An estimated 200,000 or more people—a sea of protesters dressed in red—marched and rallied in Amsterdam on Sunday to denounce Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, castigated the Dutch government and others in Europe for not doing enough to the end the suffering and bloodshed after more than 3 years of US-back bombing, intentional starvation, and endless displacement in the world’s largest open-air prison.
Organizers behind the “Red Line” rally—including The Rights Forum, Amnesty International Netherlands, Oxfam Novib, and others—celebrated the extraordinary turnout as they called for the Dutch government to do more to stop an Israeli government that “continues to kill, displace, and starve people in Gaza and the West Bank.”
“What is happening there is inhumane,” said one protester, Mike van Dongen, who spoke to the Associated Press while he marched among the enormous crowd near the city’s Museumplein. “As far as I’m concerned, [the Dutch authorities] are doing nothing. They don’t dare take any serious steps.”
As Al-Jazeera reports, the protesters “called for tighter trade restrictions on Israel and a halt to all arms sales” to help bring an end to violence in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Large crowds join Red Line Gaza protest in Amsterdam
Signs in the crowd read “Stop the Killing in Gaza,” “End the Genocide,” and “Free Palestine” as speakers at the rally demanded much tougher actions and global solidarity with those suffering in Gaza, including tens of thousands of people who lost their temporary tents and shelters over the weekend to rain storms and flooding.
According to AP:
The campaign in Gaza has strained relations between the Netherlands and Israel. The Dutch foreign minister resigned last year after failing to secure new sanctions against Israel.
Since then, a new minority coalition government has taken power and introduced an import ban on products from Israeli settlements, which the Dutch government and most of the international community consider illegal — a move that provoked a diplomatic spat with Israel.
Agence France Presse spoke with Steven Eisinger, a 33-year-old robotics engineer born in the United States who marched with a red scarf around his neck.
Eisinger, who is Jewish and has family living in Israel, said he wanted all arms shipments to Israel to end and that he attended the rally, according to AFP, “to voice his backing for Palestinians and his opposition to genocide.”
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