In Paris, police had banned Saturday, July 19th’s demonstration following brutal anti-Semitic violence after similar marches. France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls defended the decision to not allow Parisian protests. Hundreds of people, including many women and children, took to the streets regardless, and there were cheers as two Israeli flags were burned in front of the crowd. “We are all Palestinians,” chanted the protesters. Some threw stones at the cordons of riot police before running off, starting a game of cat-and-mouse with police. In the resultting running clashes, two small vans were set on fire, as well as numerous bins, while the streets were littered with broken glass and debris.
Despite the ban, a second violent anti-Israel protest flared on Sunday, July 20th, in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles, a large community of Sephardic Jews. Hundreds gathered in Sarcelles; dozens of local youth broke windows, looted shops, set cars on fire and attacked a synagogue.
Pro-Palestinian protests occurred relatively peacefully on Sunday throughout other major cities in Europe. The largest was a march of 11,000 demonstrators across the city center of Vienna to the country’s president’s residence. About 3,000 gathered in Amsterdam rallying for Israel to cease military operations in Gaza. A similar demonstration occurred in Stockholm drawing 1,000 participants.
Protests supporting Palestine also occurred in many capital cities around the world on Sunday the 20th; including in Lebanese the capital of Beirut, Rabat capital of Morocco, at a mosque in Thailand’s southern province of Pattani and in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
On Saturday, July 19th, about 5,000 leftist and pro-Palestinian demonstrators also held a protest in the Chilean capital, home to a sizable Palestinian Arab community. The march took demonstrators to the Israeli embassy in Santiago, where some participants glued pictures of children who have died in the attacks to the walls of the building. The marchers continued on to the embassy of the United States, seen as Israel’s close ally. Chile in 2011 recognized Palestine as a sovereign state, without specifying where its boundaries should be affixed. Some 300,000 people of Middle Eastern and Arab ancestry live in Chile, compared to a Jewish community of just 30,000.
Parts of central London were brought to a standstill on Saturday, as thousands of pro-Palestinians marched in protest against Israel’s offensive in Gaza, while in Paris a banned demonstration descended into violence. Organizers of the London rally claimed that “tens of thousands” of people joined the march from Prime Minister David Cameron’s office to the Israeli embassy, many of them chanting “Israel is a terror state”. Police refused to give an estimate for the number present but several roads through the centre of the capital were closed during the three-mile (4.8-kilometer) march, which passed off peacefully.
Anti-Semitic violence has occurred all last week in Paris. Overnight, on Friday, July 18th, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into a synagogue in a Parisian suburb. Fortunately no one was hurt and the damage caused was minimal. According to a report by the Drancy-based Bureau for National Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, a watchdog group known as BNVCA, a Parisian Jewish teacher was attacked Thursday, July 17th, night by three men, who cursed him in Arabic before drawing a swastika on his chest.
The US embassy had issued a statement “strongly encouraging” its citizens to steer clear of the Paris protests, warning of the risk of clashes. Authorities said organizers who defied the ban will face a six-month prison term and 7,500-euro fine.