Activists in solidarity with the Palestine Liberation Collective, Climáximo and the Lisbon Student Climate Strike today raised the Palestinian flag on the balcony of Lisbon City Hall and painted the building’s façade, the organizations announced.
In a statement released today, the three movements point to the mayor, Carlos Moedas, for his “unconditional support (…) for Israeli genocide and apartheid”.
In the note, the movements also reveal that they have attached a banner reading “Free Palestine” to the façade of the building, which has been painted red.
With this protest action, the activists in solidarity with the three movements intend to denounce what they call Carlos Moedas’ “unconditional support” for “a colonial project that, for more than 75 years, has been based on the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people”.
“The positions and actions of the mayor of CML make him and the municipality complicit in the genocide that the Israeli regime has been carrying out in Palestine for more than two months,” the activists write, adding: “Since October 7 alone, more than 20,000 Palestinian people have been killed by the Zionist army, almost 2 million have been displaced, in a clear continuation of the Nakba (catastrophe, in Arabic).”
As an example of Moedas’ “unconditional support” for the Israeli state, they point to what the mayor wrote on the social network X (formerly Twitter) hours after the bombings began: “Lisbon stands with Israel and the Israeli people, for peace and freedom.” They also recall that on October 10, “the day after Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant described Palestinian people as ‘human animals'” and promised a total siege of Gaza, the mayor joined the vigil in solidarity with the Israeli state promoted by ambassador Dor Shapira.
After the municipality hoisted the Israeli flag at São Jorge Castle, they recall, Carlos Moedas “accused (…) the ‘far left’ of being ‘racist’ and bordering on ‘antisemitism'” and the “left-wing parties of defend[ing] terrorist organizations that behead babies [and] rape women”.
“Two allegations that still have no credible and sustained basis, which only demonstrates how the highest representative of the people of Lisbon is comfortable spreading disinformation and Zionist propaganda,” they insist.
They recall that, in an interview on Sic Noticias, the mayor classified the Israeli state as “a democratic country, a democracy” and recall that the Israeli regime “has been denounced for decades by the Palestinian people as an ‘apartheid’ regime, which establishes different rights in law based on religion or ethnicity”. “This denunciation has been confirmed and amplified by reports from international human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International in 2022 or Human Rights Watch in 2021,” they add.
They also say that “Carlos Moedas’ support for the Zionist regime is not new” and recall that in 2017, when he was a commissioner at the European Union, Moedas said in the European Parliament: “Israel’s successful innovation ecosystem represents an inspiration and a highly relevant example to take into account when designing our EU research and innovation policies.”
“It is well known that this ‘successful innovation system’ is built on the suffering of the Palestinian people, who serve as guinea pigs for a technological industry of arms, espionage, ‘security’ and more,” say the activists, adding: “We are fighting for an end to the occupation of Palestine and the self-determination of its people. We will not stand by and watch this genocide”.
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