Fascists, Stalinists Rally for Hamas in Downtown McAllen
Around 75 gathered at Archer Park Sunday to advance Hamas' two main political objectives: one, an Israeli ceasefire and two, the destruction of Israel.
Local activists — John Michael Torres, Amanda Elise Salas, Cindy Candia, Cristina “Kristy Gee” Gaytan, Eduardo “Pharr from Heaven” Martinez, Omar Casas, state Green Party candidate Robin Vargas, to name a few — in tandem with Muslim organizations and student groups took part in a rally Sunday hosted by Food Not Bombs RGV and Red Star TX in McAllen, which advanced the political and military aims of Hamas, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah and the Islamist governments of Bashar al Assad in Syria and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey.
As I walked to the middle of Archer Park, local fascist activist Fabian Vasquez, approached me. He was awaiting my arrival, as I’d observed him standing in a lookout posture before he noticed me approaching. Two days before, after my article’s publishing, Vasquez had said to me, “I’ll see you Sunday,” while harassing me as I walked down Kuhn St., near the university in Edinburg Friday evening, hurling insults at me and admitting to sending me a Facebook message that read, “You’re such a piece of shit.” Vasquez, who has attended UTRGV, had driven by me just moments earlier in a white Chevy sedan. He honked, stopped his vehicle and, with his windows down, flipped me off. Vasquez has a reputation for being violent and unhinged. His ex best friend, Lizzie Lewis, told me that Vasquez once told her he had murdered somebody on behalf of a drug cartel. Being a hired goon for a cartel and then for an Islamist group seems like a logical trajectory.
Come Sunday, I told him I didn’t want to converse, to leave me alone. He continued harassing me as I walked in one direction and as he walked in the other, towards event-organizers congregated near the stage. A few moments later, Vasquez approached again, informing me that if I didn’t leave, they’d call the police. I repeated I wouldn’t engage with him. Angrily storming back to his handlers, an attendee sitting nearby asked while chuckling, “Well, you’re such a badass, aren’t you?”
Hmm, a “piece of shit” or a “badass”? You decide, dear reader.
I carried on and walked towards a group of camera people I thought might be reporters to hand them a question-sheet I’d published earlier that day, containing critical inquiries that the event’s organizers had not been asked by the press. During the discussion with the camera people, who may’ve lied to me about being with the press, a fully masked male approached me saying, “Sup, Jonathan?”
When I asked who are you? He replied, “Just a buddy.” I said don’t talk to me and walked away. As I did so, he replied, “You shouldn’t be here... You’re allowed to stay, just keep your distance.” At this point, around 5:45 p.m., the rally had not started, having advertised starting at 5 p.m. I observed event organizer, Mariam El Haj, leader and founder of Food Not Bombs RGV (a pro Hamas outfit), making a phone call, scantily looking in my direction, as were several others near her. My presence was felt.
Turns out li’l ole me had held up the Hamas rally for nearly an hour: they waited for me to arrive in order to then wait for me to leave. Guest of dishonor? In any case, I sincerely thank Food Not Bombs RGV and Red Star TX for not starting until I arrived. I was worried I might miss something, having arrived at the event 30 minutes late.
The police didn’t show up. So, they were forced to start the rally with me in attendance, as I leisurely sat back on a bench while the sun set. They wrongly calculated that they could scare me into leaving. The three stooge-goons assigned to me would have their backs turned to the rally, in order to patrol and harass me.
“There is no excuse for genocide,” said the young male speaker with the tie-dye shirt in the first photo gallery above. While he opened the event, he did not introduce himself, although he did imply at the end of his speech that he was with Red Star TX, referring to El Haj (who he introduced) as his “co-host.”
According to KVEO Ch. 5, the shady “nonprofit” which retweets nothing but Jew hating propaganda and publicly lists none of its board members, is based in Austin. Bringing in goons from out of town (as I suspect the masked young man, as well as the chubby guy with red sunglasses, as well as tie-dye kid, are, given I didn’t recognize them) reflect the fascist Nation of Islam’s tactics.
