Dear Friend,

Today, May 15, is Nakba Day. Nakba is an Arabic word that means “catastrophe” and is used to describe the process of forced mass displacement and dispossession of Indigenous Palestinians from their land that began in 1948 when the state of Israel was established, and when more than half of Palestinians were violently expelled from their native land. 

One year ago today, we wrote this piece recognizing the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. 

We explained that the Nakba did not end in 1948, but that the entire settler colonial project of the Israeli state, which began that year, has resulted in a permanent state of catastrophe in Palestine, or what we described at that time as a slow-motion genocide. 

Since then, the slow-motion genocide of the last 75 years has become a fast-motion genocide.

Over 35,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 75,000 injured, while others face famine, disease, terror, and grief on a magnitude unimaginable. And the situation is worsening. At the time of this writing, Israel has closed off the border between Rafah and Egypt, and is intensifying a ground invasion in Rafah, where 1.5 million Palestinian civilians who have been pushed out of their homes are sheltering.
 

We are deeply grateful to you for standing with us at this critical moment. We need your continued support, your unwavering solidarity. We are writing today, on Nakba Day, as we collectively continue standing up for an end to this catastrophe and also support the Palestinian people in their ongoing struggle for life and liberation. 

Our coming together as a community in radical love and solidarity at this moment is critical – and we need to widen our circle.

As adrienne maree brown said in our October Solidarity Encounter on deepening solidarity with Palestine, “At this moment, we (need to) figure out how we can plant a decolonial seed in as many people as possible.”

Here are a few things you can do right now, to plant these seeds:

1. Make a donation to our Palestine Emergency Fund, even if you have already, and help us move additional resources to our long-time movement partners, who are saving lives right now. These organizations’ efforts toward human rights, and social and ecological justice have endured for decades and will continue for decades to come. 
2. Share this video widely, let your community know you have given to the Palestine Emergency Fund, and ask them to do the same. If you need support talking to friends and family about Palestine, please feel free to reach out to [email protected].  
3. Raise your voice and take action. The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights has helpful resources for action for individuals Additionally, if you are an institutional funder or individual donor and want to get involved in Grassroots International’s funder/donor organizing for Palestine, please email [email protected]. 

Thank you for being our family, for your radical love and solidarity, and for the work you do each day planting decolonial seeds with us. The road to our collective liberation travels through a free Palestine, and we are so grateful to you for walking this road with us and with our Palestinian partners. 

In Solidarity,

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