3/30 Palestinian Land Day Rally & March

The Palestinian Land Day Sapling Planting and Rally in Montpelier on Saturday, March 30th was one of several events hosted across Vermont to oppose Israel's genocidal war in Gaza, and to stand with Palestinians in their struggle for liberation. Graham Unangst-Rufenacht, Rural Vermont’s Policy Director, along with several others, was asked to speak to the connections between food sovereignty, human rights, and democracy.

My name is Graham Unangst-Rufenacht, I am the Policy Director at Rural VT - a nearly 40 year old member based organization working for food justice and food sovereignty through organizing, education, and advocacy.  Through our membership in the National Family Farm Coalition, we are also a member organization of La Via Campesina - one of the largest social movement organizations in the world, and an organization which includes at least one Palestinian member organization: the Union of Agricultural Work Committees,  (UAWC), a grassroots organization working in Gaza and the West Bank to rehabilitate lands destroyed by the Israeli occupation, preserve native seeds and support farmers.

Inherent to food sovereignty is an explicit focus on environmental justice, human rights, democracy, the rights of food, peasants and indigenous peoples, territorial rights, internationalism and solidarity.

We are here today in honor and celebration of Palestinian Land Day.  We recognize the more than 100 year history of Palestinian land dispossession, food and crop destruction, prohibition and barriers to agricultural land and fisheries (prior to Oct. 7, the Israeli occupation had created a military exclusion zone on almost half of Gaza’s arable land, and a maritime buffer zone that allows access to barely 15% of the Mediterranean), theft and pollution of water and aquifers, ethnic cleansing, starvation, blockade and now seige, and systemic racism, violence, and genocide.  We are also here to recognize, honor, and stand in solidarity with the resilience of the Palestinian peoples, of their relationships with the land and waters; with their right to resist occupation, apartheid, forced displacement, systemic racism and genocide; with their right to return, to reparations, remunerations, and self determination.  

Food Sovereignty is the right of communities to choose where and how their food is produced, and what food they consume. It centers food, agriculture, and relationship to land and plants and animals and waters as not only essential aspects of our lives which keep us alive, but as fundamental aspects of our individual and cultural identities and legacies.  As a member organization of the National Family Farm Coalition and signatories of the Nyeleni Declaration in 2007, we affirm the Declaration’s position that,

“Food sovereignty is challenged by repression and state terrorism, particularly as conflicts affect communities' control over territories. This limits their access to land, water, food and excludes their participation in decision-making. For peoples living under occupation, self-determination and local autonomy become crucial in order to achieve food sovereignty”

Vivien Sansour, of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, tells us that, “The soil has become so toxic because of the amount of bombs, from white phosphorus to all kinds of other ammunition…a lot of our trees, which, for us, our trees are part of our family, they are part of our kin, and they are being destroyed, too.”  Between the years 2000 and 2012 (according ot the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture), the Israeli occupation destroyed more than 3,000,000 fruit and olive trees to displace Palestinian farmers.  Trees which span generations of Palestinians who have tended them, many of which were older than the state of Israel itself.  Some 100,000 Palestinian families that depend on olive production have been unable to access their lands for the harvest over the past 6 months, in Gaza and in the West Bank primarily, due to attacks by the Israeli military and settlers, who have had thousands of assault rifles distributed to them by the Israeli government since Oct. 7th.  These attacks by settlers and the Israeli military - using weapons often supplied by the US - have been ongoing for decades.  For the past 15 years the UAWC has been running an Olive Harvest Campaign to bring volunteers (often from Europe and Latin America) to assist farmers during the harvest, and to provide some means of witness and protection to Palestinians harvesting and their communities and farms.  But this year, much of this aid was not able to be provided given the level of violence in Occupied Palestine.  

