Social Workers and Allies in Solidarity with Palestine Open Letter: Justice Cannot be Compartmentalized
Oct 24, 2023 https://bit.ly/SocialWorkersforPalestine
We the undersigned, social work students from across schools and faculties of social work and our allies in the lands we now call Canada, are grieving the unprecedented normalized collective punishment and human rights and international humanitarian law violations inflicted by Israel on the besieged Palestinian people of Gaza, as well as the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories. We condemn the world's fourth-strongest army indiscriminately bombing and collectively punishing 2.3 million civilians in Palestine under the guise of self-defence. Another reminder of the brutality of the settler colonial systems of the Israeli Apartheid that have colonized, occupied, made stateless and deterritorialized, the Palestinian people who many may not realize, are without a standing army, and of which nearly half of the population are children. We are deeply mourning for the extensive and unconscionable loss of children and civilian lives in the past few weeks and in the context of the past 75 years.
Palestinian lives matter and as reaffirmed by UN resolution 37/43, they have the right to freedom, self-determination, safety, and self-defence. These rights have been ignored for the last 75 years. Social workers cannot continue to stand in a neutral state watching children slaughtered on live TV and social media, nor can they accept the currently unfolding genocide against the Palestinian people. As professional social workers, we take a conscious stand against any form of oppression and call on social workers to uphold their moral and professional values of social justice. As such, we reject biased positions and siding with Israel by Canadian governments at all levels and its institutions including universities, giving a green light to the unfolding massacre in Gaza and dehumanization of the Palestinian people. If Israelis have the right to self-defence, then Palestinians should have these rights too. As such, we demand that the Canadian government end its complicit involvement in the war on Palestinian people in Gaza and must call for an immediate ceasefire by Israel, and the rapid restoration of water, electricity, food, and medicine to the more than 2.3 million people of Gaza, as well as to intervene in the forced displacement of Palestinian civilians. It is imperative that the Canadian government work with other international organizations to de-escalate the violence, provide humanitarian support, and call for negotiations to support efforts to end the violence, which necessarily includes an end to the illegal occupation of Palestine.
We condemn many Western governments' including Canada’s persistent and unequivocal political, diplomatic, military, and propaganda support for Israel which international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner have defined as an apartheid state regime.
Not only are our governments implicated in what is taking place, university leaders must also be held accountable for failing to stand against the ongoing oppression and violence in Palestine. University leaders must retract their efforts to systemically silence support for Palestine. Instead, use their institutional weight to ensure the safety of and provide support to their university community, while reaffirming the academic freedom and expertise of their faculty and students, student unions, and their organized bodies, in speaking out against the violence and colonialism experienced by Palestinians and their allies without repercussions to their status of employment, appointment, or academic standing (see this example statement released by the Department of History and Cultural Studies at the University of Toronto indicating the responsibility to speak out and share their knowledge to these issues in their own voices).
As rising tensions are being felt by communities around the world, political, community, media, and university leaders must unequivocally denounce the intensified anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim, and anti-Arab rhetoric that is/has been accepted, normalized, and weaponized at-large across Canada. Universities and academic institutions must affirm that support for pro-Palestinian rights is not a form of antisemitism, as evident from all Jewish activists calling out “Not in Our Names” as they stand with Palestine and the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid and more than a decade of co-organizing in the solidarity movement for Palestine in Canada by the Independent Jewish Voices. Social Work students, educators, and all our allies must unite and stand against all forms of colonialism, racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism.
Specifically, we the undersigned call on social work academic institutions and organizing bodies from coast to coast to coast to take an active stance against the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, who are Indigenous to their lands, but whose forced and violent displacement we are being forced to witness and coerced into complicity by doing nothing. We strongly urge social work academic institutions’ leadership and governing bodies to explicitly take a stand and show that our social justice principles do not stop at borders, do not end for certain nationalities, or are reserved for certain religions, or ethnicities, or bodies only.
We must be clear that we will call out racism, oppression, and injustices as they happen in the present and understand them in context, just as we should with our own histories of being directly responsible for facilitating oppression and colonialism. It may be easier to weigh in on the atrocities of the past, but it requires moral and professional courage to stand up against the genocide that is occurring at present. This is one of those moments: our value system as a profession and our humanity is being put to the test, and we must choose if we will call out oppression and colonialism or continue to remain complicit.
We must also be clear that the social justice that social work subscribes to applies to everyone and is grounded on relational and international solidarities with those who are silenced and oppressed. That is why we are amplifying the Palestine civil society organizations-led movement which has, since 2005, called for civil disobedience and non-violent struggle through the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. The campaign’s demands are: full equality for Palestinian citizens in Israel; an end to the occupation and colonization of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem; and the implementation of the right of return of Palestinian refugees according to UN Resolution 194. Many authors and activists account BDS origins to Palestinian activists meeting with South African anti-apartheid activist veterans at the NGO Forum, the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in South Africa (Durban I), who made comparisons to similarities experienced by Palestinians in apartheid-era South Africa.
Furthermore, as social workers, we know that we must reckon with our history of colonialism and our relationship with the Indigenous peoples in the lands we now call Canada. This is an ongoing effort that we recognize begins with truth before reconciliation. We urge you, then, to be clear about the truth and the reality of what is happening with the Indigenous peoples in occupied Palestine, especially those in Gaza, and that it has been happening in tandem with the maintenance of the colonial state of Canada. We need to be clear that we are complicit in upholding Israeli apartheid and the colonization of Palestinian land, water, and people.
The aftermath of the current ongoing genocide in Palestine will have severe and long-lasting impacts on Palestinian people and the Palestinian diaspora. The trauma they have lived through, including the constant murder of children, will take generations to overcome. The destruction of homes, healthcare systems, and infrastructures of the city will have social implications for years to come. Social workers need to call out the long-term effects of the current crimes against humanity and play a role in supporting all victims of this ongoing colonial violence.
We the undersigned urge the Canadian Association for Social Work Education (CASWE-ACFTS), Canadian Association of Social Workers (CASW), and the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW), the various Faculties and Schools of Social Work across the lands we now call Canada to uphold its commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization by acting in accordance with this call to action.
In solidarity,
Social work students with the support of social work academics, scholars, practitioners, and other allies
*Some names may be withheld in this document due to concerns about safety and fear of retaliation. We ask that signees choose descriptors for themselves instead*
