Boston health care workers rally against genocide in Gaza

Boston — Boston health care workers and their allies rallied Sept. 14 in Copley Square to demand an end to U.S. support for the ongoing Zionist holocaust in Gaza. Called “The People’s Prescription,” the powerful action was organized by Doctors Against Genocide, the Committee of Interns and Residents of the Service Employees Union (SEIU), Alliance for Water Justice for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace and several local Palestine solidarity organizations.

Many of the activists, including speakers at the rally, are on a hunger strike in solidarity with the Palestinians suffering from a famine, engineered by the Zionist state and its accomplices, including the U.S.-based “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.” As speakers noted, over 400 people have already starved to death in Gaza, with many thousands more at imminent risk of death. (Al Jazeera, Sept. 14) 

Over the past two years, Israel Occupation Forces have killed over 1,400 health care workers. Throughout the program, speakers read out the names of health care workers who have been murdered, kidnapped or disappeared by Zionist forces. On the front steps of the Boston Public Library, activists laid candles and flowers on pictures of some of these martyrs to honor their memory.

Yet, as one Palestinian physician emphasized, even as the Zionist state and the U.S empire that enables it intensify their genocidal violence, they betray their weakness — and reveal the power of the global movement united in solidarity for the liberation of Palestine.

“Many empires came before and many empires have fallen before,” he said. “This one will be no different. Zionism will fall, and Palestine will live forever!”

Dr. Yipeng Ge, who recently volunteered in hospitals under Israeli fire, called attention to the unimaginable courage and perseverance shown by medical workers in Gaza. The genocide in Palestine, he stressed, is not just a humanitarian crisis but a liberation struggle that calls for worldwide solidarity.

He declared “The moral imperative for us in the belly of the beast, where settler colonialism was first practiced, is to do everything we can in solidarity, in full, unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people for their right to exist, their right to self-determination, their right to full liberation! Liberation is the best medicine!” 

After the speakers’ program, Dr. Lara Jirmanus and her children led the crowd in singing “Sheel Sheel Ya Ajmal Sheel,” a folk song composed by the mothers of Palestinian prisoners. 

To close the action, participants linked hands in a Dabke circle dance in a show of Palestinian resilience and sound that filled the cavernous downtown square with optimism that the global struggle to free Palestine can not be defeated.