The Consulate General of Israel in the Cidade Monções neighborhood in São Paulo (SP) was the target of a protest against the “genocide in Gaza” this Friday (5), the date that marks Palestinian Children’s Day.
Militants from the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) ended the mobilization with a symbolic action with the participation of MST children to denounce the massacre carried out by Israel against the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip, which has already caused almost 14 thousand preventable deaths. Palestinian children.
“Palestinian children are being the most massacred by this Israeli genocide, almost 50% of all those murdered in this genocide are children, so we think it is very important to bring this complaint today”, Cassia Bechara, from the national coordination, told Brasil de Fato. of the MST.
She highlights that the Consulate General of Israel was chosen to give a direct message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and denounce “Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”
“It is essential that the people put pressure on governments, it is institutional pressure that can make Israel stop this massacre. It is necessary to cut diplomatic relations and not recognize this state as legitimate. This can only be done by the international community, it can only be done with pressure on the streets so that our governments do not recognize this illegitimate government of Israel”, says Bechara.
The protest in front of the Consulate is part of a day of struggles called by the MST across the country during the month of March, in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
“It is a very important act, based on a call from the MST, in unity with the various organizations, with a commission facing children without land to remember that the lives of Palestinian children matter and that this is a war against 2.4 four million inhabitants, 40 percent of whom are children. And the majority of victims in this genocide are children”, says Soraya Misleh, journalist and coordinator of the Front in Defense of the Palestinian People of São Paulo.
MST children participated in a symbolic act to denounce the massacre of children by Israel on Palestinian Children’s Day / Pedro Stropasolas
Misleh points out that the demonstration also reinforces the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement’s campaign against the Israeli government. “Beyond words, we need action and we ask once again that Brazil breaks relations with the Israeli government. This is for the lives of our children too. It is a war against children, a genocidal war in which everyone is being affected without distinction by Israel’s bombs and bullets: women, men, elderly people, children. But there is no doubt that this is a war against children and women.”
For Jamil Murad, former federal deputy for PCdoB and member of the national executive of the Brazilian Center for Solidarity with the People and Struggle for Peace (Cebrapaz), the Israeli Consulate in São Paulo represents a “Zionist, supremacist, murderous and fascist state, a State of war, which will have to be democratized to coexist with all peoples”.
Murad points out that the Israeli massacre against Palestinian children aims to destroy the future of “not only the Palestinian child, but the Palestinian people.” “This is unacceptable, it is an attack on the fundamental principle of humanity, which is its survival. This genocide must be stopped”, he argues.
“Palestinian children are being savagely murdered in large numbers, it is a genocide. They also suffer because their parents are killed and many are left orphans. If they need surgery or amputation, they do this procedure without anesthetic, because Israel does not allow medication, such as it doesn’t let food in, so there are children dying of hunger. They destroyed their homes, they are destroying their schools.”
“As mothers we are aware of this situation that is happening, and we come to the streets because we understand that many voices fighting for the same objective can reach those people who can do something”, says Dalva Maria de Oliveira, from the Movement for the Right to Housing (MDM).
Palestinian Children’s Day
April 5th was chosen because it is Palestinian Children’s Day. Established in 1995 by Yasser Arafat – then leader of the Palestinian Authority – to highlight the impact of the Israeli colonial occupation on children, the date was adopted by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).
In the current decade, Israel – which determined that the age of criminal responsibility for Palestinians would be 12 years old – had already been toughening up this mistreatment. In 2022, Palestinian Minister for Detainees and Former Detainees, Abdul-Nasser Farawna, said that the number of Palestinian children imprisoned by Israel had grown by 140% between 2021 and 2020.
On Palestinian Children’s Day 2023, the ministry said that 40 of them had been killed and more than 800 detained in just the period of one year.
“Home demolitions, the eviction of Palestinians from Jerusalem, the illegal siege of the Gaza Strip, torture and inhumane practices, as well as the escalation of terrorist attacks by armed Israeli settler militias, devastate the lives of Palestinian children.” , said the ministry, in April this year.
“Combined, these criminal actions and illegal practices create an unbearable and traumatic daily reality for Palestinian children who remain deprived of any form of protection to which they are entitled.”
Editing: Rodrigo Durão Coelho
Source: www.brasildefato.com.br
