One year of unspeakable loss. No more bombs.

After ceasefire, our work is not done.

Today, after 15 months of the Israeli government’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, supported and enabled by the U.S. government, a 42-day ceasefire agreement was reported. We hold tightly to the hope of a halt to the Israeli military’s bombardments, an end to the starvation of Palestinians by the Israeli government, a beginning of rebuilding in Gaza, and the return of hostages held in Israel and in Gaza to their families.

15 months of genocide got us here.

For 15 months, we have fought at every turn against the efforts of the Israeli and U.S. governments to turn Jewish grief into a justification for genocide.

Since the Israeli government’s genocide began, over 47,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military — a severe undercount, with some estimations as high as hundreds of thousands. The Israeli military has devastated entire neighborhoods and cities, and has razed the centuries-old infrastructure of Palestinian life, decimating Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure, water supplies, electricity grid, schools, universities and cultural institutions.

For more than fifteen months, Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to livestream this genocide, documenting every horror and war crime that the Israeli military inflicts.

Over and over, we bear witness to the lifeless bodies of children pulled from the rubble, to the craters that are left behind when U.S.-made bombs obliterate families in their tents. And we have watched as the Israeli and U.S. governments claim to be carrying out this horror in our names.

Before October 7, 76 years of violence and apartheid.

Despite what leaders in both the Israeli and U.S. governments say, the clock did not start on October 7. Nor did it stop then.

Before October 2023, 2023 was already one of the most deadly years for Palestinians on record. The most right-wing government in Israeli history was encouraging and enabling increased vigilante settler attacks against Palestinians across the West Bank and the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands, destroying Palestinian homes, and detaining and extrajudicially killing Palestinians. Gaza was already an open-air prison, suffocating under Israel’s illegal 17-year blockade that severely restricted food, water, electricity, medical supplies, and other necessities from entering.

The Israeli government’s genocide follows 76 years of its systemic oppression and dehumanization of Palestinians. There has never been a state of Israel which did not remove Palestinians from their homes, claim their land, and violently enforce Jewish supremacy.

No more bombs to Israel.

Since the beginning of the genocide, JVP and the entire Palestinian liberation movement has fought to stop the U.S. government from sending billions to arm this mass extermination. We’ve joined the rest of the world to rise up not only to call for an end to Israel’s genocide, but for Palestinian liberation, recognizing that our struggles against oppression are interlinked.

As anti-Zionist Jews, we know that this genocide is not an aberration of Israeli policy, but the result of the political logic of Zionism: an expansionist project seeking the maximum amount of land for Israel through cleansing Palestinian and Lebanese peoples, and willing to commit unimaginable horrors achieve this goal.

As Americans, we understand that the Israeli genocide has been carried out with U.S. bombs, U.S. funds, and U.S.-facilitated impunity — we continue to demand a full weapons embargo now. We also demand an end to the complicity of corporations that profit from genocide. Left in the hands of the U.S. and Israeli governments, weapons manufacturers, and warmongering institutions, this fragile respite will not mean an end to Israeli genocide or to the violent status quo of Israeli apartheid.

Our demand remains the same: The U.S. must stop arming Israel. Now.