In the second action of the 'Thirty Days Against Checkpoints' campaign a youth band will perform the popular Russian folk song 'Katyusha' at Huwwara checkpoint on Wednesday 24th of January at 12 noon. In the second action of the 'Thirty Days Against Checkpoints' campaign a youth band will perform the popular Russian folk song 'Katyusha' at Huwwara checkpoint on Wednesday 24th of January at 12 noon.
The first action was organized on Sunday January the 14th, when some 100 Palestinian and international peace activists held a peaceful protest at Huwwara checkpoint near Nablus in the northern part of the West Bank, dressing like Native Americans to send a message to the visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
As part of the campaign 'Thirty Days Against Checkpoints', protesters gathered at the Hawwara checkpoint south of Nablus at about 11 a.m. and held up signs in English denouncing the military roadblocks across the West Bank. The protest was originally organized by a peace group calling itself “Palestinians for Peace, Dialogue and Equality”. The peaceful protesters slammed the Israeli policies of closures and the difficulties that checkpoints impose on the Palestinians on daily basis.
'Katyusha', a popular Soviet Second World War love song, was composed and written by two Russian Jewish musicians. The song was popular among Russian Jews who settled in Israel after the Holocaust in the late 1940s and 50s as it reminded them of their homeland.
With their performance of 'Katyusha' the band draws parallels between the persecution and ghettoization suffered by Jews in Eastern Europe under the Nazi regime and the current suffering of Palestinians, the organizers stated in a press release that IMEMC received a copy of.
