Free Palestine

Plea for the Fifth stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine as they endure the current oppressive occupation of their land at the hands of the state of Israel. We are an organization that supports indigenous sovereignty both domestically and abroad.

Since its creation in 1948, the state of Israel has worked continuously through acts of genocide to expel Palestinian Muslims, Jews, and Christians from their land and created an apartheid state -- a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Over the last two weeks Israel has committed several war crimes against Palestine including attacking civilians and their homes, attacking the Al-Aqsa mosque, destroying roads to a hospital in Gaza, and attempting to silence journalists by bombing the office building of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera under unfounded claims of terrorist presence within the building.

As journalists we want to stress the seriousness of attacks against media and journalists in Palestine, without which many of the atrocities against Palestinians perpetrated by the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) under the direction of the state of Israel would go under-reported.

This is not an issue that warrants a “both sides” argument. Palestine, without a military and occupied by the state of Israel, is unable to comparably defend itself and has suffered an incomparable loss of life at the hands of the IDF. Over the last 13 years, almost 115,000 Palestinians have been injured and over 5,000 others have been killed by the IDF.

Plea for the Fifth supports the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions movement and calls for the cessation of the United States’ nearly $4 billion funding to the IDF. Over the course of the last decade $54.7 million of Staten Island’s tax dollars has funded violence against Palestine.

Supporting the movement to free Palestine is not antisemitic, it is anti-Zionist. Though the current situation in Palestine is not a religious clash, the state of Israel has used Zionism to justify its violence against Palestinian people. In condemning the violence perpetrated by the state of Israel we must also condemn the harmful Zionist rhetoric that has been denounced by Jewish people and organizations worldwide.

Plea for the Fifth is working on a reading list for further education on the history of Palestine and Israel's occupation. We are also working on a piece covering this topic in more depth in the future.