Tens of thousands of people from over 100 cities have participated in protests in solidarity with Palestinians around the world from New York and London to Cape Town, Tokyo, and Amman and Doha and many more last May 15, 2021 demanding an end to deadly Israeli air raids on Gaza.
It is all began after weeks of mounting tensions over the looming forced expulsion of Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem at West Bank in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.
The situation escalated when Israeli police stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City – the third-holiest site in Islam in the midst of the holy Ramadan and Eid festivities. Hundreds of Palestinian worshippers have been wounded during several days of violence. Palestinians have massively started protecting al mosque.
“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”
NELSON MANDELA
(CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER IN SOUTH AFRICA)
Palestinian solidarity protests around the world
Cities where the first protests have taken place on May 15, 2021:
Al Aqabah; Algiers; Amman; Amsterdam; Ankara; Athens; Auckland; Baghdad; Basrah; Beirut; Benslimane; Berlin; Birmingham; Boston; Bradford; Brighton; Bristol; Brooklyn; Brussels; Calgary; Cape Town; Casablanca; Chicago; Christchurch; Copenhagen; Cork; Daraa; Dearborn; Dhaka; Diwaniyah; Doha; Dublin; Dunedin; Edinburgh; Eindhoven; Edmonton; Frankfort; Galway; Glasgow; Hague; Halifax; Hamburg; Hamilton; Irbid; Istanbul; Jacksonville; Jakarta; Johannesburg; Kampala; Karachi; Kashmir; Kensington; Khartoum; Krakow; Kuwait; Leipzig; London, Canada; London, UK; Los Angeles; Madrid; Mahdia; Manchester; Manhattan; Marrakech; Melbourne; Michigan; Milan; Milwaukee; Mogadishu; Montreal; Nabatieh; Nairobi; Nelson; New York; Newcastle; Nicosia; Norwich; Ottawa; Oxford; Palmerston; Paris; Peshawar; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; Pristina; Buenos Aires; Quetta; Rabat; Raleigh; Rome; San Jose; Sanaa; Sandton; Saskatoon; Srinagar; Sao Paulo; Sydney; St. John’s; Stuttgart; Tehran; Tokyo; Toronto; Trablus; Tripoli; Tunis; Vancouver; Vienna; Warsaw; Waterloo; Washington; Wellington; Whanganui.
Photos highlights:
London, UK. Anti-zionist jews against Israel, the Neturei Karta, a group of controversial Ultra Orthodox 
Baghdad,Iraq. Photo by TRT World 
Tokyo, Japan. Photo by TRT World 
London, UK. Photo by @niyadahmed 
Toronto, Canada 
Every year on May 15, Palestinians celebrate the anniversary of the 1948 Nakba, which means catastrophe, where Zionist forces forcibly displaced over 750,000 Palestinians from their land.
More than 400 Palestinian cities and towns were systematically destroyed by the colonialist state Israel that has adopted violent and oppressive control on the Palestinian people that turned to resist and protect their homes, families and land.
The Israel’s ethnic cleansing produced one of the world’s largest refugee populations with a total near 7 millions Palestinians refugees scattered in their neighbourhood countries in Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon and around the world, with many still in camps. In violation of international law, Israel bars these refugees from returning home.
Deaths across Israel and Palestinian territories in 8 days
If the president of the United States Joe Biden and Israel claimed that Israel were defending from the Palestinian faction Hamas rockets, a resistance organisation which governs Gaza, product of Israel’s brutality and violence that has been created 40 years after the recognition of Israel in 1948 because of the ongoing increasing occupation and oppression Gaza death toll show us that there are more victims in Palestinian side that counts more than 200 amid surge of Israeli raid over 12 reported in Israel during this period and therefore there is no symmetry of military power as most Palestinians continue throwing stones at the Israeli military as a form of unarmed resistance while Israel is a US-backed nuclear power deploying one of the most advanced militaries on the planet. Standing for the truth and the oppressed is not antisemitic but human.
Discrimination and oppression
Since 1967, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip have been under Israeli military occupation and the Palestinian people have endured adverse policies that have affected their economy and all aspects of life.
The following policies have nothing to do to neutralize Hamas but to directly oppress Palestinian and continue the illegal occupation leading to poverty and starvation.
Water
Indeed, Israel has complete control over Palestinian water supply and intentionally bombs water infrastructure and actively prevents repair or maintenance.
Agriculture
Israel regularly sprays Palestinian farmland with herbicides to prevent agriculture without any compensation to Palestinian farmers.
Trade
Israel blocks the trade of goods and services between Palestinian cities such as Ramallah, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.
Market
Palestinian goods do not have free access to the Israeli market (as per the Paris Protocols) to diminish the competitive advantage of Palestinian businesses.
Community
Israel withholds Palestinian tax revenues for preventing the Palestinian government from stabilizing fiscal policy, build critical infrastructure or invest in communities.
Education
Israel prevents students in Gaza from pursuing higher education forcing most students to drop out and repressing the academic output in Gaza.
