Barry Saks

I regularly in the mornings walk a little more than two miles every other day. Over the many years I’ve been walking in Long Beach, I’ve traveled many different paths, however, lately I’ve been walking south from Third Street on the Promenade toward Ocean Boulevard. I especially like walking down the Promenade because of all the trees and green growth generally on both sides of it and because for some unexplained reason, it reminds me of Copenhagen, Denmark.  At Ocean I turn left toward Alamitos Avenue. Even on a cold winter morning some times the sun will pierce through the clouds and I can feel the sun’s rays on my shoulders.

While I walk regularly, I irregularly take online journalism classes. My latest is a mobile journalism class, which relies heavily on photography, videography and social media skills all of which I would characterize myself as woefully lacking. The upshot is I’m learning by doing, like so many other things we do in life; so, be patient with me. A few days back, I used me iPhone SE camera to shoot this view near the corner of Alamitos Ave. and Ocean Blvd., looking southeast toward the ocean.

About 100 people, who were supporters of Palestinian rights and who were mostly of college age, on Friday, Feb. 3, stood outside the Consulate General of Israel, at 11766 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, to protest the recent killing of 10 Palestinians in the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank by the Israeli Defense Forces.

The Palestinian Youth Movement called the protest and it was supported by Stop LAPD Spying, If Not Now, Jewish Voice for Peace-LA and other organizations in Southern California.

One protester was Mark Friedman. Friedman said, “I was born Jewish. I am an atheist. I have aways supported the Palestinian movement. I’m an active member of many unions, (I’ve) been in the teachers’ union, machinists’ union.”

Many of the protesters wore a keffiyeh, which means scarf in Arabic, others carried Palestinian flags and many carried signs, with the JVP-LA logo and which read, “Palestinians Should Be Free.

A speaker from Stop LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) Spying Coalition said, “We affirm Palestinians’ right to resist and defend themselves and their land however they see fit…. (W)e see our struggle against police surveillance as intimately tied to the Palestinian struggle against Zionist colonization….Much of our work is doing collective research, using public records requests…and in the research we found records…(that) two very prominent Zionist organizations here in LA have repeatedly coordinated directly with LAPD to spy on Palestinian anti-Zionists protests. This includes protests led by the Palestinian Youth Movement, Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now.”

In response to the attack on Jenin by the Israeli Defense Forces, JVP national issued a press release that, in part, said, “On Thursday, the Israeli military launched an attack that killed ten Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp. In response, earlier today, there was a lethal attack near a synagogue in a settlement outside of Jerusalem by a Palestinian, where seven Jewish Israelis were killed. Already in 2023, the Israeli army has killed almost 30 Palestinians. This is the inevitable, horrifying, outcome of decades of Israeli apartheid. 

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Feb. 3, 2023 Outside Israeli Consulate