All speakers in Rotterdam at the Palestine demonstration stood on a stage with a meter-long black sign underneath it that read: From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. It may be that in Germany the slogan will probably be banned as an anti-Semitic call, and that the majority of the House of Representatives condemns its use, the thousands of demonstrators on the Binnenrotte chanted the words incessantly, without any restraint – alternating with a rhythmic, with drums accompanied Free, Free, Palestine!.
When asked why the slogan is so central there, spokesperson Benji de Levie of the Rotterdam Palestine Coalition, one of the organizing parties, says that he has been using it since the late 1980s. “No one has ever said that it has anything to do with Hamas, or that it is anti-Semitic. That is only now.” De Levie, himself Jewish, has been standing up for the rights of Palestinians since the late 1960s. According to him, the slogan refers to the one-state solution that he has always advocated in the area: “One democratic, inclusive, social state for everyone.”
Many thousands of people attended the national demonstration ‘Together for Palestine’ on Sunday – a police officer told the ANP news agency about 15,000 people. The demonstration was organized by the Islamic Center de Middenweg and Rotterdam for Gaza – a collaboration between SP Rotterdam, PvdA Rotterdam, GroenLinks Rotterdam, Platform Islamic Organizations Rijnmond (SPIOR), Palestine Komitee Rotterdam and the Pauluskerk. The organizers want to “raise our voice against genocide and war crimes in Palestine.” Many demonstrators walked with Palestinian flags, but the political party Denk took the cake with a huge flag of at least 100 m2supported by party leader Stephan Van Baarle, outgoing MP Farid Azarkan and former MP Tunahan Kuzu, among others.
The meeting started around 2 p.m. with the reading of a long list of names of people who died in Gaza. This was followed by several speakers, including the Belgian Dyyab Abu Jahjah, director Esther (no surname) of Plant een Olijfboom and Markha Valenta, a self-described “queer Jewish academic”.
‘Jews, Muslims, Christians’
Nourdin El Ouali, former Nida party leader and now director of SPIOR, addressed the two-hour program, starting by naming the demonstrators: “Jews, Christians, Muslims, young, old. People who stand up for life and against oppression; a family.” He also outlined the organization’s demands: an immediate “end to the genocide, an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, and an immediate admission of humanitarian aid.”
The first speaker, Chemseddine Sbita, introduced by El Ouali as imam of Centrum de Middenweg, started in Arabic, and had a more religious speech. According to him, the only thing that kept the Palestinians going, that made them “crawl out from under the rubble, is their belief in Allah, the one true god. (…) Allah is greater than their bombs.”
The speakers were united in condemning the international community and the Dutch government for not intervening to help the citizens of Palestine, or even speaking out bluntly about it. A number of them added voting advice for Wednesday: Think and BIJ1, because according to the speakers they really stand up for the Palestinians.
But voting and demonstrating alone are not enough, according to lawyer Haroon Raaza. “We have to scale up to civil disobedience. Block the Rotterdam port and airports, which transport weapons parts to Israel. Occupy bridges, roads. I am peaceful, but in the words of Malcom by all means necessary.”