[Boycott - Other News] London Al Quds Day 2018 - A Sea Of Support For Palestine Despite Far Right Zionist Provocations
inminds 13 June 2018 London Al Quds Day 2018
Saudi Betrayal - London Al Quds Day 2018
On Sunday 10th June 2018 Inminds human rights group joined thousands of Londoners from all walks of life, from all faiths and none, from all ethnicities and cultures, uniting for Palestine, for the annual international Al Quds Day in London. It was commemorated with a huge rally outside the Saudi Embassy followed with a march on Downing Street - the seat of the British Prime Minister Theresa May, who only this week welcomed war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to London.
The Saudi Embassy was chosen to show our disgust at their open alliance with Israel against the Palestinian people. The Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has demanded the Palestinians either capitulate to Israeli demands or shut up, to drop Al Quds (Jerusalem) as their capital and accept the village of Abu Dis as their new capital!
A wonderful cross-section of speakers addressed the rally outside the Saudi Embassy, including a Rabbi, a Reverend and an Imam. The Saudi regime was thoroughly condemned for its open betrayal of the Palestinian people. Sandra Watfa from Inminds spoke passionately about Palestinian resistance to Zionist occupation.
Al Quds Day was established 39 years ago on 16th August 1979, on the first Ramadan after the victory of the Islamic Revolution. Imam Khomeini inaugurated Al-Quds Day, the last friday of Ramadan, as a day for solidarity with the oppressed in the world, in particular the oppressed of Palestine. He said: "Al Quds Day is the day for the oppressed to confront the arrogant powers". Every year since that day, without exception, we have seen Al Quds Day demonstrations all around the world including London. This year over 800 cities worldwide commemorated Al Quds Day.
A multitude of Zionist lobby groups in the UK headed by the Board of Deputies of British Jews tried very hard to ban Al Quds Day in the UK. The Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, during his visit to London last week, personally demanded its banning, and in Israel the IDF spokesperson for Arab media Avichay Adraee in a video appealed to Sunni Muslims, used sectarianism to dissuade them from attending Al Quds Day, saying their very attendance would, by default, turn them into Shias. They all failed miserably with this years turn out one of the largest in recent years.
Having failed, the Zionists aligned themselves with far right nazi / football hooligan / Islamophobic groups against the Al Quds rally. They tried attacking the protest several times along the route of the march. The police to their credit managed to successfully repelled them most of the time. One of the anti-zionist Rabbis was attacked by the zionists and some members of the public were attacked by these thugs for simply cheering the passing march.
Inminds chair Abbas Ali said "Imam Khomeini in his wisdom embedded the Palestinian cause at the heart of the Islamic calendar as the last friday of Ramadan. Al Quds Day was the first protest I ever attended in my life, as a child over 35 years ago. It educated me about social justice and our collective responsibility in the face of injustice. Al Quds Day was also the first protest my daughter, as a toddler in a pram, attended. Today she again attended, this time as a young lady. Al Quds Day inspired and planted the seeds that became Inminds and the 20+ years of campaigning we have undertaken for justice in Palestine. Al Quds Day is a gift Imam Khomeini has given to the Ummah and beyond, to awaken us, to firmly plant us on the right side of history, with the oppressed against the oppressor. We will not let any lobby take that away from us!".
#AlQudsDay2018 #QudsDay4Return #QudsDay #AlQudsDay
VIDEO: London Al Quds Day 2018 - March on Downing Street
Anti-Zionist Rabbis burn Israeli flag at London Al Quds Day 2018
70m flag to represent 70 years of occupation.. London Al Quds Day 2018
Victory to the resistance - London Al Quds Day 2018
London Al Quds Day 2018
Al Quds Day Speech - Resistance
Sandra Watfa at London Al Quds Day 2018
Free the children - London Al Quds Day 2018
Razan al-Najjar - London Al Quds Day 2018
Sandra Watfa from Inminds passionately delivered a speech on Palestinian resistance to Zionist occupation:
My brothers and sisters, I am a Palestinian from Inminds Human Rights Group.
I have spoken here at Al Quds Day several times before about the plight of Palestinian prisoners, how even children suffer under Israeli hands, caged in dark 1m x 2m holes in the ground for weeks on end and tortured by interrogators to coerce confessions..
But Today I want to focus on a different aspect - I want to talk about WHY today we have over 6000 Palestinians, including over 300 children, imprisoned in Israeli occupation dungeons.. WHY 40% of our male population has been caged since 1967.. the answer is - resistance! Because they resist the occupier - they are collectively punished.
Resistance takes every form. A child despite having her home destroyed still gets up, still gets ready and still goes to school. That’s resistance!
