Philadelphia marches for 2-year anniversary of October 7

Philadelphia, PA – On October 7, 300 protestors marched through Center City to commemorate the two-year anniversary of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation which reasserted the global cause for Palestinian liberation and struck a massive blow against the Israeli occupation.

The protesters, mostly young students, marched a route intended to highlight different sites of struggle for the various campaigns being waged in Philly to disrupt Zionist normalization and U.S. military aid to Israel.

The protest started on 1500 Spring Garden Street, just outside the offices of the munitions manufacturing company Day & Zimmerman. The D&Z offices have become a well-known site of protest after Students for Justice in Palestine organized regular early-morning noise demonstrations for the past 17 Tuesdays and even a building occupation earlier this summer. Day & Zimmerman remains a powerful target in Philly, considering their responsibility in the death of six-year-old Hind Rajab and her family, as the 300 artillery shells fired at their car by the IDF were manufactured and sold by Day & Zimmerman.

The second stop along the route was directly outside the ICE field office in the heart of Philadelphia’s Chinatown neighborhood. Chants of “ICE, KKK, IOF – they’re all the same!” and “Chinga la migra!” mingled with the hot October air. For all their audacity, no ICE agent showed their face outside the building.

Finally, the march concluded outside the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, a building which used to sport a large Israeli flag with the words “The Weitzman stands with Israel” inscribed underneath, until an activist splattered it with red paint earlier this summer. Fearing the obvious bloodied flag metaphor painted on the side of their building, the Weitzman has since opted to remove it.

A speaker for the Philadelphia Palestine Coalition oriented the crowd as to why the Weitzman should be targeted for their normalization of Zionism and genocide denial by reading aloud the words on their website, reading “[The Weitzman] strongly rejects the narrative that Israel and Zionism are colonialist enterprises, or that Israel is guilty of apartheid or genocide.” Apart from its CEO and executive director, Dan Tadmor, having served in the IDF’s infamous Unit 8200, Israel’s secretive cyber warfare unit, the Weitzman has also hosted numerous IDF members to spread Zionist, anti-Palestinian propaganda through speeches and presentations.

The march was organized by the Philly Palestine Coalition and included speakers and endorsers from Students for Justice in Palestine, Philly Alliance Against Imperialism, Workers World Party, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

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