Éirígí Activists Mark Nakba Day In Solidarity With Palestine
Éirígí For A New Republic activists have again demonstrated solidarity with the Palestinian people by marking Nakba Day in different locations across the country. Nakba Day, which translates as the ‘day of catastrophe’, takes place each year on May 15th. The importance of this date stems from the declaration of an Israeli state on May 14th, 1948.
The day was marked in Dublin by the unfurling of a banner outside the Israeli Embassy. The text on the banner, which featured a Palestinian flag and Éirígí logo read ‘Ireland Stands In Solidarity With Palestine’.
Éirígí activists outside the Israeli Embassy in Dublin on Nakba Day, May 15th 2020.
A large symbolic key was also used to demonstrate support for the right of return of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were put out of their homes and off their land by pro-Israeli forces in 1948 /1949. Many of these families carefully locked up their homes before leaving in the belief that they would be able to return.
Today the keys to these homes hold great symbolic importance for these refugees and their descendants who have never been allowed to their homes or land.
The key has become a symbol for the Palestinian right to return to homes and lands that were seized by the emergent Israeli state in a massive act of ethnic cleansing.
Éirígí activists from our midlands Ciorcal (branch) marked Nakba Day by displaying a solidarity banner in the 1916 Memorial Garden in Athlone. The links between the Palestinian and Irish struggles for national liberation stretch back many decades. Both peoples have, at different times, been the victims of British imperialism as well as ethnic cleansing and plantation.
Solidarity from the 1916 Memorial Garden in Athlone to the Palestinian people.
Éirígí activists on lock-down in Wexford also sent solidarity to the Palestinian people in general and to the people of Gaza in particular. Of course, the 'lock-down’ that we in Ireland are experiencing is as nothing compared to the thirteen year long Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.
During this time the 1,800,000 (1.8m) people that live in Gaza have been forced to endure shortages of all forms of basic goods, including many medicines, as well as regular disruptions to the supplies of electricity, water and fuel. This in addition to regular bombings and less regular incursions by the Israeli military.
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