Movement
Palestinian movement has been limited arbitrarily leveraged to control the movement of labour and goods.
Discrimination
Israel illegally annexes West Bank land, forcing Palestinians into reserves and denying them the rights to which Israeli settlers are entitled. They have no judicial recourse or compensation.
“The United States that has been involved first in the Gulf War and then in the tremendously damaging sanctions against Iraqi civilians. The US that is the supporter of Israel against the Palestinians”
eDWARD sAID
(pALESTINIAN aMERICAN sCHOLAR & wRITER)
“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing”
MALCOLM X
(BLACK AMERICAL POLITICAL ACTIVIST)
The United States pro-Israel history
The United States after committed its greatest democide during the Second World War bombing of German and Japanese cities, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki apply an offensive foreign policy in the Middle East where its interests can be broken down into five areas:
ensuring the free flow of oil; preventing nuclear proliferation assumptions; fighting terrorism that it has mostly created because of its multiple wars; maintaining the security of Israel; and promoting democratization.
It has at times exacerbated internal problems and contributed to anti-Americanism. To protect its interests, the United States should try to contain the violence in the region and reenergize its efforts to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Joe Biden president’s entire career has been built on a pro-Israel, pro-Zionist position and hasn’t help much to make the world a better place because injustice everywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
The US has always been a powerful ally of Israel that is a geopolitics strategy asset. The US is providing near $3.8 billion annually in foreign military aid to Israel combined with a pro-Israel propaganda painted the Palestinians as the source of problem after launching a series of bombing in the Middle East region from Iraq, Libya to Syria intensifying instability internationally.
73 years of Israeli occupation seem disproportionate and the masks come off and public awareness has increased demanding peace and sanctions.
Who is Israel’s government?
When the US told us to support Israel because it is the only democracy in the Middle East. Let’s take a closer look at Israel’s far right and increasingly current authoritarian government.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a history of steadfast partnership with the United States since his beginning in 1996 as Prime Minister of Israel. He remains ‘determined’ to continue Gaza operation despite the fact he has been controversial and has low popularity in Israel. Indeed he was on the brink of political defeat and at the heart of a protest on July 22, 2020 in Jerusalem where he was accused of fraud, bribery, and breach of trust. He has regularly tried to escape the judicial process while stalling the investigation.
In 2018, Israel became the most condemned nation at the UN who broke and violated more than 20 resolutions.
Israeli Supreme Court decides that soldiers can use lethal force against unarmed civilians. Indeed, the Israeli Supreme Court unanimously decided in 2018 that Israeli soldiers can use lethal force against unarmed civilians, including protestors without due process.
Israeli government denies citizenship to Palestinians living on annexed lands who cannot legally seek recourse from the Israeli government. Israel’s Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law – 2003 bars Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza from residing with their spouse in Israel or East Jerusalem. Israel bars these refugees from returning home.
Extremist settlers are legally able to arm themselves while Palestinians face 5 year minimum prison for rock throwing.
Israeli-Arabs earn 60% less than Israeli-Jews across similar educational backgrounds based on an Oxford study that found that Israeli Arabs earn lower wages because of their ethnic discrimination in the Israeli labour markets.
There is a clear situation where the Israeli government wages war against the rights of the minority, the rule of law and basic equality
Vanishing Palestine with the loss of land and people eviction
UN Human Rights organization appeals for de-escalation in the region but it has failed in implementing resolutions that Israel keep violate with the United States support. For decades Israel has violated international law and committed war crimes from stealing and destroying homes, to killing innocent children and bombing lately on the same day of Nakba eviction anniversary day and the day of the worldwide protest last May 15 the Gaza tower that housed the offices of the Associated Press, Al Jazeera, and local media outlets following many hospitals and schools committing therefore a crime against humanity.
Near 60,000 people have been displaced and made homeless in Gaza after about 2 weeks of violence.
Israel attempts to erase Palestinian history by building on top of ethnically cleansed villages with still an ongoing evictions today, home demolitions, and illegal settlement construction.
Palestine does not even appear on Google maps while Israel is established on Palestinian land, and is clearly designated but there is no mention of Palestine therefore according to Google, Palestine does not exist. The omission of Palestine is a grievous insult to the people of Palestine and undermines the efforts of the millions of people who are involved in the campaign to secure Palestinian independence and freedom from Israeli occupation and oppression.
Whether intentionally or otherwise, Google is making itself complicit in the Israeli government’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Please join the petition in calling on Google to recognize Palestine in Google Maps, and to clearly designate and identify the Palestinian territories illegally occupied by Israel.
Here the evolution of Palestine map between 1917 to now created by Palestine Remix
“From 1967, all the Israeli governments continued making two big mistakes: occupation and settlement in the territories”
STEPHANE HESSEL
(FRENCH JEWISH DIPLOMAT)
“The new crimes that the US and Israel were committing in Gaza as 2009 opened do not fit easily into any standard category—except for the category of familiarity”
NOAM CHOMSKY
(AMERICAN THEORETICAL LINGUIST)
Crimes against humanity
A ceasefire has been set on May 21 after an international pressure but Israel has again broke the UN resolutions by forcing attack on the Al-Aqsa Mosque just 12 hours after they agreed to a ceasefire — as Palestinians were celebrating and attending Friday prayers — wounding at least 20 Palestinians.
