“An end to the occupation, apartheid, and denial of our refugees’ rights have yet to be won.” 
– BDS National

To date, nearly four thousand theater workers from around the United States have signed our statement calling for a comprehensive ceasefire. Yet both from our organization's inception, and through the most recent 2025 so-called “ceasefire”, there have been questions on the appropriateness of our name. We maintain that, as our statement indicates, ‘ceasefire’ has always meant something very specific for us, based on the demands of the movement–something which especially now remains worth fighting for. As we wrote in 2024, we demand the following conditions be met:

1. An Immediate, Permanent, and Unconditional Ceasefire;

2. An End to the Siege and Blockade of Gaza and the Immediate Delivery of Vital Aid;

3. An End to the United States’ Aid and Intervention in Israel’s Genocide on Gaza;

4. An End to the Israeli Occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and Historic Palestine;

5. The Right of Palestinians to Self-Determination, and the Right of Return.

We might add a sixth demand, in light of the unimaginable carnage unleashed over the past two years: accountability for all perpetrators of Israel’s War Crimes. 

A formal ceasefire was only ever the starting point. This full set of demands is what Theater Workers for a Ceasefire exists to organize for. This is what we urge all theater workers to continue to actively struggle toward. 

On October 10th, 2025 a “ceasefire” was announced. Since then, amidst multiple violations by Israel, there have been over 442 killings in Gaza and 2,500 buildings have been destroyed. Due to the constant bombing and violations of international law since the genocide began, today Gaza suffers from lack of sufficient aid, inadequate food production, lack of water and sewage treatment, decimated housing, destroyed medical infrastructure and educational facilities among its 80% of all structures damaged or destroyed. While the bombings may have decreased, these conditions continue to fulfill the UN OHCHR definition of genocide. None of the five conditions of our statement have been met. This is to say nothing of the fact that, before October 7th–before genocide–there was still apartheid. 

Despite these conditions, the Palestinian people admirably continue to show their remarkable sumud as they return home to rebuild amidst the rubble. They show the limits of bombs and guns to break real resistance–an important lesson for the rest of the developed world which will increasingly be subject to barbaric direct violence. Israel’s hasbara has also failed, as the State is closer to international isolation than it has ever been in its existence. Israel has failed in its military goals as well. As its leadership has made no secret of saying, they aimed to “flatten” Gaza and remove the “human animals” so that they could construct more settlements. Instead, they have been shunned in the eyes of the world, held up only by the graces of an elite imperialist minority class, itself increasingly isolated and organized against by the majority of working and exploited people around the world. 

The Trump-brokered “ceasefire” of October 2025 was therefore only a distraction. It was meant to provide cover for Israel to perpetuate a genocide in “slow motion” such that it would receive less negative attention. The so-called ceasefire was also meant to force Donald Trump into his preferred image of the dealmaker, or here: “peacemaker.” But to the extent that the ceasefire has had a positive effect in its decrease of direct violence for the Palestinian people, this victory has come not from the war-mongering President Trump, but from Palestinian steadfastness, its organized diaspora, and those in solidarity with them, which created conditions Israel felt it could no longer sustain given the response from the international community. As BDS National wrote “The recent wave of sanctions,  from Spain to Türkyie, from Malaysia to Colombia, from Slovenia to Antigua and Barbuda, and many more, have been reached because of your pressure on your governments. Israel is more globally isolated than ever before, as even its internationally-wanted Prime Minister has recently admitted.”

Perhaps the ceasefire’s greatest intended effect is to serve as a pressure release valve. Countries and institutions that were feeling the pressure of the movement for Palestine have pulled back on commitments and promises. Further, it has caused the mainstream media to cease coverage (to whatever extent problematic coverage existed before) which has a trickle down effect on awareness for the broader population. 

We must resist this. Hypocritical leaders and compromised institutions may purposefully forget, but we cannot. As this movement has shown, they do not speak for us. Consciousness around Palestine is at an all time high. As theater workers, we must keep this momentum up, put it into organizing, institutionalize it, form coalitional strength, and expand cultural power into a new common sense grounded in justice and internationalism. From imperialist adventurism in Venezuela and Greenland, to domestic abduction and murders by the hand of the ICE-Gestapo, those of us in the belly of the beast will be increasingly called not just to speak up, not just to stand up, but to join the struggle. Palestine is our compass. 

We call on the nearly four thousand US-based theater workers to continue organizing and mobilizing toward the goals set forth in the statement they signed on to; to resist the willful misdirection of war mongers, and to push on in the terrain of culture to end complicity in the theater and everywhere. We must organize toward justice and accountability for the victims of war crimes, for an arms embargo and sanctions on Israel, for an end for AIPAC’s influence on our democracy. This is what is being asked of us. As long as the larger structural conditions are in place, things can take a turn for the worst at a moment's notice. We must be the generation which stops this.