InSAF India Statement of Support for Palestinian Freedom
InSAF India stands in solidarity with Palestine's struggle for freedom, wellbeing and human rights. In doing so, we stand against the ongoing settler colonialism, apartheid and brutal violence being committed by the state of Israel against Palestinians.
We demand an end to all the ways in which India is complicit in the crimes that Israel is committing in Palestine. Israel is India’s one of the top arms suppliers, with sales amounting to about $1 billion annually. Since Narendra Modi’s ascent to power in 2014, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has increasingly fostered closer friendship with Benjamin Netanyahu’s party, centring the ties around the purchase of weapons and surveillance systems that have been tested on Palestinian bodies. India has used these to suppress dissent in India and commit atrocities against Kashmiri Muslims. Both Modi and Netanyahu share a similar ethnonationalist view of the nation that is deeply Islamophobic. In 2019, the Indian Consul-General, Sandeep Chakravorty, even suggested that India should follow the Israeli model of advancing a colonial-settler state in Kashmir. We demand that India continue to honour its vote in the UN in favour of an amicable settlement for Palestine and Israel and do the same at home in Kashmir and other states in India.
The latest attack on Palestinians is another low point in the ongoing atrocities by the state of Israel, which has entrenched its settler-colonial state through brutal armed repression, expulsion and discriminatory policies. Yet, among certain sections in India, the genocidal aggression against the Palestinian civilians is hailed as a necessary price to uphold a supremacist and land-grabbing settler-colonial state. Many Kashmiris have found themselves detained for demonstrating solidarity with Palestine.
We are aware that Palestinian scholars, students and activists resist, research and write under enormously repressive conditions. As a solidarity group of academics, students and citizen activists from the Indian diaspora who are working against similar repressions in India, we recognise it as our moral obligation to support the Palestinian cause.
It is in this spirit of shared struggle, we affirm our commitment to the following actions:
We commit to highlighting the role of the state of India and the state of Israel in promoting warfare and armed brutality against innocent civilians from Palestine to Kashmir.
We will generate greater awareness of the Palestinian history among our families and communities in India.
We will support community efforts and legislation to pressure our governments to stop funding or hiding Israeli military aggression.
We call on colleagues from India and its diaspora to join us in our collective obligation to protect the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people for their liberation is connected with justice in India.
