A group of pro-Palestine protestors rallied on the streets of San Francisco on Mar. 10 at 5 p.m., who were concerned about the growing tensions with Israel.
Some of the protestors were still at Montgomery St. even at 7 p.m., one of whom was Sabreen Imtair, a Youth Organizer for the Arab and Organizing Center.
“The Bay Area will not stand as violence escalates in Palestine,” she said, “We’ll always mobilize and come out and voice our opposition against to what’s happening in Palestine.”
After a couple of hours, police showed up to monitor traffic and had no confrontation, but some of the crowd members peacefully dispersed on their own valuation.
There also was a security guard screaming that they he didn’t like them and the guard said, “they had a ticket straight to hell.”
Imtair talked more about the conflict between Israel and Palestine and the rise of the right in Israel.
“We always come out every time there’s violence escalating in Palestine, she said, We’re always having campaigns and encouraging people to organize against Zionism and Emperialism in the Bay Area.”
“We’ve had successful campaigns against Israeli-US ties here locally, labor ties with Israel,” Imtair said about the positive reception in the Bay Area.
“We’ve blocked boats, in 2014 and 2021, with the Israeli Zim Shipline, we’ve stopped Urban Shield, the largest SWAT training that was facilitated by Israeli Police and military.”
The Youth Organizer also talked about the challenges that their movement faces with Israel.
“It just faces Zionist backlash and Zionist repression from both back home and here in the United States,” Imtair adds, “Particularly here, laws and lobbying against our movements in our work in our campaigns.”
She also mentions Palestine Action Network, which according to her, is a coalition and organizations in the Bay Area that do work around Palestine and do work that’s anti-war.
The protest ended with a chant of the Arabic word for revolution and members slowly peacefully dispersed.
“Whenever there’s anything for us to come and rally against, we’ll obviously be out here [this was in response to the violence] and if violence escalates, we’ll continue to remobilize,” Imtair said.
She said that the organization is currently preparing for Nakba 75, which is known as the “Memory of the Catastrophe” where the destruction of Palestine homeland in 1948.
