Greeks march in Athens on 76th anniversary of Nakba, demanding free Palestine

By Ahmet Gencturk

ATHENS (AA) – Marking the 76th anniversary of Nakba (Great Catastrophe), people marched on Wednesday evening in Athens demanding a free Palestine.

After gathering at Eleftherias Park in central Athens, over a thousand protesters, including activists, women, left-wing parties and youth organizations as well as Palestinians, marched to the Israeli Embassy with banners expressing solidarity with Palestine.

They condemned the relentless Israeli attacks on Gaza, which have so far killed over 35,000 people, including women and children.

Speaking to Anadolu, Mohammed al-Sayyed, president of the Palestinian Community in Greece, stressed that the Nakba symbolizes one of the most painful chapters of Palestinian history.

“We, Palestinians, are taught about it from a very early period of our lives and build a consciousness on it,” he said.

Also speaking to Anadolu, Layla Jaleed, another protester, remarked that her family was displaced from its ancestral home in Palestine in 1948 when she was only two years old.

“We then became refugees in Lebanon, where we were eventually expelled when Israel attacked Lebanon in the early 1980s,” she recalled.

“My children were born here, in Greece, where we moved after being expelled from Lebanon. But they don’t have a homeland. We have no homeland, no state,” Jaleed said.