As Leah Penniman has highlighted in her lectures and classes for years, it was Malcolm x who said: ““Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.”  The other side of the coin is that Imperialism, colonialism, and the destruction of culture and subjugation of peoples is dependent upon separation from land, and the inhibition or prohibition of the ability to have independent connection and relationship to land and cultural traditions related to land as not only a source of sustenance and shelter, but also a fundamental source of identity and inspiration.  As people living at the center of a global empire which is a partner in this genocide - the United States - it is important to not only be reminded of the history of displacement and genocide of the indigenous populations of this geography where we live, the histories of racism and slavery, and the ongoing imperial policies and colonialism of this country in places like Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Mexico and more; but also the impoverishment of our working class agricultural communities and our cultures of agriculture, the exploitation of farmers and farmworkers and the land, such that the average national income for farmers is typically less than -$1000, farmers are extremely vulnerable to mental health challenges and suicide, small farms and land are consolidated into larger farms and blocks of land ever more frequently owned by global capital, and many of our farmworkers face detention and forced deportation, affecting our community sovereignty over our human rights and the very resources we rely upon for our survival.  All of this as we send billions of dollars and weapons of war to an occupying, apartheid entity; and maintain imperial military bases around the planet.  

As we go out to prune our own fruit trees, to tend our sugarbushes, to put our hands in the soil as we do this time of year in VT - we will not do so under threat of attack and death by the military or armed settlers, we will not do so on roads that have been bombed and torn up to inhibit our access, we will not be faced with people chasing us and our flocks and herds away, we will not be coming from villages under constant threat of violence by occupying forces.  As farmers, farmworkers, eaters, seed keepers, and all of the roles we play here in VT - we stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine and recognize our own fates, the fates of our own trees, and land, and waters, and livelihoods as inextricably bound together.  We must end this horror - free Palestine!

Photo Credit: Grace Oedel

2/27 Ceasefire Rally at the Statehouse

At the Ceasefire Rally and press conference at the statehouse held on Tuesday, February 27th, Graham Unangst-Rufenacht, Rural Vermont’s Policy Director, along with several other organizations and individuals, was asked to speak about food sovereignty and its inherent connection to human rights and democracy. The ceasefire rally and press conference, organized by the Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation, capped an effort urging the Vermont General Assembly to sign onto a ceasefire letter, pressuring the Biden administration to demand, and commit to, a ceasefire in Gaza. You can read Graham’s speech and see pictures from the day below.

My name is Graham Unangst-Rufenacht, I am the Policy Director at Rural VT - a nearly 40 year old member-based organization working for food justice and food sovereignty through education, organizing and advocacy.  Through our membership and work in the National Family Farm Coalition, we are also a member organization of La Via Campesina - one of the largest social movement organizations in the world.

Inherent to food sovereignty is an explicit focus on human rights for all people, democracy, the rights of peasants and indigenous peoples, the right to food, territorial rights, internationalism and solidarity.

We are here today in support of - and with gratitude for - this effort by these legislators and the organizations and individuals they have been working with, to author this letter; using their political power as representatives of their constituents, and this place we call home, to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, and for the end of military aid to Israel.  I want to read parts of a statement made by La Via Campesina on October 27th which contextualizes this moment in the realm of our work in food and agriculture:

For decades, small food producers, including fisher folk and farmers have been denied access to their waters, land and other crucial common goods. Many were killed by Israeli forces while seeking to secure their livelihoods. The Israeli occupation has created a military exclusion zone on almost half of Gaza’s arable land, and a maritime buffer zone that allows access to barely 15% of the Mediterranean, which makes it impossible for fishermen to catch an adequate amount of fish to sustain their communities. This, added to the blockade on exports and imports, access to food, agricultural inputs, and fuel, and the repetitive aggressions turned Gaza into a cramped open-air prison where Palestinians suffer collective punishment and are deprived of their rights, including the right to adequate food. The right to food is recognized in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and is enshrined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which Israel has signed and ratified 57 years ago.

More than 700 Israeli military checkpoints divide the West Bank, which completely separates the  Al-Aghwar area that produces 80% of the food of Palestinians. Some 100,000 Palestinian families that depend on olive production are unable to access their lands for the harvest, in Gaza and in the West Bank primarily, due to the thousands of assault rifles that have been distributed by the Israeli government to the settlers.  Since the year 2000, the Israeli occupation has destroyed 3,000,000 fruit and olive trees to displace Palestinian farmers.  Israel’s continuous 17-year blockade has also led to a severe water crisis in Gaza…  

I would add that we are now seeing the culmination of the denial of the right to food, with the excruciating onset of manufactured starvation in Gaza.   

