The transnational, independent, and grassroots movement of Palestinian and Arab youth, known as the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) organized a number of protests and demonstrations in multiple cities across North America in order to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba.

This year, the movement chose to unify their multi-city demonstrations under the slogan "Wherever we are, the Resistance lives" highlighting the unwavering commitment of Palestinian people, and anyone that stands in solidarity with them, to the liberation of Palestine. 

PYM invited people across North America to join their protests commemorating the 75th year of the Nakba, in order to "send a clear message to the Zionist entity and its colonial allies: Wherever we are, generation after generation, we will continue to confront Zionism until total liberation."

The demonstrations took place in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, Vancouver, Washington, New York, Michigan, Boston, Cleveland, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Orange County.

Atlanta, Houston, & Dallas: pic.twitter.com/k3ohoNRxhi

— Palestinian Youth Movement (@palyouthmvmt) May 11, 2023

In Bay Area, San Francisco, demonstrators gathered and burned an Israeli flag while chanting in Arabic "Colonizer leave, Palestine is Free". In Washington D.C people chanted "Resistance is justified when people are occupied."

In Toronto, slogans were similar as the people collectively promised martyrs that the Palestinian people will continue to tread their path, adding that they are willing to sacrifice their lives and souls for Palestine, and for the liberation of Palestinian prisoners.

The Palestinian Youth Movement (#PYM) organized a series of demonstrations in the #US and #Canada, and participated in others in #Europe, to commemorate the 75th year of the #Nakba "to send a clear message to the Zionist entity and its colonial allies", according to their social… pic.twitter.com/YC1GAnuyBt

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) May 15, 2023

This year's Nakba Day coincided with the victory of Operation Avenging the Free battle. Yara Shoufani, one of the PYM organizers, told Al Mayadeen, on this occasion "we commemorate not only 75 years of dispossession, but over 75 years of resistance," reaffirming that the "Palestinian resistance to Zionist settlement and Western imperialism began before 1948, and continues today."

Shoufani stressed that "our resistance is not spontaneous, but it is organized and comes through an understanding of our conditions and the mass support of our [Palestinian] people."

The Palestinian struggle will live on

In their official and unified statement, PYM reiterated their message saying "Zionists once said that the older generation of Palestinians would die, and that the young would forget," but "We are proof that the young not only continue to remember 75 years later but are active agents in our struggle for national liberation."

Significantly, the statement also urged the "Palestinian and Arab youth across the globe, especially in the imperial core, to reclaim the struggle, to join organizations fighting for liberation from the river to the sea."

The movement also denounced the latest Israeli aggression on Gaza, saying that it is "attacking Gaza as part of a targeted attack against the Palestinian resistance," alluding to Operation Avenging the Free in which 33 Palestinians were martyred.

Moreover, the statement also denounced the killing of "Palestinian prisoner and revolutionary Khader Adnan" and emphasized that "today, Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqa remains in the occupation's prisons, diagnosed with cancer due to continued medical neglect."

In that context, PYM affirmed that the Palestinian Prisoners are the "compass of our struggle" and called for the "immediate release " of Palestinian detainees.

Lastly, the statement exclaimed that "To condemn Palestinian resistance is to demand that the Palestinian people submit passively to the violence of colonialism."

PYM called for a struggle against Zionism, which they said is not confined to Palestine, but has also "occupied Syria and Lebanon," calling it "a global movement inflicting violence across the colonized world," and urging people to "fight Zionism wherever it resides, play a role as active agents for national liberation, and build mass support for our peoples' resistance."

Read more: Countries across the world commemorate 75th anniversary of Nakba