What We Stand For

Our Statement

Updated January 29, 2024


We are a coalition of Wyomingites from Cheyenne to Jackson, Lander to Casper, with identities ranging from Muslim, Arab, Jewish, Indigenous, Black, Christian, LGBTQIA2S+, communities who have experienced the systemic abuses of the US prisons/immigration systems, and allies, standing together in solidarity against the murder and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people. In grassroots community partnership, we have adopted and adapted the Fremont County for Ceasefire Now (FCCN) statement for our united collective. We recognize the interconnectedness of the United States in the Israeli colonial project (a project that benefits the United States, itself a colonial power) and we are calling Wyomingites and Wyoming to take an active stance against this genocide, as well as all genocides occurring on and off United States soil. 


Here is why we actively resist Israeli (and United States) colonial projects:


The ongoing genocide of Palestinians finds its basis and justifications in Zionism, a project that co-opts a carefully-fabricated Indigenous Jewish identity to justify the mass killings and displacement of Indigenous Palestinians. This justification also perpetuates, and thrives upon, the blatant racism and Islamophobia directed against the Palestinian people. To condemn Zionist violence is not anti-semetic; in fact, we believe it is anti-semitic to conflate the two, as Judaism has always existed far beyond (and often well outside the scope and intention of) Zionist ideals, especially when manifested in the form of ethnic cleansing and systematic disenfranchisement. 


The United States has been funding violence against Palestinians for decades, endorsing Israeli war crimes and targeted discrimination through a dozen different presidential administrations, from Truman to Biden [1]. Our call to end the violence in Palestine is about condemning the violent colonial forces in Israel and across the globe. The current wave of Israeli violence can be traced back to the early 1900s, when British settler-colonial powers initiated a land grab that pitted western nations, particularly those that would eventually unify under NATO, against Indigenous Palestinians [2]. The United States, a direct beneficiary of this land grab, enables and reaps the benefits of this violence, in the form of Israel’s industrial-scale development and distribution of weaponry [3], border security technologies [4] [5], and training of US police and military personnel from the Israeli military and Israeli policing organizations [6] [7]. 


We cannot be complicit in the genocide of Palestinian people, just as we cannot be complicit in the racist and colonial war against Black, Indigenous, and migrant populations occurring right here on North American lands—violence that is fueled by the intermingling of the United States and Israeli military industrial complexes. In Wyoming, the continued violence (as seen in the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Crisis [8]), over-policing and disenfranchisement [9], and dishonoring of sovereignty (as seen in the historical and ongoing stealing of lands and water [10]) that is perpetuated against Native community members right here in Wyoming are all direct consequences of these systems of industrialized prejudice.


Wyoming 4 Palestine recognizes that violence did not begin on October 7, 2023 [11]. Since 1948, whether the Palestinians’ protest against their occupation was peaceful or violent, Israel’s response has always been brutal and unrelenting violence [12]. 


Over 10,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza and the West Bank between 2008 and October 7th, 2023, as compared with 1,500 Israelis during the same period [13]. On October 7, 2023, Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters (known commonly as Hamas) conducted the most violent protest against Israeli occupation to date, leading to the deaths of over 1,000 Israelis, two-thirds civilians caught in the crossfire and one-third militants [14]. Al-Qassam Brigades has since accepted responsibility [15]. Wyoming 4 Palestine does not condemn Palestinian resistance to occupation. An occupied people anywhere have the right to resist occupation and this right has been affirmed through various global institutions such as the Geneva Conventions [16]. 


Israel has responded to this attack with the continued full force of a global nuclear superpower, carpet bombing Gaza, inhabited by 2.2 million people—half of whom are children [17]. Over 30,000 Palestinians have been martyred since October 7, just under five months ago– 92% of those murders have been civilian casualties [18]. Wyoming 4 Palestine recognizes Israel as an illegal occupier of stolen lands [19] and upholds Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, Chapter VII: Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression in affirming that an occupying force does not enjoy the right to defend itself against a people they are occupying who have no military, nor capacity for self-determination [20]. 


The governments and major media outlets of both Israel and the United States have worked hard to create and widely disseminate a narrative (based on racist depictions of Palestinians [21] [22]) that justifies continued war crimes against the Palestinian people. We saw this play out after the September 11th terror attacks, and we’re seeing it again today. It’s happening because both the United States and Israel hunger for, and subsist on, industrialized warfare as a furtherance of their geopolitical aspirations. In the United States, the national defense budget in the 2023 fiscal year, as authorized by President Biden, was $842 billion [23]. Around $3.4 billion goes to Israel every single year [24]. This is our tax money. And this is a bipartisan issue. These astronomical figures  keep defense contractors and politicians who push genocidal policies wealthy and protected, while the rest of us face the grim reality of living in a violence-based society. 


The costs of war and colonial violence in the United States have also already been clearly documented and made real for many: aside from the lives that have been taken directly, the industry of warfare is one of the greatest single contributors to climate change. A low estimate of the greenhouse gas emissions of the world’s militaries is 6% of total world emissions [25]. It’s important to note as well that the United States Military uses the most fossil fuels of any world institution [26]. 


We are asking why our local and state governments have not taken a stance? We are asking why expressing solidarity with Palestine in public is seen as taboo, and similarly has been outright criminalized in certain NATO-aligned Western nations [27]. 


We are asking these questions… but really, we already know the reasons. We have long been spoon-fed information (from politicians and on all major American and western-colonial news broadcasting sources) that supports this genocide and conflates the violence as a justified war between Israel and Hamas (and also Israel and Syria, Israel and Lebanon, and Israel and Iran) when in reality the Palestinian people do not have a centralized military, as Israel does [28].  Additionally, prevailing rhetoric frequently conflates being Palestinian (that is, to be non-ethno-European, non-Jewish, or non-white) with being an active combatant, which itself is a reflection of tactics we have seen used by American military personnel to justify their war crimes across history, perhaps most notably from President Barack Obama as justification for thousands of illegal drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia [29].  This spoon-fed information also tells us that speaking up and expressing sympathy with the plight of displaced, targeted and slaughtered Indigenous Palestinians is wrong (or anti-semitic). 


However, we refuse to be silent on this crisis. We will not be made complicit in the ongoing colonial genocide against Palestinian people, just as we will not allow the violence we see daily against Indigenous and LGBTQIA2S+ people in Wyoming to continue unchallenged. We demand that our local and state governments publicly resist this genocide. We demand a full and permanent ceasefire. We demand an end to the Israeli occupation of Indigenous Lands. We demand that those complicit in this violence take responsibility, and strive to do better in securing a more dignified and equitable existence for all. 


We will continue to make our voices heard in calls to our local and state representatives, on our social media platforms, our petition, and in regular conversations with our community [30]. 


Will you join us?




Sources


“Petition · Fremont County Take a Stance in Ending the Genocide and Occupation! · Change.Org.” n.d. Accessed January 16, 2024. https://www.change.org/p/fremont-county-take-a-stance-in-ending-the-genocide-and-occupation.