Thousands of marchers descended on Washington DC on Saturday to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and to protest US aid to Israel, more than three months into an Israeli offensive against Hamas that is killing 250 Palestinians per day, according to the Oxfam charity.
The protest, called a march on Washington for Gaza, was promoted as likely to be the largest pro-Palestinian demonstration in the US since the 7 October attack on southern Israel by Hamas fighters emerging from Gaza, which killed almost 1,200 people and led to a massive military response from Israel, backed by the US government.
Oxfam said the Israeli bombardment has displaced 1.8 million of the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza and turned much of the besieged territory bordering Israel, the Mediterranean Sea and Egypt into rubble and dust.
Saturday’s protest, organized by the American Muslim Task Force for Palestine and aligned groups, was organized to draw attention to what it calls Israel’s “crimes against humanity” and articulates a position that the creation of a fully recognized Palestinian state is in US national interests.
Flyers for the event said protesters were being bused in from Florida, Minnesota, Texas, Wisconsin and other areas.
A similar, British event took place in London earlier in the day, attended by thousands including the giant, well-traveled Syrian puppet Little Amal, representing refugees and displaced people, only recently back from a high-profile visit to the US-Mexico border.
One of the organizing groups in Washington, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said on Friday that they had sent a letter to the White House calling on the president to secure a “complete and verifiable ceasefire”, the release of all hostages in Gaza and political prisoners in Israel, and the termination of unconditional US financial and diplomatic support for the Israeli government.
The letter also called for Israeli officials to be “held accountable for the Gaza genocide”, and the initiation of credible negotiations for a just and enduring peace by ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The rally in Washington is the second in the US capital since the current Israeli offensive began following the Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people and in which Hamas took more than 200 hostages; more than 100 are believed to still be held in Gaza. The Gaza health ministry has estimated that at least 23,708 Palestinians have been killed and 60,000 wounded in the Israeli action, the vast majority civilians.
Earlier this week, South Africa accused Israel of genocide in a case brought to the International Court of Justice, charging that Israel’s far-right government was “intent on destroying the Palestinians in Gaza” and creating conditions “calculated to bring about their physical destruction”.
Israel has described the accusation as a “blood libel” and said the death toll in Gaza an unavoidable consequence of its battle against a militant army. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said it was in “an upside-down world” that the state of Israel “is accused of genocide at a time when it is fighting genocide”.
Among those addressing the crowd in Washington, by video link, was Al Jazeera journalist Wael al-Dahdouh, whose wife, daughter, two sons and a grandchild were killed by Israeli airstrikes. Also speaking were long-shot US presidential candidates Cornel West and Jill Stein, as well as a daughter of Malcom X, Ilyasah Shabazz.
Al-Dahdouh spoke about the dire conditions Palestinians in Gaza are struggling to exist in while under Israeli bombardment.
“The people are paying an exorbitant price, and are living a disastrous life,” he told the crowds in Washington.
“People do not have sustenance, food or drink, a place to sleep, a bathroom and what is necessary for a life, not for a decent life, rather what is basically necessary to maintain life.”
Al-Dahdouh himself was injured in an Israeli airstrike that also killed his camera operator, Samer Abu Daqqa. “The whole world must look at what is happening here in the Gaza Strip,” he told Al Jazeera last week. “What is happening is a great injustice to defenseless people, civilian people.”
Mohamad Habehh, a director of development for American Muslims for Palestine and lead organizer of Saturday’s event, told the Washington Post that organizers had picked this weekend to honor the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr Day federal holiday in the US and to mark 100 days of war by Israel in Gaza.
“We’re past three months of constant killing,” Habehh said. “We feel that it is important for us to come on this holiday weekend in the spirit of MLK when he said that ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’, that we stand up against the injustice that’s going on in Gaza right now, and stand up against the atrocities that are being supported and being promoted by our government.”
Speaking at the rally, Taher Herzallah, the director of outreach for American Muslims for Palestine, said the conflict in Gaza had given the people of the global south the clarity to “rise together in unison”.
“Who would have known that the mighty people of Yemen would challenge the empires of the world,” he added, referring to the Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea that have led to two nights of retaliatory strikes by the US and UK.
A Gallup poll released last week showed that Americans are divided over US involvement in resolving the Gaza conflict, with 41% of those polled saying the US is doing “about the right amount” to bring an end to the war and 39% saying it was “not enough”.