The streets of London: January 10, 2009.

On January 10, the war between Israel and Hamas became a global conflict. No longer confined to the Gaza Strip, the fighting spread to cities around the world: what were billed as “anti-war” demonstrations from Los Angeles to Copenhagen and beyond were in fact overtly pro-Hamas demonstrations, and on Saturday, January 10 there was a unprecedented eruption of violence and extremism in dozens of European and American cities, surpassing anything seen at anti-war rallies in recent years:

¤ In London, protesters physically attacked police officers with unrestrained abandon and no fear of arrest;
¤ In Copenhagen, Hamas supporters screamed in public that they want to kill all Jews;
¤ In Calgary, neo-Nazis marched alongside leftists and Muslim extremists, in a grand coalition of anti-Semites;
¤ In Los Angeles, a car full of Israel-supporters barely escaped serious harm when an enraged mob tried to attack them;
¤ In Duisburg (Germany), police broke into a private home and tore down a flag displaying a Star of David, to appease stone-throwing protesters;
¤ In Belfast, an Israel-owned mall kiosk was surrounded and menacingly harrassed;
…to name just a few, as you will see in the reports listed below.

One wonders: Why January 10? Was the aggression somehow coordinated among the various far-left and Islamic groups which organized the protests in each city — an attempt to “Globalize the Intifada“? Or did the simultaneous outbreak of violence and anger in several places occur naturally? We may never know. But for some reason, this particular moment in the seemingly endless battle between Israel and its neighbors has tipped the scales, and the fighting now happens not just in Gaza, but wherever in the world Hamas supporters come face to face with anyone they deem an opponent (whether those be Israel supporters or police officers). The Hamas supporters will claim that the reason for the fresh anger now is that Israel has gone too far this time, allowing too many civilian casualties and unleashing a disproportionately large response. But what seems disproportionate this time around is not the nature of the fighting in Gaza but the extent to which the media buys into the Hamas narrative, and the unchallenged propaganda coming out of the war zone.

In any case, this post is meant to be a comprehensive roundup of the many anti-Israel protests that happened on January 10, 2009. And what makes these reports especially noteworthy is that they were almost all produced by citizen journalists: In just about every city, the mainstream media failed to cover the incidents thoroughly or honestly: As protesters waved Hamas flags and screamed “Long Live Hitler,” bloggers stepped in to do the job the media wouldn’t do.

Below is a list of the outbreaks of protest violence and extremism in each location: A few videos and photos are posted here, but most of the documentation is to be found in the various links provided.

(And if you know of any links I missed, please post them in the comments section.)

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LONDON

January 10: Masked protesters attack hapless and cringing police officers with complete impunity in scene of chaos on the streets of London. (You may want to lower your volume before playing this video due to its loud soundtrack.)

Gateway Pundit published a good overview of the January 10 violent protests in London.

January 10: Azzam Tamimi of the Muslim Association of Britain (and frequent television pundit) screams “Allahu Ackbar! Today, we are all Hamas!…Hamas is our leader to liberation…. Israel has dug its grave!” to wild cheers at a protest in London against the Gaza War. As Harry’s Place noted, “This was a Hamas Rally.” In London.

Photos of the anti-Israel rally that Tamimi was speaking to can be found at this Kodak Gallery page, taken by “J.” Most of those in the audience, it seems, were middle-class Britons — not wild-eyed extremists.

January 3: “Run, you fucking cowards, run!” protesters yelled at fleeing police in this astonishing video showing anti-Israel rioters running rampant in London at a protest the previous week, hurling projectiles and verbal abuse on a woefully unprepared and apparently incompetent police force.

January 3: Later the same day, protesters beseiged the Israeli embassy in London, in what practically amounted to a pitched battle with the police — who were once again defensive and passive.

More raw footage from the January 3 protest can be found here.

After several days of violence and vandalism at various London businesses rumored to be owned by Jews, Harry’s Place began referring to the ongoing outbreak as “Kristallwoche” — a full week of Kristallnachts.

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LOS ANGELES

January 10: Ringo’s Pictures has an extensive report about an anti-Israel protest in Los Angeles, which includes this frightening scene of protesters trying to swarm over a car whose passengers were waving an Israeli flag (starting after the first minute of the video); fortunately, security teams were able to hold the crowd back long enough for the car to escape.

This picture by Ringo from the same protest shows a sign declaring “The world must destroy Isreal.”

