Tag Archives: Popular Resistance Committees

Mar 20 2012

Mixed messages about violence from the Global March to Jerusalem

In an interview with the Palestinian news agency Ma’an on March 19th, GMJ spokesman Zaher Birawi stated that the organisers are “not interested in confrontation with the Israeli army, after similar demonstrations a year earlier ended in bloodshed”.

Whilst it is difficult to imagine exactly what sort of effective controls the GMJ organisers have been able to put in place in order to prevent their aspired one million man march from descending into violence, it should also be taken into account that a considerable number of the GMJ organisers are veterans of the flotilla project who still describe the Turkish activists aboard the IHH-sponsored Mavi Marmara in 2010 as ‘humanitarian aid workers’.

Others are members of various ‘popular resistance committees’ which define the weekly riots at places such as Bil’in and Nebi Salah as ‘non-violent protest’. The heavy involvement of Hamas and the Iranian regime in the march’s organization, together with support from Hizbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad also raises doubts as to the sincerity of the professed commitment to non-violence.

Coincidentally, the North American chapter of the GMJ has put out a new leaflet replete with messages of non-violence and invoking Gandhi and Martin Luther King as role models. 

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Click to Enlarge

When compared to the original publicity put out by the GMJ organisers, it is rather obvious that someone appears to have reached the conclusion that the North American audience is in need of a somewhat softer approach. 

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Click to Enlarge

However, over in South East Asia, audiences are apparently deemed by local GMJ organisers as being susceptible to somewhat different messages in the attempt to raise support for the project.

In Kuala Lumpur on March 18th a flashmob of students gathered in order to “create awareness on the Global March to Jerusalem”.  Chairman of the Malaysian branch of the GMJ, Dr Mohd Tahir Abdul Rahman, was present at the event and made the following erroneous statement:

“Our focus is Jerusalem, where presently Muslims and Christians are denied access to their sacred places and holy places of worship by the Zionists,” he said after the flash mob today.”

The flashmob’s student organisers explained that:

“We wanted to create awareness about the oppression in Palestine by recreating scenes of the march toward Jerusalem and also show Palestinians being liberated”

As can be seen in the video of the event below, their idea of “scenes of the march toward Jerusalem” apparently includes dead Israeli soldiers.

Somebody obviously missed out on the ‘non-violence’ memo. 

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Mar 16 2012

Global March to Jerusalem’s official website backs terrorists in latest violence from Gaza

The official Global March to Jerusalem website issued a condemnation of what it termed “criminal Israeli assassinations of Gaza civilians” on March 13th, referring of course to last weekend’s actions to stop the firing of hundreds of missiles at Israeli civilians.

“We, the Global March to Jerusalem, condemn the Zionist campaign of killing Palestinian citizens and imprisoning the Palestinians of Gaza in an open-air prison, just as we condemn the continued occupation of Palestinian land and the intentional destruction and Judaisation of Jerusalem, as well as all of historic Palestine.”

In fact, contrary to the GMJ statement, the vast majority of those who died were not civilians, but terrorists actively involved in perpetrating attacks on Israeli civilians. Fourteen of the people killed were members of the proscribed Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror organization and six were members of the Popular Resistance Committees.

Of the six others killed in the latest bout of fighting, at least two appear to have been used as human shields by terrorists, one died as a result of gun-fire at a Gaza funeral and another appears to have been carrying or operating some sort of explosive device.

Given the prominent involvement of the Iranian regime in the Global March to Jerusalem project it is hardly surprising that the GMJ organisers would find it necessary to express support for the Iranian-backed and financed Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Popular Resistance Committees which were the main players in the latest round of terror attacks on Israeli civilians.  

The GMJ organisers’ whitewashing of Iranian sub-contracted terror groups in Gaza does, however, expose its much-touted commitment to ‘non-violent protest’ as a farce.

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