March for Palestine protest at Portsmouth Guildhall
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00:00 I have a Palestinian friend, Samia. You probably can't see the picture very well.
00:06 Last October I had a letter from her. She's an 89 year old grandmother and her
00:15 16 year old grandson in the middle of the night had been arrested by Israeli
00:22 soldiers, beaten, dragged out of his home and taken to prison. Do you know what
00:29 happens in the occupation? Do you know what administrative detention means?
00:35 It means people, not just adults, children can be taken, blindfolded, tortured with no
00:45 reason, no justification, no case to answer. Held, some of them for months, some for
00:53 decades and we have remained silent. Shame on us if we have not spoken out, enacted.
01:02 My name is Maria Al Shaka. I'm a Palestinian from Nablus. Today we're in
01:08 Portsmouth fighting for the rights of the people in Gaza, the innocent people
01:12 that have been killed the past few days, murdered the past few days and the
01:17 upcoming days. My family, my grandparents, my great-grandparents were all from
01:24 Palestine. My grandpa was from a village called
01:28 Abu Dis in Jerusalem, in East Jerusalem. My grandfather, when he was seven years
01:34 old, a settler family came into their home and kicked them out and
01:40 they've been refugees to their own homeland ever since. This is really hard
01:45 to speak about and hard to, it's been really hard to see the videos of what's
01:51 been happening to the Palestinian children and the Palestinian homes in
01:55 Gaza. There's been 20,000 homes destroyed until now and more than
02:01 500 innocent children are killed, are murdered. My mom and I, we've been trying
02:07 to go back to Palestine for so many years. Every year we're denied entry
02:12 because the Israelis do not want the Palestinians to go back. We do not have a
02:17 right of return. The Palestinian refugees cannot go back to Palestine but the
02:22 Israelis can claim birthright and go get a passport and fly to Israel tomorrow.
02:27 But me and all the other Palestinians that were displaced in 1948 and the
02:33 generations that come after it, we're not allowed to step back into
02:37 our homeland. I've never seen my city, I've never seen Jerusalem, I've never
02:41 prayed in Al-Aqsa Mosque, I never had the privilege to see my own land.
02:46 Not only Israelis, any person from the West can go to Palestine
02:52 right now and have the privilege to see my homeland that I'm not able to see, I'm
02:56 not able to return to. I hope for peace, I hope for a one-state solution where we
03:02 all live under the same equal rights, where Palestinians are not treated as
03:07 second-class citizens, where we have basic human rights, access to health care,
03:12 education, being able to move from A to B. The Palestinians are not are blocked
03:18 in Gaza. They're not allowed to leave. This is a humanitarian issue, this is not
03:24 about religion, this is not about Jews or Muslims or Christians, this is about
03:28 basic human rights. Israel has been classified as an apartheid, as an
03:33 occupation, but people turn a blind eye to this. They portray themselves as the
03:38 victims, but we are the victims here, not them. They have the power, they have the
03:44 whole world with them, they have aid, they have money, they have military. The
03:48 Palestinian people do not have military, they do not have money, they don't have
03:52 anything. Israel has the power to cut this off and they have. 20,000 homes have
03:58 been destroyed, 1,500 innocent people lives have been lost, 500 children, 11
04:06 paramedics, 4 journalists just in the past few days and there's going to be
04:10 many more. These aren't just numbers, these are real people with lives. A 20
04:18 year old in Gaza has already experienced five wars during their lifetime and may
04:22 sadly face many more before becoming a victim of one.
04:27 [BLANK_AUDIO]