About 100 pro-Palestinian protesters gathered on the University of Iowa’s Pentacrest Saturday, recognizing International Day of Action for Palestine as the one-year mark of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel draws near.
“It shocks me to know that our democracy is not as strong as we say it is,” Iowa City resident and Palestinian American Mona Odeh said during the protest.
Protesters echoed many of the same calls chanted out over the past year. Phrases such as “not another nickel, not another dime, no more money for Israel’s crimes” and “Israel bombs, USA pays, how many kids did you kill today?” were heard on Saturday.
The group had posters with a tally representing each death recorded in Gaza. There was also a poster outlining every event the group has done in Iowa City since the war started a year ago.
Monday marks one year since Hamas, a political faction inside Gaza, launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing almost 1,200 people and taking nearly 250 people hostage.
According to the Associated Press, over 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the onset of the war. There are still hostages in the region. Now, fighting has expanded those death tolls to Lebanon, according to a report from The Washington Post, Lebenon’s Health Minister Firas Abiad said on Oct. 3 over 2,000 Lebanese people have died with over 9,000 wounded.
The protesters called out several politicians for “supporting genocide.” These included President Joe Biden and a myriad of Iowa politicians such as Gov. Kim Reynolds, Ashley Hinson, Zach Nunn, Marienette Miller-Meeks, Randy Feenstra, and Christina Bohannan.
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Ed Flaherty, a member of Veterans for Peace, has protested on the Pentacrest almost every Friday since the war began. He said it is important to maintain hope that the conflict will end, and people must continue to learn about the conflict and call for it to stop.
“People must not get used to it. We must continue to be enraged. We must continue to cry. We must continue to say this is not necessary,” Flaherty said.
The protest was organized by Iowans for Palestine, a group that has organized several protests on the UI campus over the last year. The protest began at 4:30 p.m., and about halfway through a counterprotest of about 10 people began to form.
UI student Itai Ben-Shahar led this counter-demonstration and, like the pro-Palestine protesters, called for people to educate themselves on the conflict.
Ben-Shahar said he lived in Israel with his family during seventh grade. He said he thinks death is wrong but that the people protesting do not understand the full nature of the conflict.
“It’s sad to see all these people who think that they know everything, and they refuse to do their own research,” Ben-Shahar said. “They’re willfully ignorant, which is the worst.”
Newman Abuissa, the chair of the Arab American Caucus of the Iowa Democratic Party, said at the protest he never expected the war to go on this long, and he condemned the actions of the Israeli government in escalating the conflict into Lebanon.
“This is a genocide. This is ethnic cleansing, and this has been going clearly in front of cameras,” Abuissa said. “We are here to let our elected officials know, to let our fellow citizens in Iowa City and on campus know, that we do not want this genocide to continue.”