Ninety people rallied in New Haven, Connecticut on June 10 to oppose the increasing Israeli attacks on the Palestinian people over the past weeks. ANSWER Connecticut called the demonstration, which demanded: 1) Stop collective punishment of the Palestinian people! 2) Free all children and political prisoners in Israeli jails! 3) End all U.S. aid to Israel! 4) End the occupation of Palestine! The protest took place at a symbolic location: a statue in memory of the Amistad slave ship rebellion.
Chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “Free free Palestine! Long live Palestine!” the rally continued over an hour as speakers condemned the week’s Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip. “The Palestinian struggle is my struggle, because as a Native person, my people’s land has been taken by the United States, just like the United States is helping Israel do to Palestinians,” said Norman Clement.
The rally was heavily attended by Palestinian families. Refugee children and parents came with beautiful hand-decorated signs and raised their voices high in support of their brothers and sisters back home. Family members translated speeches to one another, and the event overall was a powerful display of international solidarity against Zionism.
The action was so powerful and so coordinated that even when two Zionists who were passing by decided to interrupt and insult the protesters, they were forced to retreat immediately by a booming wave of unified chanting: “FREE FREE PALESTINE!”
Organizers spoke about the deep historical connection between the Israeli terror and fascism. “‘Genocide’ is not just our word for it; not just the pro-Palestine word,” explained an ANSWER speaker. “It is the word the Zionist politicians and lawmakers in Israel use when the want to describe what they are doing to the Palestinian people. They use the word shoah, which is Hebrew for ‘Holocaust’. They are knowingly building a new Holocaust. And who is standing up against this genocide? People who are Holocaust survivors, who know exactly what is happening in Palestine, who have no delusions about it.”
Another rally took place earlier in the week in Hartford, where 60 people protested Israeli war crimes at rush hour on July 7. That demonstration also included a large number of Palestinian families.
