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Thousands of Palestinian protesters have gathered on the streets of Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Philadelphia and other U.S. cities, demanding an end to deadly Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.
In Los Angeles on Saturday, protesters waved placards that said “Free Palestine” closed traffic on a major road, and in New York, a huge crowd passed through Brooklyn, “Free and Free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.”
“I’m here because I want a Palestinian life to be the same as the lives of Israelis and today it’s not like that,” Manhattan corporate strategist Emraan Khan, 35, waved the Palestinian flag while protesting in Brooklyn.
“When you have an armed nuclear state and another situation of citizens with rocks, it’s clear who is to blame,” he added.
Alison Zambrano, a 20-year-old student who traveled to the rally after Connecticut, said “Palestinians have the right to live freely and children in Gaza should not be killed,” Mashhour Ahmad, a 73-year-old Palestinian, called on US President Joe Biden to “stop aiding murder.”
“Help the victims, stop the oppression,” Ahmad said, describing the Israeli military’s violence against the Palestinians as “genocide”.
Demonstrators were outraged by the six-day violence, which killed at least 145 Palestinians in Gaza and killed 10 Israelis.
A few hours before the march, Israel intensified its attack on Gaza, killing a family of 10 people in a refugee camp and leveling the building that houses the offices of Al Jazeera and The Associated Press.
Israeli and Palestinian leaders showed no sign of backing down, however, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to continue the attack on Gaza “as long as necessary,” while Hamas leader Ismail Haniya said “the resistance will not give up.”
U.S. marches also coincided with Nakba Day, or what Palestinians call a catastrophe, a reminder that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced in 1948 in Israel’s declaration of independence.
In San Francisco, a heavy crowd blew drums and shouted “Palestine will be free,” while scenes similar to those in Boston were staged as protesters marched on the Israeli New England consulate, blocking traffic.
Films on social media showed protesters unfurling a banner in the colors of the Palestinian flag with the words “Free Palestine” on the awning of the consulate building.
In Washington, DC, thousands of protesters marched from the Washington Monument and the National Archives, and in the city of Philadelphia, protesters filled Rittenhouse Square to demand U.S. help from Israel.
Meanwhile, during a rally in the city of Pittsburgh, a speaker asked U.S. lawmakers to reduce how Israel can spend Washington aid.
Palestinian supporters protest Gaza attacks on Israel between days of conflict between Brooklyn, New York, USA, May 15, 2021 [Rashid Umar Abbasi/Reuters]
Al Jazeera’s John Hendren, in a report from Washington, DC, said Saturday’s rallies in support of the Palestinian cause are “unusually large.”
“The protesters wanted the U.S. government to put more pressure on Israel to end this conflict,” Hendren said.
“I wasn’t happy to feel that the policies of the Biden administration in recent years are not significantly different from the policies of the Trump administration or any other US administration.”
Amid violence and rallies, Biden called on Netanyahu on Saturday and reaffirmed “Israel’s support for the right to defend itself against rocket attacks by Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza.”
The U.S. leader also spoke with Palestinian Authority President Abbas and “conveyed his commitment to strengthen U.S.-Palestinian cooperation,” the White House added in a tweet.
Phyllis Bennis, a political analyst at the US Institute for Policy Research, has expressed concern that Biden “has not put any pressure on Israel to stop the massacre in Gaza.”
“The situation is very well known. It seems that the US is taking the lead in Israel when the ceasefire is ready. And Netanyahu has made it clear that he is not ready for a ceasefire,” he told Al Jazeera. Therefore, he said U.S. policy is “quite dangerous”.
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