The protest rally organised by various organisations and led by the Awami Bharat and the Hussaini Youth, was on it’s way to present slippers to the Israeli Consul General for the ongoing Genocide in Gaza. The rally was stopped by a large posse of policemen who then arrested 21 of the protestors that included Amaresh Misra, Kishore Jagtap, Feroze Mithiborwala, Imran Rasool and Jyoti Badekar.
The demands of the protestors included the following:
1) An immediate end to the ongoing, incessant & merciless bombing of Gaza and thus an end to the genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli army in compliance with the political leadership of Israel.
2) The urgent need for an internationally brokered ceasefire.
3) The end to the blockage of Gaza and for the population to have right of safe passage across the borders of Gaza into Palestine and Egypt.
4) We call for the implementation of all International laws and UN resolutions so as to create a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
5) Till the time that Israel complies with all of the above, we demand that the government of India end all diplomatic ties with Israel. We therefore call for the boycott of Israel.
A statement organised by the organisers said, “It is clear that Israel is a European Settler Colonial state built on the principles of apartheid and the ethnic cleansing of the original inhabitants, the Palestinians. Israel is also proving to be a Nazi occupying power, as it unleashes it’s terror on the citizens of Gaza, which is bares a stark resemblance to Auschwitz, the Geman Nazi camp, where Jews were slaughtered. But Gaza also reminds us of the resistance of the Warsaw Ghetto and the uprising against the Nazi’s.
“It is clear now that Israel cannot even defeat the resistance within Gaza and Hamas and the freedom fighters haved proved resolute to the might of the Israeli war machine. As all colonial ventures, the Zionist project is doomed to failure. Zionism must die if Judaism is to survive. Today Zionism and Israel are the two prime reasons for the rising Judeophobia across the world. Zionism will die as the Jewish people regain their moral values that were preached to them by the prophets of the Jewish faith. Palestine will be free as both history and truth as well as the People of the world are on their side.
“We look to the day when both the Arabs and the Jews will share and live on the same land. Till then, we the people of India stand in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance in their struggle for independence and freedom from colonial occupation. In Solidarity with Palestine, the vanguard of the global anti-Imperialist struggle.”
Eminent persons participating in the rally included Feroze Mithiborwala, Kishore Jagtap, Sayeed Khan, Varsha V V, Amol Madame, Arif Kapadia, Chetna Birje, Reshma Jagtap, Mulaniwasi Mala, Bhagwan Keshbhat, Jagdish Nagarkar, Jyoti Badekar, Irfan Mulla, gaurav Kariya, Avinash Kamble, Inayat Akhtar, Munawar Khan, Ghazala Azad and Harshawardhan Vartak.