Global Day for Gaza: Protest at Israeli Embassy in DC
Washington, DC — On Saturday afternoon beginning at 12 noon of March 2nd, protesters filled the street in front of the Embassy of Israel located at Van Ness Street NW and International Drive NW. The number of demonstrators easily numbered in the thousands including passersby. Police blocked the entrance to Van Ness from Connecticut Ave NW, and marchers filed from the Metro along the street past the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China, and the University of the District of Columbia.
What sparked the Global Day of Protests for Gaza Strip on March 2nd were several latest outrages. First, recently, the United States once again vetoed the possibility for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire without preconditions. Second, the International Criminal Court of Justice had just endured a week of advocacy on the case brought by South Africa on genocide being committed by Israel against Gaza, but judgment may take weeks to months to deliver and it may not be legally binding (resulting in action) at a time when famine will reach its peak by mid-March. Already, although the ICJ found that the case of genocide is worthy for consideration, and that Israel should take measures to alleviate the suffering of the civilians in Gaza who have endured repeated bombings; forced displacement of over 90% of the population; and cutoffs in energy, food, water, and necessities; Israel appears to enact the opposite. It accuses the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees) of harboring Hamas criminals, and demands an end to the life-saving services of UNRWA for Palestinian Territories (Gaza Strip, West Bank, East Jerusalem).
The United States and other European nations immediately acquiesced, halting aid for UNRWA, even when no solid evidence was presented of Hamas terrorists embedded within UNRWA. In fact, the Israeli Defense Forces have killed at least 152 UN relief workers since hostilities began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked Israeli towns and kidnapped occupants.
The situation in Gaza is absolutely dire at this time, approximately 150 days since the beginning of the Israeli retaliation and invasion into Gaza Strip. At least 30,000 Palestinians are officially dead, with at least 7,000 officially missing, and over 70,000 injured or maimed for life. However most authorities agree that these numbers are the low count since most of the hospital morgues have shut down. With the ensuing chaos of forced migrations, intermittent attacks, and elderly people left behind in North Gaza, it will be left to history to record the final numbers. People are lining up for the most basic necessities every single day standing for hours at a time for bread and water. Each person receives at most two liters of water per day and a bowl of soup, if they are lucky. Others are surviving on bread baked once daily baked on open hearth fires, such as at Camp al-Mawasi at the beach.
Here is what Dr. Nimr Ikram reveals from his medical missionary trip to Rafah, Gaza Strip recently. He tells Shaykh Yasir Qadhi of Epic Masjid:
“There are 1.4 million displaced people all in tents, all over; one toilet for 100+ people; and inside the house I stayed at, it had no heat; it was only 25 degrees; but outside they have only a tent and blankets; there are people staying in the hospital, making tents inside the hospital; I am not sure if this is the line for the bread or line for the water; there absolutely is no safe zone. It is literally is an open air prison. These people have no place to go. This is the furthest south they can go. They are literally at the Israel-Egyptian border…We had a green light to go, and literally a block away a bomb went off. They do not care who is what and where. Unfortunately the bombs they are using, they are out to kill everyone; they do not want anyone to survive; all six of the victims died by the time they were brought to the hospital. The bombs are so often, so frequent, the residents are used to that as part of every day life…People are afraid to stay in houses. Even those houses that are up and running, people are afraid to stay in them [for fear of targeted bombing].”
Dr. Ikram’s surgery patients were almost all victims of targeted attacks and the resultant injuries, including children with bullets through them from sniper attacks. Shaykh explains that children must be the targets when they have precision bullets through the head. Dr. Ikram explains how limited supplies are that the medical gowns must double as hospital sheets. There are not the right kind of supplies such as pins to repair broken joints in ways that will allow them to safely recover. “Even the day that we were leaving, all morning, all night long, there was the sound of bombs and drones. This is just the start of their moving into Rafah, and their plan to start attacking more,” Dr. Ikram states about his last day in Gaza.
In fact, Prime Minister Netanyahu told CBS‘s “Face the Nation” recently that nothing will stop the Israeli regime from finishing its task to eliminate Hamas from Gaza, and that the campaign in Rafah will proceed whether or not there is a ceasefire. In his view, there are two more battalions hiding in Rafah and they must be eliminated. He said that the residents will be directed to return North (even though Central Gaza and Deir al-Balah is now in the process of full scale invasion); he defends the IDF by stating that the residents are given fair warning to leave since they drop printed flyers down to warn residents before bombing; but with so many residents packed into Rafah, any kind of fire can spread rapidly and cause huge numbers of deaths and casualties.