And this one dredges up the ol’ “Jews killed God” meme with an added twist: Jesus is equated with the Palestinians.

Another video by Ringo from the same protest shows the police surrounded but successfully fending off a hostile crowd. The no-nonsense riot-control tactics of the Los Angeles police are in stark contrast to the ineffectual “law-enforcement” methods seen in London.

The Political Vindication blog also has a photo essay about the same January 10 Los Angeles protest, as does Joi Weaver.

January 6: At an earlier protest in front of the Israeli consulate in L.A, protesters yelled “Long Live Hitler” and “Put Jews in ovens,” as captured in this video uploaded by “ezpose” to LiveLeak (starting at the 1 minute 30 second mark), and first noted by Gateway Pundit.

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DUISBURG

January 10: The Jewish Odysseus blog has the video and the full story of an incident that was first reported on The Muqata: in a chilling replay of a scene straight out of late-1930s Germany, police in Duisburg broke into a private home and tore down the residents’ Star of David symbol — to appease a braying mob.

Here’s the video, and the original “live-blogging” description of what happened:

Today, 10.000 people demonstrated against Israel here in my hometown Duisburg (Germany) and to express their solidarity with Hamas. So, my girlfriend and me put two Israel flags out of the windows of our flat in the 3rd floor. During the demonstration which went through our street the police broke into our flat and removed the flag of Israel. The statement of the police was to de-escalate the situation, because many youth demonstrators were on the brink of breaking into our apartment house. Before this they threw snowballs, knifes and stones against our windows and the complete building. We both were standing on the other side of the street and were shocked by seeing a police officer standing in our bedroom and opening the window to get the flag. The picture illustrate this situation. The police acquiesced in the demands of the mob.

This German-language TV report briefly shows the same scene of the flag-removal by the police, but from a different angle.

The story was later picked up by The Jerusalem Post.

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COPENHAGEN

January 10: Danish blogger Ted Ekeroth posted this video of an anti-Semitic demonstration in Copenhagen’s main square. As also translated at Gateway Pundit, after giving a Nazi salute at 0:41 one of the protesters says in Danish at 1:10, “We want to kill all the Jews, all the Jews should be slain, they have no right to exist!“, among many other offensive statements in Arabic and Danish.

Here’s another video, apparently taken at the same rally by YouTube user “djgreg7” which shows (starting at 0:32) pro-Palestinian protesters screaming “Hitler! Heil Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!” Later in the video, according to some commenters, one of the protesters yells in Danish, “We must just kill all those Jews, man!”

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CALGARY

January 10: Members of the white supremacist neo-Nazi group Aryan Guard participate in the January 10 Gaza War “peace” protest in Calgary, as captured by photographer Robert Thivierge. An article about the incident in the Calgary Herald notes that the protest’s organizers claimed to not be particularly happy with the presence of the neo-Nazis, but basically did nothing to stop them from joining the march. National Post columnist Kevin Libin notes the incredible hypocrisy of the march’s organizers, who at a similar rally eight days earlier had assaulted, harrassed and then called the police to arrest a single protester who had the gall to carry an Israeli flag; and yet those same organizers claim they had no right or ability to stop the Aryan Guard from participating in the January 10 protest. It’s more than just hypocrisy: it shows that the other anti-Israel protesters tacitly accepted the neo-Nazis in their midst.

As Robert Thivierge points out in his roll-over pop-up notations for this photo, the “S”s in “Terrorist State” were made to look like the Nazi SS insignia; and that the Aryan Guard member on the right is wearing the same insignia on his collar.

In this final picture from the set, the Aryan Guard members are shown participating in the march, completely unopposed.
Thivierge’s full series of photos from the protest shows the rest of the protesters who happily marched with neo-Nazis. Also note that the message displayed by the Aryan Guard (calling Israel a “terrorist state”) was identical to the messages displayed at nearly every similar rally.

Ezra Levant has another picture of them later in the rally — giving a Nazi salute.

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BERLIN

January 10: This six-minute video shows a compilation of scenes from an anti-Semitic rally in Berlin that is all the more shocking considering where it took place. Could anyone have ever imagined such things would be on the agenda again in Berlin, so soon after WWII? The protesters are speaking German, but certain passages clearly stand out: At 1:33, they chant “Death to Israel”; at 2:51, a Muslim protester yells “Juden raus!” (Jews out) — which is of one the exact phrases that the Nazi mobs yelled in the 1930s; at 2:57, the same protester yells “Death to the Jews”; and from 3:38 to 5:00, the Muslims protesters en masse call for the establishment of a global Islamic caliphate — while feckless Germans blithely show their solidarity.

