Holding banners that read, “Stop U.S. Funding of Israeli Apartheid” and “Stand With Palestine: End the Occupation Now,” over 200 pro-Palestinian activists rallied at Baltimore City Hall on Oct. 5, one of many global actions marking a year of war that’s killed tens of thousands of people in the Middle East.
The anger in the streets is fueled by the United States’ unflinching support for Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks that killed over 1,100 Israelis.
Over the past year, Israeli attacks have killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, injured tens of thousands people, systematically targeted journalists and aid workers, and blocked food and medical supplies. These actions prompted South Africa to go to the International Court of Justice and accuse Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians.
“If the U.S. stopped sending military aid to Israel, it would almost certainly end the genocide,” said Mike — who only provided his first name for safety reasons—a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), one of the Baltimore protest’s organizers.
Critics argue that the U.S. shares responsibility for the deaths of Palestinians because its unconditional support of Israel has enabled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to prolong a war with no end in sight.
“The weapons being used to murder our people in Gaza are manufactured here in the United States,” said Faras, a Palestinian American who attended the protest. Faras, who declined to provide his full name for safety reasons, is a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), a grassroots group demanding an end to Israeli occupation.
Last week, dozens of U.S. medical professionals who volunteered in Gaza over the past year urged the White House to enact an immediate arms embargo to end the fighting.
“We have witnessed crimes beyond comprehension — crimes we cannot believe you wish to continue supporting,” they wrote to President Biden.
Their conservative estimate of the death toll, which accounts for both combat and starvation, puts the losses at 118,908 lives, or 5.4% of Gaza’s population. Children account for one-third of the estimated casualties. Ninety percent of Gaza’s population has been displaced, and Gaza has been declared “uninhabitable” by a U.N. official.
According to recent reporting by Reuters and ProPublica, the State Department has continued approving weapons sales to Israel despite independent findings that Israel’s conduct in Gaza violates U.S. prohibitions against arming countries engaged in human rights abuses, including blocking food and medicine shipments during war.
The U.S. has provided Israel with $17.9 billion dollars in weapons for its ongoing military campaign, upheld Israel’s right to self-defense and equated Palestinian resistance with terrorism. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, President Joe Biden said Hamas’s attacks were “driven by ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people off the face of the Earth.”
In Baltimore, activists defended the right of Palestinians to resist military occupation, and chanted “Free, Free Palestine,” and “Hands off the Middle East” to show solidarity with the people of Palestine as they marched through downtown.
In Baltimore, activists defended the right of Palestinians to resist military occupation, and chanted “Free, Free Palestine,” and “Hands off the Middle East” to show solidarity with the people of Palestine as they marched through downtown.
Among the speakers was a Johns Hopkins University student who condemned the university’s suppression of pro-Palestine activism in the face of calls to divest from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation.
Palestinian-American activists like Faras, whose family hails from the West Bank town of Nablus, have long argued military occupation is at the heart of the conflict.
He stressed that slogans like “From the River to the Sea” are not calls for genocide against Jews, but rather demands for equal rights.
“It means that people like me will be able to move freely to my home in Palestine and visit my family without having to pass through multiple checkpoints at gunpoint.”
Those views are backed by a growing number of Jewish activists, hundreds whom have been arrested for pro-Palestinian advocacy over the past year. No Jewish-led organizations endorsed the Oct. 5 protest in Baltimore, but several organized their own rallies.
Hundreds or membere of If Not Now,a group of American Jews who support equal rights for Palestinians, held a rally in Washington DC on Oct. 7.
“Our tears are abundant enough, and our hearts are big enough, to grieve for every life taken — every universe destroyed — whether Israeli or Palestinian. It is not either, or. We need one another: Jews cannot be safe if Palestinians are not safe and free,” IfNotNow, said in a press release.
The release of “The Message” by best-selling author and Baltimore native Ta-Nehisi Coates has further fueled the national conversation about whether Israel — considered by the U.S. the only democracy in the Middle East — should receive unflinching U.S. support while it systematically subjugates and denies Palestinians.
The book was written before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack last year. Coates says he aimed to inspire young writers to “confront painful truths” and to revisit his Atlantic essay “The Case for Reparations.” To illustrate how the U.S. could repay the longstanding debt owed to African Americans long denied political and economic rights, Coates referenced in his essay Germany’s payments to Israel to support the creation of the Jewish state in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust. But “The Message” revisits this example, but comes to a new conclusion — that justice for one people can’t come at the expense of another.
In his book’s final chapter, Coates travels to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. He visits Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, which memorializes the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. But he also connects Israel’s present-day treatment of Palestinians to Israel’s settler-colonial origin — as well as the racial segregation African Americans faced under Jim Crow.
Coates notes that mainstream media typically excludes Palestinian journalists or voices critical of Israeli policy– and this perpetuates the dehumanization of Palestininians. A now-viral excerpt from the program CBS Mornings illustrates the point Coates seeks to make.
“If I took your name out of it, took away the awards, and the acclaim, took the cover off the book, the publishing house goes away — the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist,” co-anchor Tony Dokoupil said. “What is it that so particularly offends you about a Jewish state? A Jewish safe place, rather than any other country?”
Coates responded: “There’s nothing that offends me about a Jewish state. I am offended by the idea of states built on ethnocracy, no matter where they are.”
As Coates details how three million Palestinians live under Israeli occupation and are denied freedom of movement, separated from family members, and subjected to extrajudicial killings and torture. With U.S. backing, Israel has destroyed hundreds of Palestinian and allowed 700,000 Israelis to create Jewish-only settlements, carving up the land designated for a future Palestinian state.
The Biden administration has continued to back Israel despite growing political risks and even as the conflict has changed American public opinion significantly.
According to a Sep. 23 poll by the Institute for Global Affairs, 67% of Democrats want the U.S. to either stop supporting Israel’s war efforts or make that support conditional on a ceasefire.
An early September poll of young Muslim voters in key swing states by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) found Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris tied with Green Party candidate Jill Stein in several key swing states.
At the Baltimore rally, Kevin James, a longtime activist and organizer, said that grassroots organizing can’t just be about protests.
“What we don’t want is for people to feel powerless. Yes, more money is going to Israel, more bombs are falling, and the war is spreading, but we can’t give up.”
On. Oct 20 at Red Emma’s, James’s group The CornerStone Project is hosting the second in a series called “Showing up for Palestine for the Long Haul,” a training focused on how movements can win demands by implementing long-term strategies and organizing around specific campaigns.
“The lesson we need to take away is: How can we fight better? How can we be more effective? If people are still here, committed after a year, it means they’re ready. So how do we harness that and make the most of it?”
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