The "Nakba": A Driving Force Behind U.S. Anti-Israel Activity in 2008
Rallies
Posted: June 3, 2008
Numerous rallies organized around the country commemorating the "Nakba" were marked by denunciations of Israel's existence. For example, on May 16, a "Nakba" commemorative rally that took place at Dag Hammarskjold Park in New York City featured demonstrators holding signs that read, "Palestine Peace not Ethnic Cleansing," "Free Palestine from the River to the Sea." A banner signed by Al-Awda read, "Return Resistance Liberation/ By Any Means Necessary." One particularly egregious poster read, "Zionism is Nazism" and had a drawing of a Star of David juxtaposed to a swastika. Throughout the rally, participants repeatedly chanted "Free Free Palestine" and "From Yaffa to Deir Yassin: Ethnic Cleansing is Obscene."
The rally was sponsored by Arab Muslim American Federation, National Council of Arab Americans (NCA), Palestinian American Congress (PAC), Adalah-NY: Coalition for Justice in the Middle East and Al-Awda.
Speakers at the rally included Cynthia McKinney, a Green Party presidential candidate; Ora Wise, a co-founder of Palestine/Israel Education Project (PEP), and member of International Solidarity Movement and Jews Against the Occupation; and Phyllis Bennis, a co-founder and steering committee member of US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (USCEIO). During her speech, Bennis argued that "Palestinians were made to pay the price of European anti-Semitism that they had nothing to do with." Other speakers at the rally referred to Israel as a "pariah state" and an "apartheid state." One speaker even charged that the "Holocaust" being committed in Gaza was "more pernicious and profound than the Nazi Holocaust."
Another rally on May 16 was held across from the White House in Washington, DC and was organized by the Muslim American Society (MAS), American Muslims for Palestine and ANSWER. Participants held signs that read "US-Israeli War Machine is the Real Terrorist;" "Palestine Will Be United" and "End the Occupation Now." One speaker, Brian Becker, the co-director of International Action Center (IAC), accused Israel of being a Zionist colonial project that is guilty of terrorism.
On May 17 in Colorado, Friends of Sabeel in North America (FOSNA), the Muslim Students Association (MSA) of University of Colorado and the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center sponsored a rally to commemorate the "Nakba" outside the State Capitol in Denver. The event, "Remembering al-Nakba: Palestine 60 Years Later" included a ceremony to commemorate the "catastrophe of the dispossession of the Palestinians' homeland by the founding of Israel."
At another rally, which was held at the Federal Plaza in Chicago on May 23, participants held signs that said "60 Years of Palestinian Dispossession;" "Boycott Apartheid Israel" with a crossed-out picture of the Israeli flag; and "60 years of exile, 60 years of ethnic cleansing.
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