At 3:18 in the video above, a sign goes by in the Berlin crowd which says “Deutschland erwache” (“Germany awake”) above a monetary symbol pointing to a Star of David. A clear photo of the sign can be seen here. “Deutschland erwache,” however, is not just another random phrase — it was a populist slogan frequently used by the Nazi Party in the 1930s and ’40s.

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BELFAST

January 10: The Slugger O’Toole blog captured the moment when anti-Israel protesters surrounded an Israeli-owned kiosk (which sells spa products from the Dead Sea) and screamed “Boycott Israeli goods!” while showering the kiosk with hundreds of leaflets. According to the on-site witness, “The staff of the targeted stall were visibly shaken, one woman and one man reduced to tears.” As well they should be. Because as Harry’s Place notes, one of these same Israeli kiosks in Denmark had been violently attacked eight days earlier by a Palestinian who shot both the employees; the Belfast kiosk employees must have been fearing for their lives.

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SAN FRANCISCO

January 10: As already extensively covered here at zombietime, blatant anti-Semitism was on display at San Francisco’s January 10 “anti-war” rally. This new photo (by a photographer who wishes to remain anonymous) showing the same sign we featured earlier also reveals the little girl carrying a miniature version of her mother’s sign as well.

Another photo from the zombietime report shows a protester calling for all “Zionazis” (code for “Jews who support Israel”) to be violently attacked.

And this video by “juklux” shows San Francisco protesters burning and stomping on Israeli flags.

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WASHINGTON D.C.

January 10: Marooned in Marin posted this photo from their report about the Washington D.C. protest which shows a kaffiyeh-wearing woman holding a sign with an approving citation of a conspiracy theory by KKK Grand Wizard and white nationalist anti-Semite David Duke.

These two additional photos from Marooned in Marin show a woman assaulting the photographer with her sign and another guy “flipping off” the camera and yelling “Fuck you!”

This Ain’t Hell also attended the January 10 D.C. protest and took this photo of the protesters praying toward Mecca.

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NEW YORK

The protests have continued after January 10, as the war between Israel and Hamas escalates.

January 11: For example, Berman Post attended an anti-Israel rally in New York on January 11 and also took a photo of protesters performing an Islamic prayer during the rally.

TigerHawk filed photos from the same event as well, one of many that have taken place in New York over the last two weeks.

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DORTMUND

January 10: This Turkish-language sign (submitted by reader “Flippowitsch”) appeared at a protest in Dortmund, Germany on January 10, and compared Israel and Zionists to the Devil.

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Other Gaza War protests around the world during January, 2009:

OSLO, Jan. 8: The Norwegian capital erupted into riots on January 8 during an anti-Israel demonstration. Videos of the rioting can be seen here and here.

TORONTO, Jan. 2: Near the end of this video recorded on January 2 at a virulent anti-Israel rally in Toronto, a citizen journalist asks a protester why he had said “Hitler didn’t do a good job,” and the protester responds by smashing the photographer in the face. Earlier in the video, starting at 1:14, one of the Palestinians shouts at the Israel supporters, “You are the brothers of pigs! You are the brothers of monkeys!” and so on.

CHICAGO, Jan. 9: Freedom Folks has a report from Chicago about another ANSWER-sponsored rally which featured this sign calling Jews terrorists — just like the similar sign in San Francisco. Also note that “Mossad did 9-11” and “Yes We Can Free Palestine.”

MONTREAL, Jan. 10: In this video (uploaded by “Technion932”) of a rally in Montreal attended by leading Quebec politicians, protesters burn Israeli flags, chant support for Hezbollah, and (starting at 4:05) chant in Arabic, “Palestine is ours; the Jews are our dogs.”

AMSTERDAM, Jan. 3: In this video, a socialist member of the Dutch Parliament calls for intifada while (starting at 1:05) his fellow protesters chant in Dutch, “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas” in the background.

COLUMBUS, Jan. 5: Hourglass1941 has videos from a small protest in Columbus, Ohio in which a professor at Ohio State University defends Hamas and a local anti-Israel activist goes on a bizarre and disturbing rant.

