BOSTON / PNN /
Dozens of peace activists and Jewish Americans continued to hold protests across the United States against the presence of Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in protest against his call to wipe out the Palestinian town of Hawara.
After the protests in the US capital, Washington, and New York peace activists and US Jewish groups demonstrated yesterday in Boston, Massachusetts, in rejection of Smotrich’s visit and calling for an end to US funding of the Israeli apartheid system.
While in Washington, the far-right fascist minister spoke to about 150 leaders at the Israel Bonds national leadership summit, which sells Israeli government bonds to investors abroad, just two weeks after calling for Israel to “wipe out” the Palestinian town of Hawara.
At the hotel where the event was taking place, Jewish Voice for Peace demonstrated inside, while Jewish groups, including J Street, T’ruah, IfNotNow, and the New Israel Fund led a rally outside as people chanted and held banners with phrases such as: “No blank check for pogroms” and “No democracy under apartheid.”
“Yesterday, as Israel’s hate-mongering Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich fundraised for ethnic cleansing and apartheid at a DC Israel Bond’s conference, Jews and allies from across the US flooded the streets in protest, calling for divestment from Israeli apartheid and an end to US military funding for Israel,” Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) said in a press statement.
“Smotrich’s appearance at the Israel Bond conference makes it abundantly clear — buying Israel Bonds is supporting Israeli apartheid. It’s funding the Israeli government’s ethnic cleansing and it’s endorsing the early Zionist strategy of “maximum land, minimum Palestinians,” it added.
“Palestinians tell us again and again what Zionism does: it wipes out villages, forcibly removes families from their homes, occupies and steals Palestinian land, and is the foundation for a system of racism and apartheid.”
“Leading members of the Israeli government openly call for genocide —and yet are still allowed into the US to fundraise for more ethnic cleansing. And now, more and more US Jews demand divestment from this racist project entirely,” it added.
Jewish activists from IfNotNow movement said that “American Jewish leaders and organizations must see that apartheid is at the center of Israel’s current governmental crisis, and there is no democracy under apartheid.”
“As Jews, we come together to say: not in our name. We reject occupation and apartheid, and we demand accountability for Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights,” they added.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the US Chamber of Commerce have canceled meetings with Smotrich and key US groups have said they will not meet the fascist minister.
