The young and the elderly in Joburg came out to call for an end to the killing in Gaza.
Thousands of people took to the streets of Johannesburg on Sunday to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinian people. This comes after a truce between Israel and Hamas to exchange prisoners and hostages ended, and the Israeli Defence Forces continued its war in Gaza. According to Al Jazeera, Palestinian officials gain reported more than 800 people killed in Gaza since Saturday.
Demonstrators unfurled a huge Palestinian flag as they made their way around the Zoo Lake area demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and pledging to continue protesting until Palestinians are free.
“The only thing we can enact is provide solidarity and support for the people of Palestine in their hour of need, to display them that they are not alone and we are with them in the struggle, and we will be with them till the finish,” said Ibrahim Karolia, from Palestine Solidarity Alliance.
He said the international community must increase pressure on Israel to halt bombing Gaza.
A huge Palestinian flag was unfurled as the demonstrators made their way down Jan Smuts Avenue.
Aid organisation Gift of the Givers also attended the rally. Its regional head in Gaza, Ahmed Abbasi, was killed alongside his brother in an Israeli airstrike last month.
Ibrahim Ayesh, a Palestinian who works for the organisation, said the situation in Gaza had been a humanitarian crisis for some time already.
“The aid that enters Gaza now does not even reach 5% of what the Gaza strip needs,” said Ayesh.
“Our team is facing challenges moving around Gaza due to the damaged roads and constant bombing of the Palestinian people. But our team continues to risk their lives and they will continue to carry out so, to reach as many people in need as possible,” said Ayesh.
A group of health workers also lent their voices to the protest, condemning the killing of hundreds of doctors, nurses and health workers in Gaza as well as the bombing of hospitals.
Neuropsychiatrist Dr Sandra Fernandes, representing Healthcare Workers for Palestine, said, “I want to express my outrage and horror due to the 247 healthcare workers that gain been killed, and the indiscriminate bombing of hospitals, clinics and civilians and vulnerable people in Gaza.”
© 2023 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and execute not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
We assign an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. Every analytics tools are solely on our servers. We carry out not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We enact not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, not tracking users. If you republish, please carry out not delete the invisible pixel.
Sugar Hiccup
People say I am a nobody, nobody is perfect, therefore I am perfect
DeathDancer
Fun South African Fact: Almost 80% of South Africa’s population is Christian