On the morning of August 10, International Children’s Day, the collective Coordinadora por Palestina (Coordination for Palestine) staged a powerful installation in front of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago, Chile: a bombed-out classroom with a blackboard in Arabic and a recording of a class, under a banner that read: “Israel kills 28 children, a class, every day since October 7, 2023.” They then unfurled a banner with the image of a child wrapped in a Palestinian scarf (keffiyeh) saying: “Let’s stop the Palestinian genocide. FREE PALESTINE.”
Eduardo Asfura, spokesperson for the Coordinadora por Palestina (@porpalestinacl) said: “We decided to carry out this action based on a brutal image that has been circulating for some time now. Israel has been killing 28 to 30 Palestinian children every day for almost two years. We saw the need to expose this image, which has also been picked up by international institutions such as UNICEF, in order not only to appeal to the sensitivity of the public, but also to show them the historic turning point we are at. The Palestinian people are being exterminated in a now long process of colonialism by a genocidal, racist, supremacist entity that is the modern state of Israel. And we needed to put this perspective forward so that civil society, which is already reacting to this horror, can begin to rally in greater numbers every day. We have also called for a mass march to bring the cities of the world to a standstill for Palestine. On September 1, trade unions, professional associations, students, and civil society organizations worldwide are called upon to demonstrate and join this mobilization for Palestine.
It should be noted that this massacre is being perpetrated not by all Israeli citizens, but by Zionism, which has taken over the state and the armed forces of that country. Zionism is a territorialist, exclusionary, and racist ideology, not far removed from Nazism, which attempted to annihilate the Jewish nation in the WWII extermination camps more than 80 years ago. Nowadays, both inside and outside Israel, voices are increasingly being raised and citizens are mobilizing to denounce and protest against this genocide in real time.
These are key weeks, as the Israeli blockade of food and medical aid to Gaza is already resulting in deaths from starvation and lack of basic medical treatment, especially among children. It is urgent that we put pressure on our respective governments to express their condemnation of this inhumane situation by breaking off trade and military relations with the Zionist and criminal state of Israel.
Across the globe, multiple organizations and collectives are taking actions like these. Yesterday, for example, there was a massive pot-banging protest for Palestine in Santiago, images of which can be seen on the Instagram pages of @porpalestinacl @eduardoasfura @laizquierdadiariocl and @judixsantisionistas.
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