World protests grow

Movement targets Israel for boycott, divestment, sanctions

By John Catalinotto

In the age of the Internet, sometimes it takes only two minutes to set an example for the world’s workers. That’s just what the Norwegian Locomotive Union did when they stopped all trains, trams and subways in Norway for 120 seconds on Jan. 8, telling passengers that they were staying in the station for that extra time in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Within days, the members of the COSATU trade union federation in South Africa were discussing in Cape Town how to bring that tactic into their country. The idea is to add two minutes each day the invasion and blockade continues. U.S. Labor Against the War posted this on its site.

As the railway workers’ action begins to gather steam, another struggle idea has spread from country to country. This is the call for “boycott, divestment and sanctions” targeting the Israeli state and its economy. Again in Cape Town at a march of 15,000 on Jan. 8, the South African Communist Party’s Richard Mamobolo put his party behind the call COSATU had made at a Johannesburg protest earlier for the South African government to expel the Israeli ambassador and implement sanctions against Israel.

The week of activities in South Africa supported the right of the Palestinians to resist. There were also protests in Nairobi, where police fired tear gas and used water cannons to disperse hundreds of Muslims who had gathered after Friday prayers, and in other cities in Kenya on Jan. 9.

This call for boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS, was common to many of the protests the weekend of Jan. 9-11. More millions of people took to the streets around the world to demand the U.S.-backed Israeli war machine stop killing and pull back out of Gaza. Acting as though they could completely ignore the cry of these millions without consequence, the Israelis continued to rain death on Gaza.

While in the first week almost all protests were at Israeli consulates and embassies, the second week an official U.S. building was likely to be the target.

Thousands more protested in Tshwane, Durban and Port Elizabeth in South Africa on Jan. 9, where they chanted support for Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela. People all over the world were inspired when Chávez expelled the Israeli ambassador and broke relations with Israel over the bloody assault in Gaza.

In Brussels, Belgium, where 70,000 mostly Arab people marched on Jan. 11, their main message was for the European Union to suspend the Association Agreement it currently has with Israel, as long as its massacres and blockade of Gaza continue. One group held a banner with the slogan “Hugo Chávez, friend of the Palestinian people,” in Spanish and Arabic.

Chávez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a phone conversation called for organizing a global summit to find a resolution to end the Gaza catastrophe.

‘Boycott Israel’

A protest of 25,000 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Jan. 6 was the largest in Latin America. Another 1,000 people protested in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Jan. 8, and demanded that Brazil break diplomatic relations with the terrorist state of Israel, cancel the commercial treaty between Brazil and Israel, and begin an international campaign of boycotting the products of Zionist corporations.

In Barcelona, Spain, where organizers say 200,000 marched, and in Madrid, where 250,000 gathered, it was obvious that demonstrations were so huge that many non-Arabs and non-Muslims were joining in a show of solidarity. The main slogan of the Barcelona march was “Stop the massacre in Gaza: Boycott Israel!” Throughout the rest of the Spanish state, there were smaller but significant marches in Burgos, Avila, Valencia, Oviedo, Malaga and Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.

In France, too, the protests grew larger, with more than 100,000 in Paris and about the same total in many cities in the rest of the country on Jan. 10.

In Germany the major actions were 10,000 in Duisberg and 8,500 in Berlin on Jan. 10.

There was another strong protest of tens of thousands in downtown London, England, that ended with clashes between demonstrators and the police. There were also protests of 10,000 in Edinburgh, Scotland, where demonstrators dumped red paint and 300 pairs of shoes at the U.S. Consulate.

There were smaller protests in Sweden and Norway, and one for the first time in Warsaw, Poland. In Italy there were demonstrations in Rome, Milan, Vicenza, Verona, Venezia and other cities, totaling in the tens of thousands. Some 7,000 demonstrated in Bern, Switzerland, and 2,000 in Athens, Greece.

In South Korea on Jan. 10, some 300 people demonstrated to stop Israel’s killing of the people of Gaza, called out by 75 civil society organizations, unions and progressive parties.

Anger grows

In the Arab and Muslim world, the demonstrations took a sharper edge. Some 2,000 protesters in the Pakistani port city of Karachi burned U.S. flags and chanted anti-Israel slogans. Then several hundred of them marched on the U.S. Consulate. Senior police official Ameer Sheikh claimed the protesters were carrying bricks, stones and clubs.

In Malaysia, the police arrested 21 people, including Klang MP Charles Santiago and several top leaders of the Malaysian Socialist Party (PSM), at an anti-war vigil at Dataran Merdeka, Kuala Lumpur.

In Turkey some of the strongest actions have taken place. Anti-war and anti-racist movement activists, social organizations, nongovernmental organizations, solidarity committees, trade unions and parties took to the streets. They have been organizing daily protests since Dec. 28 in almost every Turkish city, including Istanbul, Ankara, İznir and Adana. There were protests at the Israeli Embassy and consulates, plus marches on the main streets of big cities.

Demonstrators in Turkey showed their solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza and expressed the besieged and occupied population’s right to resist. They recognized the Israeli state as the direct criminal, the local gendarme acting as an appendage of world imperialism—particularly U.S. imperialism but also that of the European Union. (Global Peace and Justice Coalition of Turkey) Turkish fans even ran an Israeli basketball team off the court.

An estimated 2,500 Lebanese and Palestinians meanwhile protested peacefully in downtown Beirut, waving Palestinian flags and calling on the international community to intervene in the Israeli attack. Leftist participants set fire to a large Israeli flag, while children taking part in the protest held bloody dolls representing Palestinian children killed in Gaza.

In Syria, demonstrators accused Arab leaders of being complicit in the Gaza assault.

Jewish opposition to Gaza assault

More open Jewish opposition worldwide to Israeli policies has surfaced following the assault on Gaza than during any earlier U.S.-backed Israeli war or incursion. A Jewish women’s group in Toronto, Canada, occupied the Israeli Consulate on Jan. 8 “in solidarity with the 1.5 million people of Gaza and to ensure that Jewish voices against the massacre in Gaza are being heard,” according to their statement.

The French Jewish Union for Peace spoke up early against the assault on Gaza. In Britain, a group of Jewish intellectuals started a petition against the ongoing assault, and in the United States, Jewish activists held a news conference Jan. 6 at Union Square Park in New York. On Jan. 12 the group Jews Against the Occupation held a protest of 150 people before the Israeli Consulate in New York.

Paloma Valverde, Dirk Adriaensens, Bert de Belder, Fausto Schiavetto, Paola Manduca, Jorge Figueiredo, Manuel Raposo, Jay Hauben, Berta Joubert-Ceci, David Karvala and others contributed to this report.

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