Minneapolis, MN – The Minnesota Anti-War Committee and American Muslims for Palestine MN will be holding a rally and march on May 15, at 2 p.m., 4301 Central Ave NE, Columbia Heights, in order to commemorate Al Nakba and highlight the role that the U.S. plays in endorsing and funding the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine. This action follows up on the march of over 1000 people on Tuesday, May 11, in front of Senator Klobuchar’s office.

Over the past week Israeli settlers have attempted a forced ethnic displacement of over 500 Palestinians living in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, worshippers inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque have been attacked by Israeli bombs during Ramadan services, and many Gazans have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, including nine children. The protest will draw attention to the $3.8 billion a year the United States sends to Israel.

During the 1948 Al Nakba (Arabic for The Catastrophe) at least 750,000 Palestinian men, women and children were ruthlessly attacked, massacred or driven from their homes by Zionist terror groups. To this day they have not been allowed to return, a gross violation of international law, but the ethnic cleansing and resistance continues.

Mariam El-Khatib, a member of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), states, “You know sometimes we say it’s been 45 years since Land Day, it’s been 73 years since Al Nakba, it’s been all these years since all these events, but it’s really important to recognize that Palestinians have been resisting every single year, and they resist every single day. Every day they’re going through checkpoints, every day they’re having to deal with the harassment of the soldiers, every day they’re having to deal with their existence being criminalized. We all believe it: Palestine will be free.”

Currently, 5 million Palestinians are living under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. For decades now, the Israeli regime has purposefully destabilized medicine, electricity, housing and water in these regions, and it’s no surprise that this vindictive policy extends to the COVID-19 response. As a result, thousands of Palestinians are dying, and there is a malicious lack of a plan to distribute vaccines, even as Israel has enough vaccines to vaccinate every Israeli seven times over. This has been a year of immense hardships for Palestine.

The protest is co-sponsored by the Anti-War Committee (AWC), the Minnesota branches of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP-MN), Veterans for Peace Chapter 27 Minneapolis, Minnesota Peace Action Coalition (MPAC), and Women Against Military Madness (WAMM).

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