FCD Statement on Palestine
The Foothill Community Democrats recognize that our silence on the Palestinian and Israeli crisis was a mistake. The disproportionately high number of Palestinian casualties, including thousands of maimed and killed women and children, has clarified these atrocities to be a systematic genocide brought on by the Israeli government, funded with our tax dollars, against the Palestinian people. We vehemently condemn Israel’s apartheid regime in its unrelenting, U.S.-backed genocide against the Palestinian people and prolonged occupation of Palestinian territories. The staggering number of mutilated and killed children, journalists, healthcare workers, and aid workers, along with the destruction of vital infrastructure, has resulted in the undeniable conclusion that Israel is intentionally and knowingly engaging in these war crimes. This has also exposed our own delayed education and awareness of the foreign policy crisis our own Party has contributed to creating. We must hold our elected officials accountable for their past support for Israel’s war crimes, their acceptance of campaign contributions from foreign policy interest lobbies, and demand their foreign policy positions change to reflect our Democratic constituency or risk being primaried.
Generations of children who are subjected to ongoing occupation, military attacks, losing parents and siblings, and starvation will face severe physical and mental trauma for the rest of their lives. The thousands of chronically ill people who have had little access to health care due to our tolerance of the war crime of attacking civilian healthcare infrastructure. Israel controls all access to Gaza, including humanitarian aid distribution. Palestinians surviving in Gaza are facing unsurvivable conditions as Israel deliberately enacts tactics of mass starvation. On a daily basis, Israel’s illegal occupying force is using the moniker of “humanitarian aid” to lure innocent people desperately seeking food, water, and medicine to their deaths at the hands of the IDF.
This continued horror will lead to another generation that resents the United States and risks the safety of future generations of Americans. We understand that, to the military industrial complex, these atrocities ensure their future markets, which is why we, as Democrats, cannot continue to tolerate the sale of weapons as a foreign policy objective. Our participation in this genocide, through our funding and direct weapon sales to Israel, has directly contributed to undermining the foreign policy interests of the United States. If the U.S. continues its support of Israel’s colonization, it will only further stain the reputation of our country as a perpetuator of genocide and ethnic cleansing. When 98% of the casualties are on one side, it is more than simply wrong not to speak out; it is a moral failure of the conscience of people who uphold liberty and freedom.
Therefore, The Foothill Community Democrats:
Demand an immediate embargo on all military aid, weapon shipments, and military logistical support to Israel.
Demand the immediate end to the engineered famine and deliberate starving of the people in Gaza.
Demand that Democratic candidates pledge to reject all campaign financing from foreign interest sources.
Demand our representatives support recognition of the State of Palestine.
Adhere to the boycott, divestment, and sanctions efforts against Israeli and U.S. companies participating in the Palestinian genocide, as maintained by the Palestinian BDS National Committee’s BDS list, from all future club meetings, and call upon the Los Angeles County Democratic Party to support the BDS movement against Israel’s apartheid.
Demand the Democratic Party champion justice for Native Americans and the many victims of our White Supremacist history.
Denounce the conflation of anti-zionism and criticism of Israel with anti-semitism.
Call for the Democratic Party to create a Truth and Reconciliation Committee to identify and provide recommendations to correct the hypocritical application of the Party’s response to ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Crucially, we ask our Democratic elders to listen to their conscience, their base, and the youth who are seeking an opposition party to the GOP, instead of smearing, threatening, and punishing Democratic activists for demanding justice for the victims of genocide.
We should be able to agree that what we are witnessing has been foreshadowed and warned of for years. Never Again.
Foothill Community Democrats