Although we come here in support of this effort from our representatives - we must also admit deep disappointment that in this moment of this 100 years of war against the people of Palestine; that we have not done, and are not doing more as a State given the complicity of the United States in the Israeli apartheid, occupation, displacement and killing of the Palestinian people over many years - and now this escalation which the International Court of Justice has declared to “plausibly” be a genocide, ordering “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip from the risk of genocide by ensuring sufficient humanitarian assistance and enabling basic services.  Israel - and the United States - have failed to comply, and we should not be surprised.  If those in power will not yield to the International Court of Justice, if they will not yield to serious threats to their own political power, if they will not yield to tens of thousands of murdered, maimed, and starving Palestinian children - what makes us think that our voices will be listened to? 

Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu - people who understood apartheid and oppression more than likely any of us standing here today - championed the Palestinian cause.  Tutu said that Israel's apartheid is even worse than South Africa’s.  And importantly for us here today, considering what effective action looks like, he said that “what ultimately forced these leaders together around the negotiating table was the cocktail of persuasive, nonviolent tools that had been developed to isolate South Africa, economically, academically, culturally and psychologically”.  Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.

Our actions and tactics must escalate, because right now, the state of VT attributes greater societal cost to the “enteric emissions” of the cattle on my farm than it does the US-made and manufactured bombs dropping on Gaza from F-35s like those housed at the Burlington Air Base.  There cannot be a “politically impossible” in a moment like this; there can be no deference to “leadership” whether it be in the Executive or Legislative branches of federal or local government.  Our interest, and what we must work towards, is politically necessary.  Our political power is not in our individual positions in State government or organizations, it is in working together with and for the people of Vermont - in solidarity for human rights globally.  Representatives, members of the public, member-based organizations - the politically necessary will only become politically possible when we work to create change and policy together from the ground up, and make power cede to the demands and real needs of the people here in VT and around the world.  Rural VT is here with you in this work to end the occupation, apartheid and genocide - and to bring repair, return, and self-determination to the people of Palestine.

Free, Free Palestine!

1/27 Vermonters Together - Building a Better Future Rally

On Saturday, January 27th, hundreds of Vermonters gathered in Montpelier for the Vermonters Together - Building a Better Future March & Rally to call for Legislators and the Governor to create a more equitable, peaceful and healthy economy in balance with our planet. Business and politics as usual have left the state scrambling in the face of extreme weather and geopolitical events during 2023. The result? An affordable housing crisis, social unrest, overwhelmed food shelves, low-income families spending over 5 times more of their monthly income on energy bills than higher-income families, and one of the highest per capita carbon emissions of all the states in the Northeast US. 

The problems we are working to solve are interconnected and we need our Legislators to address the root-causes of injustice. We are bigger than what divides us. No more corporate schemes, forgotten people, prisons and wars. Vermont should be built on a strong democracy that prioritizes the needs of the people and our collective future. Together we can embrace new solutions that drive investments in our communities, farmers and our land, provide safe, warm and affordable housing, and give all Vermonters access to 100% low-emissions income-assessed energy. It takes courage to work for systemic change, but time is running out. Later is too late.

The 1/27/24 march and rally were organized by 350 VT and a number of supporting organizations, including Rural Vermont, calling for action and solidarity at the intersection of climate change, human rights, social justice, agriculture and more. We were invited to join the coalition and event and to speak to some of these intersections, in particular, food sovereignty, human rights, and internationalism.

Take a look at Graham’s speech as well as Earl Hatley, Rural Vermont board member, speaking as an Environmental Justice Organizer and member of the Missisquoi Abenaki and Shawnee Cherokee tribes, as well as a gallery of photos from the day below…

10.27.23 Food Sovereignty & Human Rights Social Media Posts

The following excerpt was shared to our Rural Vermont Instagram and Facebook pages as a series of slides on Friday, October 27th.

On Monday, October 16th, Rural Vermont released our collective statement regarding the Palestine/Israel conflict in our online newsletter which we now share here...

“The globe is viscerally horrified and saddened by the atrocities against civilians committed by armed fighters of Hamas in Israel - and in Palestine by the heightened state of Israel’s siege on, and bombing of, Gaza and the continued colonization of the occupied Palestinian Territories and its civilian population. Our hearts and tears are with those who’ve lost loved ones, with those who are living as hostages, to those living as refugees, and to those living under occupation, bombardment and siege with no safe place to go, no food, no water, no electricity, no medical resources.

