A Declaration for Palestine

This year, for the first time, Vermonters for Justice in Palestine (VTJP) organized a band of members to march in the annual, Independence Day parade in Montpelier, Vermont. The event was held on July 3 and, as usual, drew a very large crowd.

VTJP activists carried Palestinian flags and a banner calling for an end to U.S. funding of Israel’s military occupation.

From start to finish, the VTJP contingent was greeted with applause, cheers, and waves.

The organization also published on its website a “Declaration for Palestine,” adapted from the U.S. Declaration of Independence of 1776:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce the Palestinians under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.

Let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Israel has kept among them Standing Armies without their Consent.

It has passed acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among them:

For cutting off their Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on them without their Consent:

For depriving them of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

Israel has plundered their seas, ravaged their coasts, burnt their towns, and destroyed the lives of their people.

It has sent large Armies to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of a civilized nation.

AFTER 50 YEARS, WE CALL ON THE UNITED STATES TO STOP SUPPORTING, FUNDING, OR EXCUSING THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE.

Vermonters for Justice in Palestine