The third red line demonstration started this afternoon on Amsterdam’s Museumplein. Tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered prior to the walking tour on the wet lawn, dressed in red scarves and hats and especially lots of red rain jackets. She to demand of the outgoing cabinet that takes the concrete measures “to stop the Israeli genocide and the occupation of Palestine.”
In the run -up to the parliamentary elections at the end of this month, the dozens of organizations behind the protest want to increase the pressure on the parties: the immense suffering in Gaza must be on the agenda during the campaign.
According to the organization, 100,000 and 150,000 people were involved in the first two national Red Line Protests, last May and June in The Hague. The heap Oxfam Novib director Michiel Servaes, among others, is that there will be more this time. Based on the results of a recently Research by Ipsos I&O might come true: six in ten Dutch people think that the government should be more critical of Israel. ANP speaks on Sunday at the start of the Mars about ‘many tens of thousands’ attendees.
Red umbrella
Jacqueline Kooijman has not painted her hairs in red especially for this demonstration, but “it will be fine,” she says to NRC. The government must “listen to a little more,” says Kooijman. “In Gaza, children are bombed, people die because of hunger.”
And Thijmen Sturkenboom (40) thinks the “idiot” finds that the cabinet does not speak out harder about Gaza. “They are more concerned with seats and pointing at each other that they are actually doing something.”
Half an hour before the start, a man with a keffiyeh and a microphone warms up the protesters. “AM-Star Dam is Saying No to Genocide!“Bystanders participate.
Before the start, demonstrators make a selfie at the Rode Line Protest.
Photo Ramon van Flymen/ANP
Protesters gather on the Museumplein in Amsterdam for the third red line protest, they demand harder action from the cabinet against Israel.
Photo Koen van Weel/ANP
Tens of thousands of demonstrators participate in the third red line protest.
Photo Ramon van Flymen/ANP
Crime against humanity
From the stage the protesters are welcomed at the packed Museumplein at 1 p.m. The organization is happy with the turnout, but “we don’t have to get used to these types of demonstrations.” “It is necessary that we are here and have to draw the red line is deep and deep sad.”
Then the journalist Rita Baroud takes over the microphone. In recent years she reported on the destructive war from Gaza, including in NRC. On the Museumplein she talks about all journalists who were murdered in Gaza and the futurelessness of the circumstances there. “Gaza needs no promises, but promotions.” According to Baroud, the genocidal violence of Israel is not only a crime against the Palestinians, but against ‘all humanity’.
After this, Medhat Alimawi on behalf of Palestinian Community the Netherlands, politician and feminist Hedy d’Ancona and Loes de Kleijn of doctors for Gaza the crowd. Former PvdA minister and Holocaust survivor Hedy d’Ancona, whose Jewish father died in a concentration camp during the war, also spoke on the alternative commemoration of the dead in The Hague earlier this year.
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators
The demonstration takes place in a turbulent week. Donald Trump presented his ‘peace plan’, with which, according to the US President, the suffering in Gaza can be put to an end. Western leaders in particular reacted enthusiastically, but Palestinian analysts were destructive: the plan would be consciously vague on crucial points, which is playing Israel in the map. Palestinians would not have their own fate for the umpteenth time. On Monday, the negotiations between Israel and Hamas about this plan will start in Egypt.
And earlier this week, Israeli soldiers entered the fifty boats of activist fleet Global Sumud Flotilla, who were on their way to Gaza with relief supplies, and arrested the people on board. In the following days, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets throughout Europe to protest against Israel’s genocidal violence in Gaza. In addition, the demonstrators are joining the Museumplein today.
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On Sunday another red line demonstration, now in campaign time
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