Our approach to advocacy

Youth of Sumud understands Israel's violent separation of Palestinians' ancestral lands and the dispossession of their resources as the result of Zionism. Zionism is a form of settler-colonialism — much like the settler-colonialism that the French articulated in Algeria, and that Europeans advanced across the US and Canada, and South Africa — is inherently political. This means that advocacy work cannot only be educational. Advocacy has to advance a program that dismantles Israel's indigenous erasure by challenging laws and policies in our local institutions and governmental bodies. There has to be a specific, achievable, and impactful goal.

#DefundRacismThe Campaign to Defund Racism is a Palestinian-led movement to end the use of ‘charitable’ funds raised in the United States to carry out the mission of Israeli settler organizations. It aims to uncover wrongful acts being funded by these organizations through the use of their charitable status, stop the exploitation of US charitable laws that fund settler extremism and violence, and as a result, the subjugation and displacement of Palestinian communities.

Within this guiding framework, Youth of Sumud and other local Palestinian groups have been advancing the Defund Racism campaign. The Campaign to Defund Racism calls on the international community to stop the flow of charitable funds to radical Israeli settler organizations such Regavim, Ir David, the Hebron Fund, and others. To learn more about our advocacy work and ways that we can work together — whether joining us here on the ground, co-organizing a webinar or hosting a group here in South Hebron — you can reach us here through this form.