Thousands Of People Held A Huge Protest For Gaza On Both Land And Sea During The Venice Film Festival
About 700 people boarded ferries and sailed around Venice’s Lido island, where the festival is held, waving Palestinian flags and holding banners that read “Stop the Genocide” and “Free, Free Palestine.”
Thousands of people took part in a massive protest to support Gaza at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, Aug. 30.
About 700 people boarded ferries and sailed around Venice’s Lido island, where the festival is held, waving Palestinian flags and holding banners that read “Stop the Genocide” and “Free, Free Palestine.”
The ferry protests took place a day before the Global Sumud Flotilla, a fleet of boats from all around the world carrying thousands of people and humanitarian aid, was due to set sail for Gaza to break Israel's siege on the strip and demand Israel end its genocide.
On land, thousands more marched through the city in one of the biggest Gaza protests to take place at a major film festival, according to Variety.
The actions were led by Venice4Palestine, a coalition of Italian and international activists, who demanded the festival take "a clear and unambiguous stand [in] condemning the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing across Palestine carried out by the Israeli government and army.”
“The Venice Film Festival must not remain an event isolated from reality, but rather become a space to denounce the genocide being carried out by Israel, the complicity of Western governments, and to offer concrete support to the Palestinian people,” the organizers said in a statement.
Organizers also demanded that the festival disinvite actors that had publicly shown their support for Israel, including Israel actress Gal Gadot and Scottish actor Gerard Butler.
Gadot was later confirmed not to be attending the festival.
“We have been asked to turn down invitations to artists; we will not do that. If they want to be at the festival, they will be here," the festival's director Alberto Barbera said.
"On the other hand, we have never hesitated to clearly declare our huge sadness and suffering vis-à-vis what is happening in Gaza and Palestine. The death of civilians and especially of children, who are victims, the collateral damage of a war which nobody has been able to terminate yet," he added.
This year, the film festival will feature a film about Gaza called "The Voice of Hind Rajab," recounting the story of the five-year-old Palestinian girl who was shot 355 times and killed by Israeli forces as she was trying to flee Gaza with her family.
Kassy Cho
Cherry Mohamed
Flavie Chen
