Our people, with all their forces and components, are united in demanding the cessation of aggression.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine confirmed that our people, with all their forces and components, are united in demanding the cessation of aggression and that no deal or proposal has any value if it assumes the continuation of the genocide war or maneuvers to allow the occupation to continue its crimes. The resistance forces are entrusted with the demands of our people.

The Popular Front emphasized that U.S. President Joe Biden is a main partner in the aggression, genocide war, and war crimes against our people, and cannot be trusted in what he offers. He cannot be considered a mediator as he is a principal party in the war against our people.

The Front stated that the position on any proposal or negotiation path depends on its content regarding a complete cessation of aggression against our people, the withdrawal of the occupation, the lifting of the siege, and reconstruction.

The Front called on all concerned parties, including governments and mediators, to pressure the American administration, and stressed its demand for all forces in solidarity with our people to escalate the struggle and protest against the forces of aggression, primarily the United States of America.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Central Media Department
June 1, 2024

Source: Resistance News Network

Hundreds gathered in Grand Circus Park on May 27 to march through downtown Detroit, protesting the recent U.S.-armed Zionist attack that set refugee tents ablaze in Rafah, adding more bodies to the tens of thousands martyred in less than eight months. CNN confirmed that the munitions used in the deadly strike on Rafah were U.S.-made, provided by Genocide Joe Biden.

Passers-by and drivers stalled as the march passed through intersections and waved support for the marchers’ drums, chants, large Palestinian flags, and the many “Abandon Biden” signs.

Two miles away, the Wayne State University encampment demanded that the university administration meet with Palestinian students to discuss divestment. In November, the WSU Student Senate passed a resolution asking the administration to develop investment criteria to ensure the university is not complicit in war profiteering or “investing in companies that knowingly contribute to or benefit from human rights violations in Palestine and around the world.” 

University President Kimberly Andrews Espy’s Dec. 4 response boils down to hiding behind a “fiduciary responsibility” to enrich the independent WSU Foundation and support free speech and exchange of ideas – as long as it doesn’t disrupt the bombs falling on Palestine. 

Students and their organizations’ efforts to put divestment on the Board of Governors’ agenda were locked out or thrown out of meetings by plainclothes police. Only then was the encampment established on May 23. The University administration has now ordered all spring/summer school classes to be held virtually until further notice, essentially closing the university. 

Local press reports that Congressional Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian representative in Congress, spent the night at the WSU encampment and urged the university to reopen the school. Tlaib is a WSU alumnus. The African American Studies Department has lent its support to the encampment. 

Despite this support, cops broke the encampment on May 30, arresting 12. On May 21, an early dawn police attack sprayed chemicals on students and violently broke up the University of Michigan encampment in nearby Ann Arbor. But still, they rise to free Palestine.

The conference concluded with a commitment to intensify ending the genocide in Gaza and igniting a summer of struggle for Palestine

After three days of idea exchange and relationship building, the People’s Conference for Palestine ended with a bold call to mobilize: surround the White House on June 8 in protest of Israel’s ongoing offensive against Rafah.

“Biden said he had a red line, remember the red line? He said, if Netanyahu dares go into Rafah, that’s a red line, we the United States, will stop sending weapons to Israel,” said Brian Becker, executive director of the ANSWER Coalition, said during the plenary session entitled “How Do Movements Achieve Transformation?”

“Israel went ahead and invaded Rafah, and what did Biden do? He continued to send the bombs and the missiles to carry out the massacre in Rafah and throughout Gaza. Biden’s red line is a lie!” Becker declared.

Becker announced that on June 8, a date picked to mark the 57th anniversary of the s-called Six-Day War, “we are going to be surrounding the White House with tens of thousands of people dressed in red, surrounding the White House and letting Biden know, and letting the world know, and letting Palestine know, that we will be the red line to stop the massacre in Gaza.”

The last day of the conference unfolded as Israel bombed hundreds of forcibly displaced Palestinians sheltering in tents in Rafah, martyring dozens of people. Horrific images and videos spread around the world of sheltering families burning alive. Rafah currently contains millions of Palestinians displaced by the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.

