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Organizers held rallies in the U.S., Europe, and Asia to mark Nakba Day and condemn Israel's bombing and starvation of Palestinian civilians.
As one United Nations official on Saturday said that "brand new words" are needed to adequately describe the devastation Israel has wrought across Gaza in its U.S.-backed military assault, tens of thousands of people across the globe marched in solidarity with Palestinians to demand an end to the "ongoing Nakba."
The marches were held to honor Nakba Day, which was marked on May 15—the 76th anniversary of the mass displacement of 700,000 Palestinians who were forced from their homes when Israel declared statehood in 1948. The protesters demanded a cease-fire in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed at least 35,456 people since October, the majority of them women and children.
Protesters in London carried signs reading, "Solidarity is a verb," and "The Nakba never ended" as they marched through Whitehall, close to the home and office of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, who covered the first months of Israel's bombardment and evacuated Gaza in January, joined the marchers and told the crowd that mass protests around the world have given Palestinians hope.
"I didn't believe that I would stay alive to stand here in London today in front of the people, who saw me there under the bombing," said Azaiza. "Occupation is using all the weapons against us, the bombs, the killing, the starvation, the apartheid in the West Bank, and now killing the people and forcing them to leave their lands... I did my best to show you, and I believe you will do more, we all together will do more to stop this genocide."
In Dublin, Ireland, where politicians have harshly criticized Israel and its supporters for the assault on Gaza and the near-total blockade on humanitarian aid that has pushed parts of the enclave into famine, more than 100 civil society groups supported a march organized by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Irish Palestinian Zak Hania, a researcher and translator who was trapped in Gaza until earlier this month when he was finally granted permission by Egyptian and Israeli authorities to leave, thanked the crowd for choosing "to stand with justice and to stand with an oppressed people."
"I am proud to be an Irish Palestinian," said Hania. "I am proud to see all of you. It is part of my healing... We inherited a dream from our parents. We are trying for all our lives to fulfill our dreams and our parents' dreams. My parents are dead, but I will work to fulfill their dreams. Their dream is to have a free Palestine."
Other protests included a rally outside the German embassy in Bangkok, a march of about 400 people in Washington, D.C., and a demonstration in Brooklyn where police violently arrested at least 34 people, according to The New York Times.
Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime, told the Times she witnessed "police indiscriminately grabbing people off the street and the sidewalk. They were grabbing people at random."
Independent journalists posted videos on social media of police officers punching and kicking protesters.
The latest show of global outrage toward the Israeli government and the Western leaders who have supported its assault on Gaza came as U.N. humanitarian aid officer Yasmina Guerda told U.N. News about her latest deployment to Rafah, where 900,000 people have now been forced to flee following Israel's incursion in the city.
"We would need to invent brand new words to adequately describe the situation that Palestinians in Gaza find themselves in today," said Guerda. "No matter where you look, no matter where you go, there's destruction, there's devastation, there's loss. There's a lack of everything. There's pain. There's just incredible suffering. People are living on top of the rubble and the waste that used to be their lives. They're hungry. Everything has become absolutely unaffordable. I heard the other day that some eggs were being sold for $3 each, which is unthinkable for someone who has no salary and has lost all access to their bank accounts."
"Access to clean water is a daily battle," she added. "Many people haven't been able to change clothes in seven months because they just had to flee with whatever they were wearing. They were given 10 minutes notice and they had to run away. Many have been displaced six, seven, eight times, or more."
The daily reality described by Guerda is continuing to unfold as the Israeli forces have prevented 3,000 aid trucks from entering Gaza in the past two weeks, according to the Government Media Office in the enclave. The closure of the Rafah and Karem Abu Salem crossings for the past 13 days, since Israel launched its new offensive in Rafah, has also prevented nearly 700 injured and sick people from leaving Gaza for treatment.
"This constitutes a clear danger in light of the collapse of the health system," said the office.
