Vol. 73/No. 3      January 26, 2009

Busloads and cars full of protesters came from the Midwest and East Coast, including New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia to show their outrage.

While dozens of buses organized by Muslim mosques brought many Palestinian Americans, the crowd included students from universities and high schools across the Northeast, many at their first protest. The demonstration was sponsored by the Muslim American Society, ANSWER Coalition, Free Palestine Alliance, Code Pink, National Council of Arab Americans, and dozens of other organizations.

The demonstration started out with a rally at Lafayette Park across from the White House. After the speakers, demonstrators marched through Washington stopping at the offices of Lockheed Martin and the Caterpillar corporation, both of which sell equipment to the Israeli military, and at the Washington Post. The newspaper, which demonstrators accused of pro-Israeli bias, ignored the protest in its Sunday edition.

College student Melanie Alexea, 19, from Long Island, said, “I felt that I had to come protest. What Israel is doing in Gaza is one of the greatest injustices in the world today.”

“I am Jewish and I want Israel to stop massacring the people of Gaza in Judaism’s name,” said Frans Koster, 23, who also came to the demonstration from New York.

Shaikha Thabet came on one of three buses organized by a mosque in Flint, Michigan. Thabet, who is originally from Yemen but has lived in the United States for 25 years, came with her husband and three children. “It’s my first time,” she said. “My children convinced me to come. I support the Palestinians because innocent people are being killed every day.”

At least half a dozen buses filled with demonstrators made the overnight trip from Chicago. “The siege of the Palestinian people must stop,” said Najeh Cheriqui, a student at the University of Chicago who was born in Tunisia and has lived in the United States since 2001. She was one of 50 members of the Alliance of Muslims for Palestine (AMP) who came on the Chicago buses. Cheriqui’s father grew up in a refugee camp in Tunisia after being orphaned in 1948 when Israeli troops drove hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes.

“What’s next—nuclear war?” another AMP member, Nazia Rafat, a bank worker originally from India, asked. “It’s so unfair. It’s precision-guided missiles vs. homemade rockets. What the Israelis are doing is the same thing that was done to the American Indians.”

“There is a difference between the Israeli leaders and the Jewish people,” said Fouad Ven, 32, a bus driver in Virginia who is originally from Morocco. “Just like the Arab leaders don’t represent the Arab people.”

There were a wide variety of views expressed on what solution is possible. Some demonstrators told Militant reporters that they were for an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. Others are for an Islamic Palestine, reflecting the views of Hamas.

“Israel says it is attacking Gaza because of the Hamas rockets,” said Sam Amer, 54. “But it has nothing to do with that. I think the only practical solution is for one state for two people instead of a Jewish state. Palestine can’t be partitioned. As long as there are two states groups like Hamas will say they want it all and Israel will keep attacking.”

Cynthia McKinney, the 2008 Green Party presidential candidate, gave the keynote address at the rally. She said that the “dead babies, decapitated bodies” and the other “carnage that is Gaza” is “neatly censored” from view in the U.S. media, while in other countries TV viewers “are witnesses to 15 days of war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.”

The crowd cheered when she mentioned the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador from Venezuela by President Hugo Chávez. McKinney condemned President-elect Barak Obama for being as “quiet as a lamb” on the Israeli assault after “roar[ing] onto the scene like a lion.” But McKinney also injected anti-Semitism into the program when she claimed that Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was “cowering before the Israeli lobby.”

Ralph Nader, who ran for U.S. president in 2008 as a “anticorporate” procapitalist alternative to the Democrats and Republicans, was another featured speaker. Like McKinney and other speakers, he condemned nonbinding resolutions backing Israel passed in the Senate and House of Representatives on January 8 and 9 respectively. The House resolution offers “unwavering commitment” to Israel and recognizes “its right to act in self-defense to protect its citizens” against a “terrorist” group. “There is more dissent in the [Israeli] Knesset than in the puppet show called the U.S. Congress,” Nader said.

Other speakers included Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and Mounzer Sleiman, vice chairman of the National Council of Arab Americans. Student leaders from the Muslim American Foundation called on college students around the country to join a national fast on January 15 to raise aid money to send to Gaza.

Marwa Abed, 19, a member of the Muslim Students Association at DePaul University, told the Militant that activists on her campus are planning to set up informational tables and organize sit-in demonstrations to raise awareness about the situation in the Gaza Strip.
 
 
Related articles:
End Israeli assault on Gaza Strip now!
Oppose Washington’s support to Israel
Socialist mayoral candidate in New York protests Israeli war
Protests around world condemn Israeli war
No solution for Palestine in imperialist framework
 
 
 
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