Striped black, white, and dark green with a bright red equilateral triangle on the left, Palestinian flags billowed under the afternoon sun in downtown San Luis Obispo.
Dozens of people waved the emblem, and scores more wore checkered black and white scarves called keffiyeh either around their necks or heads.
These are the fabrics of identity for the Palestinian people.
From 3:30 p.m. until early evening on Oct. 21, hundreds of locals of Palestinian ethnicity and allies including kids, college students, adults, and senior citizens, marched to protest Israel’s attacks on Palestine and the United States’ multi-billion-dollar funding of it.
One marcher was longtime SLO resident Bass Wehhab. Wehhab grew up in Sacramento. His parents moved to California from Palestine in 1967 after the Six-Day War between Israel and a coalition of Arab states.
“I grew up hearing horror stories,” he announced at the rally. “There’s nothing happening here other than unconquered evil. This evil is colonialism.”
Israel’s current airstrikes on the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank are in retaliation for the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel—part of Palestine’s 75-year-long struggle for independence. In 1948—decades after the British government stated its support for a “national home for the Jewish people” on Arab land through the Balfour Declaration—Israel became a state with immediate recognition from the United States and the Soviet Union. According to Al Jazeera reporting, Jewish nationalists, called Zionists, expelled more than 80 percent of Palestinians in the process and seized roughly 80 percent of Palestinian land.
Soon after, 150,000 Palestinians remained in Israel and eventually received citizenship but were subjected to military rule until 1996. Israel conquered regions in occupied Palestinian territory—the West Bank and the Gaza Strip—in 1967, sparking military control there. With no land army, air force, or navy, Palestine has fought for freedom against the Israeli government and its national military, the Israeli Defense Forces.
On Oct. 7, the political and military organization Hamas, which has been governing the Gaza Strip since 2007, launched a surprise offensive of 5,000 rockets on Israel killing at least 1,400 Israelis, ABC News reported.
The U.S. considers Hamas a terrorist organization, with President Joe Biden calling it a “terrorist group” that “unleashed pure, unadulterated evil in the world.”
Immediately after the Hamas bombing, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a siege on the Gaza Strip—a 140-square mile sliver of land packed with 2.2 million Palestinians, half of whom are children. Human rights groups have called the strip an “open-air prison.” With Israeli air strikes underway in Gaza, its residents are cut off from electricity, food, water, and fuel. Israel’s bombs killed more 4,000 people, Al Jazeera reported, and 338,000 Palestinians are now displaced from their homes.
“Hamas is not a Palestinian group and not representative of the Palestinian people,” Wehhab told New Times on Oct. 23. “This whole Hamas thing is just a label that the Western media is putting on it to make it look like it’s Israel versus Hamas. No, it’s just Israel waging war on Palestine.”
The New York Times reported that Israel saw the deadliest day since its inception on Oct. 7 with the Hamas attack. More Palestinians have been killed so far in 2023 than in 2014, when more than 2,000 were killed in a 50-day war.
At the Oct. 17 SLO County Board of Supervisors meeting, the top officials unanimously condemned Hamas’ attack on Israel but remained silent on Israel’s continued aggravation against Palestine.
“I condemn these atrocities unconditionally,” 2nd District Supervisor Bruce Gibson said in an official statement after the meeting. “I stand with Israel and the Jewish people worldwide in support of an appropriate response to this criminal barbarity.”
During the meeting, 3rd District Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg said she felt caught in the middle.
“The person that influenced me most about being a public official is Anne Frank, and so I feel really strongly about the ability to stand with Jews and with Israel,” she said. “But also, I’m a mother, and I’m heartbroken over the Palestinian children.”
First District Supervisor John Peschong, 4th District Supervisor Jimmy Paulding, and 5th District Supervisor Debbie Arnold echoed their peers’ sentiments. Their comments came after residents urged support for Israel during the public comment period.
County resident and former Republican Congresswoman Andrea Seastrand requested the supervisors adopt a resolution opposing “the extermination of Jews.”
“Today, we see neo-Nazis in our streets of America calling for the killing of Jews,” she said. “Most importantly, I want to emphasize the open borders today … and especially our southern border, with thousands coming every day … traveling to all parts of this land and we don’t know who they are.”
A Cal Poly student affiliated with the independent group Abolitionist Action Central Coast SLO (AACCS) told New Times that misinformation is rife in SLO County and across the nation where criticizing Zionism is conflated with anti-Semitism. The student requested anonymity for safety concerns.
“American Jews are not under threat by Palestinian people,” they said. “People who attack synagogues and our Jewish comrades are white supremacists.”
As recently as Oct. 22, some residents in a SLO neighborhood found plastic bags weighed down by rocks in their driveways. Photographs published in a now-deleted Nextdoor post showed that the bags contained a pamphlet from the California Blackshirts, bearing anti-Semitic messaging, references to the Talmud, and the statement, “To fight for Israel is to fight for pedophiles.”
