All ISEE members were invited to vote in the poll, now closed, regarding the Statement for Peace, Justice, and Accountability. One hundred sixty-three voted in favor of publication, and 36 voted against it. ISEE will, therefore, circulate and publish the statement.
ISEE’s statement on Gaza.
For peace, justice, and accountability.
STATEMENT
ISEE’s purpose is to advance our understanding of ecological, social, and economic systems relationships for the mutual well-being of nature and people, especially the most vulnerable. To this purpose, our constitution recognizes the importance of facilitating a public voice for ecological economists.
Horrified by the violence in Israel and Palestine, we stand in solidarity with all victims of the conflict, repudiate any attack on civil population, and violation of human rights and war conventions. Achieving well-being for all within ecological limits makes social justice core to Ecological Economics. Therefore, given the colonial occupation and massive power asymmetry characterizing the conflict, we distinguish pacifism from neutrality and refuse to passively abandon the oppressed and vulnerable to their fate.
About 20,000 Palestinians have been killed, 70% of them women and children. The majority of Gaza’s 2.2 million people are displaced, and an estimated half face starvation. Israeli scholar Raz Segal calls the current situation “a textbook case of Genocide” (JewishCurrents, October 13, 2023) and the Office of the United Nations Human Rights High Commissioner a “genocide in the making” (November 16th, 2023). We condemn the Israeli massacre, displacement, imprisonment, and dehumanization of Palestinians. We condemn the human and ecological devastation in Gaza, including vital infrastructure such as water and energy, farms, livestock, soils, and biodiversity, with long-lasting human, social, economic, and ecological consequences. In line with UN resolutions, we recognize the legitimate right to resist colonial domination within the boundaries of international law.
We demand accountability for the violation of human rights, including by governments and private organizations supporting genocide through financial and military support. We demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, an end to the “genocide in the making”, the immediate liberation of all Palestinian political prisoners arbitrarily detained by Israel, an end to settler colonial occupation and apartheid regime in Palestine. We call for international cooperation towards a concerted military downscaling.
Standing with the Palestinian people is not standing with Hamas. We condemn the attack committed on October 7th, 2023, which killed close to 1200 people (most of them civilians) and demand the immediate liberation of the hostages detained in Gaza. We denounce the criminalization of solidarity with Palestine and weaponization of the crucial struggle against antisemitism to censor virtually any critiques of Israel’s policy towards Palestine, genocide, and colonial occupation. We decry antisemitism and recognize as legitimate critiques of any colonial and racist ideology premised on the subjugation of Palestinians and their land. We insist that such ideology and this conflict are also deeply damaging to Israeli society itself, which is moving more than ever towards an ethno-nationalist drift where hatred and racism thrive.
We express our solidarity and support to our colleagues and scholars working on Palestine and Israel facing threats and defamation for simply doing their work of enlightening the public debate with critical analyses.
Against dehumanizing speeches of hate, we salute frontline journalists, workers and carers enduring and resisting the everyday horrors, and Palestinians and Israelis striving for peace. We call for international solidarity to achieve a just and lasting peace in the Middle East so future generations can live in a world where dignity and security become realities for everyone.
