[Video] The youth of the youth on the streets of Morocco

We publish this impressive video of a school students demo against the Israeli imperialist aggression in Gaza. It illustrates well the sea change in the consciousness of young people in the Arab world, in Morocco in particular. Hundreds of demos like this one spread across Morocco during the war against Gaza (see earlier report on this site).

The school students of Jebbha, a small fishing village on the edge of the Northern mountains of Morocco, tried many times since the beginning of the imperialist attack of Israel to demonstrate in the streets of their village. In vain! Every time they tried, the police forces surrounded the school making it impossible for them to leave the building for a demo. Some of the organizers have even been threatened with imprisonment. But young people are imaginative and thanks to subterfuge they succeeded after a few days to mislead the police vigilance. While the headmaster tried to keep the school students inside the building a young worker with an acetylene torch opened the door and let them out!

This was literally the first demonstration ever in the history of the village. With typical humour the organizers say that this was the first demo in Jebbha since the ‘big bang'! Also very impressive was the presence of the young girls side by side with the boys on the demonstration. You hear them singing at the back and in the last part of the video. This is, or used to be, a very conservative village where young girls are not supposed to be seen on the streets of the village. Out of a total population of two thousand, the demonstration brought together six hundred mainly young people (boys and girls). Their parents were very proud of them.

To help our non-Arabic readers to understand the video we have translated the introductory text and some of the slogans chanted.

The introductory text which appears on the Palestinian banner at the beginning of the video reads as follows.

1. The school students of the Lycée El Qadi Ayad of Jebha came out of their school on Monday 05/01/2009, to protest against the Zionist massacres in Gaza.

2. The school students chanted slogans condemning and denouncing the continued Zionist aggression against the Gaza strip since last Saturday.

3. They also denounced the silence of the Arab regimes who were just acting as spectators in the face of the daily raids of the Israeli enemy.

4. The population of Jebbha reacted with sympathy to the school students' demo which had invaded the streets of Jebbha.

Some of the slogans chanted were: ‘Gaza dies and the Arabs keep silent', ‘The Arab regimes are zeros, the Moroccan government is a zero', ‘Enough blood, enough blood, enough killing of innocent people', ‘Oh regimes of defeat, let the people speak', ‘Shame, Palestine is in danger', ‘Ala dal ouna ala dal ouna (untranslatable part of a Palestinian song), the Arab leaders have betrayed us', ‘ Oh martyr, struggle, victory is coming, victory is near'.

One of the banners carries the following message: "The school students of Jebbha say no the siege, no to the bombing and the occupation of Gaza."