Limerick Protests Flotilla Murders

limerick | anti-war | news report Saturday June 05, 2010 20:59 by Zoe Lawlor - Limerick branch Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Solidarity with our sisters and brothers in Palestine

The Limerick branch of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign held a protest against the Israeli murder of humanitarian aid workers on Saturday 5th June in Arthur’s Quay Park. This was also be a vigil to remember the murdered aid workers and to show solidarity with the Flotilla, the people of Gaza and our friends aboard the MV Rachel Corrie which was hijacked just miles from Gaza.

Tree of Remembrance for Gaza & our recently deceased friends on the Flotilla

Labour TD for Limerick East, Jan O’Sullivan paid tribute to the aid workers who were murdered as well as their colleagues on the Flotilla whom she praised for taking their lives in their hands to reach the people of Gaza. Ms. O’Sullivan commended the people on the MV Rachel Corrie for standing their ground, called for an end to the siege of Gaza and for a boycott of Israeli goods in Ireland. Cian Prendeville of the Socialist Party also spoke and specifically drew attention to Cement Roadstone Holdings (CRH) and Veolia’s complicity in the occupation with their interests in the apartheid wall and the illegal tram line in East Jerusalem respectively.

Zoë Lawlor, secretary of the Limerick branch of the IPSC called out the names of the murdered aid workers and, for each person a member of the crowd placed a card with their name on it on the Remembrance Tree for Gaza, to loud applause. The tree has over 1,400 leaves, each bearing the names of those killed in the assault on Gaza of 2008/2009.

The names of the dead aid activists are: Cevdet Kılıçlar (38), Necdet Yıldırım (32), İbrahim Bilgen (61), Ali Heyder Bengi (39), Cengiz Akyüz (41), Cengiz Topçuoğlu (54), Cengiz Songür (47), Fahri Gündüz (43) and Furkan Dogan (19) . Nine people lay on the ground wrapped in white shrouds to People donned white sheets and laid on the ground to represent the activists executed in cold blood by the Israel.

Ms. Lawlor also described autopsy reports on the dead obtained by the Guardian which show that people had been shot in the back of the head and from close range by the Israeli commandos. She called for the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador, the withdrawal of the Irish Ambassador to Israel as well as the suspension of all trade with Israel and the revocation of its recent OECD accession. She further called for an end to the siege of Gaza and the illegal occupation of Palestine and a total boycott of Israeli goods, paying particular attention to Israeli diamonds which represent 30% of its exports. Ms Lawlor went on to deplore how the narrative on the people of Gaza has turned into one of measuring their needs just so that they can subsist and said that what the people of Gaza need is freedom and to decide their own needs.
She finished by quoting rapper and activist Lowkey at a demonstration in London where he said: “The line of division is not between Muslim and Jew, it is a line of division between those who stand for the equality of all and those who stand for the supremacy of some”