Argentinean protesters slam Israeli aggression against Palestinians

Activists have staged a demonstration in Argentina to censure the Tel Aviv regime’s increasing acts of violence against Palestinians amid ongoing tensions between the two sides in the Israeli-occupied territories and Gaza.

On Friday, members of Palestinian solidarity organizations and their supporters converged outside the Israeli embassy in the capital, Buenos Aires, carrying Palestinian flags, posters and banners to denounce the recent spate of deadly violence against Palestinians.

During the rally, Rafael Araya Masry, the international relations secretary for Argentina’s Latin American Integration Movement of Social Expression (MILES), called on the Buenos Aires government to officially condemn Tel Aviv’s crackdown in the occupied Palestinian territories.

‘If right against South Africa apartheid, right against Israel’

“We are calling on the national government to bluntly condemn this recent Israeli escalation of repression and death… We call for backing and action to decisively promote and fulfill… a boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel in all areas of our daily lives from cutting academic cooperation to not buying any product originating in Israel in the supermarkets,” he said.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) global campaign was launched in July 2005 by 171 Palestinian organizations, and calls for “various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets its obligations under international law.”

The movement seeks to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinians lands and wants the Tel Aviv regime to respect the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.

Masry went on to say, “If we did it against apartheid in South Africa, so should we do it even stronger against Israeli apartheid.”

Tensions in the occupied territories have dramatically escalated in recent weeks, prompting many to believe that a third Intifada (uprising) might be underway.

Palestinian medical sources say 55 Palestinians sustained injuries during Friday skirmishes in the West Bank.

The Palestinian Health Ministry says at least 71 Palestinians, including 12 children, two infants and a pregnant woman, have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces since the beginning of October. Some 7,100 others have also sustained injuries.

At least 10 Israelis have been killed and 130 others injured during the same period.

The fresh wave of tensions in the occupied Palestinian territories was triggered by the Israeli regime’s imposition in August of restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam after Masjid al-Haram in Mecca and Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina.

Palestinians are also angry at increasing violence by Israeli settlers, who frequently storm the al-Aqsa Mosque.

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