In the Netflix series about Malcolm X’s death, it was revealed that the organization to which he once belonged tasked “The Fruit of Islam” goons from a neighboring New Jersey mosque to assassinate him, under the reasoning that given their distant residence, they could avoid detection by the New Yorkers there to protect Malcolm the night he was killed at The Audobon ballroom in the Bronx February 1965.
“There is no excuse for Israel’s apartheid state,” tie-dye boy went on. “We are here to declare to our government, our representatives and the world, that we as Americans stand with Palestine and stand against the oppression our government perpetuates and the weapons our government sends, our tax dollars. We are here to declare loudly, and clearly, that we are not okay with this.
“We are not okay with genocide. We are not okay with even one more child in Gaza being a victim of a bomb. We are here to stand against the United States’ censorship of our efforts to resist in solidarity with Palestine. From New York, where police brutally attacked protestors, to Turkey, we stand with not just Palestine but Palestinians across the world and the diaspora facing oppression and violence.
“So, thank you for coming out today, to let our representatives know, to let Monica de la Cruz, to let Vicente Gonzalez, to let Joe Biden know that we will not stay silent as they perpetuate the genocide. We will not stay silent as he lies about the number of deaths coming out. I see the Palestinian Health Ministry numbers when it comes to the dead. Trust the Palestinian Health Ministry and the count of their loss!”
(The “Palestinian Health Ministry” is run and controlled by Hamas in the Gaza strip, tie-dye boy forgot to mention.)
El Haj spoke next.
“This month is the largest scale of violence Palestine has witnessed since the Great Nakba of 1948,” El Haj said. “Propaganda attempted to and still attempts to capture the hearts and minds of the West, while an ongoing genocide is wholly justified… President Joe Biden has the blood of thousands of Palestinians on his hands.”
Chants of “Free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” echoed throughout and in between speakers, two favorite dog-whistles of Islamists which call for the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel.
A woman in a burka, speaking Spanish, said she was a “Mexican Muslim.” She gave an emotional speech about the children dying in Gaza and made a bizarre ecumenical, localist appeal to Christians, saying Muslims also believe in Christ and the Virgin Mary. Indeed, both non-prophets, Mohammad and Jesus, were false prophets, frauds, raving lunatics, as the Jews correctly concluded. This is one of the many reasons why Jews have been historically hated by both members of the “religion of unconditional love” (Christianity) and the “religion of unconditional peace” (Islam).
Hence, this was a subliminal antisemitic ecumenical appeal. Translation: “We both have good reasons to dislike the Jews. There’s more that unites us!”
A male speaker from Mexico also spoke and made similar points.
Up next was heartbreaking because somebody I’ve respected greatly, Jennifer Harbury, spoke in agreement that Israel is committing a genocide against Gazans. Jennifer, who I know personally, have interviewed several times and worked with closely in my journalism career, referenced her family history, in which a grandparent of hers perished in the Holocaust.
She also referenced her deceased husband, a Guatemalan guerilla who was tortured and killed by the government army in the early 1990s with the aid the U.S., during the end of Guatemala’s 36-year-long civil war.
Holding a placard reading, “Stop the genocide”, Jennifer referenced these two points and the support of atrocities by the U.S. in Central America, arguing that as a descendent of a victim of Hitler’s endgültige Lösung, Jewish people have a special duty to assure genocide doesn’t happen to anyone else.
“You can’t let a tiny strip of land be closed off from all health, all food, all gasoline, all everything. It’s slaughter. You can’t tell people ‘Go south’ and then bomb the road south,” Harbury said. “I don’t know how the message got distorted to, ‘It happened to us [referring to the Holocaust] so we can get away with doing it to someone else.’ Wrong! We have to live much higher than this.”
After Jennifer concluded her speech, I felt sick, especially when as she walked off stage, the crowd repeatedly chanted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “Viva, viva, Palestina!” But I’ll have more on Jennifer later…
For now, this rally at Archer Park Sunday advanced Hamas’ military and political objectives, while only using the word “genocide” to describe the actions of the Jews.
jonathansalinas@substack.com