Above photo: Will Hodgkinson of Workers World Party speaking in front of Boston’s Israeli Consulate on Nakba Day, May 15, 2026. Steve Kirschbaum.
Will Hodgkinson gave the following remarks on behalf of Workers World Party in front of the Zionist consulate in Boston’s City Hall Plaza as part of the Boston Coalition for Palestine’s commemoration of Nakba Day, May 15, 2026.
We are here to honor the martyrs of al-Nakba — the Catastrophe — that began 78 years ago and to raise a fist in absolute solidarity with the ongoing Palestinian Resistance!
We are also here to honor and support Palestine’s allies in the global struggle — the people of Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, Cuba, Venezuela, the Sahel — all the countries and peoples resisting the decades of terror-bombing, deadly sanctions and starvation inflicted by the Zionist and U.S. regimes.
So what can we do here, in the heart of the U.S. empire, in the belly of the beast, which is responsible for the global carnage? What can we do in Boston, where Democratic Mayor Michelle Wu and Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey have already made clear their complicity in Zionist genocide by harboring Israel’s criminal consulate and its corporate arms, such as Elbit Systems and Sheba Medical Center? [The crowd chants, “Shame!”]
One way is to target FIFA, the World Cup corporation, which is scheduled to take over City Hall Plaza in June. Not only has FIFA refused the world’s righteous demand to ban Israel from its “beautiful games,” it has joined the Trump real estate cabal in its illegitimate “Gaza Board of Peace,” outrageously creating a fake “FIFA Peace Prize” for the fascist, warmongering Donald Trump.
That is why the Boston Coalition for Palestine has taken up the call of the Black Alliance for Peace and the growing Anti-Fascist Football Coalition to say: “FIFA: Move the Games out of the U.S. now!” and “Boycott the U.S.!” [The crowd chants, “Boycott the U.S.!”]
We have to bring the global Boycott, Divest and Sanctions [BDS] Movement that has targeted the Zionist state back to the source, to the U.S. itself. The U.S. is what Martin Luther King Jr. so courageously called “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” What was true then during the U.S. occupation and genocide in Vietnam is true now during the ongoing occupation and genocide in Palestine. Every day the U.S. and the Zionist regime find new ways to show their depravity.
But in doing so they show their weaknesses. Over the past three months we have seen the U.S. regime and its Zionist vassal fail and the resistance in Iran, in Lebanon and in Palestine persist and persevere. And this Nakba Day we are in solidarity with the resistance to U.S. imperialism that has laid bare its rot and its weaknesses and has shown us the way towards liberation. We have to keep up the pressure here.
Just as the U.S. Empire continues to support genocide overseas, its thugs at ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] are rounding up thousands of immigrant workers. This is not a country that people from around the world can safely visit. Football is “the beautiful game” that has brought together billions of people around the world. It deserves better than becoming a spectacle put on by the gangsters who run FIFA for the enrichment of billionaire MAGA Zionists, such as Patriot’s owner Robert Kraft.
Ajamu Baraka of the Black Alliance for Peace, who has raised the call to organize this boycott campaign, said: “It would have been obscene for the white supremacist South Africa settler-colonial state to host the World Cup. Why is it acceptable for the white supremacist, settler-colonial U.S. state — a state supporting a racist genocide, illegal wars and carrying out domestic terrorism against residents and citizens — to host the games?”
So let’s demand an end to Boston’s complicity in genocide. Let’s promise on this Nakba Day in the center of empire to lead the way in demanding: “FIFA: Move the World Cup out of the U.S. now!” and “Boycott the U.S.!”
CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE BOYCOTT AND TO SIGN THE PETITION.
We also say: “U.S. hands off the Iranian national football team!”
And let’s use and expand this boycott to keep up the momentum of resistance here in the U.S. imperial core to do whatever it takes to support the Resistance and fight for a Free Palestine, from the river to the sea!