On Sunday, U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths warned that the blockade on aid is leading to "apocalyptic" consequences, with the famine that has taken hold in parts of northern Gaza close to spreading across the enclave.
"If fuel runs out, aid doesn't get to the people where they need it, that famine, which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming any more," said Griffiths. "It will be present."
"No one is free until everyone is free," read a banner representing a Seder plate. "Jews say stop arming Israel."
As U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer prepared to vote on Tuesday night for a foreign aid package including billions to continue arming Israel in its bombardment of Gaza, roughly 300 protesters were arrested outside his home in Brooklyn for holding an "emergency Passover seder" protest, demanding the U.S. end its support for an assault that has killed at least 34,262 Palestinians.
The protest was led by anti-Zionist Jewish organizers with Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, with a large round banner representing a traditional Seder plate at the center of the protest at Grand Army Plaza, a block from Schumer's home.
Hundreds of people, some wearing traditional Palestinian keffiyehs, linked arms and chanted, "Free, free Palestine!" while blocking traffic and displaying the Seder plate.
"No one is free until everyone is free," read the banner. "Jews say stop arming Israel."
Schumer's home has been the site of numerous protests since October, when Israel began its attacks on and blockade of Gaza, which have left parts of the enclave facing famine and the entire population of 2.3 million people suffering from "acute food insecurity," at a minimum.
"A genocide being carried out in our names as Jews demands that we adapt our sacred tradition again, take to the streets, and do everything we can to prevent more death," author and activist Naomi Klein said at the protest.
The Biden administration has approved numerous weapons transfers to Israel, and the Senate overwhelmingly voted Tuesday night in favor of the package that includes $17 billion more in unconditional aid for the Israel Defense Forces.
Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) were the only members of the Democratic caucus who voted against the funding bill. Fifteen Republicans also opposed the bill over its inclusion of Ukraine aid.
The demonstration at Grand Army Plaza was organized amid a burgeoning protest movement on U.S. college campuses, including at Columbia University, where more than 100 students were suspended and then arrested for trespassing last week after setting up an encampment to demand the school divest from all companies that work with the Israeli government.
The student-led protests have been denounced by President Joe Biden and other pro-Israel critics as "antisemitic" and endangering Jewish students, despite the fact that Jewish students have helped to organize the nonviolent demonstrations.
One organizer, Calvin Harrison, told The New York Times that he attended the Brooklyn protest Tuesday night "because I'm a Jew and I was raised to believe that Judaism is about justice."
"Passover is a celebration of liberation for the future," he told the Times. "We can't celebrate liberation for ourselves while we're oppressing Palestinians."
Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of IfNotNow, recalled the group's Liberation Seder in 2016 in New York, where campaigners protested the Anti-Defamation League's support for the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.
"Eighteen of us were arrested," he said. "Tonight: [Organizers] led a Seder in the streets demanding Schumer stop arming Israel. Hundreds are being arrested. The movement grows."
Last night's CNN Democratic presidential debate in Brooklyn was both contentious and clarifying. It was contentious because the each candidate has had it with the other. Clinton is aggravated that Sanders has been surging and irritated that he keeps pointing out that she's the big money, establishment candidate in the race.
Last night's CNN Democratic presidential debate in Brooklyn was both contentious and clarifying. It was contentious because the each candidate has had it with the other. Clinton is aggravated that Sanders has been surging and irritated that he keeps pointing out that she's the big money, establishment candidate in the race. Sanders is tired of Clinton distorting his record, and being slippery about her own positions. But, contrary to the hand wringing of pundits, it isn't the personal distemper that will make unity difficult in the fall. It is significant differences on policy, direction and strategy.
The Obama Card
Once more, Clinton made herself the candidate of continuity. She wrapped herself in President Obama again and again. She invoked him to defend taking big bucks from Wall Street and special interests. She cited his appointment of her to defend her foreign policy judgment. She used his energy plan to dodge questions about her promotion of fracking and refusal to embrace a carbon tax. She put the decision to go into Libya on his shoulders to deflect her responsibility for that calamity.
