I Will Bless Those Who Bless You. . .

h/t Weasel Zippers

Jerusalem Post:

Paris: Demonstrators tried to break into the Israeli embassy
By JPOST.COM STAFF
05/31/2010 23:00

During a violent anti-Israel demonstration in Paris on Monday, demonstrators tried to break into the Israeli embassy.

The demonstration was in protest at the killing of nine pro-Gaza activists during the storming of the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara early on Monday morning.

About 1200 people took part in the noisy demonstration against Israel, and threw stones at police who cordoned off the embassy.

Alertnet.org:

Thousands protest flotilla deaths, clashes in Athens
31 May 2010 20:34:55 GMT
Source: Reuters
* Israeli action widely condemned in street demonstrations

* Protesters call for boycotts, recall of ambassadors

(Adds Muslim Brotherhood-organised protests in Egypt)

By Yannis Behrakis and Yiorgos Karahalis

ATHENS, May 31 (Reuters) - Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Europe and the Middle East on Monday, clashing with police as they protested against the Israeli storming of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla during which 10 activists were killed.

In Athens, some 3,500 protesters rallied outside the Israeli embassy, chanting "Hands off Gaza" and "Free Palestine". Several hundreds clashed with police, throwing chunks of marble, stones and bottles. Police fired teargas to disperse them.

"Demonstrators set barricades on fire, police chased them, there were a lot of stones and teargas and a few people had blood on their heads," a Reuters witness said, adding he saw four people injured. Police said they detained five protesters.

The Israeli marines' action in the eastern Mediterranean sparked street protests and government ire in Turkey, long Israel's lone Muslim ally in the region, and thousands of followers of an anti-U.S. cleric took to the streets in Baghdad.

Across Egypt, which in 1979 became the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel, up to 8,000 Egyptians protested, demanding the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador in Cairo and called on the government to open its Rafah borders with Gaza.

The protests were organised by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's biggest opposition group which is affiliated to Hamas, the Islamist group that took control of the Gaza strip in 2007. Two Brotherhood parliamentarians were on board the convoy ships.

"Hamas you are the cannon and the Brotherhood is your voice," chanted thousands of Egyptians protesting in Cairo. The Brotherhood routinely organises protests demanding the lifting of the Israeli blockade on Gaza.

Police used teargas in Paris when about 2,000 people demonstrated near the Israeli embassy, hurling stones, waving Palestinian and Turkish flags and brandishing banners saying "Long live free Palestine" and "Criminal Israel."

Small, peaceful anti-Israel demonstrations were held in Rome and other Italian cities. "The Italian government needs to immediately call back its ambassador from Israel as other countries in Europe have done," said Paolo Cento, a leftwing politician among the demonstrators.

"This is extremely serious and has no precedent whatsoever in the history of international diplomacy."

Swedish police said more than 5,000 protesters marched from a central Stockholm square towards the Israeli embassy, carrying banners and shouting slogans.

Chanting "Boycott Israel", they held banners saying "Free Gaza", "Put Israel on Trial, "Israel to The Hague" and "Gaza Bleeds." (Reporting by Yannis Behrakis, Yiorgos Karahalis and Renee Maltezou in Athens, Cristiano Corvino in Rome, Sudip Kar-Gupta in Paris, Marwa Awad and Dina Zayed in Cairo, writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Tim Pearce)

Daily Star:


Thousands protest across Lebanon against flotilla killings
Palestinians, organizations march in support of Gaza aid convoy
By Patrick Galey and Mohammed Zaatari
Daily Star staff
Tuesday, June 01, 2010

BEIRUT/SIDON: Thousands of activists gathered in Beirut, Tripoli and Sidon on Monday to lend their voices to the international outcry over Israel’s attack on an aid ship bound for Gaza, which killed at least nine aid workers.

Palestinian citizens, officials and leftist political organizations organized large-scale protests outside the United Nations ESCWA headquarters in downtown Beirut and Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in Sidon. Those gathered burned Israeli flags, waved banners and chanted “Death to Israel.”

In the capital, classes of schoolchildren, instructed by their teachers, sang anti-Israeli songs and drapped themselves with Palestinian flags. A giant Turkish flag was unveiled and paraded in front of the UN’s offices as a show of solidarity with those were killed aboard the Gaza flotilla, who were mainly Turks.

“I have come down here to say that Israel is the terrorist, not the Arab people,” said one 18 year-old protestor, Khalid. “They kill children, men and boys, everything. Why did they do this? These people [in the flotilla] had no weapons, just food and water for the people of Gaza. Why kill them?

“If I killed an Israeli, what would the world do to me? They would say I’m a bad person, a terrorist.”

Ahmad al-Assad, a hairdresser from the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp, said that the protest called on the international community to boycott Israel and call it to account over Monday morning’s attack.

“It’s not enough for people to just condemn Israel; we want people to unite and the world to listen,” he said.

In Sidon, thousands of Palestinians marched through the streets of Ain al-Hilweh to express their anger over the incident and the continuing Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Protester Hiba Al-Ali condemned the international community’s seeming indifference to the plight of Palestinians across the Arab world.

“Where is the free world, where are human rights organizations, where is the statue of liberty?,” she asked. “Where is America, the land of freedom and law? They have shut their ears and eyes.”

The head of a Lebanese delegation aboard the flotilla, Hani Suleiman, was injured in the attack. His son, Adham, said that he was proud of his father for standing up for his beliefs.