As the horrific news unfolded, Mohammed Nabulsi, leader in the Palestinian Youth Movement, denounced the US government’s complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people.

Nabulsi denounced “those who send humanitarian aid simultaneously as they send bombs.” Biden has made promises of aid to Gaza through the building of a temporary pier for the delivery of humanitarian goods.

“They think they can scare us with Trump… you know who was fighting during those four years of Trump’s administration? We were!” Nabulsi continued. “They say they want to save democracy, we want to save our people. To hell with their democracy.”

From May 24 to May 26, conference attendees from all sectors of the movement for Palestine met in Detroit, Michigan for the People’s Conference for Palestine, creating a space to build the movement for Palestine in every corner of society. Not once did the thousands of attendees, representing hundreds of organizations participating in the global Palestine solidarity movement, forget that first and foremost, they are organizers of masses of people.

Also in the plenary session entitled “How Do Movements Achieve Transformation,” historian and journalist Vijay Prashad outlined the significance of maintaining the struggle following the height of student Gaza Solidarity Encampments, many of which have by now been brutally suppressed by police. According to Prashad, university administrators might assume that “by the end of the spring semester, as is normal, things will taper down, students will go home in the summer, when they come back in the fall semester, they’ll forget what they did in the spring. It’s our responsibility to be the bridge for those students from the spring semester into the fall semester.”

“It’s our responsibility to deepen and carry on the kind of movements and things you’ve already been doing. It’s not what you should do, it’s what you have to do more.”

Life from a life sentence

Sana’ Daqqah, activist, journalist, and the wife of the martyred Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqah, joined the conference program for the second time, following her address on May 25. Sana’ was part of a special plenary session on the Palestinian prisoners’ movement.

The movement for political prisoners is a key part of Palestinian political life. Before October 7, 2023, Israel was holding 5,200 Palestinian political prisoners in its jails. This included 170 children and 1,264 administrative detainees held without trial or charge. The struggle to fight for the freedom of these thousands of prisoners is a demand that inspires people’s movements globally, including in the United States, where freedom fighters, principally those involved in the Black liberation movement, have been held as political prisoners for decades. Today it is estimated that over 8,000 Palestinians are being held in Israeli prisons.

“In the 60s the prisoners were placed in cells without the bare necessities for life. In this way, the occupation tried to bury the youth, the thousands of youth that entered into the prisons. But instead the exact opposite happened and the resistance emerged within the prisoners’ movement in the 70s through hunger strikes,” Sana’ Daqqah outlined. ”Into the late 80s and 90s, the prisoners’ movement played a critical role during the first Intifada. In fact, much of the First Intifada was administered from within the prisons themselves.”

“We have to be proud of being part of a people that brings out a prisoner movement like this and creates heroes and fighters like ours,” Daqqah affirmed. ”The prisoners decided to create life from a life sentence.”

Palestine and internationalism 

Palestine as a cause has ignited the support of people’s movements and governments across the world, a level of international solidarity that was reflected in the plenary session entitled “Palestine and Internationalism.” A key speaker was Mandla Radebe, associate professor in the University of Johannesburg, and Chairperson of the South African Communist Party in Gauteng province.

Radebe outlined that because of the shared struggle between the South African and Palestinian people against apartheid, “South Africa’s government felt strongly that we should take legal proceedings to the ICJ.”

“We as South Africans have a unique perspective of having lived in almost similar experiences with the people of Palestine. What was happening at the ICJ, it was in a sense a cathartic moment for South Africans, many ordinary South Africans who experienced first hand the oppressive apartheid policies.”

“International solidarity [is] one of the pillars of the struggle that helped us to defeat apartheid in South Africa,” Radebe continued.

Mask Off Maersk

Fitting the theme of drawing on the wellspring of energy at the conference for mass mobilization, the Palestinian Youth Movement, one of the key conveners of the conference, announced a new transnational campaign entitled, “Mask Off Maersk” at the “Arms Embargo Now!” panel.

