Palestine: Zionist provocateurs attack left demo in Haifa
[LRCI in Occupied Palestine]
A Jewish-Arab demonstration in the memory of the Palestinian holocaust (El-Nakba) and against the current occupation of West bank and Gaza Strip was attacked by Zionist Arab provocateurs. The provocateurs called for police intervention; the CPI refused to participate in the demonstration.
On the evening of Wednesday, 25 April a group of peace activists organised a demonstration in Wadi Nisnas neighborhood in Haifa, in the memory of the Palestinian holocaust and against the Israeli occupation.
They waved the national Palestinian flag and black flags. The Communist Party of Israel refused to participate in the demonstration, although the member of Haifa council city from the CPI faction, Ayman Oda, gave an explanation for this demonstration – the demand of many Arabs citizens in Haifa to change the name of the main Arabic street, Zionism avenue, back to its original Arabic name before it was changed in the 1970s.
The CPI defines the war of 1948 as the "Independence war" of the Jewish people and celebrates the "Israeli Independence day".
In the first half hour, there was no attack on the demonstration. Then, the Zionist Arab provocateurs started to throw eggs at the demonstrators. The response to this attack was restrained. Then, a few young Arab provocateurs came to attack the demonstrators.
People from the street tried to separate them from the peace activists. Then, suddenly the provocateurs came and started to beat other Arab peace activists. They took the flags and the posters and started to tear them up. They also took the rods of the flags and broke them on one body of one of the demonstrators; they hit another activist on his head.
Then the local police came and intervened into the riot. The police proclaimed the demonstration was illegal. The police took the pieces of the posters in order to gather evidence to arrest some of the demonstrators.
The common opinion among the peace activists is that the police paid the Arab provocateurs, or the provocateurs are agents of the General Security service. The peace activists condemned the CPI and claimed that this is the best proof about the grip of the pro-Zionist section inside the CPI.
In the demonstration were the "Sons of the Land" movement ("Abnaa el-ballad"), "The Movement against Apartheid", "The Democratic National Alliance", "The Progressive Movement" and the LRCI inside occupied Palestine.
- The LRCI-OP published a call for the anti-Zionist left to boycott the May Day demonstration of the CPI on Saturday, 28 April as a protest against the CPI's action.
- The LRCI-OP called on all peace & equality activists to participate only in the main May Day demonstration in Tel Aviv.
Palestine: the shape of Israel's "final settlement"
Palestine: casualties of the propaganda war
Israel: history of an oppressor settler state
Palestinian Nationalism and the PLO
[LRCI 1988]