Over 1,000 protesters descended on Rep. Earl Blumenauer’s Portland house to demand he call for a ceasefire in Gaza during the Children’s March for a Ceasefire on Dec. 2.
The Israeli Defense Forces, or IDF, blockaded Gaza and killed over 17,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian Ministry of Health estimates, following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Hamas militants killed 1,200 people in the attack, including over 300 Israeli soldiers, and took 240 people hostage, according to Israeli government estimates. The IDF said, as of Dec. 4, 75 additional soldiers died in its subsequent ground offensive in Gaza. The IDF response and growing disparity in death tolls have led to widespread outcry, including in Portland, for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Led by Mothers for a Ceasefire, a local grassroots organization, the rally marched from Grant Park to the congressman’s residence. As the Palestinian death toll continues to rise, parents, children, organizers, and Palestinian youth expressed their grief in speeches, poems and through a display of hundreds of stuffed animals, signs and letters left at Blumenauer’s house.
Multiple organizations, including Portland’s chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace, or JVP, and Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA, sponsored the event.
A children’s march
With around 6,000 children killed by the IDF in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, emotions around the world and in Portland’s community ran high. Facing this reality, Mothers for a Ceasefire formed spontaneously and got right into action.
Savannah North, while not a mom, spends her days taking care of babies as an infant/toddler childcare provider. She joined Mothers for a Ceasefire at its outset and helped organize the rally.
“We (Mothers for a Ceasefire) are all people who either are parents or caregivers or are advocates for children in some way,” North said. “There was something really specific about seeing what was happening to children in Gaza that made us all feel like we needed to do something.”
Many people feel the issue is too complicated, but Mothers for a Ceasefire rejects the idea that people need well-developed political theories on Israel-Palestine to be against the Israeli military’s bombardment of Gaza. The IDF estimates it has killed twice as many civilians as Hamas militants, IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus told CNN on Dec. 4, describing the ratio as “tremendously positive,” due to the number of militants “embedded in the civilian population.”
Protecting children was something that most people could rally behind, North noted. For many, grief is what brought them together.
“I want to say to the kids in Gaza, I'm sorry that your homes are getting bombed, and I hope that Blumenauer makes the right choice,” Sequoia, a child who attended the protest, said. “I wrote a letter to Blumenauer because I knew that it would hopefully really help him make his decision to say ‘no more bombing in Gaza.’”
North described the scenes from Gaza as an “out of body horror.” With her background in caring for children, she said seeing the destruction in Gaza “breaks everything inside of me.”
Wael Elasady, a Palestinian and one of the main organizers of the event, had similar feelings when thinking of his own children.
“I cry every day,” Elasady said. “I look at my children, my two daughters, 9 and 3, and my 5-month-old boy, and every child that I see on Instagram, I see them and imagine what it would be like to be a parent who is losing or seeing your children hurt and being utterly incapable to defend them.”
Parents expressed fears over violence against Palestinian children and youth in the United States, but hundreds of children still attended the event. Incidences of Islamophobic and anti-Semitic attacks sharply increased since the war erupted in October, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Anti-Defamation League.
“I am Palestinian, and I need to show support for my people,” Guevara, another child who attended the protest, said. “Every human deserves equal rights, and Palestinians and Gaza are no exception.”
Children make up nearly half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. With them at the forefront of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, parents in Portland felt there was a need to give children a voice in the States.
“We really wanted to provide a platform for kids and their families to be involved because this conflict is affecting children so disproportionately,” North said. “Their voices need to be heard.”
North described the protest as an organizing success but felt a burden with Blumenauer still not pushing for a ceasefire. Many still felt an emotional impact from the event, particularly from the display at Blumenauer’s house.
“If you’re a parent, you know how dear a kiddo’s stuffy is to them and that they don’t part with them easily,” Elasady said. “The loss of a stuffy is often the occasion of countless tears, yet hundreds of kids on Saturday made the selfless choice to give up something so important and personal to them to try and help Palestinian children they’ve never met.
