Dear Iroquois Nationals,
We are writing from occupied Palestine to urge your team to
withdraw from the 2018 World Lacrosse Championships in Israel. We know
what an important role this sport plays in Iroquois culture, Please
allow us to explain our appeal.
As indigenous peoples, we have both seen our traditional
lands colonized, our people ethnically cleansed and massacred by
colonial settlers. This year marks 70 years of Israeli dispossession of
Palestinians, which began with what we call the Nakba, or catastrophe.
In the years surrounding Israel’s establishment on our homeland in 1948,
pre and post-state Israeli forces premeditatively drove out the
majority of the indigenous people of Palestine and destroyed more than
500 of our villages and towns.
The two Israeli venues hosting the World Lacrosse Championships stand on the ruins of ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages.
The Wingate Institute was built on the lands of
Khirbat al-Zababida,
ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian inhabitants in 1948 as part of
the attacks focused on clearing indigenous villages along the coast
north of Tel Aviv. The ruins of the Palestinian village
Bayyarat Hannun, which met the same fate, literally stand in the shadows of Netanya Stadium.
Like the Iroquois Confederacy and the indigenous peoples of
Turtle Island, we struggle daily for self-determination and against
ongoing dispossession and colonization.
For decades, the Israeli government, which is sponsoring
the Lacrosse championships, has worked tirelessly to expand its
settlements in a deliberate plan to rob indigenous Palestinians of our
lands and natural resources. It regularly and quite deliberately uses
major sporting events to divert the world’s attention from its
entrenched oppression of Palestinians.
Like you, our people have been divided geographically by
artificial boundaries, and colonial controls over travel, residence and
ownership of homes and lands. Israel’s apartheid wall and military
checkpoints, its
brutal siege
of Palestinians in Gaza, its denial of the right to return for
Palestinian refugees separate families and limit our ability to travel
to, from and within our traditional lands.
Like you, we have seen settler-colonialism limit and
attempt to erase or appropriate our traditions, culture, heritage and
identity. Israel has
stolen precious artifacts from occupied Palestinian lands and carried out
systematic attacks on Palestinian culture, shutting down Palestinian cinemas and theatres, raiding and banning Palestinian cultural events.
Israel has also
attacked,
imprisoned and
killed Palestinian athletes and
bombed and destroyed Palestinian stadiums. Earlier this year, Israel’s sports minister
posted a video
of herself with fans of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team, known for its
vile racism, as they incited violence against Palestinians, chanting
“May your village be burned” to the rival Palestinian team.
Like you, we have limited rights to oversee our own laws,
rules, regulations and practices among our communities. Palestinians
living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza are subject to Israeli
military rule, while Palestinians within Israel are faced with more than 60
racist laws that racially discriminate against them in all areas of life.
Like you, foreign police and military forces invade and
occupy our communities, and we have both seen members of our communities
detained, jailed and killed because of their refusal to surrender to
the demands of external state policies and procedures. Currently, nearly
6000 Palestinian political prisoners, including close to
300 children, many arrested during terrifying night raids, are being
held in Israeli prisons where torture is rampant.
But our resistance against colonial powers for our rights,
like yours, knows no limits and will not be stopped by the violence and
intimidation tactics of our oppressors.
Palestinians have long looked to the resistance over
generations of the indigenous people of Turtle Island as an inspiration
for our struggle, as we stood in solidarity with yours. From
publications to solidarity statements, financial contributions and
participation in demonstrations, including standoffs at Oka, Akwesasne
and Ganienkeh, and indigenous struggles at Wounded Knee, Alcatraz and
most recently Standing Rock, we have stood united with your struggles
against state and corporate colonialism.
As part of our ongoing struggle for freedom, justice and
equality, in 2005 Palestinian national and local community organizations
issued a call to people of conscience throughout the world to engage in
boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns to isolate Israel
until it respects the rights of indigenous Palestinians. This call has
grown into the global, Palestinian-led BDS movement, and urges cutting
academic, cultural, sports, military and economic ties of complicity
with Israel’s regime of oppression as the most effective means of
standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
We recall actor Marlon Brando’s 1973
boycott
of the Academy Awards, refusing the award for Best Actor in protest of
Hollywood's treatment of indigenous peoples and that year’s struggle at
Wounded Knee. Brando later said it was possibly “unkind” of him to
refuse the award, but he knew there was a larger issue at hand and that
the powers that be would change only if forced to.
We are asking you to respect our nonviolent picket line by
withdrawing from the 2018 World Lacrosse Championships, denying Israel
the opportunity to use the national sport of the Iroquois to cover up
its escalating, violent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians throughout our
ancestral lands.
Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)