Today, October 16, 2023, is the International Day of Action for People’s Food Sovereignty. One of the greatest threats to food sovereignty and collective wellbeing is warfare and human conflict. Today, we affirm our commitment to protecting human and territorial rights.

As stated in our 2021 Statement of Solidarity with Palestine, ‘Rural Vermont affirms the equal rights of all Palestinian people and Israeli Jews to self-determination, and to freedom from discrimination and human rights abuses… We explicitly stand with our Jewish, Palestinian, and Muslim brothers and sisters against antisemitism, against islamophobia, and against discrimination towards Palestinians in the pursuit for equality, safety, and dignity for all peoples. National self-determination cannot be a fundamental right awarded to some yet denied to others. It is wrong to dehumanize any peoples, and efforts involving the dehumanization and oppression of one peoples in pursuit of liberation for another bring us ever further from our collective liberation.’

We are at a critical moment in this conflict - we call on VT’s representatives, the United States government, and international actors to act now and prevent the escalation of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, and to apply and enforce standards of international humanitarian law equally between Palestinians and Israeli Jews throughout Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. The United States must not militarily or rhetorically continue to “unconditionally" support the actions of the state of Israel and share complicity in crimes of war and crimes against humanity exacted upon the approximately 2 million inhabitants of Gaza and Palestinian civilians across the occupied territories of Palestine. We ask those organizations who have not spoken out to use your voices to help end this conflict, and to support transforming the role of the United States into one calling for peace, human rights, and territorial sovereignty in the region for all peoples and nations.

Why is Rural VT speaking on this issue? As stated in our Mission, Rural VT is an organization which finds its home and community locally, and also in our relationships with organizations and communities around the world grounded in shared principles of equity, justice, and human rights. We believe that internationalism is a critical aspect of local movement building; and that local movement building and the voices of local stakeholders are critical to creating change by and for the people and planet. As an organization which works with federal representatives on policy, while being committed to grassroots education and movement building - we feel it is important to speak and advocate in this moment, and on this issue, in particular given the role of the United States in this conflict and region.”

After the Hamas assault on southern Israel which killed approximately 1300 people, approximately 7,500 civilian Palestinians and inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank have now been killed by the state of Israel. More than 3,000 children in occupied Palestine have been killed, more than 130 children in southern Israel were killed. More than 50% of Gaza's civilian infrastructure has been destroyed. These are all crimes of war, but of entirely different proportionalities and from entirely different positionalities of power.

The world watches on in horror as the United States continues to "unconditionally support" Israel's assault, and militarily and diplomatically defend its crimes of war - as recognized by the Sec. General of the UN, and Amnesty International - and by the unwillingness of VT's delegation to support an immediate ceasefire and recognize these war crimes. President Biden, Rep. Balint, Sen. Welch, Sen. Sanders - your positions and US policy must change.

TAKE ACTION NOW!

Farmers, eaters, farmworkers, community members - urge our congressional representatives to advocate for an immediate ceasefire, an unconditional support for human rights and humanitarian law, an end TO the occupation of Palestine, and the foundation of a sovereign Palestinian state as the starting points - not the ending points - of a lasting and legitimate peace process.

Contacts

Sen. Sanders Office

D.C: 202-224-5141

Vermont: 802-862-0697

Rep. Balint's Office

D.C: 202- 225-4115

Vermont: 802-652-2450

Sen. Welch's Office

D.C: 202-224-4242

Vermont: 802-862-0697

11.02.23 Response to Our Palestine/Israel Social Media Posts on 10.27.23

Thank you to those who respectfully and thoughtfully responded to our Instagram and Facebook posts on October 27, 2023.  We hope you all feel listened to and heard in our response below- we have tried our best to address the questions and concerns that were raised in the comment sections of both social media platforms. We appreciate the understanding that words are imperfect - and we implore everyone to see beyond the specific words to what they are pointing to which is this terribly dire situation and atrocity being broadcast around the world.  Here we will address some of the questions about words we have chosen to use:

We reaffirm that we do not see this as Rural VT taking a “side”.  We condemn violence against civilians by Hamas and the state of Israel, we condemn anti-semitism and islamophobia, and other forms of discrimination and violence based on identity, religion, and ethnicity.  We are calling for an immediate ceasefire, a just peace, and effectively "siding" with international humanitarian organizations such as Amnesty International, the UN Secretary General and staffers such as the (now) former director of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, with the Geneva Conventions and other international humanitarian laws and standards for conflict.  We are siding with the civilian human beings caught in this conflict, and we are citing and describing evidence related to war crimes by Hamas and the state of Israel: crimes of targeting civilian populations, crimes of apartheid, crimes of the use of food as a weapon, crimes of occupation and displacement of populations and the denial of the right of return to refugees, crimes of hostage taking and the taking of political prisoners, and the crime of genocide. We are asking that our government immediately and unconditionally support a ceasefire, human rights, humanitarian law, internationally recognized borders, and the protection of civilians as opposed to unconditionally supporting any particular state or non-state actor.  We have expressed, and continue to express our solidarity with the grief, anger and deep loss faced by Israeli and Palestinian families and communities.  Indeed our own grief, anger, and deep sense of loss as humans irrevocably linked through empathy and the web of life.  

“Colonization” and Criticism of Israel

Intentionally or unintentionally, our focus on Israel has been conflated into a focus on the Jewish people by some people in the comments.  We reiterate, criticism of Israel, an independent nation-state, is not criticism of the civilian population of Israel, Jewish people or Judaism; it is not anti-semitism; we reject anti-semitism, as well as islamophobia, and discrimination against the people of Palestine.  We do not question the indigeneity of Jewish people to this place - nowhere in our statements have we.  Our statement does not suggest that Jewish people are colonizers of a foreign land, or that the state of Israel should be abolished.  In naming particular behavior and actions of the state of Israel as colonial in nature, Rural VT stands with representatives of the United Nations and their statements made at various points of time, and a number of humanitarian organizations globally such as Jewish Voice for Peace and the Center for Constitutional Rights. 

Here are some examples: https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/10/1129942, https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15424.doc.htm, https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/12/israel-treats-palestinian-territories-like-colonies-says-un-rapporteur, https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/1/craig_mokhiber_un_resignation_israel_gaza, https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/legal-group-israeli-colonial-domination-necessary-context,  Amnesty International report,

Self Determination and Statehood

We are not here to prescribe “solutions” - we are here first in solidarity with Palestinian and global humanitarian calls for a ceasefire, just peace, and self determination for the Palestinian people. It is true that nation state status may not be one of the chosen outcomes of “self determination”; however, here we are echoing the call that we have heard from a great number of Palestinian civil society organizations for decades for the establishment of a Palestinian state as one critical part of their self-determination.

More on why RV speaks on this:

We have already spoken in this post as to why we have written about this ongoing conflict and other statements on it over time, and how this relates to Rural VT’s mission and relationships and history, and work more broadly - but we can add more here:

This is our mission statement:  "Rural Vermont organizes, educates and advocates in collaboration with local and global movements to strengthen the social, ecological and economic health of the agrarian communities that connect us all."  As was stated in this post, we strongly affirm the importance of internationalism, solidarity with intersectional struggles for food sovereignty and peace and justice, and we are working to grow opportunities for VT farming communities to have more exchange with farming communities globally.  We still spend a relatively small portion of our capacity on things that are not immediately occuring in Vermont.  

We are an organization organized around and advocating for food sovereignty.  Inherent to food sovereignty is an explicit focus on human rights, the rights of peasants, on internationalism, and territorial rights.  As such, we are a member organization of La Via Campesina through the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC).  NFFC has a staffer - Jordan Treakle, who has joined us in VT on a number of occasions in the past as well - currently at meetings of the UN in Rome, interfacing with representatives of La Via and others on this and other issues - and bringing back information we are responding to as an organization.  Our membership in these organizations helps bring our local voices global, and helps us bring global voices to this locality.  This is a part of our organizational family and work, and this family has a history of work related to a just peace in Palestine / Israel, and at least one member organization in this coalition is under direct threat from this violence: the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) in occupied Palestine.