“That’s the kind of behavior our politicians can afford to learn from.”
Why target Blumenauer?
Blumenauer positions himself as an anti-war candidate and is a member of the Progressive Caucus in Congress. He has also worked to improve water and sanitation in Gaza, noting in an Oct. 25 statement that he knows “full well the consequences (Gazans) face.”
Despite Blumenauer’s sympathies, constituents attending the protest expressed their disappointment with the Congressman’s statements regarding the crisis.
Brian Denning, an external organizer with Portland DSA, noted the lack of action on Blumenauer’s part.
“Blumenauer and others in the House of Representatives have a huge opportunity to sign on to Cori Bush's ceasefire bill and to stand on the side of righteousness,” Denning said, going on to praise Oregon state Rep. Farrah Chaichi, D-35, for her early support of a ceasefire.
While Sen. Jeff Merkley called for a ceasefire in his Nov. 20 statement, Blumenauer instead claimed he is “not interested in playing semantics” when it comes to the difference between a ceasefire and a humanitarian pause.
“I think Palestinian lives are not semantics and it's incredibly harmful to minimize the scale of death and destruction and also to disregard the blatant abuse of human rights that we're seeing on behalf of the Israeli government,” Julia Ford, a Jewish volunteer with JVP, said.
Protesters expressed frustration with Blumenauer’s wording as hundreds more Palestinians were killed following the end of a temporary pause in fighting Dec. 1.
“We have a community member who's lost 39 members of their family, others who've lost 100 members of their family,” Elasady said. “The killing has started again, the bombing has started again. A demand for a ceasefire is to end what is happening and to end any support for Israel if it doesn't listen to that.”
The protest was originally going to target Merkley, but the focus shifted to Blumenauer after Merkley’s ceasefire statement. With nearly 60 federal lawmakers now supporting a ceasefire, Portland attendees are beginning to doubt Blumenauer’s progressive image.
“Blumenauer’s called himself an honorary member of ‘The Squad’ in the past,” Elasady said, referencing a group of eight progressive democrats, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, and Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan. “If he even believes that for a moment, he would immediately call for a ceasefire and sign onto the legislation that 'The Squad' has helped bring forward.”
Jewish voices
Blumenauer and others have cited “Israel’s right to self-defense” in their statements. A number of Jewish community members take issue with this position, arguing Israel’s actions are not an act of self-defense.
“The understanding that I think people need to have right now is that the scale of destruction is unprecedented,” Ford said. “What is happening in the region is not building towards a more stable or just society for anybody. We are fundamentally not working towards safety.”
While many share Ford’s sentiment, a serious concern among Americans is being considered anti-Semitic for supporting Palestine, especially following actions like House Resolution 894, equating anti-Zionism, a position opposing the establishment and support of a Jewish state in the land of Palestine, to anti-Semitism. However, JVP is one of many organizations rejecting that paradigm.
“I think this is a distraction from what is happening,” Ford said. “There are hundreds of thousands of Jews across the world, millions, I would say, even though we're a very small population, who are incredibly critical of Israel.”
Many in the Jewish community believe their freedom is tied to the liberation of Palestinians, yet these individuals are sometimes criticized for their views, being called “self-hating Jews” or similar labels.
“It is a very fortunate privilege, for those of us that have it, that if you disagree with something that your government is doing, you can speak out against it,” Ford said. “I have a right to return under Israel. I could move there if I wanted to and get citizenship.
“I should also be able to criticize it without having my Jewish card revoked.”
Many protesters assert historical context is missing from arguments that the Israeli government is acting in self-defense and that critics are anti-Semitic.
Many point to the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948, when Zionist militias and the new Israeli army forcibly displaced over 750,000 Palestinians, killed thousands more, and David Ben-Gurion declared the state of Israel on 78% of historic Palestine.
