Hundreds of people, mostly Thais and Muslims, demonstrated outside the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok Saturday, demanding an end to the bombing of the Gaza Strip amid chants denouncing both Israel and the United States for supporting it.
"The people of Gaza are under attack. We are Muslim, and Palestinians are Muslim," Jamal Pataw told VOA.
"We come from the south of Thailand, and we want to protect the Muslim people," he said, shoulders draped in the traditional Palestinian kufiya, a black-and-white scarf with a checkered fishnet pattern.
Most Thais are Buddhist but many of the day's demonstrators came from the country's deep south, where ethnic Malay Muslims are the majority and where fighting between Islamist insurgents and security forces has killed more than 7,300 people over the past two decades.
"I am sorry for the Gaza people," Pataw said. "We ask [Israel] to stop to attack Gaza and stop to attack the hospitals."
The Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a massive attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, killing at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians and many of them women and children, according to Israeli officials.
According to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry on Saturday, more than 4,300 Palestinians, also mostly civilians, have been killed in the relentless bombing campaign Israel has carried out in Gaza since then. Many fear the civilian death toll in Gaza will rise if Israel launches a widely expected ground invasion.
On Tuesday, a massive explosion and fire at the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza killed hundreds. Hamas has blamed Israel for the blast, while U.S. and European intelligence services have joined Israel in blaming it on an errant rocket fired by Palestinian militants.
'Palestine you are not alone'
At Saturday's rally in Bangkok, protesters waved Palestinian flags while being led from banks of loudspeakers in blistering chants of "Down with Israel! Down with America!" and "Free Palestine!" in Thai and occasionally English.
Many waved homemade signs reading "Palestine you are not alone," "Israel your time is over" or "Bombing kids is not self-defense." These were written in English, though many others were in Thai. Some took turns trampling on an Israeli flag in front of the office tower housing the embassy. Local news reports say at least one Israeli flag was set on fire.
'We need peace'
Others in the crowd held up images of Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khameni, or wore T-shirts bearing the image of Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2020, an apparent nod to Iran's long-running support of Hamas.
Dozens of police stood guard around the office tower and the protest remained peaceful.
Amid the verbal vitriol, though, some denounced both sides for the bloodshed and came with a message of peace.
"The first time, Hamas came to kill many people. But now in Palestine [Gaza], Israel has [fired] many bombs and many people have died," said Hasan Mahdy, who also hails from the south of Thailand and came to the protest with his extended family.
"Not everyone [in Gaza] is Hamas, but many people there have died. Now I think it's enough," he told VOA.
"We need peace. You know that song? What is it? Imagine," Mahdy said, referring to the iconic anti-war anthem by John Lennon. "People should live like this."
Some in the crowd of protesters were Muslim but not Thai. Others were Thai but not Muslim.
"I want the siege and the bombing to stop. I want the Palestinians to be free and have basic human rights," said Thanachanok, a Thai Buddhist who came out to show solidarity with her Muslim friends. She asked that only her given name be used for safety concerns.
"I am not for Hamas, but I want the people of Palestine to be free," she said. "I feel sad for them because they don't have hospitals to help all the people; no water, no electricity. It is inhumane."
"Killing children is not humanity," echoed Syad Abdul, an Indian Muslim who lives and works in Thailand. "It breaks my heart."
Contacted after the rally, Israel's ambassador to Thailand, Orna Sagiv, said she was disappointed by some of the protesters' behavior.
"It's really sad that in days like this, after Israel suffered from this brutal Hamas-ISIS [Islamic State] attack against our civilians, some people here in Bangkok, instead of ... showing support for ... innocent civilians in Israel that were slaughtered and murdered in cold blood — babies children, old people — instead of that, they are burning flags of Israel in front of our embassy," she told VOA by phone.
The Islamic State terror group has not been implicated in the Hamas attack.
Responding to the crowd's calls for Israel to stop the bombing of Gaza, Sagiv said Israel had no choice but to engage in a war that Hamas started.
"Yes, Israel is bombing Gaza at the moment because we have to react, we were forced into this war," she said. "But ... we are doing everything possible to avoid harming civilians who are not involved."
Sagiv said Israel has been urging civilians in Gaza to move to the south of the strip to avoid its bombardment, and she accused Hamas of blocking them in order to use their own people as human shields. According to numerous news reports from Gaza, though, bombing continues to pummel civilians trying to flee south.
Thailand has remained neutral in the conflict and says it is working with all sides to free more than a dozen Thais who Hamas has taken hostage and to repatriate thousands of nationals who went to Israel for work. Officials say at least 30 Thais were killed in the initial attack by Hamas.
