DEARBORN — Hundreds of demonstrators commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Nakba of Palestine, calling for freedom and justice for the Palestinian people and stopping the U.S. support for Israel, as well as condemning the recent Israeli attacks on the Palestinian people in Gaza.

The demonstrators, who carried out a sit-in protest in front of the old Dearborn City Hall on Michigan Ave. last Sunday, carried Palestinian flags and banners that read “Stop killing Palestinians”, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” and “Stop apartheid policies.” Others raised photos of longtime Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqa, who has been in Israeli prisons for 38 years and whom the occupation authorities refuse to release, despite his incurable disease, along with other health problems, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS).

The demonstration was marked by the participation of White and Black American activists, as well as Jewish activists who support the establishment of a Palestinian State and a permanent peace between Arabs and Israelis in the Middle East.

Demonstrators in Dearborn commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Nakba of Palestine

On May 10, in conjunction with the Israeli bombing of residential areas in the Gaza Strip, U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib reintroduced a draft resolution calling for an end to the Israeli attacks on the Palestinian people, as well as for the U.S. to officially recognizes the Palestinian Nakba that resulted in the destruction of 400 Palestinian towns and villages and the displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians in 1948.

The resolution called on members of the U.S. Congress to condemn all “manifestations of the ongoing Nakba in Palestine”, including the Israeli theft of Palestinian lands and their continued occupation and settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as it continues displacing Palestinians by demolishing their homes and confiscating their lands, as well as the daily brutality and violence employed by the Israeli occupation army and the Israeli armed settlers against Palestinian civilians.

The resolution also called for banning the use of American weapons to destroy Palestinian homes and confiscate their lands and prohibiting the construction of government buildings on Palestinian confiscated lands.

The resolution was co-sponsored by Representatives Betty McCollum, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamal Bowman and Corey Bush. They all signed the copy submitted by Tlaib last year, which chronicles the history of the mass expulsion of millions of Palestinians and their displacement in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank and neighboring countries, such as Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria.

On April 25, Tlaib voted against a semi-unanimous resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives to “celebrate the founding of Israel” on May 15, 1948, which coincides with the Palestinian Nakba.

This month also marks the anniversary of the killing of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot dead by an Israeli sniper while she was covering an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp last May. Multiple investigations have refuted the Israeli allegations about the killing of the journalist, who also held American citizenship, as the investigations showed that the killing of Abu Akleh was intentional and premeditated.