SASKATOON, Jan. 10: Because No One Asked reports on a small protest in snowbound Saskatoon, Canada in which someone carried a sign saying “Israel kills to satisfy YHWH blood lust.”

TEHRAN, Jan. 13: At a government-sponsored anti-Israel rally in Tehran, protesters burned Israeli and US flags — and burned posters of Obama as well. He hasn’t even taken office yet, and Obama is already the new Bush.

CARACAS, Jan. 8: This picture was taken at an anti-Israel rally in Caracas, Venezuela in front of the Israeli consulate on January 8. Notice the Nazi salute given by the protester on the left.

FT. LAUDERDALE, Jan. 13: In this video taken at an anti-Semitic rally in Ft. Lauderdale on January 13, protesters (at around the 2:25 mark) begin chanting offensive Arabic slogans about Jews, and at 3:05 begin giving the Nazi salute. Then at 3:10 they start to yell, “Go, go Hitler! He should have finished you off! He should have finished you off!” Similar antics continue for the full ten-minute video. This film proves that the notorious Ft. Lauderdale rally on December 30 in which a protester shouted “Go back to the oven” and “You need a big oven, that’s what you need,” while other protesters called for Israel to be nuked and exterminated, was no fluke.

MELBOURNE, Jan. 18: As noted by Tim Blair, a protest in Melbourne, Australia featured a young Muslim girl holding up this sign.

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Also see:
Buuuuurrrrning Hot: The Violence of Hamas-Supporting Protestors Worldwide, for another roundup which includes many Gaza War protests not mentioned here.

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If you know of any additional citizen journalist reports from protests in other cities on January 10, please post the links in the comments section below.

A new report up at zombietime looks at a Gaza War protest and anti-Israel rally that played out in San Francisco on January 9, 2009.

Here are a few pictures to whet your appetite:

If you would like to comment on this event, you may do so here.

Yesterday I found this mysterious button on the street in Oakland:

“Allah Is Good. Allah Is Gay,” it says.

Hmmmmm. Who made this button, and for what purpose? And who would dare wear it in public? Are there out-of-the-closet gay Muslim activists in Oakland?

For nearly every day of the last week, San Francisco has seen street protests about the fighting in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. Hundreds of Palestinians, as well as left-wing activists organized by ANSWER, have marched and chanted in and around downtown San Francisco starting on December 30, and continuing (with a break on New Year’s Day) every day since, with no end in sight.

I have been unable to attend and document these protests in person, but KTVU Channel 2 filmed the protest on January 2, 2009 and made some of the raw video available on its site. Because the KTVU video page does not display or load properly on many computers, I have downloaded the raw video and, after editing out a section at the beginning where not much happens, uploaded it to YouTube so more people can get a flavor of what these protests are like.

Here is the YouTube version of the KTVU video of the January 2 protest:

Note in particular the moment at the 0.22 mark in the video when the Palestinian protesters reach across the barricades to attack the five pro-Israel protesters, and have to be restrained by police. At the end, one of the pro-Israel protesters, who were vastly outnumbered, declined to be interviewed by the cameraman, saying, “I’m a little spooked.” After watching this video, I think we’re all a little spooked! It’s as if the battle in Gaza has come to San Francisco.

If you want to watch the full five-minute video, you can see it either here on the KTVU site, or (if that doesn’t work) here directly on its own page (which may display more easily for most users).

This full KTVU video shows how, after this incident, the police were forced to escort the pro-Israel protesters inside a building — to keep them safe from the Palestinian protesters, who could not be controlled.

(Thanks to Joo-Liz and Eclectic Infidel for technical help with this video.)

Meanwhile, at an earlier San Francisco Gaza protest on December 30, the Palestinian protesters (according to this post at the “At the Back of the Hill” blog) chanted the following slogans in Arabic:

“Itbach al Yahud” (slaughter the Jews)
“Falastin balad’na w’al Yahud qalab’na” (Palestine is our land and the Jews are our dogs)
“ba ruh, ba dam, nafdeek ya Falastin” (with our soul, with our blood, we will cleanse you oh Palestine),
“al mawt al Yahud” (death to the Jews),
“Khaybar Khaybar ya Yahud, jaish-Muhammad saya’ud” (Khaybar Khaybar oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return).

At the Back of the Hill noted,

While the Arabs screamed their desire to exterminate Jews, the English-monolingualists simply stood there happily smiling their approbation.