Mask Off Maersk aims to target one of the largest shipping companies in the world, while 68% of Israel’s weapons are transported from the US. “Since October 7, we know that Maersk has shipped the most weapons to Israel out of any of the logistics companies,” said Aisha Mansour, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement. PYM aims to utilize multiple sectors of society to target Maersk in this new campaign, including labor, media, and on college campuses. Organizers are demanding that Maersk cut ties with Israel. “We want to develop a multi-pronged and multi-regional strategy to pressure Maersk,” outlined Celine Qussiny of the Palestinian Youth Movement. “Since weapons are not the entirety of their business we believe this is winnable.”

Source: Peoples Dispatch

May 24 — As the bloody Zionist/White House genocide against the people of Gaza continues, so do protests in solidarity with Palestine. 

Since mid-April, university students, faculty, and staff across the U.S. and internationally have set up encampments, occupied buildings, and captured the attention of corporate media and social media alike. 

Cops, private security companies, Zionist thugs, and other right-wing groups have been unleashed at Columbia University, at UCLA, and at many other colleges to try to end the encampments and demonstrations. But protestors have repeatedly regrouped. 

Over the weeks, faculty and other college staff, as well as community members, have come out in support. Now, one of the United Auto Workers locals that represents graduate students at University of California (UC) campuses has initiated a series of “stand-up strikes.” 

The power of 48,000 graduate students, teaching assistants, and researchers organized in UAW Local 4811 has strengthened the protest movement through rolling political strikes modeled after the historic victories against the big three automakers in 2023.

The series of actions is in response to the violence against the UC encampments. Two thousand striking UAW workers walked picket lines at UC Santa Cruz beginning on May 20, and the strike will expand to UCLA and UC Davis on May 28.

Local 4811’s potent intervention in the student Gaza solidarity campaign now has UC administrators grasping at straws. The main issue for the strikers is workplace safety. No one could argue with credibility that standing by while fascists attacked union members didn’t compromise the safety of these unionized workers. 

Twenty-five students were sent to the emergency room while police stood by during the five-hour assault on April 30. Hoping to get an injunction, UC filed unfair labor practice charges with California’s Public Employment Relations Board. But yesterday, May 23, the charges were rejected. There will be no injunction against the strike.

This foray into the fight against the Biden/Netanyahu genocide isn’t the first by organized labor. The Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions called for support soon after the assault on Gaza began, and hundreds of union locals have responded. 

UAW, United Electrical Workers (UE), American Postal Workers Union, American Federation of Teachers, and many others have released statements calling for a ceasefire or divestment. Smaller locals have organized teach-ins in support of Palestine, and rank-and-file efforts within some unions are pushing the leadership in those locals that haven’t spoken up to do so.

Weapons to Israel blocked at Oakland dock

In the first actual workplace union action to defend Gaza, on January 14, hundreds of unionists from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union joined by activists from the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) set up a picket line when a ship was scheduled to pick up weapons bound for Israel. Throughout the day, 200 dock workers from ILWU local 10 refused to cross the picket line to load the weapons onto the ship. Labor publications around the world reported the action at the Port of Oakland.

The January port action, the varied calls for a ceasefire or divestment by union locals, and the current UAW strike add a great deal of strength to the movement against the genocide in Gaza. 

College administrations and mayors of major cities continue to unleash police and fascist attacks but are failing to achieve their goal of crushing the movement. New encampments and street demonstrations, recent disruptions of Genocide Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and heightened calls for disinvestment from anything that benefits the Zionist state are all testament to the determination of hundreds of thousands of students, community organizations and unionized workers. 

The unionized labor element is not only a burst of strength in the immediate sense but also hints at the potential of a broad anti-imperialist movement. Consciousness about the role of the White House and Congress is growing as the U.S. military-industrial complex – the death merchants of imperialism – continues to build all of the weapons that are adding to the death toll.

