Below is a copy of the speech given by Salma Abu Ayyash at the Rally yesterday in Boston. If you were not able to attend, but would like to be involved organizing further demonstrations and educational efforts in support of Palestine and against the brutal savage invasion of Gaza, i invite you to please come to an organizing meeting with the several groups and many individual concerned who came together to organize Sundayʼs successful rally this coming Tuesday, Jan 6, 7pm at the Palestine Cultural Center,41 Quint Ave., Allston, between Brighton Ave. and Glenville Ave.



SECURITY? By Salma Abu Ayyash (Speech made at the rally and march in Boston 1/3/09 in support of Palestine, Saturday)



How many Israeli women gave birth to still born children on checkpoints?

How many times do Israelis run out of bread? Clean water? Pencil and papers in their schools?

How many Israeli CHILDREN are in Palestinian jails?

How many hours do Israelis have to wait in a long line to cross a checkpoint?

How many Israeli houses were demolished by Palestinian bulldozers?

How many Israeli groves were destroyed and uprooted by Palestinians?

How many Israeli kids get spit at, harassed or shot at by settlers and soldiers on their way to school?

How many Israeli kids watch their fathers, mothers and grandparents being humiliated and shouted at by hateful soldiers every time they venture out of their homes?

How many Israeli kids suffer the tactics of invading homes and extracting children in the middle of the night for throwing stones at armored vehicles in their neighborhoods? Always at night for added horrifying effect?

Late Edward Said said: "Palestinians must die a slow death so that Israel can have its security, which is just around the corner but cannot be realized because of the special Israeli "IN-SECURITY." The whole world must sympathize, while the cries of Palestinian orphans, sick old women, bereaved communities, and tortured prisoners simply go unheard and unrecorded. He said, "once in a while we ought to pause and declare indignantly that there is only one side with an army and a country: the other is a stateless dispossessed population of people without rights or any present way of SECURING THEM.

The language of suffering has been hijacked, it is now as Edward Said said "pure fiction deployed as a screen for the purpose of more killing and painstaking torture - slowly, fastidiously, inexorably."

Israel's security is a very fickle piece of fiction in the heads of Israelis who want the world to view them as victims, who want to view THEMSELVES as victims, to justify the crimes they commit! Absurdly enough we could have answered all these questions affirmatively 60 some years ago if we remembered what Jewish people suffered at the hands of the Nazis. I don't think we forgot the Warsaw ghettos, the pogroms, humiliations and killings of Jews, committed against them SIMPLY because they are Jewish, but those afflicted with the Zionist dream seem to have learnt NOTHING, and they are committing and ACCEPTING genocidal crimes against us Palestinians SIMPLY because we are Palestinians.

ZIONISTS everywhere, you are not the victims anymore, your credit has run out a long time ago! Free yourself of Zionism or WE will do it for you!

It is not about two sides of a conflict, it is not about a cycle of violence, it is about GENOCIDE, racism and people's right to resist!

Genocide is: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. This step-by-step campaign of ethnic cleansing and Genocide began with violently driving Palestinians from their lands during the 1947-48 Arab-Israeli war; the destruction of hundreds of conquered Palestinian villages; the military conquest of the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 war, the illegal colonialization of these "occupied territories" afterward, along with a steady destruction of Palestinian economy and society. With each assault, Israel furthers its strategic objectives of destroying Palestine and the Palestinians. It continues right as we speak, in Gaza, a refugee camp with over 70% of its starved prisoners, refugees from what is now Israel! This cease fire, which Israel broke on Nov. 4 by killing 6 Palestinians in Gaza, and which it did not abide by its conditions requiring the easing of the inhumane illegal year and half blockade, regardless of what lies you hear on the US media, contradicting their own reports from November; Israel did it first; HOWEVER, this cease fire, is just an excuse among many that Israel uses to continue its genocide.

BDS

20 Israelis killed in the past EIGHT YEARS by Palestinian resistance in Gaza, while Israel has killed more than 450 & wounded over 2,100 Palestinians through only eight DAYS of brutal genocidal attacks on Gaza Strip with U.S. supplied weapons.

NINETEEN Palestinian children died in the past 24 hours alone!

A professor at UMass Boston wrote a very powerful sentence recently: "Palestinians must be very light; they must be lighter than birds. They must be like clouds, like the very air. Their deaths weigh no one down. No one's conscience seems to ache when they're killed." I ask you to think of someone so beloved, so dear that you would suffocate with tears now just THINKING about this son, daughter, brother, father being brutally torn to pieces? Can you feel that weighing on your heart and crushing you? Well, this is how much a Palestinian weighs, because he has a mother who will morn him just like all you mothers and fathers will mourn yours! Racism, only, stands in anyone's way of accepting that equality!

I say, boycott and divest, many international organizations and companies are doing it. Some would say, ah it won't work, Israel is too strong, I say forget that, YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE, you can make a very powerful statement , when you go to a shoe store and see that Israeli brand, TELL the shop keeper, this is a beautiful shoe but I will NOT buy it because it's made in Israel. I and YOU, TELL HIM or HER. TALK, SCREAM, WHISPER BUT DO NOT STAY SILENT!

SEND a message to the world that YOU do not accept this racism, send a message to the world that YOU choose equality over Zionism.

Insanity someone said is doing something over and over and expecting the outcomes to change at each attempt. Israel tried in Lebanon to crush people with US made and donated weapons, and they have been trying to break our spirits in Palestine for 60 years and we tell them:

We will not kneel, we will not surrender, you will not break our spirits! Will we will resist until we have our rights back!

What Palestinians want is what you want, dignity, equality and our rights be restored.

My 8 and a half year old son just told me as I am writing this: "say that they won't share the land!" Two states is another tactic to delay the inevitable liberation of both the Jewish and the Palestinian people of Zionism. ONE COUNTRY WITH EQUAL RIGHTS for all: Jews AND Palestinians

BOYCOTT racism, BOYCOTT inequality, BOYCOTT GENOCIDE