Never Again Action Statement on Palestine-Israel

Never Again Action, Immigrant Solidarity, and Palestine Solidarity

Never Again Action began in 2019 in a moment of collective outrage over the many families being torn apart by immigrant detention and deportation, evoking memories of concentration camps and forced removals during the Holocaust. Our movement grew out of the relationship between organizers working on immigrant solidarity and Palestine solidarity, even though we did not have a clear and public stance on Palestine in the beginning. So, let us be clear: our opposition to ethno-nationalism extends beyond our fight against the white Christian nationalism driving the U.S government, and includes an opposition to Zionism’s prioritization of Jewish life over Palestinian life.

A World Without Borders

While our work is focused on immigration in the US, our movement has always been defined as a mobilization against detention and deportation systems because we are deeply grounded in values of freedom of movement and a world without borders. In this statement, we hope to clarify Never Again’s official stance in how these values relate to Palestine-Israel.

Results

The central tenet that brings our movement together- a vision of free movement without borders - absolutely extends to Palestinians and Israelis.

No “Second-Class Citizens”

This is not a new stance but a clarification of our values. When we choose to stand up for immigrant rights in the US, we do so because we know that one group of people holding power over another is wrong - no government should have the right to reduce a person to a legal status, keep them separated from their families, or restrict people to a second-class citizenship based on ethnicity. Many of us do this work because we remember the oppression done to our Jewish ancestors; some of us do this because we are simply people who care about building a more just world.

With our ancestors at our backs, we can say, collectively, with a full chest:

• Israel’s occupation of Palestinian and other Arab lands, its genocide against the Palestinian people, and apartheid policies are just some examples of how the state of Israel, like the U.S., operates through a deeply-embedded systematized white supremacist ideology.
• Our opposition to ethno-nationalism extends beyond our fight against the white Christian nationalism driving the U.S government, and includes an opposition to Zionism’s prioritization of Jewish life over Palestinian life.
• Our abolitionist vision does not stop at the doors of U.S. prisons and ICE detention centers, but extends to Israeli systems of detention (particularly the detention of youth under ‘administrative detention’).
• The fact that we, as Jews, have suffered from white supremacy does not excuse the oppression of another people.
• Criticism of the oppressive systems enforced by the state of Israel is not antisemitic; it is, in fact, out of love for the Jewish people and the Jewish faith that we reckon with the anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias that undergirds our communities’ resistance to that criticism and has allowed the fascist right to use the Jewish community as an excuse for attacking immigrant communities.

There is no version of solidarity with immigrants or any justice movement that can exist without a recognition of the full humanity of Palestinians and Arabs.

When our future generations look back at the horrors committed with shame in the name of protecting us, they will also see us resisting and fighting back with all that we have. What does that resistance look like for Never Again Action? We will continue to proudly partner with immigrant-led and Jewish Left organizations focused on Palestinian solidarity. We will support members of our communities to further explore how the detention and deportation machines we are combatting here in the US relate to the violence in Palestine. We have developed a toolkit that will help chapters engage in Palestinian solidarity work in alignment with the values as outlined in this statement.

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None of this fundamentally changes what NAA stands for or does. Instead, it affirms the truth that has been core to our work all along: our struggles are interconnected. When we stand together, we are stronger.