President Obama is popular among Democrats. And in New York, only registered Democrats can vote in the primary. (Independents, those registered with the Working Family Party, etc. won't be able to vote). Clinton wants to firm up her lead among African-American voters. So tactically, the Obama card makes sense.
Strategically, however, it makes her the candidate for Obama's third term - at a time when the country is looking for change. She'll no doubt try to reset that image if she wins the nomination, but the imprint may be indelible.
The Strategic Divide
The debate repeatedly revealed the core divide between Clinton and Sanders: their theory of change and what's possible. Sanders argues that the country needs fundamental change. Our economy is rigged; our politics is corrupted. So he lays out big, common sense, but fundamental reforms: national health care, a new trade regime, tuition free public college, a mobilization to meet the challenge of climate change, etc. The only way to get these, he argues, is run independent of the big money of the entrenched interests that have rigged the rules, and to mobilize a political uprising that provides a mandate, and forces the obstructionists and the timid to get out of the way.
Clinton, and most of the chattering classes, dismiss this as romantic, at best. She constantly defends her embrace of less bold reform as necessary because she wants to "get things done." She supports building on Obama's health care plan because it's practical. She supports a $12.00 an hour minimum wage because she wants to "get things done." She offers complicated, preemptively compromised reforms because they are more realistic.
But in today's Washington, the once pragmatic is utterly unrealistic. Clinton's program isn't much different from Obama's. But the Republican Congress obstructs any progress on Obama's agenda. They don't favor a $12.00 minimum wage over a $15.00 one, they won't allow a vote on raising the wage at all. Clinton suggests that she'll be more effective because she's prepared to schmooze with politicians, drink them under the table, meeting with them constantly and do whatever is needed to get things done. She'll have support of big interests that have financed her campaign. This is essentially a plea to go back to politics as we once knew it.
There are two problems with that. Even if we could go back to the old politics, it won't get us where we need to go. Without fundamental change - change of the very things the old order put in place and defends with a vengeance - most Americans will continue to struggle. And, the Right that now controls the Republican Congress isn't playing by the old rules. Clinton is as loathed by the Right as Obama is. And there is no reason to think that she'll have the kind of sweeping victory needed to sober the Republican obstructionists. Sanders argument may be far-fetched, but it is more realistic than Clinton's business as usual notion. (And of course the things that the Clinton might find agreement on -- corporate trade deals, austerity, cutting Medicare and Social Security as part of a "grand bargain," tax giveaways to corporations - would only make things worse.)
Driving the Debate
Populism - and populist movements - drive this debate, largely because of the Sanders candidacy. Clinton now believes she must embrace breaking up the big banks, defeating the TPP trade deal she once described as the "gold standard," a $15 minimum wage, lifting the Social Security cap and more. She carefully hedges her statements, making her commitments hazy much to Sanders' irritation. But she's moved to meet the temper of the time.
The Foreign Policy Vacuum
Foreign policy got a bit more attention in this debate. Sanders continued his attack on Clinton's judgment because of the vote on Iraq, but expanded that to her responsibility for Libya. He took a relatively courageous position on Israel that Clinton chose not to join. He stood by his call for demanding the allies pay their fair share for NATO, which Clinton echoed.
But once more, Clinton's record of supporting failed interventions didn't come out. It isn't just Iraq. She championed the coup in Honduras, the intervention in Libya, going after Assad in Syria, the surge in Afghanistan, the meddling in Ukraine. At the debate last night, she put forth a chilling argument about a "more aggressive" Russia, suggesting that it wanted to "rewrite the map of Europe."
Sanders has relentlessly focused on his core message and agenda. He hasn't wanted to let debates on foreign policy or other issues distract from it. And he's looked less comfortable on those issues than on domestic policy. But presidents now have a virtually free hand on foreign policy. And while Clinton clearly will be "prepared from day one," the alarming question of prepared for what must be probed.