Hasbara attitude even encourages the Zionists to make fun of the Gazans and the Palestinians on the West Bank. It perpetuates the notion that the Zionists are the victims of ruthless attacks, even when most Palestinians do not have guns (because it would be illegal), whereas the Israeli government has literally been handing out free rifles for the illegal settlers on the West Bank; in fact, encouraging and allowing them to attack Palestinian farmers with impunity. On social media and elsewhere the trolls are out there sharing the equivalent of snuff videos showing the torture and killing of innocent Gazans captured by the IDF; Euro-Med Monitor reports that “The Israeli army introduced groups of Israeli civilians into detention centers and prisons holding Palestinian prisoners and detainees from the Gaza Strip, permitting the civilians to witness torture crimes against the detainees, with many allowed to film them on their own phones…” The gist of this was that it was “fun” to torture the prisoners in front of other Israeli civilians who could watch and share the videos on “TikTok.”
Even mainstream journalists, such as Stephanie Freid reporting at CGTN, made denigrating remarks on the incompetence of the Palestinians to take care of their water supply because they rather use the concrete to build tunnels. In fact, it is more likely the water systems are in disrepair due to years of inability to adequately import “dual-use” items such as water pumps, fittings, piping material, and tools. It is not merely due to “Hamas stealing the concrete” but also due to the border police not allowing eg. well-drilling equipment through in a timely manner.
Israel has also deliberately slowed to a logistical trickle critically needed food and fresh water for Gaza, with literally two thousand trucks full of aid parked outside on the Egyptian border side of Rafah, hoping to cross near Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing. The excuses by Israel include the need to inspect trucks and certify or remove dual-use materials; limited hours of operation at the crossing; special hours to allow Zionists to demonstrate at the crossing, etc. In fact the number of trucks entering was between 55 to 98 per day for February; far below the minimal minimum of 100 per day needed to provide for at least 1.9 million Palestinians living inside of Gaza (since the north border crossings are closed/destroyed).
According to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor in “Israel blocks entry of food and aid supplies, kills starving civilians”:
“Israel is deliberately deepening the catastrophic starvation crisis for all Gazans…Rather than expanding aid operations and making it easier for humanitarian supplies to enter the Gaza Strip, Israel has purposely increased its restrictions on aid trucks attempting to access the enclave…”
To add to the list of atrocities, Israel has even continued to carry out military operations “leading to the breakdown of civil order and deepening of the widespread humanitarian crisis in the Strip.” Humanitarian aid workers cannot conduct normal business when the IDF is conducting sniper attacks against the food convoys, as has happened various times, and with increasingly bloody results. They have targeted food convoy drivers, civilian police officers (who are not armed with the machine guns which the IDF always carry no matter where they go), causing chaos and mayhem by shooting at the people crowding around the truck, with the ensuing catastrophe, then blaming the victims for attacking the convoys.
The situation is so bad that the United Nations World Food Programme had to suspend all humanitarian aid heading towards north Gaza. This is provided that they can even use the roads to travel north from Rafah (the Beit Hanoon or Erez crossing has been massively bombed since 27 October 2023 and is basically impassable for all but the IDF). According to the World Socialist Website:
“The estimated 400,000 people still languishing in Gaza City (central Gaza Strip) and the surrounding areas have barely received any aid for months due to Israel’s blockade. Reports have surfaced of families surviving on animal feed.”
WSWS.org, “Gaza becomes a ‘death zone’
Animal feed is not designed for human consumption and young children in particular suffer stomach upset and indigestion. Another gambit of the Israeli government is proposing privatization of relief aid and delivery, which on the surface appears as a palatable solution, but without the fair and impartial adjudication and distribution of the UNRWA system, is probably yet another covert attempt to weaponize food, and to divide the increasingly desperate and hungry residents, and turn them against Hamas.
In the most recent outrage, the “Flour Massacre” of February 29, 2024, at least 112 civilians were killed and more than 700 people injured. While these patient malnourished Palestinians were lining up to receive flour from aid trucks, a ruckus occurred which was simultaneous to the IDF opening fire upon the crowd. Typical of the IDF, they never go without their guns, but in this case also had infantrymen, snipers, tanks, and drones. If the protesters standing in front of the Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C. on March 2, 2024 were in Israel, waving large Palestinian flags and demonstrating in front of the Knesset, they would in all likelihood be subject to gunfire, sniper attacks, beatings, stalkings, and indefinite arrests.
