Global: Protests for Palestine

The world has come out in support of Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of people have turned up at rallies and demonstrations over the past five days, which have spanned the globe. From Boston to Beirut, Cape Town to Caracas, citizens have shown their solidarity and support for Gaza.

Here's a collection of photographs sourced from Flickr:

Osama Al-Eryani, Calgary

infomatique, Dublin

Alalettre, Paris

Jewish Voice for Peace, Seattle

farfahinne, Beirut

Hamza Daoui, Boston

The Electronic Intifada also posts a round up of reactions from around the world here.

28 comments

  • Liliane

    We all know it’s not that simple. There is too much history here, to summerize it with what I said or what you’re saying, I was just trying to formulate what you said in the flawed logic that I showed, that was my purpose.

    But I will still make a quick note, let’s go with your explanation, if my neighbor tought their children that I am an animal and should be killed, the question here is… Why did my neighbor say this in the first place?

    I think extremism doesn’t lead anywhere. No part is right, but a part is suffering more than the other, and why is that?

    You think what Israel is doing is making things better for their people? Or is it creating more enemies?

  • Faris Arouri

    1. regarding Sudan, well, if Doug is accepting putting “the oasis of democracy in the middle east” on the same side of Sudan and its dictatorship, regressive and opressive system, then that is pretty fine with me :) it is a pretty convincing arguement :)
    2. regarding the incitement arguement, well Thomas, if your neighbors are teaching their sons that you are an animal (which is not true, since i’m a palestinian living the west bank, taught – with my siblings – in West Bank Schools and universities, and we were not taught anything even close to what you’re saying. yes, we were taught about our history and displacement, and our narrative, just like the israelis are taught about the holocaust, which is their right.

  • Doug Swallow

    Liliane: Your “logic” lesson is somewhat lacking but you do bring up a point that certainly pertains to the current pathetic occurrences in Gaza. You seem to not want to understand that this current round of events didn’t “just” start with Israel attacking Gaza. The first Hamas suicide bombing in opposition to the Oslo accords was conducted in 1993.

    “Hamas takes credit for an attack on Israel that leaves two IDF soldiers dead and a third kidnapped.” 06-25-06
    “With the blessing of Hamas, Islamic Jihad sends a teenage suicide bomber into a restaurant and massacres at least nine innocents. More than sixty others are injured.” 04-17-06
    Since Israel gave up all of Gaza in 2005 – relinquishing homes, farms, places of business and worship – terrorists have launched more than 6,300 rockets and mortars into Israel from Gaza.
    During the past year, Iran-backed terrorist groups in Gaza have fired more than 3,000 rockets, missiles and mortars at Israeli civilians in the southern Negev region,

    “In addition to firing rockets and mortars, terrorists have smuggled vast amounts of war materiel into Gaza. Israeli Minister for Public Security Avi Dichter said that in July 2008 alone, more than four tons of explosives were smuggled into Gaza via tunnels dug by terrorists under the Egypt-Gaza border. There are 400-600 smuggling tunnels running along Gaza’s Philadelphi Corridor, the strip of land spanning the border between Egypt and Gaza.” Does all of this seem to amount to wanting to live in peace with your neighbor?

    This has to do with the boarder crossings:
    In addition to firing missiles at Israeli civilians, the terrorist groups have conducted a sustained campaign of attacks against the border crossings from Gaza into Israel. In 2008 alone, there have been more than 17 attacks or attempted attacks on the crossings. Very intelligent thing to do if you want to keep the crossings open so that your people can get the supplies they need since they produce basically nothing.

    The Palestinians can’t get along with each other; therefore, there is little hope that either faction will want to really allow Israel to exist in peace. Palestinian fighting during the past two years has dealt a harsh blow to future prospects for peace, with 616 Palestinians killed in factional fighting from the time that Hamas won Palestinian elections in January 2006 through May 2007. In June 2007, when Hamas seized control of Gaza in a bloody coup against the Palestinian Authority President’s Fatah faction, 161 Palestinians were killed and at least 700 wounded. Actually, Fatah now quietly sits back hoping that Hamas is crushed by the Israelis and how many people must die before that happens?

