Early this morning the Israeli military launched a new wave of airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, murdering over four hundred Palestinian men, women and children. The Hands Off Uhuru Fightback Coalition vehemently condemns the ongoing, escalating genocidal slaughter by the U.S.-backed Israeli settler-colonial state against the people of Occupied Palestine! 

Over the past year, the settler-colonial state of Israel, armed and funded by the U.S., has killed more than 100,000 Palestinians with unrelenting air strikes destroying schools, hospitals, mosques, entire neighborhoods and refugee camps. More than 2 million Palestinians are facing genocidal conditions of starvation and disease after Israel cut off access to food, medicine and fuel. The colonial powers, however, have failed in crushing the will of the Palestinian people to fight for their freedom and self-determination! 

As the anti-colonial free speech coalition, we stand in deep unity with the Palestinian people and their heroic resistance to brutal colonial occupation of their land by the illegitimate Zionist regime. 

We call for the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian student activist at Columbia University who was kidnapped from his apartment by federal agents on March 8, 2025. 

The government has detained Khalil for exercising the right to free speech to advocate for the liberation of the Palestinian people. We say, Hands Off Mahmoud Khalil! Hands Off Palestine! 

The African, Indigenous, Mexican, Filipino, Cuban, Venezuelan and other oppressed peoples of the world stand together with Palestine in a united front against colonialism, our common enemy.

The state of Israel is an illegitimate white nationalist colonial settler state resting on stolen Palestinian land. The current wave of brutality by the Israeli settler state is only the most recent in a history of colonial genocide, land theft and displacement spanning back over 70 years.

African people in the U.S. and around the world have always stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Palestinians in our shared struggle against colonialism. As African People’s Socialist Party Chairman Omali Yeshitela, the founder and leader of the Uhuru Movement, has stated, “Israel is part and parcel of a capitalist world order revolving around the colonial economy with its origin in the enslavement and colonization of African people.” 

Hands Off Uhuru was formed to advance the counteroffensive for anti-colonial free speech following the July 29, 2022 FBI raids on Chairman Omali Yeshitela and the Uhuru Movement. 

We call on all of our organizational and individual members to mobilize in support of the Palestinian resistance, an end to the U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza. Demand the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil and the end to all raids and arrests of Palestinian people within the U.S. who have organized in support of the liberation of their homeland! 

Free, Free Palestine!
Down with Colonialism!
Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa!