Good morning,

My name is Leah Cohen, representing the Agricultural Justice Project, writing in support of the commission adopting the ceasefire resolution.  

I would like to speak in particular about its intersection with the work this commission has invested in to build a resilient, local food economy that nourishes all those in our community. 

1. The borders and checkpoints of Israel are used to control and harass Palestinians, many of whom are forced to seek precarious and exploitative work in Israel while their own economy is strangled by the occupation and blockade. The ILO reported in 2023 that about one fifth of the West Bank labour force was employed in Israel, often paying labor brokers high fees to obtain jobs. About 40,000 work without legal documentation, making them particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. This pattern is familiar across the imperial and colonial powers, but resonates particularly strongly with the labor regime of US agriculture, where most farm workers are immigrants from south of our border and lack legal status in the US. 

2. As violent ethno-nationalist sentiments, which threaten hopes for a future of peace and justice, are stoked in Israel and Palestine, this serves to dehumanize the people of Palestine to justify their extermination, removal, and exploitation, so too do these same dynamics play out here to justify the inhumane conditions we permit in our food and agricultural systems that disproportionately harm people of color.  

3. Food as a human right: Israel is using salvation as a strategy of war against the people of Gaza, while simultaneously continuing a decades long practice of strangling Palestinians’ access and control of their own agriculture, fishing, and water (GRAIN, October 2023), creating desparte dependence on charity food aid, which is also being violently targeted.  “...the entire population of about 2.2 million people in the Gaza Strip is estimated to be in Crisis or worse, the highest percentage of people experiencing such acute food insecurity that the IPC has ever classified for any given area or country.” (FAO Brief to the UN Security Council, February 27, 2024)

All of these are in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including the right to freedom of movement, the right to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions, the right to equal pay for equal work, without discrimination, and the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity.

None of us can tout human rights and food sovereignty as worthy goals in our work towards building food systems that can sustain communities in Alachua County, US, and globally and ignore the use of root causes that block achieving this. 

The Agricultural Justice Project calls for an immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an end to occupation and violence in Palestine.  As we call for an end to the violence in Gaza and urgent delivery of aid to relieve the immense human suffering, we also call for solidarity in standing against state violence, oppression, and exploitation everywhere.  This is your opportunity to uphold the values you have stated for our own community.