Violence has worsened in Gaza with thousands of deaths resulting from Israeli missiles since Oct. 7, and Wichitans gathered in Old Town Square on Sunday, Oct. 22, to speak on behalf of the Palestinians affected.
The creation of Israel in 1948 marked the displacement of more than 700,00 Palestinians and the capture of 78% of the region’s land. After Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist political group, launched a surprise attack in Israel on Oct. 7, the Israeli government started a bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip. The death toll in Gaza has reached nearly 5,100 Palestinians as of Oct. 23.
The Wichita protest was organized by several community members, including Sabreen Abusherbi, with the goal of calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and pushing the United States government to make policy changes.
According to Abusherbi, part of the controversy over supporting Palestine or Israel is the confusion between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. She said that anti-Zionism is the belief that Jewish people do not have an exclusive right to Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people, whereas antisemitism is the discrimination of the Jewish people. The anti-Zionists at the protest did not condone antisemitism.
“This is not a war about religion,” Abusherbi said. “This is, you know, a war of sovereignty and land. This is about the displacement and taking over the homes of the Palestinians. This has nothing to do with the Jews. This has nothing to do with (Israel’s) Jewish religion.”
The protesters focused on the human rights that Palestinians are deprived of, including food, water, shelter and safety. Gaza, home to 2.3 million Palestinians, has been under an Israeli blockade for 16 years. Following the Hamas attack, Israel announced their plan to shut off electricity in Gaza and withhold food and fuel until Hamas freed all Israeli hostages that were captured.
Restoring basic human rights and humanity to Palestinians were the driving values behind the protest, according to Abusherbi.
“Their children are being killed, women are being killed – murdered,” protester Iman Khalil said. “Now, they’re saying that there’s like, you can smell the dead because they just can’t get to people under the rubble.
“Put yourself in their position. What would you do if somebody was to take your home and somebody was to bomb you? If you’re pulling your own child out of the rubble? What would you, how would you feel?”
The conflict in Palestine directly affects families in the U.S., too. Carrie Seyam, another protester, said she married a Palestinian person.
“My kids are half Palestinian and very true to their culture and heritage,” she said. “They do have relatives that have lost their homes … My daughter, every night, she can’t sleep. She watches kids, you know, being pulled out of rubble and things like that, and so she cries every day.”
U.S. Government responsibility
Maheen Khan, another protester, said U.S. citizens have a huge voice that can be utilized to uphold American beliefs, including peace, harmony and justice.
“The U.S. is the biggest financial and moral supporter of Israel, which is committing these crimes in Gaza,” Khan said. “So therefore, it is a moral responsibility as well to stand up against these crimes.”
Seyam compared the conflict to the genocide that Native Americans faced after Christopher Columbus came to the Americas.
Protesters also felt the U.S. government should send aid to Palestinians rather than Israel.
President Joe Biden has offered a great deal of support to Israel, including a variety of military equipment and weapons. He also promised to send $100 million to Palestinians for food, water, and hygienic care in the midst of the crisis. Israel receives $3.3 billion Israel in military funds annually from the U.S.
“What (the U.S. government is) doing is not right whatsoever. I mean, killing innocent civilians altogether, whether you’re a government, whether you’re a president, whether you’re anything, is just not right,” Khalil said.
Khan said Americans’ taxes fund and negatively affect this conflict.
“We want to let our representatives, our U.S. representatives, know that we are calling and demanding for an urgent ceasefire, and we are not okay with what is happening in Palestine right now,” she said.
Protesters planned on making their stance clear to the government as well as holding them accountable for their actions.
“We are going to be watching,” Abusherbi said. “What (U.S. government officials) say … and what they vote for. I will also be writing letters and calling them … to hold them accountable for their decisions.”
Support among WSU students
Students Organize for Syria (SOS), a WSU student organization, also showed support for Palestine this weekend.
According to sophomore Huda Jesri, the treasurer of SOS, the organization came to emphasize that it is not just one group of people being affected but that the root issue is human suffering and loss of human rights.
“When you have, like, people advocating from all different sides and different ethnicities and genders and sexualities, it really shows … it’s nothing about religion,” Jesri said. “It’s a humanitarian crisis.”
Providing aid
Khalil shared how advocates for Palestinians can cause change to provide aid to Gaza.
“It would help the innocent civilians (in Gaza) and would help people just come to their senses and not turn a blind eye,” Khalil said. “And I mean, they’re innocent civilians. It hurts to watch, it hurts to see; it’s evil.”
Most of all, the protesters wanted those in Gaza to know they are seen, heard, and supported by people all around the world.
“We want you to know that we love you, and we’re trying to help you,” Jesri said. “Keep holding onto your hope, hold onto your faith. One day, Palestine will be free, and we’re going to be on the right side of history.”
Peter Grant • Nov 6, 2023 at 5:48 am
I was at this protest and not once was anything said to denounce Hamas. As a Jew I do believe in a free Palestine but not at the expense of the Jewish people. If the “good” people of Gaza, years ago, revolted against Hamas, Gaza would probably be a much different and better place today. While I believe it is a tragedy what is happening to the civilians in Gaza, Israel needs to now go after Hamas and take them out while trying to protect civilians and at this protest the good Palestinian people of Wichita should have denounced Hamas along with calling for a ceasefire and a free Palestine.
