Nancy Murray, Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine
The Boston-based Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine has been active since 2013, when it emerged from the Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights (BCPR) to campaign against the ‘Innovative Water Partnership’ that then-Governor Deval Patrick had formed with the State of Israel. In October 2015, we succeeded in getting the Water Partnership ‘put on hold,’ and it has not been revived since then.
A focus on water justice has enabled us to raise public awareness about Israel ‘s apartheid practices and to stand in solidarity with US groups that are fighting for access to clean water and the environment, from Indigenous water protectors, to activists in Milwaukee, Detroit, Flint and Chelsea, MA. Who could fail to be disturbed by images of Israeli soldiers shooting holes into Palestinian roof top tanks and filling Palestinian springs with concrete? It has also given us a way of connecting with Palestinian refugee camps and towns where the water supply is turned off by Israel for weeks, and with farming communities struggling to stay on their land after Israeli soldiers and settlers have destroyed their wells, cisterns, reservoirs and water pipes. The ample evidence in the West Bank that Israel is using water as a weapon of ethnic cleansing so it can complete the takeover of Palestinian land has made a mockery of the 2010 General Assembly ruling that ‘water is a human right.’
In the Gaza Strip, the water situation has been even more dire, as Israel has made water a weapon of war. Repeated Israeli bombardments (2008-9, 2012, 2014, 2021, 2022) have damaged the water infrastructure, including wastewater and desalination plants. Well before October 2023, 97 percent of the water produced by Gaza’s sole aquifer was unfit to drink. We warned that the destruction of Gaza’s water resources could pave the way for genocide as defined by Holocaust survivor Ralph Lemkin, a Polish lawyer who coined the term and helped frame it as part of international law. Genocide, he wrote in 1945, “refers to a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of life of national groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight.”
After Israel cut off all supplies to long-blockaded Gaza of water, electricity, food and gas in the wake of Hamas’ seismic October 7th attack, Lemkin’s words appeared more painfully relevant than ever. Within a week there was not sufficient power to run desalination and purification plants, water wells and sanitation services, and air strikes had destroyed much of the water infrastructure. People were forced to drink sea water which had leached into agricultural wells that were further contaminated by heavy metals from bombs and massive amounts of untreated wastewater being discharged into the sea every day. Before long, incessant bombardments and a Lemkin-style ‘blight’ had turned Israel’s latest military aggression on Gaza into a genocidal war.
Protesting the war and US collusion in it has brought Alliance members repeatedly to the streets for demonstrations throughout Massachusetts and Washington DC. Those of us who have been active in the struggle for Palestinian rights since the 19 80s and 90s have been greatly encouraged by the rapidly expanding movement and emergence of a new generation of organizers, with Palestinian and Jewish youth frequently in the lead. The Alliance has organized a black-garbed, shroud-bearing procession through Boston’s streets, taken part in die-ins, given support to student and community encampments, spoken at universities and church gatherings and attempted to educate elected officials about the context behind October 7, 2023 and need to push for an immediate ceasefire and end to arms shipments. Through social media and our bi-weekly briefs and blog posts, we have been a steady source of news and analysis. And we have continued to collaborate with other groups to oppose efforts to silence pro-Palestinian voices.
Over past years, the Alliance and partner organizations stopped anti-BDS legislation from being adopted in Massachusetts. This year, our joint advocacy helped prevent Massachusetts from adopting the controversial IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition that conflates criticism of the Israeli state with antisemitism. But that success could be short-lived given the subsequent formation of a state Commission to Combat Antisemitism. Dominated by the ADL and other staunch supporters of Israel, it seems primed to recommend Israel-aligned curricula for schools and changes to hate crimes legislation that could undermine the First Amendment.
A new McCarthyism is gathering force. Take, for example, the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther, which claims to provide “a blueprint to counter antisemitism.” Its goal is to destroy “the virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, anti-American groups comprising the ‘pro Palestinian’ movement” that it calls a “global Hamas Support Network (HSN).” It asserts that the HSN is funded from abroad and threatens not just American Jewry but the whole of western civilization. Enumerated as members of this “terrorist support network” are Jewish Voice for Peace, American Muslims for Palestine, and the National Students for Justice in Palestine among others. Project Esther states that such groups should be ‘named and shamed,’ and subjected to lawfare and audits. “Extirpating the influence of the HSN from our society will not be easy, but extirpate it we must.”
The NLG has been commendably stalwart in its support of the right to dissent and defense of student protestors. Its legal expertise and commitment may be more in demand than ever in the years to come, as antisemitism is increasingly weaponized to silence critics of Israeli apartheid and its attempt to erase Palestine.
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