    I will give another reply to you later but first a question. What do you think that Israel should do? As to logic, why didn’t the leaders of Hamas care what the outcome of their continued attacks might bring to the Gaza strip? They could care less, that is why the “leaders” have left the area. When asked not to continue sending rockets into Israel, that is what they should have done; but, that is not the type of logic that Islamic jihad operates under.

  • Paul

    I just don’t understand the logic behind the minds of the senseless fools who shoot stupid rockets into their so call enemy’s territory incurring very little damage while receiving a barrage of destruction on their own civilian population. The leaders of Hamas has only proven their stupidity in waging wars on their enemy who has a track record of supreme military might and success. Perhaps I am wrong. It’s not stupidity that reigns on these fools mind, but sheer indifference to their own peoples suffering . If there is anybody who is responsible for this carnage the blame almost solely rest on the stupid organisation that goes by the name hamas. If the leaders of Hamas truly cared for the well being of their people they would have surrendered their mindless act of rocket firing and pursued peace for once instead. Even now the sheer arrogance and indifference could be seen at the comments coming from the lips of these foolish cowards tugged in some save haven like Syria breathing words of fire and war at their enemies while countless numbers of their own people who are left to face the music of their mindless freaking leaders. I guess it’s only a true saying that there are some goons in this world who just do not know when to say ‘quits’

  • Wow! That’s all I can say after reading this factual, sensible yet never-ending circular discourse. It’s fascinating to me how people, once engrained into a particular philosophy, ideal or cause, can become so close and narrow minded that they fail to see the rest of the picture.
    Let us view the current conflict through a simpleton’s eyes. You shot bottle rockets at my house, neighbor, all night long and through the week. I called the cops on you, I called and asked you to stop, I went to your door and asked you to stop doing that for it was terrorizing my children and the rockets were burning my beautiful yard that was once a barren spot of desert. I worked my land very hard to make it bear fruit. I slowly built my home so it looked appealing and so my kids had a nice home. Now you are being careless and irrational and continue to throw rockets at my house.
    The police have not done anything. They say it is a neighborly spat and we need to come to an agreement. When I approach you you simply say, sure, I’ll stop but only when you lower your roof so I can see the mountains (or some unrealistic request like that).
    I filed a lawsuit and it has taken years to go to court. The judge told you to stop because it was not right to do such acts. But, it wasn’t against the law because you can do what you want in your home. And, frankly, I am fed up. I will now take the law into my own hands. So I go into your backyard, smack you around, destroy your bottle rockets and tear up your porch which is where you are launching them from. I tear up your shed because that is where you were storing them and I destroy your car so you cannot go buy any more. From now on, every time you leave your house, I will beat you and will keep doing so until you finally relent and decide to become a good neighbor. Only then, can there be peace.
    You see, I know your great-grandfather and mine once had a fight over a herd of cattle. I know your father and mine argued a lot but eventually allowed by-gones to be by-gones and they lived as neighbors cordially, but not amicably. I know that you and I inherited their homes and now live as neighbors. I know that my grandfather once sued your grandfather and won an injunction that gave my grandfather your grandfather’s home. And my father gave that home back to your father as a gesture of good will.
    However, you still hold ill feelings towards me because I am more succesful than you are. I am sorry I have worked hard to better myself and you have chosen to sit in your home and lament about the fact that I am succesful and that there has always been bad blood between the families. You choose to sit idle while I move forward. That is NOT my fault or my doing. It is time that you did a little bit of sucking-it-up and pushed forward with your life and thought about how you could become succesful in your own right so your kids could one day enjoy the bounties that your efforts may reap. Firing bottle rockets does not make you better, it only eases the pain of your CHOSEN pathetic, sorry, existence.

  • Liliane

    Cruise doctor, you left me speechless. :) There is nothing I can say or do to make you think otherwise. So I won’t.

    I will just quote you:
    “It’s fascinating to me how people…..can become so close and narrow minded that they fail to see the rest of the picture.”