We all know that the ceasefire is not a permanent solution to the ongoing oppression preventing the liberation of thousands of Palestinians as Israel still violate international law and broke the ceasefire and continue to commit crimes against humanity without impunities.
Why is Israeli-Palestinian conflict not about religion
Not to mention it isn’t a conflict about religion. Back to the history where the political Zionism’s founder, Theodor Herzl, an Austrian secular agnostic and perhaps even an atheist who didn’t know anything about Judaism, transform an ancient longing into a modern political movement that resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel according to an interview with the Israeli journalist and peace activist Uri Avnery on the interfaith Jewish left-progressive magazine Tikkun . Even the desire to found a Jewish State was not unanimous. If some dreamed of a bi-national state, half Arab, half Jewish like other like the “Practical” Zionists wanted to fulfil the Zionist dream by patient settlement in the country, “Revisionist” Zionists wanted to achieve at once an international “charter”. Religious Zionists want a state based on and dominated by the Jewish religion. National-religious Zionists believe that God has sent the Jews into “exile” because of their sins, and wanted to compel God by their deeds to send the Messiah now. Atheist Zionists declare the Jews are a nation, not a religion, and want nothing to do with the Jewish faith.
Michel Collon, a Belgian journalist and writer who created Investig’Action, a network of independent journalists fighting against the media lies pointed out the reality about zionism on his book “Let’s Talk About Israel”. Here a sneak peak:
While in reality Jews are supporting Palestinian cause from the Orthodox Jew community in the UK to the anti-Zionist organizations such as Jewish Voice For Peace and some of the Israeli and Jews in the US such as the Holocaust survivor Gabor Maté (as per the Russell Brand video interview with him below).
“Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs…”
GANDHI
(LEADER OF INDIA’S INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT)
No longer silent: time for action and sanctions
How social media helped making a difference
It became hard to ignore the voices of many young Palestinian writers and activists like Mohammed El-Kurd, Omar Ghraieb and the Eye Of Palestine media and the UK based organization Friends of Al Aqsa. While Western media organisations have long been criticised for underplaying the stories that come from the Palestinian side and overplaying the ones from Israel, this time some traditional media organisations appeared to be in a fix.
Israel seems to lose the state narrative on Palestine’s. Israel’s “right-to-self-defence” argument is monotonous state propaganda, which has been deployed over and over again to justify the use of disproportionate force against Palestinians.
The war Israel waged on Gaza two weeks ago has ended up as a failure for the Jewish state. Apart from adding more dead Palestinians bodies to its tally, it could not filter the flow of information with the help of Western media organisations and also the arrival of protestors from Jordan and Lebanon breaching the borders into Palestine to show solidarity to facing the ethnic cleansing.
A video recently went viral on social media in which the Israeli settler Jacob with “squatters with Brooklyn accents” could be seen trying to forcefully occupy Mona al-Kurd Palestinian woman’s house in her garden, Al-Jazeera reported. The incident took place in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighbourhood in the occupied East Jerusalem.
When the woman protested against his actions, saying that he is trying to “steal her house,” the man said: “If I don’t steal your house, someone else will steal it. Visibly angered by the man’s audacity, al-Kurd yelled at him, saying: “No one is allowed to steal it.” The man then says in Hebrew: “This is not mine in order to return it.”
“Why should these Palestinians, who have lived in Jerusalem for hundreds of years, be evicted from their homes so that Jews from Brooklyn can live in them?”
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN
(AMERICAN JEWISH SCHOLAR)
“In Palestine, the Israelis claim they found a land without people,’ a Syrian officer explained to us. ‘Now they will take southern Lebanon and claim they have found another land without people if these refugees do not return”
ROBERT FISK
(BRITISH JOURNALIST)
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”
Martin Luther King Jr.
(African American Baptist minister & activist)
Injustice everywhere is a threat of justice anywhere. We cannot face in 2021 such an illegal settlement, an open prison, a genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid as called by many from worldwide protesters to statements from celebrities, politicians, organizations and more.
We need to learn, understand and drive more awareness if we want to promote peace in Palestine and in the Middle East region and around the world.
Injustice everywhere is a threat of justice anywhere. We cannot face in 2021 such an illegal settlement, an open prison, a genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid as called by many from worldwide protesters to statements from celebrities, politicians, organizations and more.
We need to learn, understand and drive more awareness if we want to promote peace in Palestine and in the Middle East region and around the world.
“The only way to resist colonialism is through education”
TARIQ RAMADAN
(SWISS EGYPTIAN OXFORD PROFESSOR & WRITER)
POLITICIANS
CELEBRITIES
SPORT
Score a brace in final 💙🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/osx4ZEgA23
— Peshawar Cityzens (@MCSCPeshawar) May 23, 2021