A report in the publication of the All India Central Council of Trade Unions about the role of U.S. unions against the genocide quoted Gerry Scoppettuolo of Pride at Work Eastern Massachusetts and Executive Board member of the Greater Boston Labor Council, who said, “Organized labor in the U.S. has not been as united in this way since the 1980s when a majority of labor opposed the Reagan/Kissinger support of death squads in Honduras, fascist national police in El Salvador, and the Contras in Nicaragua.” 

A January article posted to Prismreports.org quoted several unionists with Labor for Palestine, a network of activists across the spectrum of union locals in the U.S. Mary Jirmanus Saba of UAW Local 2865, which represents UC graduate workers said that activists in UAW are “looking for ways to support UAW workers in weapons plants and trying to disrupt those supply chains.” 

Zachary Valdez of UAW Local 2110 in New York seconded Saba’s remarks when he said, “The labor movement has the power to disrupt supply chains. The UAW is uniquely placed within this system of oppression because … UAW members are involved in the creation of weapons that are being sent to Israel and bombs that are being dropped on Gaza.”

Every victory in this struggle against genocide serves to isolate and expose the Zionist settler project and the U.S. imperialist war machine. Even just the mention of the power that workers hold over the means of production – in particular, the production of weapons being used in the genocide is nipping at the Achilles Heel of capitalism.

All out solidarity with Palestine! End the occupation!

Local organizers with the Palestinian Youth Movement led a Nakba Day week of actions in New Orleans, from the May 16 ceasefire rally outside City Hall to the May 18 “All Out for Nakba” rally, march, and die-in starting in Jackson Square. In this latter action, several hundred people marched.

The young Palestinian activists – including young women – demonstrated a remarkable ability to direct the crowd through the busy French Quarter without ever letting the energy dip. The New Orleans area has some 10,000 Palestinian community members; they have reason to be proud of these young leaders.

Popular chants included, “From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go!” and “There is only one solution, Intifada, revolution!”

Support for Israel is about profits

Various contingents were prominent during the march. One grouping wore Queers for Palestine t-shirts. Another carried a banner that read, “No to SRC21 – no support for Israel.”

SRC21 is a bill that passed the Louisiana Senate on April 22, pledging congressional support for genocidal Israel. The bill was sponsored by far-right Sen. Valarie Hodges, who — together with her husband — operates a real estate company, Northstar Properties and Homes, and a missionary organization that oversees evangelical churches in Mexico and Nicaragua. (She’s also known for demanding that the Department of Health approve Ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment.) This bill passed in the Senate only 11 days after the House struck down a measure to raise Louisiana’s $7.25/hour minimum wage. 

Louisiana’s corrupt politicians have many reasons for supporting Israel (just as they have reasons for denying workers fair pay), none of which have anything to do with protecting Jewish people. Just last year, the Port of New Orleans entrenched its relationship with Israel’s Port of Ashdod in Tel Aviv with the so-called “Innovation Embassy.” That’s just one example. Support for Israel is about profits. 

‘Defense’ companies making a killing by killing

At the May 18 march, members of the Workers Voice Socialist Movement of New Orleans distributed a newsletter with some telling figures about the war industry (deceptively called the “defense” industry). 

“Stocks of the biggest weapons manufacturers have increased by as much as 27% since Israel began bombing Gaza in October. Raytheon stock is up 18%, Lockheed Martin +12%, and General Dynamics +14%. RTX (Raytheon) alone reported $74.3 billion in sales last year, with profits soaring after Israel began bombing Gaza. Most U.S. lawmakers are invested in these stocks.”

Louisiana and Israeli police train together

This same Workers Voice newsletter exposes connections between Louisiana’s police departments and Israel.

“Like many other police agencies across the U.S., Louisiana State troopers jointly train with terrorist Israeli forces such as the Israel National Police, the Ministry of Internal Security, and the Israel Security Agency. Louisiana State Police (LSP) has a long record of brutality, especially against Black people. The horrific video of the 2019 murder of Ronald Greene by state troopers displays the same techniques of violence inflicted on Palestinians by Israeli forces.

“Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry has ordered a special deployment of state troopers to New Orleans. LSP is immune from the federal oversight currently applied to NOPD, and LSP will coordinate with ICE to attack New Orleans’ immigrant communities.

“On Feb. 9, the arch-racist Landry announced half-jokingly that he would like to annex New Orleans into Gretna. Gretna is known as the ‘arrest capital’ of the U.S., where as many as 1 in 3 residents are arrested yearly. Landry plans to raise money from fines and fees while exempting corporations and the rich from paying taxes on their wealth or income. Landry wants Louisiana to be like fascist Israel, where the rich live in luxury while native Palestinians live behind barbed wire fences and checkpoints.”

We say no to Landry and no to Netanyahu! From Palestine to New Orleans, stop the U.S. war machine! 

Joe Biden has engaged in some pretty abhorrent politics over the years. 

At Strom Thurmond’s 90th birthday party in 1993, Joe Biden spoke, heaping praise on the segregationist stooge. Biden’s glowing remarks reached a height when he compared Thurmond to another segregationist stooge, Robert E. Lee. 

Ole Genocide Joe did not mean this as a criticism, nor was he drawing a thoughtful parallel between the neo-Klan movement and the Confederacy. This comment was genuinely meant as a compliment. 

Thurmond had led the “Dixiecrat” charge against the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s, famously filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours. The man certainly had a dogged commitment to the most pernicious racism and fascism. 

If you don’t remember that particular saga, you may remember Biden’s championing of racist mass incarceration legislation, or his glib threats of genocide against Serbia … or, last one, his insistence that “poor kids are just as bright as white kids.” Woof. 

That said, Genocide Joe Biden may have outdone himself May 7 with a right-wing tirade on national television that the Democratic Party had the nerve to frame as a “speech against antisemitism.” 

Genocide Joe began this “speech against antisemitism” with recognition of some alleged friends of the Jewish community and allies in the fight against antisemitism. In particular, Biden named Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and former Anti-Defamation League (ADL) spokesperson Abe Foxman. 

Let’s start with the esteemed speaker, Mr. Mike Johnson. Johnson is an open Christian Zionist and a proud Trump right winger. Christian Zionists support the colonization of Palestine by U.S.-backed Jewish Zionists because they believe that the full “return” of Judaism to Palestine will usher in the end of the world, where all non-Christians will be destroyed. Does this seem like a real friend to the Jewish people? 

Moving on to Hakeem Jeffries. The Democratic minority leader in the House has voted for every piece of legislation to arm Ukraine, despite neo-Nazis playing a prominent role in the Ukrainian military and Ukrainian society being deeply engulfed in fascism since the 2014 Maidan coup. As if that wasn’t enough, Jeffries has said that the U.S. should consider sending troops to Ukraine to protect those fascists. 

Last but not least, we get to Abe Foxman, a fervent Zionist spokesperson and lobbyist who formerly ran the Anti-Defamation League. Foxman is a huge supporter of the “birthright” program, which grants young Jews free trips to Palestine in order to indoctrinate them into the Zionist colonial project. Many of these young Jews from the United States are brainwashed on these trips into literal or figurative soldiers for the Zionist entity.

In 2016, Foxman attacked anti-Zionist Jew and IfNotNow founder Simone Zimmerman, taking particular aim at her new position in Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign. Foxman’s attack actually led to Zimmerman being suspended from her position just two days after she started. 

Foxman has a strange way of showing support for young Jews. The cherry on top is Foxman’s vitriolic stance against collegiate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. 

These men may be friends of Zionism, but they are certainly not friends to the Jewish community. 

Distorting history

After these insidious introductions, Biden launched into a lecture on Jewish history, and who better to speak on Judaism than an old white Catholic guy from Scranton? 

In his speech, Biden preached many inaccuracies and twisted versions of history. However, one rang out as particularly bold in its evil. 

About a third of the way through, Biden made a parallel between two events. He declared that the events of Oct. 7, 2023, were equal to the Shoah (or Holocaust) in their horror, hatred, and violence against the Jewish community. 

