A crowd of thousands, Arabs and Jews, gathered in Nazareth on Saturday morning, April 29, to take part in the city’s annual May Day march. As well as marking International Workers’ Day, the demonstrators marched against the occupation and the government’s repression of Palestinians and the neo-liberal social and economic policies of Netanyahu’s far-right government. The participants also called for justice and peace, and for workers’ rights.
Hadash MKs Dov Khenin (center in red shirt), Ayman Odeh (next to Khenin, at right’), and Aida Touma-Sliman (far right) along with the Secretary General of the Communist Party of Israel Adel Amer and leading CPI activist Mohammed Barakeh (third and second from the right, respectively) during the May Day march in Nazareth, last Saturday, April 29 (Photo: Zo Haderech)
All Hadash MKs in the Joint List were among the marchers, including Joint List head Ayman Oden, Aida Touma-Suleiman, Dov Khenin, Abdallah Abu-Ma’aruf and Yousef Jabareen. Also participating in the rally were Secretary General of the Communist Party of Israel (CPI), Adel Amer and the leading CPI activist, Mohammed Barakeh, former MK and chairman of Israel’s Higher Arab Monitoring Committee
The march ended around midday, and was followed by speeches and the singing of the “International” by youth members of the Communist Party. May Day events took place early this year, due to Memorial Day in Israel – scheduled according to the Hebrew calendar – which falls this year on May 1.
On Thursday morning, April 27, Palestinian workers from the occupied territories coming into Israel through the Eyal checkpoint, one of the busiest entries for Palestinian laborers, were handed flowers by Hadash members of the Knesset starting at dawn. Along with three Hadash MKs, members of the Hadash caucus in the Histadrut Labor Federation stood outside the checkpoint and handed out red flowers and pamphlets explaining workers’ rights in Israel.
Also on Thursday, during the afternoon and early evening, thousands of members of the Histadrut Youth Movement rallied in Tel Aviv in celebration of May Day. Along with them were the “Social Block,” members of Hadash, the Communist Party of Israel, Meretz and Standing Together, who rallied in a separate column in which MKs Dov Khenin, Abdullah Abu-Ma’aruf and Ilan Gilon (Meretz) participated.
