Yasser Musa Leads Anti-Israeli Protest

The state of Israel is celebrating seventy years and to mark that occasion, Alon Levi, their Deputy Chief of Staff, at their embassy in Mexico will be in Belize. Part of the visit includes the opening of a course involving the Police Department. Like many other countries, Belize has diplomatic relations with Israel and has traditionally supported the cause of the Palestinians maintaining that Israel and Palestine are two separate, independent states living side by side.  The previous administration took it further saying they are two separate states living side by side with Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. Earlier this year, there was loud protestation when the U.S. and Guatemala moved their embassies to Jerusalem. Thereafter, the Belize government recently went on to condemn the killing of Palestinians following the transfer of embassies. The Israelis are also known to be cozy with Guatemala and have significant business interests there. This brings us to the point of a protest planned here in Belize by a group of artists when the Israeli diplomat meets with the police next Tuesday at the Police Academy in Belmopan.  Yasser Musa spoke of the protest to News Five.

Yasser Musa

Yasser Musa, Protest Organizer

“A couple days ago, a group of artists, writers, poets, we got together and held a discussion because we had received an invitation, not sent to us, but we had seen an invitation where the Israeli consul to Belize sent to various officials, parliamentarians, diplomats, the who’s who in the zoo, as they’d say and that invitation is very disturbing.  Why?  Two things about that invitation: one, it is asking the persons invited to come to a celebration of the nation-state of Israel, the seventieth anniversary of the nation-state, the seventieth anniversary celebration.  We find this, as artists, disturbing because that same country has been oppressing the Palestinian people of which Belize has relations with.  So that’s one point, the second point is, on that same invitation they are inviting the officials to the inauguration of a course, a training course called Police and Community which means that the Israelis are going to be training our police department personnel.  We don’t know the details of that but we find that very alarming because for one, they are doing it on our own police academy grounds and for, this is the part that’s disturbing: we know the record that Israel has with Guatemala.  They are strong allies; actually Guatemala is only one of two countries on this earth that has decided to move its embassy to Jerusalem.  But that is not the issue, the issue is that Guatemala has received decades of training for their armed forces from Israel, training, as well as buying military hardware and now they are coming at us.  To me this is unacceptable.  The writers and the artists in our group find this totally unacceptable, so on June 26^th, the day when they are having this event in Belmopan we are calling on our Belizean brothers and sisters to join us because we will, we have drafted a letter and we will present this letter to the Office of the Prime Minister.  If he’s there we will happily present it to him, to the office of the Foreign Minister and to the National Assembly, the clerk, so that he can give each parliamentarian a copy of this letter and then we will proceed over to the police academy training area to voice our concern about this matter.”