Talk by Hafer (Students for Palestine)

We show up to demand political action on a personal, societal, and governmental level in the face of aggressively escalating environmental threats. We, as a student collective that stands for the right of Palestinian people to live, are here today to talk about the devastating effects of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza and the West Bank and make sure that everyone here, after leaving the demonstration, will HAVE TO think about what this war is doing to the Palestinian people and the entire planet.
What is an environment? Just think of the environment as a shared and co-constructed field of living interaction. Life in humans, life in nature, life in every living organism… The expression of life on the planet defines and shapes what an environment is. Now, we ask you to think about what an environment under military occupation and non-ending bombardment looks like. In the last 15 months of the ongoing onslaught against the Palestinian people, the Israeli army, with the help of major weapon providers like the US, Germany, and the UK, has dropped, in GAZA alone, 85.000 Tons of bombs. That is the equivalent of almost six Hiroshima atomic bombs!!
Currently, the human death toll is over 47.000 humans, of which more than 15.000 are children. This means, in reality, that 44% of the deaths in Palestine SINCE the 7th of October were children most of which 5 to 9 years old. Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble, leaving 1,9 million Palestinians displaced. 92% of the homes are destroyed.
This is a Genocide as much as it is an Ecocide. We cannot separate the consequences of colonialism from climate activism when the director of EcoPeace Middle East has stated : “On the ground, this war has destroyed every aspect of Gaza’s environment.”
We cannot separate the consequences of colonialism from climate activism when already in the first weeks of the war, the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA reported that the Israeli army dropped 42 bombs every hour on Gaza, producing millions of CO2 tons that come into the atmosphere.
We cannot separate the consequences of colonialism from climate activism when the rebuilding of war-torn areas that have completely turned to rubble will cause even more CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. From the targeted destruction of greenhouses and farming lands to the pollution of sewages and water sources, Israel is not only targeting the ecosystem but is systematically destroying the environment of Palestine.
We cannot remain silent. We cannot allow constant repression to prevent us from talking about injustice and demanding an end to human suffering as well as to the degradation of the ecosystem. As they both come hand in hand.We must rely on self-education to defeat the root causes of human pain found in the injustices that racism and classism are reproducing in our daily lives.
We are in deep pain, and we are outraged. But we cannot let hope die. We must fight to keep hope alive by engaging with problems that may seem distant to our own daily lives and foreign to our realities because the fact is that we all carry a responsibility to act. Supporting decolonial struggles includes fighting against the genocide in Palestine.
This is how we all feel because of the German government’s complicity. And this is why the German population has the responsibility to respond before the country is permanently dragged into a new era of historical shame and guilt. We expect and hope that Germany will eventually respond with proper morals and emotions, with compassion, and a conscious vote in the upcoming elections.