A favourite pastime of the Israeli occupation is to abduct children on their way to school, just before exams so they are forced to retake the year.
Writing poetry against the occupation, that’s resistance!
Dareen Tantour has been imprisoned just for that - for writing a poem entitled 'Resist, My People, Resist Them!".
Daring to walk home, as in this Great March Of Return, that’s resistance!
Athough in this case Israel has chosen to cold bloodedly gun them down instead of caging them.
And of course let us not forget the armed struggle. That is also resistance!
The United Nations has on many occasions, with specific reference to Southern Africa and Palestine reaffirmed the legitimacy of the "armed struggle" in peoples' struggle for "liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation".
When we look at history we see all successful struggles for freedom have included multiple forms of resistance including armed resistance. But once success has been achieved, there is a rush by historians and media in the pay of the empire to hide the armed struggle aspect of those successful freedom movements so as to not encourage other liberation struggles to learn from them and in order that the empire can dictate the form of struggle allowed for a subjugated people.
So whilst Mandela is now portrayed as an icon of peace and reconciliation, the reality is that following the Sharpeville massacre where racist police killed 69 demonstrators, he, along with Walter Sisulu and Joe Slovo founded the military wing of the African National Congress - Umkhonto We Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”).
Mandela said that "The hard facts were that 50 years of non-violence had brought the African people nothing but more and more repressive legislation, and fewer and fewer rights. After a long and anxious assessment…I, and some colleagues, came to the conclusion that as violence…was inevitable, it would be unrealistic and wrong for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the Government met our peaceful demands with force."
At the time he was branded a terrorist by the United Kingdom, now he is hailed as a hero with his statue in Parliament Square.
In the last few weeks we have seen nearly twice as many unarmed Palestinian protestors - from nurses, to children, to double amputees, to journalists gunned down by ruthless Israeli snipers, than were slaughtered at Sharpeville. We have seen 70 years of peace talks achieve nothing for the Palestinian people other than more dispossession, more ethnic cleansing, and more suffering.
Let’s look at another struggle, one closer to home.. This year marks the centenary of the successful Suffragettes movement which gave women the right to vote in this country.
About a 1000 suffragettes were imprisoned. Like Palestinian prisoners, many of them went on hunger strike. Like the Palestinians, they were violently tortured through force feeding. Although the word rape was not mentioned, some like Fanny Parker were brutally force feed through their rectum and then through their vagina simply as methods of torture to try to break their will.
On 18th November 1920 - Black Friday, in Parliament Square, the Metropolitan police brutally attacked 300 protesting women, sexually assaulting many of them on mass which lead to the deaths of two women.
Following Black Friday the suffragettes formed an armed wing which went on to carry out the largest scale bombing this country has ever seen.
They planted bombs in army barracks, Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George's house, Westminster Abbey, St Paul's Cathedral, St Martin-in-the-Fields, the Bank of England, the National Gallery, railway stations and more than one hundred other locations.
The suffragettes were called terrorists at the time, but today, with their armed struggle having carefully been airbrushed out, the Prime Minister Theresa May dressed in suffragette colours hails the "heroism" of the suffragettes.
So what I want to say is that it is not up to us, living here in the safety and security of our homes, to dictate to the oppressed Palestinians – to my people, how to resist. It is their choice, they pay the price, not us.
Our responsibility here is to defend their right to resist illegal occupation of their land and our responsibility is to ensure our governments stop supporting their oppression. The British government is particularly culpable in the oppression of my people.
My father is from Akka in Palestine. Akka was ethnically cleansed in 1948. But Akka was well situated to defend itself from the zionist invaders, so what the zionist forces did was to put bacteria into the spring that fed the town. The spring was called Capri and it ran from the north. The zionist forces put typhus bacteria into the water going to Akka, the people got sick, and the town fell to the zionist forces. Those that weren't slaughtered were made refugees. They took my father’s home, and my father’s town of Akka became Acre.
That is terrorism! The flag those terrorists hold is the Israeli flag. If you want to ban a terrorist flag, that's the flag to ban!
Victory to the resistance!
Free Palestine!
VIDEO: Al Quds Day Speech - 'Resistance' - Sandra Watfa
In defence of Palestine - London Al Quds Day 2018
London Al Quds Day 2018
London Al Quds Day 2018
More Information
For more information on Al Quds Day:
http://www.inminds.co.uk/article.php?id=10477
Placard Designs For London Al Quds Day 2018:
http://inminds.co.uk/article.php?id=10804
Alert 10th June 2018 - Al Quds Day London - United for Palestine:
http://inminds.co.uk/article.php?id=10803
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