  • Paul

    I wonder what \the rest of the picture is \ it is well said that those who take up the sword dies by the sword \ Hamas is clearly responsible for this senseless war firing rocket and waging a war the leaders surely knew they could never win . So why these meaningless blood shed. It’s like a small punk trying to pick a fight with the mose muscular well trained kid in school. Hamas has never recognize the state of Israel (what are we gonna do ? Kick them into the sea?) They are a bunch of terrorist that very few nations has formerly recognized. What would anyone feel if their neighbor has taken your life to exist?

  • Paul

    I truly hope that sanity would prevail but it’s a sad fact nothing of it ever prevails in the region we call middle east. It’s a region where a brother kills his own brother all on the basis of a sectarian difference . I am really sick and tired of the whole Islamic world with all its hypocrisy of ever picking on the Jewish state when countless number of their own people are being massacred by their own kind on the sheer reason that they are somewhat different in their beliefs. Nobody in the so call Islamic world condemns or says anything about the mindless killing of countless numbers of Shia and Sunnie muslims. The jews are not killing them brother!!! It’s their own doing . The massacre that’s going on in Iraq and other countries like Pakistan it’s a a momentous shame on the whole islamic ideology. So why just get so freak out at a state that’s only trying to defend itself from mindless people who has nothing better to do but to ruin everybody’s lives including themselves.

  • Liliane
    I’m from Central America…I have no bone in this fight. All I can tell you is that the entire world is protesting a nation’s right to defend itself. War is about killing and destruction. To fight the fanatic islamists you have to accept collateral damage because they hide behind the skirts of women and in the company of children so that they can get the world to cry foul when these innocent victims are killed by hostile fire. Why doesn’t the whole world get in an uproar against the senseless fanatic islamic movement? Because islamists have learned how to manipulate the media so they are viewed as the victims not the aggressors. That’s the big picture. You can’t see that? You sound like a very intelligent person, but you choose to wear blinders, and for what reason, I don’t know. Civilians dying in Gaza is not good, Israelis getting shelled and killed over a senseless rocketing act is not good either. You’re smart. What’s the answer? Israel has tried to exist without harrasing neighbors and invading countries or fanning the Jewish people in the world to blow up those things that represent anything Palestinian, Islamist, Arab or Muslim. Yet, they are picked upon because they are….well, Jewish. You think that’s right?
    What good has come out from Belfast after they fought the Brits? The Catholics fought the Protestants, for what? Hugo Chavez and his rhetoric agains America serves what purpose? None, only to satisfy his hyperinflated ego because probably some American looked at him wrong one day and now he hates America. Who knows the reason.
    If the issue here is to simply state that war, in general, is wrong. Then, I’m with you. I agree. But, to take sides on a fight just because you have sympathy for one side or the other without stepping back and judging the situation is plain ignorance. That would be like me saying that it was okay for the Hutus to massacre the Tutsis. What side would you take on that issue?
    Peace, my fellow human. This earth will never be free of war. As long as we have radicals on this earth…it will continue to happen. That’s reality.

  • Liliane

    Cruisedoctor, I see your point. You don’t think we know that? But fast fact is, Israel is quite smart as well on making themselves look as victims, because, in reality? They’re not. We can all go back and see how the 4 months ceasfire was broken.. who made the first move..

    And no, I am not defending Hamas, not at all. It’s just that my heart goes to those innocent people and kids mostly.

    Another point, how do you think radicals are born? Just by luck? just by chance?

    Israel right not is not really solving the SOURCE of the problem is it?

    And I have nothing against jews, some arabs do, some arabs don’t, just like how i.e. Some americans have something against arabs, and some don’t, it’s no hypothesis to drill a recurrence proof from it and build conclusions except what they are.

    Anyway, I am not sure if either of you, Paul or Daug Swallow have ever lived in war, being the attacked, hearing bombs drop on your building, not having electricity, not being able to leave your country, not having food, water, always leaving school early before the bombings gets stronger… :) I have, for almost 10 years of my life (on and off). P.S. I am Lebanese.

    So that’s why I look at Gaza now, and my heart goes directly to those people who are only, how shall I put it paying for the price of the mistakes of Hamas and Israel. More than 1000 casualties in 3 weeks? REALLY? This is making things right? This is teaching Hamas?

    The ball is in Israel’s court now, they can stop this. Not Hamas.

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