Saturday evening, after 21 days
of war and only a few hours before the National Security Cabinet voted
for a "unilateral ceasefire" in Gaza – while maintaining Israeli
military presence throughout the Strip – around three thousand people
marched from Tel Aviv into Jaffa in opposition to Operation "Cast
Lead".
Protesters met after sundown at the Charles Clore Park,
by Tel Aviv’s esplanade, and marched in a lively, spirited,
raucous procession upwards into Jaffa, where they rallied under
sporadic light rains in Gan Hashnaim park (in the Palestinian-populated
part of Yefet Street) and stood silent for one minute in remembrance of
this war’s victims.
Palestinian and Israeli protesters at the march against the war, Jaffa
The march, organized by a coalition of various groups
with coordination and support from the leadership of the Palestinian
citizens of Israel, was comprised of several blocks of marchers,
including a strong Anarchist "Pink & Black" one, complete with a
loud, radical percussion group. About one hundred Anarchists marched
behind a large banner with the word "Liberty" on it, [and the anarchist
A in circle] and were quickly joined by many Palestinian demonstrators,
shouting slogans alternately in Hebrew and Arabic. In addition to the
unifying message of the march, which was a call to end the military
offensive, the siege on Gaza and the killing on both sides, the banners
and slogans of the Anarchist block did not shy away from pinpointing
Zionist ideology as the root cause of Israel’s military
aggression.
The demonstration proceeds up Yefet street
Braving Tel Aviv’s thuggish Special Patrol Unit
police officers, who kept a close eye on the march (many with their
faces covered), as well as the more widespread, political clampdown on
dissent (according to police, 763 demonstrators, the vast majority of
Israeli-Palestinian, were arrested in Israel since the war began), both
Jewish and Palestinian Israelis showed once more that they won’t
keep quiet in the face of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian
people, whether through siege, air raids, Apartheid walls, military
occupation or wanton massacres, in Gaza or anywhere else.
Copied from the web site of the Anarchists Against the Wall (AAtW) http://awalls.org
Video by Israel Puterman