Not an excuse, but an explanation.<\/p>\n
That was one result of a passionate demonstration by Palestinian-Americans from all around the midstate on the state Capitol steps Friday night, as through signs, chants and no-holds-barred speeches, they sought to tell \u201cthe other side\u201d of this week\u2019s violence in Israel and the occupied Gaza Strip.<\/a> <\/p>\n Numbering nearly 200 strong – many wearing the black and white Kufiya that is specific to the Palestinian cause, and others waving the tri-colored flag of Palestine – they called for an end to the Israeli strikes on Gaza and an immediate opening for the flow of humanitarian relief.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are here today standing up with 2.2 million people in the Gaza Strip that are under Israeli occupation, living in an open air prison, that are fighting for their lives, and running for their lives,\u201d said Omar Mousa, one of the organizers of the rally.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are seeing a genocide, right before our eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n Mousa\u2019s reference was to the repeated bombardment of Gaza City and surrounding areas this week in retaliation for last Saturday\u2019s brutal incursion by Hamas fighters into villages and towns in southern Israel that killed more than 1,300 people and seized at least 100 hostages.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s retaliatory strikes have, according to reporting from the scene by The New York Times and others, wiped out entire neighborhoods<\/a>. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said Friday that at least 1,900 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza, and more than 7,600 injured since the war began.<\/p>\n More than 338,000 Palestinians have been displaced by the fighting, electricity and water are cut off, and there is limited access to food and medical supplies.<\/p>\n There is widespread speculation that a full ground invasion by the Israeli Defense Forces is yet to come.<\/p>\n No one at Friday\u2019s rally spoke directly of Hamas, the organization that heads up the government in Gaza,<\/a> and whose military wings led Saturday\u2019s brazen massacre; nor did they in any way condone the violence, much of it committed against Israeli civilians.<\/p>\n But there was a great sense of clarity about who these protestors held responsible for it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are witnessing the consequences of 75 years of Zionist settler colonial rule; 56 years of violent… military occupation; and 16 years of a brutal blockade that has suffocated the Gaza Strip and the 2.3 million that inhabit it,\u201d said 21-year-old Zeena Rahman, of West Hanover Township.<\/p>\n Hand-lettered signs dotting the rally reinforced the pro-Palestinian message, and spoke to attendees\u2019 frustration with American policy in the Middle East.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s genocide, ethnic cleansing, oppression and terrorism… Stop calling it a conflict,\u201d stated one.<\/p>\n \u201cEnd the Palestinian Holocaust,\u201d read another.<\/p>\n Some protestors grew visibly frustrated when reporters tried to draw out their comments on last Saturday\u2019s Hamas attack, irritated that journalists would feel obligated to ask them that now, when they believe what Israel is doing now will be far more deadly and just as indiscriminate.<\/p>\n \u201cIf what they (the Hamas fighters) did is true, they\u2019ll have to answer to God for it,\u201d said Anastaziya Adham, who came to the rally with her husband, Adam, and their two children. \u201cBut I also condemn seventy-five years of oppression and the murder of children (by Israelis) on a daily basis.\u201d<\/p>\n Adam Adham agreed.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople need to have a longer memory than seven days ago. No lives should be lost like that,\u201d he continued, but it can be the logical extension of what happens when one lives in a state of apartheid, with an overseer controlling your every move and act, and enforcing it all with regular spasms of violence.<\/p>\n \u201cIsrael is doing to the Palestinians what was done to them (Jewish people) by Germany\u201d prior to World War II, Adham said.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a Palestinian side of the story, many argued, that is routinely overlooked or ignored by most new media reports. The one-sidedness of the discussion only seemed magnified by a series of \u201cwe stand with Israel\u201d statements issued by Gov. Josh Shapiro and other leading Pennsylvania political leaders.<\/a> <\/p>\n Others. like Adam Rahman, 47, and also of West Hanover Township, decried what feels to him like hypocrisy in the Biden Administration\u2019s strong support for the occupied in Ukraine, and the occupiers – Israel – in the West Bank and Gaza.<\/p>\n For some attendees, the concerns are quite personal.<\/p>\n Yousra Hamed, a 39-year-old resident of Lower Paxton Township, told of a teen boy from Gaza who local Palestinians had helped bring to America to get outfitted with a prosthetic leg several years ago after he was shot by Israeli snipers.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, Hamed said, she was able to talk to the boy, who said he was helping to pull survivors and wounded from rubble in Gaza City. When she tried to check in on him today, there was no response, giving way to a nervous waiting game amid widespread power outages in Gaza.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Hamed noted, she had a cousin was shot on Friday in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.<\/p>\n Gaza, a 25-mile-long by 6-mile-wide enclave bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Israel to the north and east and Egypt to the south, was part of what was historically known as Palestine. <\/a><\/p>\n After World War I, it came under Great Britain\u2019s control until 1948, when Egypt captured it during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.<\/p>\n It remained under Egyptian control until the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, when Israel seized the territory and occupied it, along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians claim these territories and see them as part of a future state.<\/p>\n In an interview with NPR Tuesday, Ali Barakeh, a senior Hamas official based in Lebanon, said the Oct. 7 attack came in response to \u201cIsraeli crimes against the Palestinian people in Jerusalem and the West Bank\u201d and to \u201cbreak the blockade on the Gaza Strip.\u201d He said it was also meant to free thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.<\/p>\n The U.S., Israel and a number of other Western countries classify Hamas as a terrorist organization.<\/p>\n Friday\u2019s rally was organized by The Central Pennsylvania Committee of Masajids, a coalition of Islamic congregations and groups through the midstate. Organizers said that Palestinian-Americans attend a variety of congregations within the group.<\/p>\n Some of Friday\u2019s protestors said they ultimately hope for a return to serious negotiations for a \u201ctwo-state solution,\u201d<\/a> an objective advanced by several successive American administrations that seeks creation of an independent and autonomous Palestine living side-by-side with Israel.<\/p>\n But the first priority, of course, is getting the new war ended.<\/p>\n A number of motorists passing by the rally on North Third Street honked horns in solidarity with the demonstrators. There were no visible, or audible, signs of any counter-protestors.<\/p>\n Mousa noted additional rallies for Palestine are scheduled for Washington D.C. on Saturday, and in Lancaster on Sunday.<\/p>\n \u00a92023 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit pennlive.com<\/a>. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/a> <\/p>\n KeyWords:: 998ba966-f506-541e-be6e-b49041e1a124 Not an excuse, but an explanation. That was one result of a passionate demonstration by Palestinian-Americans from all around the midstate on the state Capitol steps Friday night, as through signs, chants and no-holds-barred speeches, they sought to tell \u201cthe other side\u201d of this week\u2019s violence in Israel and the occupied Gaza Strip. Numbering nearly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31407,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31406\/revisions\/31407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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