Nakba Day honors 77 years of Palestine’s resistance

On May 15, 1948, British imperialists withdrew from Palestine. They had assumed a mandate over the territories after defeating the Ottomans in World War I. The evening before, David Ben-Gurion, President of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared Israel’s statehood and independence. 

The new Zionist State of Israel then began its brutal removal of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people from their rightful lands. Seventy-seven years later, the ongoing Nakba (the Catastrophe) has resulted in an estimated 4 million Palestinians being relegated to refugee status. At least 78% of their lands have been confiscated by a racist, settler-colonial occupation reminiscent of apartheid South Africa and the wholesale theft of the Indigenous Americas. This ongoing displacement, including the genocide in Gaza, continues today with beatings, massacres, starvation and jailings of Palestinians — with U.S. backing in the billions of dollars.

The Palestinian people continue to carry out a heroic resistance with strikes, protests, boycotts and an armed struggle inside Israel and in the Occupied Territories, especially Gaza and the West Bank. The Nakba was not just a singular event. Today we are still living with the effects of the Nakba. 

This year, during the week of May 12 – 19, global protests commemorate the 77th anniversary of Nakba. (More on page 5.)

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The Boston Coalition For Palestine (BCFP) commemorated Nakba Day on May 15 with daylong Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) actions that targeted the Israeli consulate and the global transportation giant Maersk. Chanting “Evict Israeli war criminals!” BCFP protesters picketed the downtown Boston offices of the Israeli consulate during its morning open hours. 

This nest of internationally “wanted” war criminals at 20 Park Plaza has been hidden, signless, for decades among other high-end tenants on upper floors of a plush Saunders Real Estate Group building, adjacent to the swank Park Plaza Hotel. 

BCFP demonstrators regrouped by the hundreds in the afternoon outside the Kendall Square/MIT subway station in Cambridge to demand that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) end its collaboration with Danish international shipping giant Maersk. 

Maersk has shipped millions of tons of military cargo to Israel in support of its brutal genocide in Palestine. Corporate executives of Maersk, ExxonMobil, Walmart and Uber Freight evacuated a MIT-sponsored conference in the Royal Sonesta Hotel when pro-Palestine supporters led by the Palestinian Youth Movement and Palestinian House of New England marched to the hotel and set up a militant picket line outside.

Nakba actions in Philadelphia started in the early morning of May 15 with a banner drop over a bridge above a major city expressway. A late afternoon protest was held outside weapons manufacturer Day & Zimmermann corporate headquarters on Spring Garden Street where an estimated 100 demonstrators rallied to demand that the genocide profiteer be shut down!

The privately owned munitions company, with revenues of $2.7 billion in 2023, is the sole purveyor to Israel of three of the most frequently used munitions in the ongoing genocide in Gaza — M795 155mm tank shells, M107 high explosive projectiles and M830A1 Heat 120mm cartridges. The company has made billions in profits by selling Israel the ammunition used to kill and maim tens of thousands of Palestinian children and their families. 

Organized by Philadelphia Students for Justice in Palestine and supported by several other groups, the rally called on people walking and driving by to tell the company that they are not welcome in this neighborhood or anywhere else in Philadelphia. As speakers continued to explain what was happening with the genocide in Gaza and Day & Zimmermann’s role, more people came out to listen. One was a worker at a Dunkin Donuts next to the company’s office building who expressed outrage upon learning what the company did. 

In a demonstration on May 18, over 300 people marched from City Hall to the Art Museum steps.

On Nakba Day in Buffalo, New York, on May 15, dozens of community members came out in support of the Palestinian resistance and in opposition to Israeli Occupation Forces’ ongoing genocide in Gaza. While the demonstration did bring on some opposition from drivers-by and the occasional heckler, the majority of drivers and pedestrians happily collected pamphlets or honked their horns in support. A number even joined in, despite having had no prior knowledge of the event. 

The busy street corner action included demonstrators from Workers World Party, State University of New York Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (SUNY BDS) and University at Buffalo Young Democratic Socialists of America (UB YDSA). They came together to chant against the fascist Israeli regime and to remember the Nakba. 

Local activists held a Red Line procession from the Santa Fe Plaza to a rally at the Railyard in Santa Fe, New Mexico, May 15, to protest Israeli genocide in occupied Palestine. Railyard pedestrians were leafletted with a full color brochure: “The Nakba Never Ended.”

Local Indigenous and Palestinian speakers drew parallels between their experiences under settler colonialism. Speakers represented the Santa Fe Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine, Santa Feans for Justice in Palestine, the Olive Tree Campaign and Youth United for Climate Crisis Action (YUCCA). Young Palestinians sang and led the crowd in chants, accompanied by a drummer.

The event, called by the Santa Fe Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine and Santa Feans for Justice in Palestine, ended with video displayed on the Railyard water tower after sunset.

Steve Gillis, Joe Piette, Alex Quinn, Ellie Dorritie, Steve Kirshbaum and S. Hedgecoke contributed to this article and pictures.