Activism and BDS Beat 16 October 2023
Mass demonstration for Palestine in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, on 15 October.
PPI ImagesThe Palestinian health ministry announced on Sunday that Israel’s bloodthirsty onslaught against Gaza was now killing one Palestinian every five minutes.
Israel has wiped out nearly 50 Palestinian families in Gaza. A million people have already been displaced from their homes.
Israel’s sheer brutality caused a global outpouring of disgust, and a massive wave of demonstrations over the weekend.
There were huge protests in the Arab world: Iraq, Yemen, Qatar, Jordan and Syria; as well in Iraq’s neighbor Iran, whose government arms the Palestinian resistance.Online publication Africanews reported that there were also demonstrations in Algeria, Libya, and Morocco.
On the Jordanian border with the occupied West Bank, crowds gathered demanding the Kingdom let them through. They were tear gassed by Jordanian forces.
In the capital Amman, massive crowds demanded “Open the borders” and chanted “All of Jordan are Hamas.”The majority of Jordanian citizens are Palestinians refugees and their descendants, those expelled by Israel since 1948. Israel and Jordan formally normalized relations through the Wadi Araba agreement in 1994, despite there being no restoration of Palestinian rights or an end to Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
But while formal diplomatic relations exist between the two countries, this has never translated into a so-called warm peace among people.
There were also demonstrations in Turkey, Malaysia, Pakistan and South Africa.
The latter country’s president Cyril Ramaphosa stated that “we pledge solidarity with the people of Palestine,” and said that Israel had “been dubbed an apartheid state.”Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Nkosi Mandla Mandela, sent “revolutionary greetings from South Africa” in a video message, saying that Palestinian support for the struggle against South African apartheid “enabled our own march to liberation.”
But there were also massive protests throughout Europe and the United States, whose governments are the most staunch supporters of Israel and its crimes.These came despite severe repression by the regimes.
The worst crackdowns were in Germany and France.
France unsuccessfully banned pro-Palestinian demonstrations altogether and Palestine solidarity protesters were dragged off the streets in Germany. Italian riot police beat protesters in Rome.
Britain’s home affairs minister suggested that waving a Palestinians flag could potentially be outlawed in some contexts. The mayor of London described graffiti reading “Free Palestine” as “hatred.”
London’s Metropolitan Police ordered shut a book event organized by the Palestine Festival of Literature and Amnesty International.
But despite – or because of – all this, huge numbers marched.
Organizers told The Electronic Intifada that 150,000 people protested in London on Saturday, with smaller protests taking place in Bolton, Birmingham, Bradford, Preston, Newcastle and Leicester.Video posted online also showed large protests in the northern cities of Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool.
As well as England, there were also demonstrations in Wales and all over Scotland.A second London demonstration is planned for next Saturday, organizers said.
In a Twitter thread, MintPress News journalist Alan MacLeod documented massive protests all over the United States on Saturday.
He posted video of tens of thousands in Chicago and New York, as well as large crowds in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Dearborn, MI. and even in Kansas City.
Some protestors have decided that marching alone is not enough.In the UK, Palestine Action said they had carried out direct actions on at least four targets during the week.
They said they had driven the sole UK recruiters for Elbit, Israel’s largest weapons firm, out of their new Manchester office.They also hit Elbit’s recruiters in Edinburgh, published a list of 50 targets in Britain and daubed the headquarters of the BBC with red paint – in protest of the latter’s pro-Israel coverage.
Palestine Action expanded their campaign of direct action to the Unites States, hitting Elbit’s facility in Boston, Massachusetts. Just like in the last major escalation in 2021, the world stands with Palestine once more.Watch this video from the protests in 2021:
