SKM, a collective platform of farmers’ unions across India, has appealed to the farmers across the country to extend support and solidarity to the farmers of Palestine, and urged the Indian government to do everything to stop the massacre of Palestinian children and women in Gaza.
Groundxero | April 22, 2024
The Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), a collective platform of farmers’ unions across India that led the historic protest movement against the three farm laws in 2020-21, has appealed to the farmers across India to extend support and solidarity to the farmers of Palestine who are facing successive terrorist attacks in the villages by settler gangs with the backing of the Israeli occupying army.
In a press statement, the farm unions platform, said that Israeli army and gangsters are targeting Palestinian residential areas and farmers in villages in the West Bank alongside the genocidal war in Gaza committing massacres including killings, burning of homes and farms, deliberate destruction of property as part of their continuing efforts to displace the Palestinians.
SM’s appeal is in response to a call by the Palestinian Farmers’ Union for urgent international protection for Palestinian farmers. The Indian farm unions body SKM has appealed Indian farmers to write to the President of India urging the Government of India must do everything to end the genocide in Gaza, call for urgent ceasefire to end the massacre of Palestinians especially children and women by the army and settler gangs of Zionist Israel.
As per the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the number of children killed in the besieged Gaza strip since October 7, 2023 has surpassed 14000. UNICEF has requested the entire world to do something for a ceasefire. The UN body said that the Israel attack has become ‘a war against children’ and Gaza is home of above one million children. It pointed out that one child was killed or severely injured every ten minutes in each day in Gaza.
According to Gaza’s ministry of health, 34012 Palestinians have been killed and 76833 wounded so far in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on 7th October 2023. Above this, at least 7000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Gaza strip. Majority of those killed or wounded by Israel are women and children. The war has resulted in an acute famine in northern Gaza, resulting in the death of many people, mostly children. Nearly two million people have been displacement – the largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
The press statement pointed out that in the last six months of this genocidal war, more civilians have been killed and more innocent died than in any recent war. SKM said that ceasefire is the only way now to stop the killing and maiming of children, and demanded the International Court of Justice to prosecute the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal for the dreadful cruelty unleashed against Palestinian children and women.
“The Zionist dogma based on hate politics is the root cause of the ongoing genocide. The Jewish people have been subjected to the worst genocide in the history under the Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler. The modern state of Israel consisting of the Jewish people is perpetrating the most inhuman, cruel genocide against Palestinians today is a paradox”, added the statement.
SKM has urged the Indian government to come out of the clutches of the USA-Israel nexus, regain its status as the voice of the developing countries, play its traditional role by mobilizing world opinion for peace and against the Imperialist forces led by USA that stands with Israel and vetoes ceasefire resolutions in the UN Security Council.