The world has come out to express its solidarity wirh Palestine and to denounce Israel's aggression against innocent citizens in the region. There has always been an aggression against the Palestinian population by the Israeli army, but on October 7 it with the brutal attacks by the terrorist group Hamas against civilians that prompted thousands of citizens from the five continents to fill avenues and squares in protest against the war. This gallery depicts the massive pro-Palestinian march on October 29 in Madrid, attended by an estimated 35,000 people. "Europe sponsors, Israel murders", "It's not a war, it's genocide", "Boycott Israel" or "It was a hospital, not a military base" were some of the slogans chanted to demand an immediate ceasefire.
Images and news coming from Palestine show us the blood, pain, and the horror of over 3,200 Palestinian children killed in October as a result of the military operation launched by Benjamin Netanyahu's government in Gaza and the West Bank. It is a crackdown that apparently has the approval of a large part of the international community. Of every ten fatalities in October, nine were Palestinian, and only one was Israeli, according to data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the Palestinian Red Cross, the Addameer Association, Al Jazeera, and the Israeli Army.
With just a click, and a little curiosity, anyone can be a witness. But all those pictures on the screens are not enough to describe the highly complex war that every person in Palestine must wage daily. Talal Okal, a journalist and political analyst, is both a father and a grandfather. He spoke to Transversal from the Gaza Strip. In the background we could hear a lullaby and the occasional baby's voice. It is quiet now, but he doesn't quite know how long this calm will last because "everything in Gaza is under fire." Mr. Okal believes that "we are facing a kind of international conflict" and feels that US President Joe Biden warned some time ago that he wanted to use the Ukraine war as a proxy against Russia, and he is succeeding. "He proposed the same thing for Israel since it is a key alliance in the Middle East." Okal relies on the resistance of public opinion. "In Europe and America, people are pushing for Israel to respect humanist values and international law. If they don't change their strategy, some leaders like Macron, Sunak and Biden are going to fall", he said.
"The Western media system, in which Israel has a lot of influence, supports every anti-Palestinian initiative by stopping our speech from reaching the international political forums, and this is another kind of weapon against the Palestinian people," he said. What so many Western media and governments have called the "Palestinian-Israeli conflict" is actually seen as a war with a wide spiritual and religious footprint.
Countries considered full democracies such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have chosen to ban their citizens' right to demonstrate if they plan to protest for a fair peace for Palestine. In cities such as Paris, people ignored the ban and, as a response, riot police subdued dissenting voices with beatings, water cannons, and tear gas.
This photographic essay represents an impulse to denounce the undefendable, to respect international law, make a commitment to recover, and redefine the way of mediation and dialogue.
