Hundreds of people gathered in Manhattan on Nov. 29 to mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The United Nations established the day in 1977 in recognition of the catastrophe unleashed by the 1947 partition of Palestine — a vote forced through the General Assembly by the Truman administration using open threats and bribery.
That vote paved the way for the Zionist settler state. Within weeks, U.S.-armed Zionist militias launched a campaign of terror that destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages and drove more than 750,000 people into exile, many into refugee camps. Large numbers were crowded into the small coastal area that would later be known as the Gaza Strip.
This November, after two years of U.S.-funded genocide, the Trump regime forced what amounts to a partition of Gaza itself through the UN Security Council. Nearly 2 million descendants of the refugees of 1948 are imprisoned in a small part of the strip, where they are denied adequate food and medicine and bombed daily by Israel’s U.S.-made warplanes.
The resolution puts the whole strip under the control of a so-called “board of peace” controlled by Donald Trump himself.
Free Palestine! on Fifth Avenue
Dozens of Palestinian flags were waved by protesters along with signs condemning the ongoing U.S.-financed genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. The initial rally — alongside Central Park at 59th Street and Broadway — confronted the surrounding corporate headquarters and the penthouses of the super-rich.
The Palestinian Youth Movement helped initiate the action along with other rallies across the United States, as well as in Toronto, Canada. One of the main demands was an arms embargo on Netanyahu’s murder machine, which has already killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, including tens of thousands of children.
Among the speakers were those from PYM; PAL- Awda; Nodutdol for Korean Community Development; the Party for Socialism and Liberation; and Neturei Karta, an organization of anti-Zionist religious Jews.
Manolo De Los Santos of The People’s Forum held the flag of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as he addressed the crowd. “If you stand with Gaza, you have to stand with Venezuela,” he said, speaking beneath the statue of the enslaver Columbus. “The Venezuelan people have committed the crime that under their feet stands the world’s largest proven reserves of oil. For this crime, Trump and his army of criminals in Washington have threatened war against them.”
People then marched down 59th Street past billionaires’ row and the hotels of the wealthy. Going down Fifth Avenue, they marched in front of Trump Tower and blocks of luxury stores.
Pedestrians on Fifth Avenue shouted support for the marchers and joined in chants of “Free Palestine!”
The final rally was held in front of the reference library on 42nd Street. Palestine will win!
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