We, the undersigned staff members at Universities across Australia, support the University of Melbourne students who passed the recent motion ‘UMSU Stands with Palestine – BDS and Solidarity Policy’. We also support University students across the country who take a stance on Palestine in the face of an orchestrated campaign by Zionist groups who attempt to slander them for standing against settler colonialism, apartheid, and racism in Palestine.

In the context of Palestine, failing to adopt an abolitionist lens and, instead, focusing on apartheid isolates the Palestinian question from the broader settler colonial project of which it is subjected, and ignores what we know about the use of prisons and incarceration in older settler colonial projects.

We resist through BDS so that we can return to and rebuild villages like Safsaf. We resist through BDS to stop forced ethnic displacements in villages like Sheikh Jarrah. We resist through BDS to create a unified Palestine where our rights and sovereignty are realised and respected. We resist through BDS to organise communities around the world to dismantle the systems that oppress.

Palestinian Economic Week is an opportunity for allies to shift from performance politics to genuine economic and political support for Palestinians. People are finally talking and questioning where their food is coming from.