Dear Law Scholar Colleagues,
As I write, Israel is systematically exterminating northern Gaza. Israeli forces have surrounded 400,000 Palestinians, machine gunning anyone attempting to flee the encirclement. F-35 fighter-bombers drop payload after payload of our bombs onto tents in which families cower, incinerating their inhabitants alive. Artillery shells fall like rain.
Israeli remote-controlled vehicles packed with explosives shudder up streets and detonate, demolishing whole city blocks teeming with refugees. Israeli killdozers bring down the remaining structures on the heads of families hiding inside.
No food or water has been allowed into the area for weeks. Swarms of Israeli quadcopter drones move across the apocalyptic landscape, gunning down the starving survivors. They hunt the children first, then bomb the adults who rush to save them.
Israeli death squads round up those who remain, separating the men and boys from the women and lining them up in front of trenches.
Those waiting to die post their goodbyes on social media, their accounts going silent one by one.
Here is the message left by one young woman shortly before Israel killed her on October 18: “Always pray for me. I don’t want to be just another number.”
Israeli forces face no meaningful resistance from Palestinians, who fight with homemade weapons.
Extrapolating from estimates in The Lancet, Israel has already killed more than 300,000 Palestinians over the past year. In the next few weeks, that number is likely to double as Israel liquidates the entire population in the north.
Our leaders are not naïve, weak, stupid, or somehow beholden to political entities that are entirely dependent upon them for security. They are the killers. They will not stop.
Against this backdrop, I invite you to join me in the statement copied below, which calls upon the international community immediately to invade and put an end to Israel.
If you would like to join the statement, please email me at ramsiwoodcock@antizionist.net and I will add your name to the list.
Please forward to your networks.
Sincerely,
Ramsi
STATEMENT
I call upon every country in the world to make war on Israel immediately and until such time as Israel has submitted permanently and unconditionally to the government of Palestine everywhere from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Israel is the last major Western colony remaining in Africa or the Middle East. Israel has committed genocide, extermination, and forced displacement against the native population of Palestine since her inception in 1948.
Israel has done so at greatly accelerated pace over the past year, during which she has killed in excess of 300,000 people, about 150,000 of whom were children. Israel promises to kill many times that number.
The norm against Western colonization established by wars of decolonization in the 20th century is in peril. It will survive only so long as states are willing to go to war to defend it. The world must act now. Given the stakes, each nation must prepare to strike alone.
I stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and the Lebanese people, their resistance forces, their allies throughout the region, the global intifada, and, especially, my fellow law scholars in Palestine, both teachers and students, thousands of whom have been slaughtered by Israel over the past year.
Signed:
Ramsi Woodcock
University of Kentucky
PS An earlier statement can be found here.