Sunday, May 21, 2023. New York City – On Saturday, May 13, 2023, Palestinians, Anti-zionist Jews, Mexicans, Latinos, Latinas and others commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba.
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The organization Within Our Lifetime (WOL) organized a rally and a march. The rally was at 72nd and 5th Ave in Bay Ridge. The march was in the same neighbourhood of Bay Ridge in Brooklyn; New York City.
The organization Within Our Lifetime said before the rally and march, “Join us for a takeover of Bay Ridge, the heart of the Palestinian community in NYC. This is more than a protest, it is a community gathering to assert our power and show NYC that we stand with Palestine from the river to the sea, and we support Palestinian resistance and liberation by any means necessary.
This will be a family friendly event, to celebrate Palestinian resistance, life, culture, refreshments, music and the ongoing struggle for Palestinian liberation! We will have face painting, coloring books, chalk, and more activities for kids! We will also have refreshments, beverages, resistance music and more throughout the day.
Every year thousands of people come to Bay Ridge to experience the Palestinian community and stand in solidarity with us in the fight against zionism and settler colonialism. We want this to be a space that does more to give back to our community and create a space for Palestinian resilience.”
WOL shared photos and said on Instagram after the rally and march, “Yesterday we brought the campaign to #FreeTheHLF5 to the streets of Bay Ridge during our #Nakba75 Palestine Takeover, where we uplifted the ongoing fight for Shukri Abu Baker, Ghassan Elashi and Mufid Abdulqader’s freedom who have been wrongfully imprisoned in the U.S. since 2008 for the crime of sending food and medicine to orphans in Palestine.
With the 15 year anniversary of their wrongful conviction approaching in November and the anniversary of their unjust sentencing around the corner on May 27th, we urge all those who stand with Palestine to join us in mobilizing to #FreeTheHLF5 at Nakba Day actions and in the days and weeks to come.”
They also shared photos and said on Facebook, “They said “The old will die and the young will forget” but generation after generation Palestinians continue to resist until liberation and return within our lifetime.”
More information about Within Our Lifetime on its website wolpalestine.com and Instagram: wolpalestine.
Mexicanos Unidos supports Palestine.
The group Mexicanos Unidos attended the rally and marched in Bay Ridge in support of Palestine.
Mexicanos Unidos says on Instagram their “mission is to develop a critical collective social consciousness for the Mexican community, in solidarity with all oppressed brothers/sisters.”
Anti-Zionist Jews support Palestine.
Anti-Zionist orthodox Jews of the organization Neturei Karta (www.nkusa.org) marched in support of Palestine.
They say on their website nkusa.org, “Neturei Karta oppose the so-called “State of Israel” not because it operates secularly, but because the entire concept of a sovereign Jewish state is contrary to Jewish Law.
All the great rabbis who in accordance with Jewish Law opposed Zionism at its inception did not do so merely due to consideration of the secular lifestyles of the then Zionist leaders or even for their opposition to Torah heritage and rejection of its values and practices, but due to the fact that the entire concept of a Jewish state is in direct conflict with a number of Judaism’s fundamentals.”
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Ten Facts You Need To Know About The Palestinian Nakba
The BDS Movement says on its website www.bdsmovement.net, “Today, on May 15th, we mark the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe). During the Nakba, between 750,000 and 1,000,000 Indigenous Palestinians were driven out of their homes and ethnically cleansed at the hands of Zionist militias and, later, the Israeli army to establish the state of Israel as a Jewish supremacist settler-colony.
Apartheid Israel’s colonial violence and naked aggression have never stopped. But neither has Palestinian resilience, popular resistance and sumud (steadfastness). In Gaza, Jenin, Beita, Masafer Yatta, the Jordan Valley, Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, and Al-Naqab, across historic Palestine and in exile, Palestinians stand united against Israel’s regime of settler colonialism and apartheid.
With the rise of the most openly racist far-right government in Israel, Palestinians have been subjected to renewed and intensified campaigns of ethnic cleansing and settlement construction, land and water theft, repeated massacres in besieged Gaza, mass arrests, and restriction of movement. This year Israel’s occupation forces and illegal settlers have murdered over 150 Palestinians, including 26 children, and it is only May.
And still we rise! We shall continue the struggle for our liberation, for our inalienable rights, including our right to self-determination and the right of refugees to return home. Onward we march for freedom, justice, equality and dignity!
Here are 10 facts you need to know about the Palestinian Nakba:
1- Between 1947 and 1949, Israel and pre-state Zionist militias forced between 750,000 and 1,000,000 Indigenous Palestinian Arabs into exile, making them refugees.
2 – Today, there are around 8 million Palestinian refugees in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and neighbouring Arab countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. Apartheid Israel has persistently denied their UN-sanctioned right to return to their homes, lands and other property simply because they are not Jewish.
3 – The ethnic cleansing during the Nakba was a deliberate, planned and systematic campaign carried out in order to create what human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Al-Haq and B’Tselem call “a Jewish supremacy” in historic Palestine, which was overwhelmingly populated by Palestinian Arabs prior to 1948.
4 – Contrary to Zionist mythology, pre-state Zionist militias began their ethnic cleansing of Palestinian towns and villages months before the establishment of the State of Israel. The massacre and depopulation of the Palestinian village of Deir Yasin, for instance, took place on 9 April 1948.
5 – Approximately 150,000 Palestinians remained inside what became Israel’s borders in 1948, many of them internally displaced. They were eventually granted Israeli citizenship but lived for years under military rule. To this day, Palestinian citizens of Israel live as second-class citizens in their own homeland, subjected to a system of apartheid enshrined in dozens of racist laws that discriminate against them.
6 – During the Nakba, Zionist militias and, later, Israeli forces systematically destroyed about 530 Palestinian towns and villages to prevent exiled Palestinian refugees from returning. Many homes that remained standing were repopulated with Jewish-Israeli colonial settlers.
7 – The Jewish National Fund (JNF), an openly racist pillar of the Zionist settler-colonial project in Palestine, acquired approximately 78 percent of its land holdings from the Israeli state between 1949 and 1953, much of it agricultural land of ethnically cleansed Palestinian refugees that the state had confiscated and designated as “absentee property.” The JNF holds this stolen Palestinian land as “the perpetual property of the Jewish People.”
8 – The Nakba did not end in 1948 but continues to this day in the form of apartheid Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities; theft of Palestinian land for Jewish-Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory as well as inside present-day Israel; destruction of Palestinian homes and agricultural land; revocation of residency rights; expulsions; demographic engineering; and periodic massacres.
9 – Israel is currently attempting to implement the largest mass ethnic cleansing since 1968, targeting some 1,300 Palestinians living in eight villages in the area of Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron. Many of the Palestinians in Masafer Yatta have already fled Israeli massacres in Al-Naqab, committed by Israeli forces during and in the aftermath of the Nakba. What is happening now in Masafer Yatta is a prime example of the ongoing Nakba. It repeats itself still today in Al-Naqab, Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, and across the territory under Israeli control. Indigenous Palestinians are being forced from their homes by state-sponsored violence at the hands of Israeli soldiers, Israeli police, and armed, fascist Israeli settlers.
10 – Israel has a law that prohibits Palestinians–second-class–citizens of the state from commemorating the Nakba. This does not stop Palestinians from remembering and insisting on our right to return to our ancestral lands.
Commemorate the Nakba wherever you are, share the stories of the Nakba from Palestinians, and join BDS campaigns, the most effective way to support our struggle to achieve our internationally recognized rights, including the right of return for refugees.”
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