“The last I heard is he has been transferred to a hospital [in Israel],” he told The Daily Star. “I am optimistic. It makes me proud to have such a father and I am truly touched by all these people who came here and what the Turkish government has done.”

Suleiman, however, said the protests in Lebanon were unlikely to radically alter the situation, as little action from the international community was expected.

“Unfortunately, these protests have never had much power. All I can count on is Lebanon being head of the [UN] Security Council to help us,” he added.

Several members of political delegations attended the protest in Beirut, including Hizbullah spokesman Ibrahim Moussawi, who told The Daily Star that the international community must show more interest in the plight of Palestinians.

“This is an outcry to the international community to try and do something to break the [Gaza] blockade,” he said. “This is a strong voice to express solidarity with the martyrs and wounded people that came from all over the world.

“It’s time for governments to be in synonymy with the impulse of the people who condemn Israel and to change their policies,” Moussawi added.

Saadallah Mazraani, politburo member of the Lebanese Communist Party, said Monday’s displays of dissatisfaction were an opportunity to change the international community’s approach to Israel.

“Today the world should stand against the Zionist criminality and should realize that it is a threat to peace,” he told The Daily Star.

“Israel is not trying to seek peace and is not making steps towards peace negotiations. Unfortunately it has America’s support and the support of certain western countries.”

Mousawi called for international governments to listen to people at demonstrations which took place outside Israeli consulates throughout the world on Monday.

“It is time for the international community to express condemnation of Israeli leaders to bring them to justice because this is an act of international and criminal piracy,” he said.

AFP:

Protests erupt across the world after Israeli raid
(AFP) – 8 hours ago

ANKARA — Tens of thousands of people joined angry rallies across the world Monday after a deadly Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, demanding retaliation and showing support for the Palestinians.

Turkish protesters tried to storm the Israeli consulate and burned Israeli flags after the incident left nine dead, while police used tear gas to break up several demonstrations in European cities.

"Damn Israel!", "A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye, revenge, revenge!" yelled protesters in Istanbul where about 10,000 people converged on the central Taksim square in the afternoon after marching from the consulate.

A similar sized crowd surrounded the building again in the evening, hurling stones, eggs and bottles of water at riot police and trying to force their way through barriers outside.

"I call on the government to expel the Israeli consul... And if necessary, we are ready for war," Seref Mangal, 40, told AFP.

In the capital Ankara about 1,000 people gathered outside the residence of Israeli ambassador Gabby Levy and shouted "Damn the Zionist murderers!" and "Israel will drown in the blood of the martyrs!".

They threw eggs and plastic bottles into the garden of the residency. Reports said demonstrations were held in dozens of cities across the country.

In London more than 1,000 people -- some of whom had friends on the ships carrying aid to blockaded Gaza -- protested outside the residence of British Prime Minister David Cameron and the Israeli embassy.

Chanting "Free Palestine" and brandishing the Palestinian flag and banners condemning Israeli "war crimes", activists blocked a major route through the capital.

"We have close friends on the boat on which people were killed and we are here waiting for news," said Kate Hudson, the chairwoman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

In Paris about 1,200 people joined a noisy protest near the Israeli embassy, waving Palestinian flags and shouting "Palestine will survive". Some through stones at police and tried to break through barriers around the building.

Scuffles broke out when rival protestors waving Israeli flags approached, prompting police to fire tear gas. Officers also fired tear gas at protesters in Strasbourg while there were rallies in cities including Marseille and Lyon.

Greek police used tear gas to force back around 1,500 protesters outside the Israeli embassy in Athens, while another 2,000 people rallied in the northern city of Thessaloniki.

In Lebanon thousands of Palestinian refugees and activists waving Palestinian flags and banners marched in the country's 12 refugee camps.

"Where is the international community? Where are human rights?" they chanted in the Al-Bass camp in the southern coastal city of Tyre.

In Beirut hundreds called on Israeli embassies in the Arab world to be shut down and for Israeli ambassadors to be expelled.

At a demonstration of about 3,000 people at the Beddawi camp in the northern city of Tripoli, anger also turned on Israel's traditional ally, the United States.

"God is great and America is the greatest evil," they chanted. "Give us weapons, give us weapons and send us on to Gaza."

There were even demonstrations inside Israel, where hundreds of protestors flooded the streets of the Arab city of Nazareth as Israeli police raised the level of alert across the country and deployed reinforcements.

Several thousand Egyptians, mainly supporters of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, demonstrated in Cairo and other cities. Egypt is one of only two Arab states to have peace agreements with Israel, along with Jordan.

More than 2,000 people in Amman protested what Jordan's Information Minister Nabil Sharif dubbed a "heinous crime" and demanded that Jordan shut down the Jewish state's embassy and expel the Israeli ambassador.

In Iran's capital Tehran, dozens of people pelted stones at the UN office chanting: "This savage regime of Israel must be wiped out." They burnt the Israeli flag and tore up pictures of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In Pakistan politicians, lawmakers and journalists staged a peaceful protest in Islamabad, denouncing the killings and calling on the United Nations and the United States to intervene.

Around 6,000 people rallied in Stockholm and others protested outside the Israeli embassies in Belgium, Copenhagen and The Hague.

In Geneva around 200 people rallied outside the UN's European headquarters demanding an inquiry into the raid, and hundreds of Bosnians marched through Sarajevo, brandishing Palestinian flags.

Around 2,000 people protested in Morocco while several hundred rallied in the capital of the Saharan nation of Mauritania, where parliament called on the International Criminal Court to intervene.