The events of last Oct. 7 were not an attack on Judaism. They were an attack against violent Zionist settlers who stole Palestinian land and waged a terror campaign against the Palestinian community, who the colonists themselves forced into Gaza and the West Bank. 

Many Jews live by a saying: Tikkun Olam. It is Hebrew for “heal the world.” My old rabbi opened every Friday evening or Saturday morning service with a discussion of Tikkun Olam. As a community, we asked ourselves, “How will we heal the world?” 

So it needs to be asked, how is the violent seizure of land from an Indigenous people healing the world? How are the armed Zionist settler militias that commit pogroms against the Palestinian community healing the world? How are the Zionist bombs that rain all over Gaza healing the world? 

The Jews who are staying true to the values of their community and the legacy of their ancestors’ struggles against fascism are the ones who now struggle against Zionist fascism. Those Jews are trying to heal the world. They are trying to heal the infected wound that is the state of “Israel.” 

So for Joe Biden to assert that resistance against vicious settlers, settlers who have really replaced their Judaism with a form of fascism, is not only an insult to living Jews but to all our ancestors who struggled against monarchism and fascism in Europe. 

Lucky for us, Genocide Joe did not stop there. He took it all one step further. When discussing the recent pro-Palestine protests and encampments at colleges across the United States, Biden again drew a comparison to the Shoah. 

Apparently, 19-year-olds protesting against apartheid are as serious a threat to the Jewish community as the policies of Hitler. This is a pretty wild comparison considering that 97% of pro-Palestine encampments did not even cause “serious damage,” according to a study by Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a nonprofit. 

The study analyzed 553 campus demonstrations between April 18 and May 3 of this year. It found that fewer than 20 resulted in any serious interpersonal violence or property damage. So, we are supposed to believe that several hundred relatively tame protests against apartheid are equivalent to the systematic industrialized murder of millions of Jews, Roma people, communists, LGBTQIA+ people, Slavs, and others? Really? 

Comparing the two is at best a trivialization of the Holocaust, and at worst – outright denial. 

Joe Biden’s speech didn’t have anything to do with antisemitism. It was just another despicable chapter in the propaganda war against the Palestinian liberation struggle disguised as an overture to the Jewish community. The spectacle was evil beyond evil, and not a word of it should be believed by Jews or anyone else. 

Free Palestine!

Lev Koufax is an anti-Zionist Jewish activist in Baltimore.

Havana, May 11 — The Cuban Conga Against Homophobia and Transphobia took its message of “Love is the law” to the central avenues of the capital’s Vedado neighborhood, along with demands for a free Palestine and against the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Representatives of Cuban LGBTQIA+ activism and friends from other countries joined the parade that called for “All rights for all people,” convened by the National Center for Sexual Education (Cenesex) from May 3 to 18 within the framework of the Cuban Days Against Homophobia and Transphobia.

Cuba encourages the effective exercise of the sexual rights of LGBTQIA+ people and the combination of academic, cultural, sexual education, and community participation activities that promote that purpose during these days.

In recent statements to the “Mesa Redonda” program on Cuban television, the director of Cenesex, Mariela Castro Espín, highlighted the need to continue making visible the forms of violence that transgender people and their families experience.

She underlined the purpose of Cenesex to provide tools against different forms of discrimination and under the premise that love is the law, endorsed in the Constitution and the Cuban Families Code.

In that sense, she pointed out the urgency of increasing the communication effort of the country’s institutions to achieve higher levels of understanding, learning, and acceptance in relation to gender identity and sexual preferences within families and society.

Likewise, she drew attention to the existence in the LGTBQIA+ community of revolutionary activism in defense of popular causes in the midst of the active imperialist media crusade that stimulates rejection and discrimination against homosexual and transgender people.

Translated by Melinda Butterfield

Source: Granma

Thousands of people marched in Brooklyn, New York, on May 11, to commemorate the 76th anniversary of the expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians from their homes. Called the Nakba — Arabic for “catastrophe” — by Palestinians, the 1948 massacres allowed Zionists to set up their apartheid state of Israel.

