Re: American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

>Any news of protests elsewhere?
>
>Yoshie

NY Times, Oct. 7, 2000

Times Square Marchers Protest Killing of Palestinians

By AMY WALDMAN

Several thousand demonstrators gathered south of Times Square during the
evening rush yesterday to protest the killing of dozens of Palestinians by
Israeli soldiers in recent days and what they characterized as blind
American support for Israel.

They said they wanted Americans to hear of their pain and to question
Washington's financial support for a government that, as one protester had
scrawled on a sign, uses "missiles against rocks." They said they wanted to
force elected officials and candidates for office to acknowledge their
political power.

On countless posters they hoisted the photocopied image of 12-year- old
Muhammad al-Durrah in his father's arms, fatally wounded in the crossfire
in Gaza between Israeli and Palestinian forces.

In the Mideast, the death toll from eight days of violence rose to 77
yesterday. The fighting began after a highly publicized visit by Ariel
Sharon, the Israeli right-wing opposition leader, to a holy mosque in the
Old City of Jerusalem. Palestinians say the visit was a challenge to peace.
Israeli officials say the Palestinians used the visit as a pretext for an
uprising.

Yesterday's protest in Times Square showed how the Mideast situation is
touching New York City. Over the last week, the police have reported
several possible bias attacks linked to the renewed tensions, although
local Arab and Jewish leaders have taken pains to urge people to avoid
violence.

Yesterday's protest was largely peaceful, although two people, Nael N. F.
Msallam and Mahmoud Abedalgader, were charged with reckless endangerment
and public disorder, said Officer Guy Braun, a police spokesman.

Marchers chanted "We're Muslims, we're Americans and we vote," a message
Mason Mohamed, a 24-year-old college student born in Yemen, said he was
particularly eager to send to Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic
candidate for Senate from New York.

"I don't approve of Hillary Clinton backing up Israel just to get votes,"
he said. "She doesn't know Arabs, Muslims vote. I do, and I'm not going to
vote for her."

To express sorrow over children killed in the Mideast violence, children
were brought to the rally. They held flowers, sat under police barricades,
and pressed forward to share their thoughts. Several said they would not
forget the image of Muhammad slumped in his father's arms, an image shown
frequently on television and in the nation's newspapers this week.

"From the inside, I feel very bad; the kid who got shot, I feel awful,"
said Diana Awawdeh, 10. "I felt someone was shooting part of my heart."

Diana and her brother had come with their mother, Abeer Awawdeh, 35, a
homemaker and mother of six, from Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Ms. Awawdeh, a
Palestinian, said, "We want Clinton and Albright to announce on TV that
they are standing with us," referring to President Clinton and Secretary of
State Madeleine K. Albright. "Especially Clinton: he is hiding from us."

She and her neighbors and their children had crowded by the dozens onto the
train to ride to Manhattan. The point, she and others said, was to show
solidarity with Palestinians and unity to the world.

Yusef Al-Abad, a 28-year-old aeronautical engineer, said: "Every
Palestinian has a goal in their lifetime to eventually go back to
Palestine. We want to show Israel that we will unite. We will unite one day
soon in Israel, just like in Times Square."


Louis Proyect
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