Young county residents continue working to raise awareness. On Oct. 25, a group of Cal Poly students planned to host a teach-in on campus that aims to offer a de-colonial perspective on Palestine.
The Oct. 21 rally for Palestine took place a week after a Jewish Community Rally marched downtown SLO to support Israel after the Hamas offensive.
Palestine ally Wehhab, in turn, hopes his speech at the rally for Palestine will inspire people to move away from politicians and support local chapters of groups like the NAACP, Diversity Coalition, and Race Matters, who already “embrace the opposite of what’s going on now, which is white supremacy and apartheid.”
Still, Wehhab added that he respected the words of a one-time politician who spoke at the rally for Palestine: former SLO Mayor Heidi Harmon, who called Israel’s assault on Palestine an apartheid.
“It is heartening to see Jews worldwide link arms with Muslims and Christians … and demand, ‘Not in my name,’ from the Israeli government,” she announced prior to the rally. “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.” Δ
Clarification: This story was updated to include the year that military rule over Palestinians in Israel ended.
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Oct 26 – Nov 5, 2023.
I can sympathize with the horror of many at the death and destruction being experienced by the residents of Gaza, and their demands for a ceasefire or withdrawal by Israel. But abandoning the effort to destroy Hamas will ultimately result in more death, not less. Hamas has made it clear that they will continue their efforts to destroy Israeli, regardless of the death and injury to the people of Gaza, so that continuing this war on an intermittent basis guarantees continuing loss of life in both Israel and Gaza. In WWII, we completely vanquished the evil leaders who caused the war, and hanged the worst. It reformed those societies, and they are peaceful and prosperous countries today. To survive, a cancer must be excised.
This article is full of misinformation, lies, and distortions.
Just a few:
1. Article fails to mention that Israel’s intervention in Gaza comes in response to Hamas’ invasion of Israel. Hamas terrorists murdered 1400 Jews, committing barbaric atrocities such as burning babies in front of their parents, gouging out eyes, throwing hand grenades into homes, mass rapes and more.
2. Hamas has made it very clear that it does not aspire to an independent state for Palestinians, but a worldwide caliphate. Their immediate goal is to kill as many Jews as possible and drive the rest away. The Hamas Charter calls for the killing of Jews (not just Israelis).
3. In 1948, after a United Nations partition of the land into Jewish and an Arab states, the armies of five Arab states invaded Israel with the publicly claimed goal of committing gennocide agaisnt the Jews. The Haganah (Jewish army) for the most part expelled only those Arab villages that housed foreign Arab troops and attacked neighboring Jewish communities. This was self-defense, not ethnic cleansing.
4. The almost 2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel were NOT subjected to military rule (except for a very short period early on during Arab attacks). They have full citizenship rights. Arabs sit on the Supreme Court, have full voting rights, and elected representatives to the parliament.
5. Shame on the New Times for failing to obtain comment from the other side and for relying solely on a biased respondent.
6. The New Times is in effect supporting a terrorist organization that not only kills Jews, but has repeatedly brought misery onto the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people need to be liberated from Hamas.
REMOVE THIS ARTICLE IMMEDIATELY. This is not news.
This article is nothing but outright LIES and LIBEL. It is PROPAGANDA. As far as I am concerned, your article is nothing more than a HATE CRIME.
I have never read such a one-sided article in my life. You have not fact checked ANY of the information in your article. You clearly know nothing of the history of Israel – nor of the history of Palestine. A simple Google search would prove you wrong – and make you rethink everything you just wrote.
Furthermore, where is your sense of humanity? 1,400 of my people were brutally slaughtered, raped, decapitated, mutilated, burned alive, and kidnapped. And THIS is what you post? Nothing about them! No sympathy? No condemnation?
The words in your article are dripping with anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews. This is not news. But I have heard your racism loud and clear.
SHAME ON YOU for writing this.
SHAME on New Times for printing this and approving it. We hear you loud and clear as well.
I DEMAND a retraction, and an apology. The City Council and your editor will be hearing from all of us.
And we will not forget your name.
Frankly I am overjoyed to see the above letters but overall my attempts to get support for Israel have been dismal. I hope for a big turnout at the Board of Supervisors meeting Oct 31 regarding Israel and the related Vax mandate by Penny Borenstein. As a Jewish person she should know that this is an insult as the Nuremburg code was written in direct response to Josef Mangele. Anyway we need every Jew in this county to spread the truth that the Palestinians are out to destroy Israel and they voted in Hamas. The Gaza strip is part of historical Israel. It was kind of the Jews to let them live there in hopes of finding peace. The Muslims were the invaders and colonizers.