This brutal, savage aspect of the so-called “civilized democratic government” in the Middle East is hardly the image of tolerance, egalitarianism, and open-mindedness that the West is led to believe. This is why, as Breakthrough News discusses recently, people are beginning to see through the hasbara-sayanim of Western media. There is no way to white-wash the death of the gifted U.S. Airman, Aaron Bushnell, as just the unwitting suicide of a mentally disturbed anarchist. He was troubled, but he knew what he was doing and why. He does not want to be part of a nation that is complicit in every possible way, including sending troops into Gaza, with the ongoing genocide taking place. His last words were: “Free Palestine!“
He is the catalyst for a new coming out of people saddened by the young man’s death, by the relentless onslaught of the IDF, who are rejoicing and celebrating the Palestinian civilians dying there every single day, even while their leaders make the dying children out to be of no importance, no loss whatsoever, since “they will all become future terrorists.“
Besides having the opportunity to listen to speakers from ANSWER Coalition, Jewish Voices for Peace, 4th International, Party for Socialism and Liberation, and Youth for Palestine, there were many inspiring signs, banners, printed art posters, and best of all, Arab-Muslims from the wider DC Metro community out enforce to evidence their concern. There were also ample students, local humanitarian activists, and members from the diplomatic missions present.
SEP 2024 Presidential Campaign Kickoff
4th International or World Socialist Website also had a table and is presenting their Socialism2024 Presidential candidates, Joseph Kishore for US President & Jerry White for Vice President. Both men are old hands in the Socialist Equality Party, having conducted speaking tours and written for the website for years. Their slogan for the 2024 campaign is presently “Mobilize the Working Class Against the Genocide in Gaza and the US-NATO War Against Russia in Ukraine!” They have come out in support for peace in the ongoing war in Ukraine, and now with regard to the war by Israel upon Gaza.
The perspecuity of the socialists is evident in Kishore’s observation about the most recent stunt by the Biden administration in the wake of the “Flour Massacre” to conduct airdrops of food into Gaza (a total of 160 food supply packages and medical equipment successfully landed for the benefit of over one million residents trapped in southern Gaza):
“On Friday, President Biden said the US would ‘air drop’ aid to Gaza, while not mentioning, let alone condemning, the massacre in Gaza City. This is a futile effort to cover his own culpability. American imperialism has repeatedly vetoed UN resolutions calling for a cease fire, and Biden is demanding the passage of a military spending bill that includes more than $14 billion to finance the Israeli military.”
(This is not including the preoccupation to pass an additional aid package of $60 billion for military weapons to Ukraine—small wonder that recently the Netanyahu has been warming up to President Zelensky and voicing his support for Ukraine—with the Israeli regime opening a new war front against Lebanon, and needing all the arms aid it can get its hands on.)
The SEP believes that the current wars are normalizing the possibility for nuclear war as part of an imperialist global conquest that will eventually include war with Iran and China.
“While the ruling class allocates trillions of dollars to death and destruction, there is supposedly no money for decent jobs or basic social programs such as public education and healthcare.” — Joseph Kishore, U.S. Presidential Candidate, Socialist Equality Party
Indeed, from the many years AGN has followed the WSWS.org, they are the first to compile the reports coming out on Detroit into The Truth Behind the Bankruptcy of Detroit (available at Mehring Books). They also reported extensively on the Railroad Union strikes in 2022, the East Palestine railroad disaster in 2023, and most recently the strikes by the United Autoworkers (Stellantis). Most importantly, they are one of the independent voices exposing the cause behind the crisis of layoffs which is due to increase from the deployment of the “robot revolution” coming soon to all U.S. workplaces.
At a time when neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will backdown on the imperialist wars, the time has come to explore third party options. Another term with President Trump will certainly widen the Middle East wars: Trump not only voted to move the capital and U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; he supported a one-sided Peace Agreement solidifying Israeli control over all the Palestinian territories; supported ending US funding for UNRWA; and is advised by son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a long-time member of Chabad Lubavitch, an extremist Zionist organization whose eschatological plans include exactly the kind of current undertakings in Gaza.
In contrast, the Socialist Equality Party (Socialism2024.org) calls for rejecting war and investing efforts here at home for the working class; fighting for an independent movement of the working class against imperialism and capitalism; calling on workers to take collective actions including building rank-and-file committees independent of the AFL-CIO trade union apparatus; and taking the political offensive against the ruling class and all of its parties. Founder David North also recently delivered a powerful lecture, “The Israeli state’s fascist ideology and the genocide in Gaza,” which is historically educational and a personal revelation on the differences between Jewish culture and the Zionist ideologues currently in power in Israel.
Report and photos by AGN