Accomplishments
Origins
The Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine (formerly the Boston Alliance for Water Justice) was organized in the fall of 2013 in response to the launch of the “Massachusetts-Israel Innovation Partnership” based at the Mass Clean Energy Center (MassCEC). Then-governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick had led a delegation to Israel that met with the former head of Israel’s state-owned national water company, Mekorot, which exploits Palestinian water resources. According to the Boston Globe, the former head was “focused on one problem: launching Israel’s water technology industry onto the global stage. Massachusetts, he believes, can provide the platform.” Our immediate goal was to prevent Massachusetts from providing that platform.
We spoke at forums, disseminated written information, lobbied key members of the Patrick Administration, held four meetings with Mass CEC officials who were overseeing the Water Partnership and planning delegations to Israel, and provided detailed material about Israel’s discriminatory water practices. On World Water Day 2015, we demonstrated outside the Mass CEC office and spoke with its staff. Mass CEC officials received hundreds of post cards and telephone calls denouncing the Water Partnership.
In October 2015 the Water Partnership with Israel was placed “on hold” for the foreseeable future. This welcome news was tempered by the possibility that the Partnership could be revived: In late 2015 the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) organized a junket to Israel for a quarter of the Massachusetts Senate. Some senators expressed interest in knowing more about Israel’s water technology, and all appeared indifferent to the way the trip could be seen as an endorsement of Israel’s increasingly draconian violations of international law and Palestinian human rights.
After a November 23, 2015, press conference at the State House we presented the senators with “Ten Reasons” not to go on the JCRCR trip along with a petition signed by 1,200 Massachusetts residents. We continue to try to educate our representatives about the realities of Palestinian life. Our campaign to end the MA-Israel Water Partnership was both important and successful.
Working in Coalition
• Anti-BDS Legislation
The Alliance works with other Palestine solidarity, human rights, and free-speech organizations in the Boston area and regionally. Along with Massachusetts Peace Action, Jewish Voice for Peace/Boston, and Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East, the Alliance is an original member of the Joint Advocacy Group (JAG), which was formed in June 2016 to coordinate efforts to block passage of anti-BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) legislation in Massachusetts.
In late 2016, JAG assembled a “Freedom to Boycott” Coalition to oppose such legislation. Throughout 2017 we mounted a vigorous campaign against a deceptively named “Act to Prohibit Discrimination in State Contracts.” We set up some 35 meetings to speak with individual legislators in key committees to inform them of the true intention of the bill that was in violation of the First Amendment. Over 100 organizations around the Commonwealth endorsed JAG’s “Freedom to Boycott” letter, which we hand-delivered to each legislator’s office. We testified at a major hearing on the bill that was held in July 2017.
In February 2018, our organizing and advocacy bore fruit. The bill was effectively killed in committee when it was sent to study. In a guidebook that we made available to groups organizing against similar legislation in other states we outlined the steps involved in winning the Massachusetts battle. The following year there was another attempt to pass similar legislation, which we again successfully countered with visits to legislators and spirited testimony in a November 2019 public hearing. We continue to be vigilant on this issue.
• Keeping the IHRA definition out of Massachusetts
After working in coalition to successfully defeat a BDS bill, we also succeeded in keeping the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of antisemitism from being codified by the state legislature. The definition terms certain criticisms of Israel “antisemitic” and would undermine the freedom of expression of pro-Palestinian groups.
After the IHRA bill failed to pass the legislature, a 2024 amendment to the state budget set up a Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism. The Alliance is part of the Together for an Inclusive Massachusetts (TIM) coalition working to ensure that antisemitism is addressed in a way that reflects the diversity of all Jewish people in the Commonwealth and within a framework that embraces equity and inclusion for all. We do not want the Commission to be a vehicle to advance punitive measures and enshrine political support for the state of Israel in Commonwealth statute and policies.
In addition to its state legislative focus, the Alliance through JAG educates and pushes our federal congressional delegation to take the lead in making Israel accountable for its actions against Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Israel. We have urged them to sign on to "Dear Colleague" letters and the McCollum Bill(s) in all of its iterations, among other efforts.
We recently participated in actions and meetings at the offices of Senators Markey and Warren to pressure them to sign on to Bernie Sander’s Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRD) to halt arms shipments to Israel. Both Senators finally voted in full support of the JRD, together with 17 other Senators.
• 1for3, Our Sister Organization
The Alliance is fortunate to work closely with 1for3, which partners with Palestinian refugees living in UN-run camps. 1for3 (“One organization, three Palestinian rights: Water, Health, Education”) was formed in 2012 to work for better water quality for Palestinian refugees. Its newest water project, the Community Hydroponic Garden, is a 55-square-meter rooftop installation in the UN-run Aida camp, built to serve 125 families (over 800 people) with fresh food that they produce while using 70–90% less water.
• Other Solidarity Actions
We amplify the calls of Palestinian groups and US solidarity organizations. Our membership in the New England Network for Justice in Palestine has enabled us to share information and coordinate actions with other advocacy groups around the region.
We have connected with and publicized campaigns for water justice in Detroit, Flint, and Indigenous communities.
Amplifying Our Message
Because we know that the demonstrations, standouts, letters to the editor, and scenes of Gaza’s devastation are helping to sway public opinion, we have intensified our education, agitation, and organizing.
