Palestine Solidarity Statement

On Saturday, The San Francisco DA issued arrest warrants for 26 pro-Palestine activists who blocked traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge last spring. These activists now face up to 40 criminal charges each. 

This effort to undermine pro-Palestine protests is part of a larger effort to commit genocide with impunity. We see abundant connections between U.S. and Israeli suppression and violence. 

Every day that goes by we are alarmed and heart-broken by the violence committed against Palestine. We share this statement in solidarity with the movement for Palestinian liberation.  

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Since its inception, Berkeley Copwatch has aligned itself with liberatory movements around the world. As current Copwatch members, we want to reiterate this stance and our staunch solidarity with our comrades in Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora who are facing a brutal genocide. 

Since the 1948 Nakba (the Arabic word for “catastrophe”), Israel has launched a systemic attack on the Palestinian people and their ancestral lands. As U.S. residents, we know our taxes are funding the genocidal Zionist project that, from the Nakba to today, continues to claim hundreds of thousands of lives and perpetuates the suffering of millions. 

The U.S. war machine funds the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people just as it funds its own murderous policing systems- the same systems we, as Copwatchers, are fighting to dismantle. It’s no secret that the U.S. and Israel function as two sides of the same imperialist project- by exchanging weapons, war tactics, surveillance practices and more. This means the fight against police brutality in the Bay Area is intrinsically connected to the Palestinian struggle for freedom. 

Individuals and communities throughout the Bay Area have shown their solidarity through acts of civil disobedience, from the Bay Bridge 78 who successfully blocked traffic in their demands for ceasefire to blockades at the Port of Oakland which stalled international shipments to Israel. We have also seen encampments at UC Berkeley, SF State, UCSF and more than 100 other colleges and universities across the country who are demanding their institutions divest from the Israeli apartheid state. 

Berkeley Copwatch had its own tent at the UC Berkeley encampment, which was run by multiple UC students involved in Copwatch and its corresponding DeCal course, “Copwatch: Community-Based Accountability.” These students joined their peers in crafting a list of demands that called for the UC system to take a stance against the atrocities in Gaza and completely divest from all financial holdings tied to the Israeli government. The encampment, which was established on April 22, amounted to more than 180 tents. While it has since been taken down, students and residents across the Bay Area remain outraged by the ways our institutions and governments remain actively complicit in this ongoing genocide.

As the horrific genocide of Palestinians wages on, Berkeley Copwatch continues to be staunchly pro-Palestinian and in alignment with all those fighting the liberatory fight in Gaza and in diaspora. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!