Richard Worley, DDS • Nov 3, 2023 at 12:15 am
I’m a 1967 grad of WSU. I have a clause in my Trust & will bequeathing 10% of my residual estate to WSU to be used in support of life the sciences, dentistry if possible. I am deleting that bequest from my Trust. That WSU would allow the university newspaper to publish such an inaccuracy as this & that your publication takes such a stance requires that I do so.
Your reportage is woefully one sided, displaying ignorance of history & the truthful status of Jews, Israel, Palestine, Hamas & Islam. Jews & Arab inhabitants of what we now call Palestine (first described as such by the Romans) lived together in Judea for over a thousand centuries before Islam was established. The Torah, the first four Books of the Old Testament, & particularly the better documented New Testament are as valid a historical record as any, absent allegory & myth from lack of contemporary science, and that is supported by contemporary archelogical knowledge. These ancient historical documents describe Jews living in Israel as a Nation of two tribes antecedent to any historical land known as Palestine. There is & has never been a nation of Palestine; Palestine describes an area as does New England, the Midwest or Arabia. The Jews were there as a nation first.
Since the declaration of Israel as a nation by the UN in 1948 the government & Jewish religion has repeatedly & consistently offered to live in peace with the inhabitants of “Palestine”. Arabs including Muslims can be citizens, can vote, can & do sit in the Knesset. The “Palestinians” have repeatedly & violently refused peaceful coexistence, proclaiming their “land” was stolen by the Jews. This is historically false. This is the expression of antisemitism, one of the core beliefs of radical Sunni Islam, Hamas & Shite Iran. (I personally don’t believe there is “radical Islam”, just Islam. Only a very few enlightened Muslims deny & refute the violence against non-believers contained within the Koran & they are vilified for that.) This is NOT inclusive, equitable or characteristic of a diverse society.
Islam was established 600 plus years after the death of Christ. Islam is a autocratic, totalitarian, intolerant political system masquerading as a religion that proclaims conversion, payment of Jizyah by nonbelievers or death with the Koran much to easily defining any opposition to those principles as offence against Allah justifying Jihad, execution of which generally agrees with the Western democratic definition of terrorism.
Setting aside any religious approach to analyzing the current conflict with Hamas (which clearly states the objective to kill every Jew & totally destroy the nation of Israel), history as recent as 90 years ago very accurately records written & visual evidence of the violence & human cost of totalitarian, fascist, autocratic, racist governments & populations. I doubt U.S. citizens & students under the age or 30 or so are aware of the atrocities of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan & why the Western democracies were required to prevail in World War II regardless of the cost in material or lives as the alternative would be to usher in a new Dark Age. That contemporary students, professors & others deny the Holocaust is as misbegotten & evil as denial of the atrocities by Hamas against Israeli Jews, both being abundantly, reliably & truthfully documented. The world now faces not a similar but an exact duplicate of the worst of human nature & governance displayed by Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Stalinist soviet Russia & Chinese Communism under Mao. These dark ideologies lurk within Islam, the current CCP, the mafia that has become Russia, Iran & North Korea. We have seen this movie before & it does not end well. I encourage you students to grow up, realize you are being manipulated by a far left ideology in league with Islam, Communism &, unfortunately, a U.S. government too deeply intertwined with big finance & commerce colluding with these dark forces for power, profit & personal gain. I encourage you to read The Federalist Papers, critically examine the Declaration of Independence & Constitution, read accurate history including the period from 1880 or so thru World War II & to the Present. You have not been made aware of the value of Western democratic ideals within this body of knowledge by your education from elementary school into & through University. Read Atlas Shrugged, Animal Farm & 1984. Get accurate information instead of what you think is the truth on TicToc. Islam, Communism & other global despots are coming after YOU once they finish with the Jews. There is always an “other” to demonize & set apart to justify the elite few ruling over the majority by force.
Read “Then They Came” by Martin Niemoller. “First they came for the Communists & I did not speak out because I was not a Communist … Then they came for the Jews & I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me . And there was no one left to speak out for me.”
Perhaps “me” is LBGQT. Israel is fighting for YOU against a totalitarian, fascist, oppressive, non-inclusive, inequitable evil that does not embrace diversity. That evil exists also in Russia, Iran, communist China & North Korea among others. This is a fight to preserve YOUR right to speak out but that right has responsibilities, one being not to speak for evil as you do when you chant palestinian tropes that are frankly antisemitic. War is indeed hell, innocents are killed & harmed, not all war is justified & righteous but unfortunately war is required when evil attempts to subjugate by force.
No, I am not a Jew, an evangelical Christian or a MAGA republican. I AM an adult with an adult understanding of history, the value of Western democratic principles & that evil does exist in the world & it is not the United States of America.
Richard Worley, D.D.S. Denver, Colorado