Here is my letter to the editor:
New Times’ October 26th article “Roar of Resistance,” reads like a piece of Hamas propaganda. It is full of misrepresentation, but I will comment on just one instance. Referring to the horrific Hamas attack on 600 young people at a concert and several collective farming communities (Kibbutzim) near the Gaza border, the article states “On Oct. 7, the political and military organization Hamas, which has been governing the Gaza Strip since 2007, launched a surprise offensive of 5,000 rockets on Israel killing at least 1,400 people.” The article is blatantly hiding the fact that the tactics of the ”surprise offensive” consisted of much more than rockets alone.
Did rockets gun down at least 260 people at the Supernova music festival “after fighters arrived in trucks and on motorcycles, wearing body armor and brandishing AK-47 assault rifles,” as reported by Al-Jazeera News Service on October 12? Did rockets kidnap and take hostage over 220 men, women and children, including at least 12 Americans, and hold them hostage in tunnels beneath Gaza, as widely reported, including by Reuters October 25? Did rockets massacre unsuspecting civilians in collective farming communities, including Holit, Re’im Be’eri, Nir Oz and Kafar Aza, where, as reported by CNN October 13 quoting an eyewitness to the aftermath, “women, children, toddlers and elderly were brutally butchered in an ISIS way of action”?
No, these heinous, carefully planned acts were committed by Hamas men in the personal presence of their victims, cowering before them. Hamas is a well-organized, well trained and internationally funded terrorist organization with the goal of eradicating Israel “from the (Jordan) River to the sea,” a common call to arms for pro-Hamas activists. Secretary Anthony Blinken was quoted by CNN on October 12 saying, “Hamas has only one agenda, to destroy Israel and to murder Jews.”
Regarding the events of October 7, Genocide Watch stated on their website, “Hamas targeted Israelis simply because they were Israelis. It was the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have expressed their genocidal intent to destroy the nation of Israel. The massacres by Hamas constituted acts of genocide. The attacks were also crimes against humanity and war crimes.”
As the war between Hamas and Israel intensifies and possibly spreads, each side vowing to ruthlessly conquer the other, I, like so many others, am deeply concerned about the loss of life and destruction of communities in Gaza and Israel. I am heart sick at the violence against innocent civilians resulting from acts of war. How to build a foundation for lasting peace in the region, concerned citizens around the world are asking. I certainly don’t have the answer. But this much is clear—propagandistic reporting does nothing but mislead the public, exacerbate divisiveness and fan the flames of hate. Here is my challenge to the New Times: Rise to the highest duty of journalism, objective reporting, and become part of the solution, not the problem.
Take this article down!!! Its so false and incendiary that you may as well have had Hanas write it. At least we know that hateful Nazi mentality lives in our county and are watching our backs.
I repeat REMOVE THIS ARTICLE TODAY!
I find this article highly misleading and offensive. I urge anyone else who feels this way to contact the advertisers for new times, politely let them know how you feel, and ask them read it for themselves and decided if they want to be associated with this type of misinformation.
I studied the Holocaust in school, met survivors like Elie Weisel and others, have imagined its horrors as nightmares and as I read book after book. Once you become a father or mother, the Holocaust takes on a completely new meaning, as you have a deeper understanding of its horror. If you become, as our family became, one which loses a family member in tragic circumstances, the loss of life– Israeli or Palestinian, is no longer abstract– its pain takes on different dimensions and depths.
To be against injustice is at the heart of Judaism. But Israel is not Judaism, just as the US isn’t Christianity. You can criticize a state without being against a religion. In the case of Gaza, I believe Chris Hedges has spoken the truth when he describes what we are witnessing. He writes:
Israels bombing campaign, one of the heaviest of the 21st century, has killed more than 7,300 Palestinians, nearly half of them children, along with 26 journalists, medical workers, teachers and United Nations staff. Some 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced and an estimated 600,000 are homeless. Mosques, 120 health facilities, ambulances, schools, apartment blocks, supermarkets, water and sewage treatment plants and power plants have been blasted into rubble. Hospitals and clinics, lacking fuel, medicine and electricity, have been bombed or are shutting down. Clean water is running out. Gaza, by the end of Israels scorched earth campaign, will be uninhabitable, a tactic the Nazis regularly employed when facing armed resistance, including in the Warsaw Ghetto and later Warsaw itself. By the time Israel is done, Gaza, or at least Gaza as we knew it, will not exist.
Not only are the tactics the same, but so is the rhetoric. Palestinians are referred to as animals, beasts and Nazis. They have no right to exist. Their children have no right to exist. They must be cleansed from the earth.
The extermination of those whose land we steal, whose resources we plunder and whose labor we exploit is coded within our DNA. Ask Native Americans. Ask Indians. Ask the Congolese. Ask the Kikuyu in Kenya. Ask the Herero in Namibia who, like Palestinians in Gaza, were gunned down and driven into desert concentration camps where they died of starvation and disease. Eighty thousand of them. Ask Iraqis. Ask Afghans. Ask Syrians. Ask Kurds. Ask Libyans. Ask indigenous peoples across the globe. They know who we are.
