By Phil Wilayto

Ignoring the pouring rain, dozens of pro-Palestine protesters marched to the State Capitol May 14 to draw attention to the existence and role of the Virginia-Israel Advisory Board, the only state agency specifically set up to promote trade with a particular country.

A line of cops prevented the crowd from entering the Capitol grounds. The board’s website lists its postal address as Old City Hall at 1001 E. Broad St., which borders Capitol Square.

“We’re not going to stop until we get what we deserve, which is peace and justice for Palestinians,” Sereen Haddad, her arm in a sling, told the protesters. “Never again means never again.”

Haddad, a 19-year-old Palestinian student at VCU who has lost more than 100 family members during the siege of Gaza, was injured in the April 29 police attack on the tent encampment on the VCU campus.

The march took place during a week of actions marking the 76th anniversary of the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) in which half the Arab population of historic Palestine, some 750,000 people, was driven from what would become the state of Israel.

Many of those displaced moved to the Gaza Strip, now under attack by the Israeli military.