Skokie Illinois-style, pro-Hamas bike ride set to run through neighborhoods with high amounts of Jewish residents
Working people, allies of Jewish people, those who oppose Jew hatred, all defenders of Israel's right to exist: countermobilize!
Countermobilize! Let these groups know that McAllen and the Rio Grande Valley stands with Israel, our Jewish community and Jews all around the world, and truly cares about the future of Palestinians, which means opposing Hamas — Palestine’s true oppressors!
Defend Israel’s right to exist! Call for cease-fire is support for Hamas!
Food Not Bombs RGV and Red Star Tx (front groups for the Islamist/fascist Hamas) announced Thursday on social media that they would be biking from Archer Park to Bill Schupp Park Sunday evening. The route, which presumably will be (was actually) Main St., cuts through several of McAllen’s middle-class subdivisions, many of which are home to McAllen’s Jewish community, a fact well-known by longtime McAllen and Rio Grande Valley residents. The bike ride’s final destination was only announced Thursday, Nov. 2, having been hitherto left to be determined for a later date. The two groups organized a rally last Sunday at Archer Park, attended by about 70. Parroting Hamas’ political objectives, the rally called for an Israeli ceasefire while amazingly also calling for the destruction of Israel — in other words, “surrender and then kill yourself.” Such are the demands of a cult of death like Hamas, which says it loves death more than we love life, as well as their suicidal sympathizers here at home.
Masked and unmasked goons, some with violent histories, patrolled the rally last Sunday for those opposed to Hamas, in order to harass and intimidate them. I was one of those targets.
The event included, of course, well known calls for driving of Jews out of the Middle East alongside calls for the destruction of Israel. A drag show was held after the rally, making this bike-ride the third of events organized “in solidarity” with the terrorist organization that controls Gaza, under the guise of solidarity with Palestinians, whose real oppressors are those which these groups support. (The Israeli Defense Forces will liberate the Palestinian people of this cancer that is Hamas, once and for all.)
The bike-ride, which calls for an Israeli “ceasefire” but makes no demands of Hamas to release hostages, comes at a time when the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hasan Nasrallah, announced on Friday, before a hysterical crowd of supporters, that his forces joined the war against Israel on Oct. 8., congratulating and praising the Nazi-style stormtroopers, which he described as “martyrs,” who sadistically slaughtered over a thousand Jews in southern Israel and several workers from other countries, particularly underdeveloped west and southern Asian countries like Thailand.
Iran’s President, Hassan Rouhani, said in an interview on the same day as Nasrallah’s speech that the Islamic Republic was prepared to join the war against Israel, making genocidal threats, as well as also congratulating the Nazi-style pogrom of Oct. 7. The Iranian rulers declare the destruction of Israel as one of their central aims, if not the central aim. They promise to use nuclear weapons against Jews. They armed and trained Hamas in all aspects leading up to Oct. 7.
Despite claiming to be assembled “peacefully,” these groups used goons to try to intimidate me into leaving last Sunday. While they were careful to not start a physical altercation, they certainly attempted to bait me into one, and suggested things might get violent if I didn’t leave.
Meanwhile, the McAllen Police Department was nowhere to be found. They had zero patrol vehicles at Archer Park last Sunday. None even patrolled the area. McAllen PD allowed these goons to take over, for an evening. Will McAllen PD allow these goons and bands of antisemites run amok through central McAllen, waving their Palestinian flags and surreptitiously calling for the murder of more Jews, without letting them know that McAllen is watching?
We cannot rely on the police to protect our rights to counter-assembly and use free speech to counter their hate speech. Police tend to side with the fascists and protect their rights, while turning a blind eye when they violate ours.
In 1977, when Nazi members of the American National Socialist Party wanted to organize a rally in Skokie, Illinois, which was known to be a thriving community and home to a large majority of Jewish immigrants who fled the Nazi terror after World War II, the community came out in their masses to overrun and counter-demonstrate the neo-Nazis who had deliberately targeted Skokie because of its demographics.
Whether they could hold their rally became a national controversy, ultimately being decided by the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the Nazis who were legally defended by the American Civil Liberties Union, without even electing to hear opening arguments. The ACLU itself went through a lot of inner turmoil, as many of its members and supporters were Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, resulting in the loss of 15 percent of its membership for its decision to take the case. However, given the massive and overwhelming response from not just Jews in Skokie but their non-Jewish allies as well, the Nazis moved their demonstration to Chicago.
In the 1930s, when supporters of Hitler rallied across the United States, it was counter-mobilizations by workers and people of good will that showed them that there was resistance to their hateful ideology, that it was strong, and prepared to fight back. These are the kinds of counter-mobilizations that are needed at this time, to counter the calls for the destruction of Israel (which are nothing but surreptitious calls to drive Jews out of the Middle East), here in McAllen and across the world.
jonathansalinasmusic@gmail.com