WATCH: Israelis launch world protest day with solidarity demo on Syrian border

Dimi Reider By Dimi Reider October 15, 2011 | Edit

(Update – the video is now fully subtitled.)

Today is October 15 – the day slated by dozens of local social justice and democracy movements to try and hold a worldwide, truly global demonstration. Protests are taking place in an astonishing 951 cities in 85 countries, including, obviously, New York, Tel Aviv, Cairo, London. But the most heart-warming images so far today come from the small, crisis-stricken town of Kiryat Shmona.

Kiryat Shmona, Israel’s northernmost city, is effectively a frontier town, usually in the news either as a habitual target for Hezbollah rockets or for its rather dismal socio-economic state; and it also boasts one of the most steadfast and vocal outposts of the J14 social justice movement, holding on to its tents even as protest camps around the country were evicted or forced to regroup. Early (very early) this morning, the Kiryat Shmona activists decided to launch their global protest day by expressing solidarity with the Syrian protesters. They marked sunrise on the Syria-Israel border, released balloons with messages of support into Syria, and have just uploaded the video below.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMesHgaND64[/youtube]

I want to highlight the very first Hebrew statement made by one of the activists in the film:

“We want our regimes to stop putting barriers between us, because we want to link up with our brothers and sisters in Syria, and finally achieve peace and justice for the region.”

Dimi Reider

Dimi (Dmitry) Reider is an Israeli journalist.  His work has appeared in The New York Review of Books,  The New York Times,The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Haaretz,  Jerusalem Post, and  Index on Censorship. "Dimi's Notes" has been quoted and referenced by the following publications:

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