Originally published on Boston Indymedia: http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/206629
January 10, 2009
by Sofia Jarrin
Boston, Mass.--Around 400 people with home-made coffins marched in downtown Boston in a silent funeral procession to join protests around the world against Israel's military aggression in Gaza. Thousands marched in major cities in Europe, Arab countries, and the United States to express their outrage for the killings of so far 821 Palestinians, including 235 children, and close to 3700 wounded (50% of them women and children). Thirteen Israelis have died in the offensive, ten of them soldiers.
“Palestinian people must be some of the most extraordinary human beings in the world to continue to survive and raise families and talk about peace under the conditions they are living in,” said Catherine Hoffman from the Cambridge-Bethlehem People-to-People Project. “People who see Israel as the victim here, can see the power, absolute power that Israel wields in Palestine, not just now in terms of the killing, but everyday in terms of the occupation.”
Dressed all in black, a diverse community of Palestinians, Arab-Americans, Jews, Christians, and people from different heritage backgrounds, gathered in Boston in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. They marched from Copley Square to Downtown Crossing and back, waving Palestinian flags and carrying small bundles to represent dead children. They called for an immediate cessation of Israel's attacks on Gaza, a humanitarian international response to the crisis, and an end to Israel's stranglehold of the occupied territories.
“What's going on in Gaza right now is nothing new. We've had massacres all through our history since 1948. Hundreds of massacres, large scale, low scale. Continuously targeting Palestinians,” said Salma Abu Ayyash, a US resident born to Palestinian parents who fled the occupied territories in the late 1960s. “What is happening in Gaza is basically a manifestation of a greater plan to partition Palestine and make it impossible for Palestinians to have any kind of self-determination, any kind of real political representation and rights as human beings.”
Hillary Rantisi, a Palestinian from Ramallah who arrived to the United States seven years ago with her husband, a Ph.D. student, said that life in the West Bank is marked by a daily struggle under Israel's military and political power. She said her childhood memories are marked with Israeli soldiers patrolling the streets on her way to school. She herself was caught in the crossfire and has many friends who have been imprisoned.
The 600-plus checkpoints and the network of fences and walls controlled by the Israeli army make daily life impossible in the West Bank, said Hillary. “Imagine if you lived in Somerville and went to university in Boston or Cambridge, and there was a checkpoint in between. You wouldn't be able to go to your school. Or if you worked in a different town. So your life is basically very much under the control of all these restrictions,” she said.
“They need to acknowledge that we have rights too,” said Salma, “that the only way to move forward is if Israel recognizes our right to exist. Is not the other way around. We are the ones who are being obliterated here.”
Meanwhile, Israel has dropped leaflets in Gaza warning the 1.5 million residents of an escalation to the offensive, ignoring a UN Security Council call for an immediate ceasefire. The Hamas resistance continues to throw rockets into Israel in response. Concerns for the safety of the civilian population in Gaza has become critical as Human Rights Watch confirmed today the use by Israel forces of white phosphorus in the Gaza City/Jabaliya area.
“White phosphorous can burn down houses and cause horrific burns when it touches the skin,” said Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch. “Israel should not use it in Gaza’s densely populated areas.” Its use, according to the organization, would violate the requirement under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury and loss of life.
At the same time, fears have arisen that its war tactics has resorted to target journalists within the strip. The International Federation of Journalists issued today a condemnation of the Israeli government for bombing the Al-Johara Tower, an eight-story building that housed over 20 news organizations. At least one journalist was reported injured. Four other Palestinian journalists were killed in separate attacks. Nevertheless, news of the human loss and devastation in Gaza have been broadly broadcasted around the world, despite Israel's blockade of media entry into the strip.
Similarly, the daily worldwide protests seem to be on the rise. Israel Indymedia reported protests in at least six different cities in Israel today and yesterday, with several arrests. In Washington D.C. as many as 15 thousand people rallied today for Gaza, according to DC Indymedia. In Boston, daily vigils and protests have spread into several different towns, including Boston, Cambridge, Watertown, Roxbury, Dorchester, Brookline, Worcester, and Northhampton; in a spree of solidarity that has not been seen since the early protests against the Iraq war.
“It is in the US where it's particularly amazing, I think, because for the most part this is where our most fierce opposition lies and it's where it's most significant to have a change in policy. We've always known there has been a global movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people, and to see that penetrate into US mainstream I think is absolutely inspiring at this stage,” said Omar Baddar, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of Massachusetts and steering committee member US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.
“We stand together, whether we are Jews, Muslim or Christians, saying that we have one humanity. That we are equal as human beings, regardless of our religion, regardless of our backgrounds. And we today demand that we [Palestinians] are recognized as having equal humanity,” said Hillary.
RELATED: Watch video of the funeral procession, by Michael Borkson:http://openmediaboston.org/node/498
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