Protest hits Israel fund-raiser

WW photo: Sara Flounders

Hundreds of people, many of them youths from the Palestinian communities in and around New York, picketed and chanted on Park Avenue across from the Waldorf Astoria on March 18 to protest the $1,000-a-plate dinner to raise funds for the state terrorist actions of the “Israeli Defense Forces” (IDF), and the presence of Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

The New York fundraiser seems particularly offensive since it comes after a week in which the IDF killed

126 Palestinians, including many children and other obvious non-combatants. The Israeli military even attacked Palestinian schools, mosques and soccer fields, killing children as they studied, prayed and played childhood games.

“It is incomprehensible and despicable that these war criminals—who just murdered over one hundred Palestinian innocents and children in their homes, in their schools and on playgrounds—have the audacity to come raise money for their genocidal plans and stuff their greedy faces on our streets,” says a representative of Al-Awda, the group that called for the demonstration.

—John Catalinotto