PSL Gainesville Rallies at Depot Park For Lebanon
On Tuesday, in a rally organized by the Gainesville Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), several activist groups and local community members paid tribute to Lebanese victims of Israeli attacks.
The rally came a week after the Israeli military detonated explosives planted in pagers owned by Hezbollah members. The attacks killed dozens and injured thousands. Young children were among the victims.
A day before the rally, Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health reported that over 500 adults and 50 children were killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
Attendees of the protest were given the opportunity to speak. A Lebanese woman named Maria talked about her family in Lebanon. “My world keeps spinning around me while my American friends are sending memes and my coworkers are talking about different social trends…. My survivor’s guilt is so overwhelming while I text my cousins as they’re fleeing Beirut or when I think about my grandmas in their 80s who’ve already survived so many wars. I think about my dad, who has a flight out of Lebanon tomorrow, but we keep wondering if the airport is gonna stay open for him to get out. My uncle is undergoing chemotherapy while worrying about a healthcare system that’s been collapsed. My brother and I are here helpless, and even with my gratitude for safety oceans away, there’s some part of me that wants to be there anyway; home with my family.”
As the rally closed, attendees held a candlelight vigil and a moment of silence for the victims in Lebanon.
Three days after the rally, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut. The attack destroyed high-rise residential apartment buildings, killing at least 11 people and injuring 108, reports the Lebanese Health Ministry.
Israeli bombings in Lebanon are ongoing, with 77 people being killed so far today, reports the Lebanese Health Ministry.
