San Francisco turns out in Solidarity with Palestine 3/30/02

San Francisco turns out in Solidarity with Palestine 3/30/02
by Dan Mattson • Saturday March 30, 2002 at 10:19 PM
handyman [at] california.com

A thousand or more turned in San Francisco today on behalf of ending the Israeli occupation of Plaestine, and ending US support for Israel. This 8:45 minute video highligts the march and Palestinian speakers at the rally at UN Plaza.
RealVideo: stream with RealPlayer or download RM file (1.3 mebibytes)

I was there. I counted. 37. Cops were around 75 plus +(motorcycles, helicopters, units, paddywagons, horses and mountain bikes). The unwashed 37 looked at most pathetic and at least somewhat disponedent.

My assesment is that it was a pathetic turnout for a city know for it's wacked out extremests. In a word...the party's over.

at this time of complete insanity in the middle east, it is high time that people start talking and writing about an underlying issue which is never discussed, namely that there is not one but two groups of refugees in the middle east. for details, please visit http://www.jimena-justice.org. here is a brief sketch:

we all know about the arab refugees from palestine, but there has been total silence about the 900,000 jewish refugees from arab countries. my family was among those jews indigenous to the middle east and north africa, who were forced to flee from their homes of 2,500 years in the middle of the last century. as was common throughout the region, my family's property was confiscated and nationalized by iraq, and my family was forced to leave penniless. in total, billions of dollars of jewish property and hundreds of miles of jewish land was confiscated by the arab states. in addition, many jews were massacred for the "crime" of being a jew.

nonetheless, we do not hear about a jewish refugee problem today. because, although life in israel was far from perfect, israel absorbed the jewish refugees. the arab states, however, did not absorb the arab refugees. instead, they built squalid refugee camps, which israel inherited in a defensive war in 1967, what more, when israel attempted to build housing for the arab refugees in 1967, the arab states passed resolutions barring israel from doing so. in addition, rather than pouring money into the refugee problem, the arab states funded an expensive propaganda war against israel.

as a result of this propaganda war, we have all been fed the image that israel is a white european colonizing nation taking over third world people of color. but for 50 years, until the recent russian immigration to israel, 70% of the jewish population of israel was mizrahim (jews indigenous to the middle east and north africa). today, mizrahim are still over half the jewish population of israel.

JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) is a humanitarian organization working to raise awareness of some important historical facts that can shed light on the current crisis in the middle east. the organization recognizes the suffering of all the groups in the region and demands that in addition to israel taking accountability for its people and actions, the arab states take accountability for theirs. please visit http://www.jimena-justice.org for more information.

There are plenty of people who are aware of this, and a lot of them probably were in the solidarity march. But the current situation is not acceptable in anyway even if a great injustice occured 2500 years ago. People think Natives of North America are niave to argue that they should get their land back because they were tricked/backstabbed or given disease by the Europeans, and that wasn't even 600 years ago.

I understand the above is a far streach in certain ways, but I can't make much of analogy to anything else because every situation is unique, no matter what way we look at it. Ultimately in the end, full integration between the Israelis and the Palestinians must be formed. Otherwise peace will never come, and SOMEONE needs to take the initiative. The way it looks so far, Sharon is taking the other alternative to make peace. Which would probably lead to genocide in the end, because thats the only other option for peace right now, and that will lead NO WHERE.

The guy who counted 37 must be very bad at mathematics (the video is a good evidence for that. He/she may need to wear glasses too).
It was a great turnout given the pro-israeli propaganda that's on vogue in the mainstream media.
Cheers to free spirits. Peace ;)

I handed out 100 copies of the Labor Council resolution, and I did not reach most of the people who gathered at Montgomery and Market. We clearly outnumbered the police. This idiot who counted 37 people must have showed up at the end or very early, before most people got there. If some people actually counted and counted 1500 at its height, that may be true. I took the safe side and simply said hundreds. This is typical of the bourgeoisie in San Francisco. There is nothing liberal about San Francisco. The so-called newspaper of record, the San Francisco Chronicle, is more concerned about the Queen of England and full-color Macy's ads than reporting on our demonstration or the Reichstag fire aspect of the 911 bombings, or just about any other news. Independent Media is the "newspaper of record" for the entire world that it reaches. Three cheers for Independent Media!

I'm new with my video equipment, but there was WELL more than the 37 some propagandist put up. I think it might have been upwards of 1000 at the peak, but I'm not good at guestimations. You can judge for yourself. I'll make sure to post a copy of the march as it goes by. Guess for yourself, or rewind a bunch and count. :)

Hopefully I can get some of this footage up tonight. Anyone have suggestions on compression software? I get nice raw AVI files that are really huge... but when I compress em they turn into crap quality... ideas on which is the best to use?

bring your video to the imc - we can give u a quick tutorial on encoding (best to make an appointment to make sure a video person is there)

I have learned that right-wingers are not above lying or at least twisting the truth to fit their line. Calling activists "wacked out extremists" shows your narrow-mindedness and bias.

Those who critisize the people participating in events like these (because there number is small) are humanities most cowardly ememies.