Protesters gathered outside of the North Carolina State Capitol Building on Friday to rally against the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to Israel. The relocation of U.S. the embassy Monday happened as protests in Gaza led to the deaths of more than 50 Palestinians.
Organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at NC State, the “Emergency Protest— stand in solidarity with Palestine” had more than 100 attendees.
Odai Mansour, a rising second-year studying biochemistry, is an organizer of the event and was one of the speakers.
“We are here because the U.S. Embassy was moved to Jerusalem,” Mansour said. “We are all here today because we care a lot about something that is happening in Palestine.”
On May 11, President Trump announced that the U.S. Embassy to Israel will be moving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. According to The New York Times, many Palestinians went to the border fence to protest this action made by the U.S. and they were met with gunfire and tear gas. The event caused uproar from Palestinians and supporters of Palestine across the world.
The permit for the event only accounted for 100 people, but officers monitoring the event said that such permits were always based on rough estimates, and that they had accounted for more people with the appropriate forces.
Yasmin Mustafa (‘18), a recent graduate of NC State, is one of the organizers of the protest through SJP. She is hoping that the protest will raise more awareness for what has been happening between Israel and Palestine for over 70 years.
“We’re out here today to protest for our brothers and sisters in Palestine who are having to resist every day the mass destructions of their tear gas bombs and their weapons,” Mustafa said. “They have nothing to fight for so we’re out here fighting for them.”
The event began with a recital of the Jewish Mourner’s Kaddish by Genna Cohen, from Jewish Voice for Peace, in honor of those killed in Gaza over the course of the past week.
Many attendees at the protest, including Ahmad Amireh, a first-year student at Duke University and one of the speakers at the protest, wanted to make it clear that their anti-Israel sentiments are not anti-semitic.
“My opinion is that Israel is not Judaism,” Amireh said. “I think that people can be anti-semitic, and use pro-Palestine events and occurrences to be anti-semitic, but at the same time, it’s not anti-semitic to say that what Israel is doing is wrong.”
Zainab Baloch, a Raleigh native who ran for a Raleigh City Council at-large seat during the 2017 municipal elections, has stressed the importance of policy change, and recognizing the role that the United States plays in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“It is a tragic country that we are ignoring, but there’s that one aspect of us ignoring it, and there’s that other aspect of actually funneling and being a part of the reason that they’re in such distress,” Baloch said.
Mansour, who is from Palestine, is upset at the Israeli claim to Jerusalem and the recognition of Jerusalem being Israel’s capital from the United States.
“If you look at the initial partition of the land in Israel and Palestine, Jerusalem is supposed to be its own international city, which is not claimed by anyone,” Mansour said. “And so this is an attempt by the U.S. to claim Jerusalem as an Israeli city, which it isn’t.”
In 1947 the UN General Assembly created a plan which called for the creation of separate Jewish and Arab states and for Jerusalem to be controlled by a Special International Regime. However, after the resolution was passed by the general assembly, civil war broke out in the country and the plan was never put into place.
Organizers of the protest, including Dema Alqudwah, a third-year studying political science, are hoping that the event helps state representatives recognize that good relations with Israel do not have to come at the cost of Palestinian lives.
“We want to bring awareness to our representatives … to say look what is going on,” Alqudwah said. “Just because you’re great friends with Israel does not mean that you have to turn a blind eye to what’s going on in Palestine. … Ultimately we just want to inform the public and let the people know that what’s going on in Palestine is unjust, it’s inhumane, it’s cruel and it’s not fair and nobody should be treated like that.”
