By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

Below is the text and video of the passionate call for justice and accountability made by Palestinian author and journalist Dr. Ramzy Baroud at the Seattle rally for Gaza on October 5.

The rally marked the first anniversary of the Gaza war and genocide, which killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in the besieged Strip.

Full Text:

One year ago, we witnessed a tragedy that is unlike any other.

We experience a collective pain that cannot be expressed in mere words.

We watched our loved ones perish before our own eyes.

They called on us to help. They pleaded, shouted, or cried in their dying breaths.

But we could do nothing.

We saw entire families mutilated, lying on top of one another, in their dozens, in their hundreds inside hospitals, mosques and churches.

And, still, we could do nothing.

We saw mingled bodies of little children inside the very United Nations schools, to which they had escaped, seeking safety from the holocaust underway in their cities, refugee camps and neighborhoods.

And we could do nothing.

Instead, we began counting ..

A Hundred Palestinians were killed in Gaza.

A thousand Palestinians killed in Gaza.

Ten thousand killed.

42 thousands.

And now, the Lancet medical journal is telling us, that the number will be much higher.

186 thousand would be killed, they say. But that is if the slaughter ended in July.

Now, we are in October, yet the genocide continues.

The American weapons, of which you, you and you and I are paying for, keep flying to Israel.

Our lethal weapons are transported in every possible way, all with the hope that Israel may sustain its killing machine in Gaza, and now in Lebanon, for another day or another year.

Washington tells us that Israel has the right to defend itself, even if the price of this ‘right’ is the extermination of a whole nation.

They say that Israel is a democracy, and somehow democracies, like our own, are entitled by some strange wisdom to carry out genocides against native people, anywhere, anytime.

We have done it; why cannot Israel?

But what about our people’s rights to defend themselves?

Aren’t we entitled to freedom, safety, and security like everyone else?

How about our right to know that our children will wake up in the morning alive, have a school to go to, a mosque or a church to pray at, loving parents to hold them and to reassure them that their love is infinite and will last a lifetime.

But here we are, we continue the count:

50 killed in Khan Yunis.

94 in Rafah

33 in Gaza City.

274 in Nuseirat.

And now, thousands in Lebanon, who are being killed in the exact same way, by the same criminals, by the same weapon supplier, and for the exact same reason.

One year ago, we also witnessed courage, like no other. A power of a people that is unmatched in history, ancient or modern.

A year ago, we watched as a nation reanimated itself, from underneath the rubble of their homes, under a siege, under a military occupation, and under a system of racist apartheid, rising in unison to lead us, to lead this broken world in a march of freedom, unlike any other

Not only their freedom, but ours as well.

One year ago, we witnessed the birth of a miracle, a miracle called Gaza, where a people never die no matter the firepower or the Israeli US-supplied bunker busters.

And where the shouts of freedom, and justice can never be buried under the weight of shattered concrete.

And where the resistance can never end, even when the fighter is martyred.

Because – sisters, brothers, comrades – it turned out that resistance is not about guns and bullets.

Resistance is about our collective courage. Resistance is bout heart. It’s about faith. It’s about hope.

So please join our popular resistance. Continue to march.

Stay on the front line of this new resistance. Until Palestine is free. Until all of us are free.

FREE FREE PALESTINE. FREE FREE PALESTINE.