Sunday, May 21, 2023. New York City – On Sunday, May 14, 2023, Palestinians, Anti-zionist Jews, Latinos, Latinas and others commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba.
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The rally in support of Palestine was in Times Square, Manhattan; New York City. The march was from Times Square to Grand Central Terminal in the same borough of Manhattan. Watch videos below.
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PRESS RELEASE by organizers before the rally and march: New York for Palestine Coalition and Human Rights Organizations Rally to Mark The 75th Year of the “Nakba”, the Zionist Catastrophe, and 75 Years of Palestinian Resistance to Zionist Colonization and War Crimes.
New York, NY: On Sunday, May 14 at 12pm in Times Square (at Broadway and West 43rd Street), New Yorkers will rally to commemorate the 75th year of the catastrophic colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the “Nakba”, by Zionist forces – and to protest the ongoing and escalating war crimes by Zionist forces in Palestine. The rally is organized by the NY For Palestine (NY4P) coalition along with numerous other NY based community and human rights organizations.
The Nakba marks the height of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Zionist forces in 1948, wherein Zionists exiled approximately two-thirds of the Palestinian population from their homes and lands and destroyed over 700 Palestinian towns and villages. Since then, Palestinians have been subject to a brutal regime of torture, armed home invasions and demolitions, massacres, policies of Apartheid, expanding military occupation, and theft of their lands, homes, farms, water, and schools. By commemorating the Nakba, Palestinians mark and highlight 75 years of daily policies and practices of brute violence by the Zionist entity, which violate every article of the Geneva Conventions.
The ongoing, murderous bombardment of Gaza this past week by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) which caused the murder of 30 Palestinians, including several entire families; the murderous raids by Zionist colonizing forces in the West Bank, especially in Jenin and the refugee camps; the pogroms by Zionist settlers under protection of armed forces in the areas surrounding Nablus; and the murder of hunger-striking Khader Adnan and countless other Palestinians abducted by Zionist forces – these events underscore the Zionist colonizing forces’ clear intent to continue the Nakba of Palestinians, and the urgent need for Palestinians to be supported in their resistance to escalating Zionist incremental genocide of the Palestinian people.
NY4P calls on all people of conscience in the New York area to join the rally in declaring: 75 years of Nakba is 75 years too long; Israel must be sanctioned until it dismantles all policies and practices of colonization, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid.
“Savagery. That is the word that describes Zionist policy in Gaza and across Palestine. For over 100 years, the settler colonial project has been established on a foundation of murder, displacement and repression. This is not a matter of the past, it is ongoing, as we see with the most recent assaults on Gaza. These are calculated massacres, and the occupation forces are well aware that entire families would be the casualties of attacks. We not only condemn the actions, but call for immediate action to end these heinous crimes,” said Wassim Kanaan, Chairman of American Muslims for Palestine – NJ.
“The Palestinian Nakba is the story of reclamation and resistance. We write today in honor of our youth who refuse to abandon the struggle,even when dispersed across the globe. We believe that our youth are the cradle of liberation—as the Zionist entity’s violence increases and Arab regimes continue to normalize, our demand remains nothing less than the complete liberation of the land and our return..,” said a representative of the Palestinian Youth Movement, New York Chapter.
“It is absolutely mind-boggling that the US government watches US Citizens engage in pogroms and war crimes, from burning Palestinian towns, to lynchings, home invasions, and bombing Palestinians as they sleep – live on video – and does nothing. These Zionist practices do not merely threaten the lives of Palestinians but pose a threat to global morality, order, and peace- and have no place in civilized society. It is incumbent that the US government put an end to, and prosecute, material support by US citizens and organizations to Zionist war crimes which are a violation of the US Federal War Crimes Act; and that the US government itself immediately end all political, financial and military support to the Zionist regime,” said attorney Lamis Deek who is a member of Al Awda NY: The Palestine Right to Return coalition, and co-founder of the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation.
New York for Palestine is a coalition of community organizations, activists, educators, and community members working to advance the cause of Palestinian liberation in New York City. The coalition includes American Muslims for Palestine New Jersey (AMP), the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Al-Awda NY: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, who are joined in Sunday’s rally by United American Indians of New England, ICNA Council For Social Justice, D12 Movement, Struggle La Lucha, Students for Justice in Palestine – Brooklyn College, Fordham SJP, Palestine Solidarity Alliance of Hunter College, The Party for Socialism and Liberation, the ANSWER Coalition, The Al Quds Committee, Brooklyn for Peace, Workers World Party, and more.”
Anti-Zionist Jews support Palestine.
Anti-Zionist orthodox Jews of the organization Neturei Karta (www.nkusa.org) participated in the rally and march in support of Palestine.
Anti-Zionist Jews 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.”
Protest the parade
SUNDAY, JUNE 4 AT 10AM
West Side of 5th Ave at 58th Street, Enter from 6th Ave or the Central Park South. OCCUPATION IS A CRIME: FROM NEW YORK TO PALESTINE. DISPLACING LIVES SINCE ‘48, NOTHING HERE TO CELEBRATE.
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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