Nearly 6 million people are currently Palestine refugees, or “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict,” according to the United Nations.
Others will point to the Great March of Return in Gaza, a largely non-violent protest in 2018-2019 when the IDF killed over 200 Palestinians and injured more than 36,000.
“We really need to interrogate sort of how we've gotten to today while also again grounding in this moment of a ceasefire,” Ford said, noting the importance of ending the occupation of Palestine in both Gaza and the West Bank.
A majority of protesters also mourned the loss of Israeli lives on Oct. 7, but they felt there is more nuance to the conflict than what most media presents.
The mainstream narrative
The topic of misinformation surrounding Israel-Palestine has been pervasive, reaching new heights since before Oct. 7. President Joe Biden added to this by expressing distrust in the Gaza Health Ministry's death toll numbers, facing pushback from various aid agencies, including the UN. Additionally, he made unverified claims that Hamas beheaded babies during its Oct. 7 attack.
The United States’ involvement in Israel spans decades, consistently providing over $3 billion in military aid per year. The extent of Palestinian casualties in the ongoing conflict has intensified criticism, with Biden's request for an additional $14.3 billion in aid sparking outrage and bewilderment.
“I want us to learn from what happened in Afghanistan,” Denning said in response to the Israeli government’s hopes of “destroying Hamas.”
Discussing the failed U.S. mission to eradicate the Taliban, Denning highlighted that increased spending and casualties did not achieve the intended goal.
“It turns out when you kill people's uncles and brothers and sisters and mothers and cousins and daughters, they don't forgive you, and they don't go ‘okay, I guess you had a point and we should give up,’” Denning said.
While there is public concern over protecting the Israeli and Palestinian populations, Elasady views U.S. involvement as driven by political and financial motives — another way to defend markets and sell weapons.
Amid these complexities, media faces criticism from a number of groups, including journalists. According to The Washington Post, hundreds of journalists signed an open letter stating the rhetoric used by newsrooms has “served to justify ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”
UN experts say Palestinians are “at grave risk of genocide.” Protesters agreed this message was missing from most U.S. news sources.
“The average person who's defending Israel just might simply not know what's happening because our media does such a bad job providing context,” Elasady said.
Elasady said the media often omits details like how Palestinians have lived under occupation for over 75 years, over 80% of Gaza’s population is refugees from the Nakba, and with the blockade, Israel counts calories going into Gaza.
Between security issues, internal political disputes, economic stagnation and the blockade, 64.3% of Gaza’s population was moderately or severely food insecure prior to Oct. 7.
Beyond potential bias in the media, many individuals at local rallies over the past two months voiced frustration with the lack of coverage and language used by newsrooms.
“A really tangible example is the way that children who were held under administrative detention by the Israeli government were referred to in the last seven days versus the Israeli hostages,” Ford said. “Everybody who is a child should be referred to as a child. One side shouldn't be a child and the other a young woman when you're talking about people that are the same age.”
National scale
Groups across the United States, including the United Auto Workers union, called for a permanent ceasefire in hopes of seeing action on the federal level.
An estimated 100,000-300,000 protesters marched on Washington D.C. in support of a ceasefire on Nov. 4. Similar to Portland, hundreds gathered in downtown Los Angeles for a children’s march for a ceasefire on Dec. 2.
In a survey from Data for Progress, 61% of Americans, including 76% of democrats, said they agree or somewhat agree the United States should call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. With a majority of the country on the side of a ceasefire, Portlanders wonder what else Blumenauer needs to see before he joins the call.
“There is no justification in international law for the indiscriminate killing of civilians or the holding of civilian hostages.” Ford said. “The Israeli government, with the fourth strongest military in the world, has been actively holding a population of more than 2 million people under blockade for over 16 years.
“What is happening right now is calculated and intentional forced displacement of Palestinians and all-out genocide. This is not debatable according to the standards of international law and humanitarian organizations from Amnesty International to the UN.”
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