The letter under has simply been mailed by Raed Amira, a Palestinian social employee, to problem the neutral stance of the IFSW with regard to the genocide of Gazan civilians. Raed is predicated in Bethlehem and is a consultant of the Human Rights Fee for the Asia Pacific Area, a member of the Palestinian Union of Social Employees and Psychologists, and a member of the Arab Federation of Social Employees. Raed wrote this because the loss of life toll within the 2023 Israel-Gaza conflict approached 9,000, two-thirds of whom had been ladies and youngsters: these are usually not simply statistics; they’re loving members of the family misplaced, ambitions damaged and goals destroyed.
On the similar time, in his neighborhood in Bethlehem within the West Financial institution, Raed’s colleagues, pals and households are being shot at by settlers and detained and tortured by the Israeli occupation forces.
The Reimaging Social Work collective stands shoulder to shoulder with our Palestinian brothers and sisters and we condemn the IFSW for its neutrality and complicity with Israel’s settler colonial conflict crimes.
“If you’re impartial in conditions of injustice, you have got chosen the facet of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and also you say that you’re impartial, the mouse won’t respect your neutrality.”
Bishop Desmon Tutu
I concern not execution
Not loss of life from rifle barrels or
The shadows on the gates
I concern not stressed nights with
Capturing stars of streaking ache
I concern however blindness from a world
Detached and insane.
Halfdan Rasmussam
My colleagues in IFSW,
I hope you might be doing effectively. This might be my final message to you. As we speak, I might be extra frank with you. I’ll share this message with our colleagues around the globe.
To begin with, it’s not permissible for anybody on this world, particularly when he requires human rights, to equate the sufferer with the executioner, the oppressor with the oppressed. You might be human rights advocates, and you’re the ones who taught us that social work is about resistance, that social work is about sacrifice, giving, and freedom.
You’re the ones who instructed us that you’re dedicated to the United Nations and its establishments, the Safety Council and its resolutions, human rights, worldwide legislation, and so forth, which all name for the illegality of the occupation and the Palestinian rights to self-determination and resistance.
As we speak, you might be known as be the house owners of an actual trigger and to take a transparent place, in any other case, there isn’t a want on your phrases and sermons. The reality is obvious to you, and you already know it very effectively. A lot of you spoke to me and admitted that these are atrocities and crimes and that the occupation is prison and brutal. A lot of you inform the reality however can’t say it publicly. Who would have anticipated that within the 12 months 2023, by which the world imagined flying automobiles, we might as a substitute witness a genocide reside on social media and in entrance of silent mouths?
You and your administration know that members of the Israeli Union of Social Employees take part within the killing of Palestinians as a result of they, like most Israelis, carry a conscription ID, and assist the terrorism of their authorities and their settlers amongst us. But, you continue to embrace this fascist, racist, and Zionist establishment. This was acknowledged by the president of the Israeli Union of Social Employees in Dublin in 2018, the place she mentioned frankly and proudly that the members of the Israeli Union take part within the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), killing and arresting Palestinians. Together with the repeated arrests of Palestinian social staff who had been imagined to have obtained worldwide immunity from you. The entire world is aware of that Israel kills medical doctors, paramedics, journalists, and youngsters, but nobody acts to discourage them?
At present, the Arab Union of Social Employees are ready for our opinion relating to your shameful and impartial statements. There’s anger amongst social staff, not solely in Palestine but in addition in lots of international locations. We’re ready on your response. By the best way, there are lots of social staff in Gaza. I want we might talk with them and be reassured they’re nonetheless alive. However, the coverage of collective punishment imposed on Gaza, reduce each the electrical energy provide and the Web. I have no idea something about my fellow specialists in Gaza. I do know that certainly one of my colleagues was injured and misplaced her household within the frenzied Israeli bombing.
Nor ought to we overlook the various Palestinian social staff locked up in Israeli prisons, sentenced to administrative detention and held with out cost. I hold them in my prayers and supplications. The scenario right here within the West Financial institution is deteriorating day-after-day, and certainly one of our colleagues, Riad Arar (a widely known social employee) and his son, have simply been brutally arrested by the occupation forces.
For the sake of all this, don’t be silent. For the sake of all of the blood and the ache, don’t be silent. In any other case, I’m ashamed to be a member of this union.
Free Palestine!
Greatest Regards
Raed