Over 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed and 15,000 Palestinians were killed during the Nakba. At least 110 Palestinians in Deir Yassin village were murdered on April 9, 1948, by the Irgun and Lehi terrorist gangs. Zionists threw bodies down wells.

Seventy-six years later, Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Genocide Joe Biden have killed over 30,000 children, women and men in Gaza. Hundreds more have been slain on the West Bank by Zionist settlers, cops and soldiers.

It was these war crimes that were protested by thousands of people who came to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The basketball arena is named for the Barclays Bank, British loan sharks with $2 trillion in assets whose business was jump started by slavery. With billions invested in arms companies, Barclays now profits off genocide in Palestine.

The rally was called by Palestinian Assembly for Liberation – Al Awda: the Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PAL-Awda) and supported by the Shut It Down for Palestine Coalition.

Speakers included representatives of PAL-Awda, the Palestinian Youth Movement, American Muslims for Palestine, The People’s Forum, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and Raja Abdulhaq, co-founder of the Quds News Network and former director of the Islamic Leadership Council.

Even as the rally was beginning, helmeted police charged into the crowd to seize an organizer holding a bullhorn and another protester. That’s freedom of speech in the capital of capitalism.

Hundreds of cops wearing helmets and other riot gear threatened protesters. Prison buses were lined up on Flatbush Avenue along with dozens of police vehicles.

After the rally, people began to march, with cops trying to block them and force them off the streets. Hundreds attempted to march to Manhattan, with many arrested on the Manhattan Bridge. Even a media photographer was busted. The bridge was shut down for hours. 

Other contingents marched through the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. Police arrested 20 or more protesters on Myrtle Avenue. Many residents and shoppers greeted the marchers.

Around 200 people were arrested in total. Police were obviously seeking to bust such a large number in order to try to stop the Palestine solidarity movement.

So far nearly 3,000 people have been arrested across the United States with dozens of university encampments raided. None of these attacks will stop the movement for Palestinian freedom.

The zionist army is drowning in the quagmire of Gaza and paying the price for Netanyahu’s narrow political interests.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) holds the U.S. administration and the international community fully responsible for the continued closure of crossings, intensifying shelling in various areas of the Gaza Strip, and forcing refugees once again to flee to unsafe areas under bombardment and gunfire.

The Front emphasizes that the recent statements by U.S. officials regarding the occupation’s operations in Rafah confirm high-level coordination between the U.S. administration and the zionist entity, especially regarding the plan to occupy the Rafah crossing and close the crossings, exacerbating the humanitarian situation as a means of pressure on the resistance.

The Front warns of the catastrophic consequences of the continued closure of crossings, especially the Rafah crossing, amid severe shortages of relief supplies and medical supplies due to the non-entry of relief convoys into the Strip for several days.

The Front affirms that the return of the zionist army to invade areas it had previously invaded, such as Jabalia and Zaytoun, despite claiming to have cleared them of resistance, indicates disagreements between the military and political levels. This was expressed by chief of staff of the zionist army, Halevi, when he repeatedly interpreted “the army’s return to work in places where work had been done due to the lack of any political horizon,” confirming that the zionist army is drowning in the quagmire of Gaza, suffering severe losses and failing to achieve any field accomplishments on the ground, and that it is paying the price for Netanyahu’s narrow political interests.

The Front also warns of the deceitful methods practiced by the occupation to cover its upcoming crimes in Rafah, when it classified neighborhoods in the center of Rafah city as the Shaboura and Yabna Camps and included them within the areas located east of the city that must be evacuated, which is a prelude to committing massacres against the citizens and displaced in these neighborhoods.

The Front concluded its statement by affirming that the moment of truth is approaching for the war criminal Netanyahu, his war council gang and his defeated army; they are on the verge of a strategic defeat drawn by our heroic resistance fighters in various confrontation axes from the far north of the Strip to its south, with its other landmarks and details.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Central Media Department
May 12, 2024

Source: Resistance News Network