We are an organization which works substantially on policy - not only at the local level, but also with these national and international partners, and on national and international issues.  This is a part of our history, see Rural VT's protests and direct actions in the 1990's against NAFTA and GATT for example, and its longstanding relationship with the National Family Farm Coalition, La Via Campesina, and national and global policies they are working on.  As an organization with connections to lawmakers at the national level, we are committed to a particular responsibility when it comes to our ability as an organization to influence policy and in particular to take positions on important local / regional / national / global issues which are often not politically comfortable, or when our government is taking particularly problematic positions which we feel must be addressed related to our mission and vision as an organization.  This is also a part of our deep commitment to education and encouraging citizen advocacy.

In this case, the United States has invested a disproportionate amount of its foreign aid, military aid, and diplomacy in supporting Israel and its policies ``unconditionally" for decades, as opposed to supporting both nations of peoples, a just peace, and the adherence to agreements of state boundaries and humanitarian law. These are policy decisions - and there will be many policy decisions in the days to come which will militarily affect this conflict, human and territorial rights, and ultimately the survival and displacement of thousands of people now and over generations.  These policy decisions will affect the perceived credibility of, and trust in, the United States in the eyes of the world, in particular the global south for generations to come.  The ongoing expenses of war and the already catastrophic US military budget also take away desperately needed funding for local, national, and global initiatives to address agrarian needs and even potential policies which Rural VT may advocate for: healthcare, childcare, education, climate change, reparations, agricultural reforms, etc.

War exacerbates climate change and environmental destruction, it prioritizes public money (US taxpayer dollars) for the private sector and the military industrial complex and in doing so divests from investments in the needs of people and the planet, it destroys and greatly affects for generations cultures and communities and families and individuals lives, it poisons the soil and water, it exacerbates existing inequities, it hardens divisions.  It can lead to the use of nuclear weapons.

Amnesty International Report

UN Secretary General Statements

Rural VT Statement of Solidarity with Palestine and Support for Actions by Ben & Jerry’s Inc.

Rural Vermont stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people and condemns the Israeli State’s systemic human rights violations, discrimination, and the illegal occupation and blockade of Palestine which has now affected generations of Palestinians and the lands of Palestine. 

On April 27 2021, Human Rights Watch released a 213-page report entitled "A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.”  This is not the first organization or report to describe Israel’s actions in Palestine as “apartheid” (UN ESCWA Report On Israeli Apartheid).  Michael Lynk, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has described illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem as a “war crime”.  The Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, has confiscated land and property from thousands of Palestinians who have been there for generations. Military blockades continue to limit the distribution of supplies, including food and water, and there is widespread and life threatening lack of access to medical care and a restriction of movement for Palestinian peoples, affecting how and if they can go to work, school, visit family members, or even access their farmland. The bombing of crops, chemical destruction of beehives, burning of olive trees, and destruction of agricultural roads are just a few of the injustices Palestinian farmers face.  The results are felt by all Palestinians, over one million of whom are refugees and currently reside in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and nearby occupied territories.

There are many significant and devastating regimes of discrimination around the world. We feel it is critical for Rural VT and others to speak in solidarity with Palestinians for a number of reasons, in particular the historical and ongoing role of the United States, and US based companies, in condoning and perpetuating the systemic inequities, disproportionate violence, and apartheid inflicted by the State of Israel on the Palestinian peoples.  The United States has used its privilege in the UN Security Council to veto dozens of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions critical of Israel, including at least 53 since 1972, according to UN data.  In 2020 alone, the US gave 3.8 billion dollars in aid to the State of Israel, almost all of it for military assistance (BBC June 2021)[1]. US support has allowed Israel to have nuclear capabilities and one of the most advanced militaries in the world, and this support directly supports the ongoing and illegal occupation and blockade of Palestine and the continued displacement, killing, incarceration, and maiming of Palestinian men, women, and children. 

