Rally challenges ‘celebration’ of Israel

WW photo: Maggie Vascassenno

A grand celebration of 60 years of Israel’s existence was marked May 10 at the prestigious Kodak Theater in Hollywood, filled with entertainers and celebrities to push the message that Israel’s past and present should be honored. That was the Hollywood fantasy.

Outside the theater, more than 40 demonstrators made it clear that this was an attempt to hide Israel’s brutal and genocidal nature. “What about the massacres of children killed by Israel?” shouted Mazen Almoukdad, press spokesperson and member of Al-Awda Right to Return Coalition, which sponsored the rally along with the Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid-Southern California, Free Palestine Alliance, International Action Center, National Council of Arab-Americans and the Palestinian American Women’s Association.

Participants included Bev Tang of the Filipino social justice organization BAYAN USA, Martha Rojas of the immigrant rights May Day Unity Coalition and Don White, member of CISPES-LA.

Speakers reminded those going into the theater about Israel’s role as the primary agent of U.S. imperialist interests in the region—maintaining an illegal occupation, violating U.N. law and practicing genocide and ethnic cleansing since 1948.

One Black man passing by stopped when a speaker made the connection between apartheid in South Africa and the struggle against Israeli apartheid. He then joined the rally. With constant chants ringing up and down Hollywood Boulevard, the fantasy Zionists were trying to portray did not go unchallenged.

—John Parker