Pro-Palestine rallies take a different shape amid pandemic
A 2018 free Palestine rally (Photo Credit: The Paisano/Google Images)
Written by: Ese
While the COVID-19 pandemic has caused many countries to go into lockdowns, activists condemning human rights violations in Palestine have not cancelled their activities for this year. Annual international rallies, like the Al Nakba and Al Quds Day rallies, have instead gone virtual.
Different groups are organizing these rallies in different ways. Some have chosen to host online live events, including speakers that highlight the human rights violations in Palestine, sign petitions and collect charity, while others have started campaigns.
Read more: Nakba in the age of COVID-19: The Struggle Continues
Examples of some virtual events for Palestine
The UK’s Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) has recently released an international campaign to be carried out in the Islamic month of Ramadan, particularly during its last 10 days (May 15, 2020 and onwards). Several organizations, belonging to different faiths or no faiths, around the world also support and promote this campaign.
The campaign includes using the hashtags #FlyTheFlag #AlQudsDay2020 and #NakbaDay, particularly on Twitter, while also sharing pro-Palestinian art, poetry and pictures of Palestinian flags flying outside people’s homes or cars.
“Flying the flag is not just something on social media. People are actually putting flags on their cars, on their houses, on their businesses,” said IHRC Chair, Massoud Shadjareh. “It keeps the love of Palestine and love of justice in the community and it shows it everywhere else.”
After the Israeli occupation of Palestine, beginning in the 20th century, more Palestinians than Israelis have been killed in the conflict.
Between 2000 and 2014, Palestinians made up around 86 per cent of conflict-related deaths, while Israeli deaths made up around 13 per cent.
As of May 11, 2020, more than 500 Palestinians have been infected with the COVID-19 virus in Israeli occupied Palestinian territories (oPt), while a cumulative of around 62,000 are quarantined, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
On this same day, the Humanitarian Coordinator for the oPt, UNICEF Special Representative and Head of the UN Human Rights Office, issued a joint statement expressing “serious concern” over the Israeli authorities’ continued detention of Palestinian children, who at high risk of contracting the virus. Their statement called to immediately release all detained children and to halt any further imprisonment.
According to a 2019 Amnesty International report, Israeli authorities have “unlawfully detained” thousands of Palestinians and have held hundreds in administrative detention without charge or trial.
Shadjareh says his motivation to “stand up to injustice” comes from his religion, Islam.
“My own personal experience and indeed what I read in Quran and the history that Allah (God) will come to the aid of those who stand up and that definitely will make all the difference,” he said.
However, he says he is disappointed with Islamic scholars who don’t raise awareness about the injustices around the world.
Shadjareh says he believes this year’s campaign would bring about even more awareness than the previous years.
“If the previous years we were going in the streets of London, around 10,000 plus [participants] one day a week for something like four hours, you will only have so many people come across and feel it and see It. Now for 10 days, people [are] in our streets and you [will see] people will [be] driving with our cars with flags on it and [on] social media and so forth,” he said.
“The reality is it's gonna reach more people both in social media, and [physically] people [will be] seeing these flags, so there will be more awareness.”
According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, pro-Israel activists have launched sites to blacklist pro-Palestine student activists to prevent them from getting a job after college. These sites are also used by the Israeli government to interrogate people traveling to Israel.
When asked what he thinks of the pro-Israel opposition, Shadjareh stated his belief that the pro-Palestine movement is “winning”. He doesn’t think the opposition would spend so much time “harassing people legally and socially on social media” and trying to criminalize boycotting Israeli goods, if the pro-Palestinian rallies weren’t effective.
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