Israels distorted, settler colonial visage is our own. We pretend otherwise. We ascribe to ourselves virtues and civilizing qualities that are, as in Israel, flimsy justifications for stripping an occupied and besieged people of their rights, seizing their land and using prolonged imprisonment, torture, humiliation, enforced poverty and murder to keep them subjugated.
Our past, including our recent past in the Middle East, is built on the idea of subduing or wiping out the inferior races of the earth. We give these inferior races names that embody evil. ISIS. Al Qaeda. Hezbollah. Hamas. We use racist slurs to dehumanize them. Haji Sand Nigger Camel Jockey Ali Baba Dung Shoveler And then, because they embody evil, because they are less than human, we feel licensed, as Nissim Vaturi, a member of the Israeli parliament for the ruling Likud party said, to erase the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.
Naftali Bennett, Israels former Prime Minister, in an interview on Sky News on Oct. 12 said, Were fighting Nazis, in other words, absolute evil. Not to be outdone, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Hamas in a press conference with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, as the new Nazis.
Think about that. A people, imprisoned in the worlds largest concentration camp for sixteen years, denied food, water, fuel and medicine, lacking an army, air force, navy, mechanized units, artillery, command and control and missile batteries, is being butchered and starved by one of the most advanced militaries on the planet, and they are the Nazis?
There is an historical analogy here. But it is not one that Bennett, Netanyahu or any other Israeli leader wants to acknowledge.
When those who are occupied refuse to submit, when they continue to resist, we drop all pretense of our civilizing mission and unleash, as in Gaza, an orgy of slaughter and destruction. We become drunk on violence. This violence makes us insane. We kill with reckless ferocity. We become the beasts we accuse the oppressed of being. We expose the lie of our vaunted moral superiority. We expose the fundamental truth about Western civilization we are the most ruthless and efficient killers on the planet. This alone is why we dominate the wretched of the earth. It has nothing to do with democracy or freedom or liberty. These are rights we never intend to grant to the oppressed.
Honor, justice, compassion and freedom are ideas that have no converts, Joseph Conrad, who wrote Heart of Darkness, reminds us. There are only people, without knowing, understanding or feelings, who intoxicate themselves with words, repeat words, shout them out, imagining they believe them without believing in anything else but profit, personal advantage and their own satisfaction.
Genocide lies at the core of Western imperialism. It is the building block of Western domination. The humanitarian interventionists who insist we should bomb and occupy other nations because we embody goodness although they promote military intervention only when it is perceived to be in our national interest are useful idiots of the war machine and global imperialists. They live in an Alice-in-Wonderland fairytale where the rivers of blood we spawn make the world a happier and better place. They are the smiley faces of genocide. You can watch them on your screens. You can listen to them spout their pseudo-morality in the White House and in Congress. They are always wrong. And they never go away.
Maybe we are fooled by our own lies, but most of the world sees us, and Israel, clearly. They understand our genocidal proclivities, rank hypocrisy and self-righteousness. They see that Palestinians, largely friendless, without power, forced to live in squalid refugee camps or the diaspora, denied their homeland and eternally persecuted, suffer the kind of fate once reserved for Jews. This perhaps is the final tragic irony. Those who were once in need of protection from genocide now commit it.
This world, and many who commented here, is so hypocrite. Around 85% of Gaza population were kicked out of their homes when the US and Western Europe created a national “home” for the people they persecuted on the land of another people. Since that time, the “civilized” World has witnessed Israeli ethnic cleansing, colonial settler expansion and violence, apartheid and now genocide. Still, the leaders of this “civilized World” blame the cornered victim being killed and oppressed for scratching the face of their oppressor. On top of all that, Zionists themselves have walked back on many of their initial lies like the beheaded babies and raping. In addition, it turns out that Israeli helicopter killed many of the festival goers and tanks charred many of the civilians in their homes, and the Israeli toll is 1200 (plus 200 charred Hamas fighters). Still, many ultra-Zionists commenting here (and elsewhere on mainstream media) still repeat the same propaganda and lies. SHAME on you!!!
Letter to president Biden- Dear president, you keep talking about Israel’s
“right to exist” – why don’t you mention the Palestinian’s right to exist? You say you support a Palestinian state? But what of the Palestinians driven from their homes? Why don’t you mention them? What about the murder, maiming, kidnapping and theft inflicted on the innocent Palestinians? Should we just forget all that and move on? So many questions and so many non answers. This is one American (still a democrat and never trumper but extremely doubtful I’ll support any democratic candidate) that votes no confidence in you, the USA, the west in general and the puppet un. Venceremos