Our Biweekly Briefs offer an in-depth, hugely informative understanding of Israel’s political acts and decisions, and their repercussions and effect on Palestinians. The Briefs are disseminated widely.
We send out a weekly list of demonstrations and standouts in the greater Boston area.
We created and widely distributed three yard signs: Let Gaza Live, Ceasefire Now, Us Stop Arming Israel.
Annual actions
• World Water Day
World Water Day (March 22) is an annual United Nations observance, started in 1993, that raises awareness of the 2.2 billion people living without access to safe water.
In 2014, the Alliance began organizing WWD events that have forged links internationally and domestically to connect the struggle in Palestine to wherever access to clean water is denied. That year, we helped plan a Grassroots International forum at the Chelsea (MA) Collaborative, “Politics of Water: From Palestine and Israel to Chelsea and Beyond.”
Our yearly commemoration of World Water Day has now included two World Water Day webinars, one WWD forum, and several WWD standouts.
In 2018, our standout in Downtown Crossing, Boston, was followed by “The Arc of Water Injustice from Palestine to Standing Rock: A forum on The Threat to Indigenous Water Resources,” featuring Nidal al Azraq of 1for3, Chung-Wha Hong of Grassroots International, Gaza water engineer Yasir Kaheil, Dorotea Manuela of Color of Water, Mahtowin Munro of United American Indians of North America, and Oglala Lakota educator Mark Kenneth Tilsen.
On World Water Day 2019 we brought our banners, signs, and leaflets to standout on the busy BU Bridge that crosses the Charles River from Cambridge to Boston.
For World Water Day 2020 we had planned a forum at the North American Indian Center of Boston entitled “Sustainable Futures: Indigenous and Palestinian Perspectives on Water Land and Self-Determination” that was cancelled due to the pandemic.
Our World Water Day 2021 webinar “Water, Health and Human Rights: Marking World Water Day from the US to Palestine” featured Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Monica Lewis-Patrick, of We the People of Detroit, Mahtowin Munro of United American Indians of New England, Wayland ’X’ Coleman of #DeeperThanWater, Nidal al Azraq of 1for3, and Jehad Abusalim of AFSC Chicago. Nearly 1,000 people registered.
Our World Water Day 2022 webinar “Parched in Palestine: Resisting Water Apartheid” included film clips of water struggles in the Jordan Valley as well as Palestinian speakers, among them Shatha Al-Azzeh from Aida camp, Mohammed Obidallah from Battir, Lubna Shomali from Badil Resource Center and Amani Bashir from “Green Girls” in the Gaza Strip.
Every year since then, we organize a large standout in downtown Boston.
• International Day of Solidarity With the Palestinian people
We hold an annual demonstration on November 29, the International Day of Solidarity With the Palestinian People. As with all our standouts, we amplify the need to stop the $130 million Massachusetts gives Israel annually as part of the annual $3.8 billion the US government gives Israel unconditionally. We demanded a diversion of those funds back to Massachusetts cities and towns for community use in health, education, climate action, etc. In 2024 the large crowd then marched to the offices of Senator Warren and Senator Markey where the Alliance delivered letters to each of them about the issue. This year the additional emphasis was US complicity in funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
• Standouts and Demonstrations
The Alliance holds numerous standouts, demonstrations, and marches. Our banners, signs, and leaflets have been visible at weekly standouts in busy urban areas and at demonstrations from numerous sites in the Boston area to the Elbit headquarters in New Hampshire.
On November 19, 2019, dozens of Alliance members and supporters joined Harvard students in a silent protest at the Harvard Law School lecture given by the Israeli Consulate General in NY, entitled “The Legal Strategy of Israeli Settlements.” Protesters took over, then walked out of the auditorium after he was introduced, holding signs that read “Settlements Are a War Crime.” He was forced to deliver his lecture to a near-empty room. Students then joined the protest outside organized by the Alliance.
Every year on graduation day, Alliance members and supporters hold a large standout outside Harvard University and distribute material as thousands of people from across the globe pass by.
Over the past year, Alliance members participated in dozens of Boston area demonstrations and encampments in Salem, Cambridge, Lynn, and other communities in Massachusetts. We also regularly visited the local offices of Senators Markey and Warren and other elected officials.
• Education and Social Media
The Alliance maintains an active blog, on our website, and a Facebook page, which has over 1,700 followers. Our Instagram presence is growing. Over 20,000 individuals and organizations follow us on Twitter. Over 582 people receive our Biweekly Briefs about Gaza and the West Bank; 242 people receive our weekly listing of Boston-area “Demos & Standouts.” Each is shared by widely many people.
There is a growing international solidarity movement calling for justice in Palestine and an end to the genocide funded by our tax dollars. The Alliance contributes to that movement in many ways: organizing demonstrations, pressuring elected officials, creating and distributing yard signs—Let Gaza Live, Ceasefire Now, and US Stop Arming Israel.
We created a short video to illustrate how the amount of money given to Israel each year could be better used at home.
Draining Palestine: Water, Power, and Genocide, our new, 3-minute, video is being distributed across the country. The video explains how the 1919 Zionist plan to steal and weaponize the water in Palestine has played out through the occupation and into the genocide in Gaza.
Through our blog pieces and articles, letters to local papers and the mainstream press, participation in webinars, workshops, speeches and radio interviews, we spread our message: Israel is using water as a weapon against the Palestinian people.