Protests Demand: STOP U.S.-Israel Genocide in Gaza

September 1, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

In July and August, the rulers of Israel carried out a savage escalation of their genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people. More than two thousand Palestinians were killed, a quarter of them children. Hundreds of thousands remain homeless. The nearly two million Palestinians in Gaza are packed into what is in effect the world’s largest outdoor prison—cut off from contact with the outside world and the ability to live. In August, important resistance to these crimes—which are backed and enabled by the U.S.—emerged around the country. Among them:

 

Revcom.us/Revolution correspondent Alan Goodman speaks at the NYC event “"Stop Israel’s Ongoing War Crimes Against the People of Gaza."

August 14, New York City: Hundreds turn out for powerful teach-in, "Stop Israel's Ongoing War Crimes Against the People of Gaza"—watch it online at revcom.us.

 

Week of August 18, 2014: Thousands of activists picketed docks on major West Coast ports to stop importation of goods from Israel. Israeli ships were blocked or delayed at ports including Oakland and Long Beach, California, and Tacoma, Washington. In Oakland, workers from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union refused to cross picket lines set up by demonstrators.

 

New York, August 20, 2014. Courtesy Dennis Trainor, Jr., AcronymTV

August 20, New York City: Demonstrators marched over the Brooklyn Bridge in support of the people of Gaza. Late in the evening, the march merged with protesters on the Lower East Side marching for justice for Michael Brown.

August 21, Chicago: Activists, including Jewish Voice for Peace, protest a “Chicago Stands With Israel” fundraiser sponsored by the Jewish United Fund at the Chicago Hilton hotel. During a speech by the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, they chanted “Shame.”

New York, August 20, 2014. Photo: AP

In both Chicago and New York, signs and chants raised “Occupation is a crime, Ferguson to Palestine.”

Growing links between these struggles are an inspiring development. These outrages flow from a common source of oppression in the global system of capitalism-imperialism, and these links are an important development in forging a common struggle of the people of the world against that system.

 

August 23: 327 Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors and victims of the Nazi genocide published an ad in the New York Times condemning manipulation of the Nazi genocide to attempt to justify the attacks on Gaza. The ad is reprinted with permission of the authors at revcom.us.

 

August 23, Gaza City, Gaza, Palestine: Israel bombed an 11-story residential high-rise building that housed 50 families. Residents reportedly were warned by Israel to evacuate the building; however, 17 people were injured, four of them children, and the home for these 50 families was destroyed. Since July, more than 2,000 have been murdered in Israel’s continuing savage assaults on the 1.8 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The United States backs Israel with billions of dollars of “aid” every year—most of it going to Israel’s genocidal war machine. In turn, Israel has carried out the dirty work of the U.S. empire in the Middle East and around the world. The blood of the Palestinian people is on the hands of the rulers of the U.S. as well as Israel.

 

For resources, news and what you can do to STOP U.S./Israel genocide against the Palestinian people, see Stop U.S.-Israel Genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza!

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