In the early Summer of 2021, as violence once again escalated in East Jerusalem and Gaza (resulting in the killing of at least 256 Palestinians including 66 children, as well as an estimated 13 Israelis including 2 children), Rural VT joined many other 2020 Ben & Jerry’s Foundation grant recipients in signing onto a letter to Ben and Jerry’s Inc.’s leadership drafted and initiated by the Pilsen Alliance, and assisted by members of Vermonters for Justice in Palestine, the BDS Movement, Jewish Voice for Peace, and If Not Now.  Vermonters for Justice in Palestine, among other organizations, has been urging Ben & Jerry’s Inc. to discontinue its sales and operations in occupied Palestine, and meet other demands, for over a decade.  The letter was to be delivered on July 20th, however on July 19th Ben & Jerry’s Inc. released a statement saying they would cease sales in the occupied Palestinian territories.  We applaud Ben & Jerry’s Inc., while recognizing this as a small but important step for this and other companies to take.  Please see a full statement of response to Ben & Jerry’s Inc. and Unilever (which has not taken a similar action as Ben & Jerry’s Inc.) drafted by the Pilsen Alliance which Rural VT stands in solidarity with here.  This statement importantly calls attention to the political backlash Ben & Jerry’s is now facing: “In the wake of these efforts for justice, Democrat and Republican legislators have launched a wave of anti-BDS laws in state legislatures across the U.S. in an attempt to oppress and silence Palestinian activists and anyone advocating for Palestinian freedom. We encourage everyone to follow and join efforts to prevent and dismantle these laws in your state: BDS movement (@BDSmovement), US Palestinian Community Network (@uspcn), Palestine Legal (@pal_legal), Jewish Voice for Peace Action #SaveSheikhJarrah (@JvpAction).  Please let Ben & Jerry’s Inc. know that you support and commend its decision to pursue a just course of action in Palestine.

Rural Vermont affirms the equal rights of all Palestinian people and Israeli Jews to self-determination, and to freedom from discrimination and human rights abuses. We reject the narrative that criticism of the Israeli government is anti-Semitic.  This narrative seeks to conflate criticism of a Nation State based on its actions with discrimination against a people based on their religion and / or ethnicity.  The existence and actions of Jewish organizations that advocate in opposition to Zionism and in support of Palestinian liberation and justice, such as Jewish Voice for Peace, directly contradicts this narrative. Palestinian and Jewish peoples have both faced extreme historical traumas, discrimination, and dispossession.  We explicitly stand with our Jewish, Palestinian, and Muslim brothers and sisters against antisemitism, against islamophobia, and against discrimination towards Palestinians in the pursuit for equality, safety, and dignity for all peoples.  National self-determination cannot be a fundamental right awarded to some yet denied to others. It is wrong to dehumanize any peoples, and efforts involving the dehumanization and oppression of one peoples in pursuit of liberation for another bring us ever further from our collective liberation. 

The situation in Gaza is especially dire.  People in Gaza live under a state of siege and frequent military attacks.  In the agricultural sector alone,  Gaza’s Ministry of Agriculture estimates around $27 million in damages from the recent outbreak of violence, including greenhouses, wells & irrigation systems, and agricultural lands. Many thousands of peasant farmers and fisherfolk in Gaza have experienced crop losses (estimated over 50 hectares) and damages to infrastructure. Water supplies and farmland have been polluted by missile attacks and many are covered in rubble. The recent closure of the seas and destruction of fishing boats currently threatens the food security of about 3600 families (Via Campesina 2021). The United Nations estimates that approximately 800,000 people in Gaza do not have regular access to clean piped water, as nearly 50 percent of the water network was damaged in the spring 2021 bombing.

Even as access to water, food, healthcare, and education are limited, there is resistance and there is hope. Palestinian agriculturists in occupied lands are protecting and preserving their indigenous practices. Through La Via Campesina, an international network of peasant and landless farmers, Rural Vermont is connected to organizations like the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, who are working to preserve cultural heritage in Palestine while protecting biodiversity and maintaining soil health, and also through the creation of a seed bank. Women and youth agriculturists and the knowledge of community elders are held in high regard. We stand in struggle and solidarity to exert peasant rights and the rights of landless peoples to pursue food sovereignty as part of our liberation. Food sovereignty is nonviolent resistance and a form of self-determination.

Let us stand with the people of Palestine in their struggle, as a critical part of our collective struggle for justice, and a future in which all peoples can live safe and dignified lives.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/57170576

[2] https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/11/1078532

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/mar/07/debunking-myth-that-anti-zionism-is-antisemitic

Other Sources

We invite you to learn about and support the following groups and organizations. This list is not comprehensive. Let us know if there are groups you feel should be included on this list.

Solidarity Groups in Vermont and the Northeast