A Year of Struggle For Palestine in Belly of the Beast

October 7 marks a year since the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, which opened up a new era of struggle against the Zionist occupation. This action ignited the peoples of the world to stand with Palestine and resist imperialism everywhere. Within the United States, without which the Israeli colonial project would be impossible, millions of people were brought into the struggle against imperialism from within the belly of the beast.

This mass raising of consciousness has brought the majority of people in the United States on the side of an arms embargo against Israel. But this shift did not happen overnight, and has been a result of countless rallies, actions, community meetings, media projects, and other undertakings by grassroots organizers.

October 8, 2023: Just a day after Israel began exacting collective punishment on Palestinians in response to the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, organizations such as the Palestinian Youth Movement, the ANSWER Coalition, and the People’s Forum held a rally in Times Square, New York City, standing in solidarity with Palestinians resisting occupation. These organizers held firm despite subsequent attacks by powerful lawmakers such as New York Governor Kathy Hochul who denounced the rally as “abhorrent and morally repugnant.”

October 20, 2023: As the Israeli genocide unfolded, these organizers were only proven right as millions of people across the country began to join the movement for Palestine. This included the powerful front of organized labor within the United States. On October 20, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America and the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 3000 initiated the call within the labor movement for a ceasefire. 

“We, members of the American labor movement, mourn the loss of life in Israel and Palestine. We express our solidarity with all workers and our common desire for peace in Palestine and Israel, and we call on President Joe Biden and Congress to push for an immediate ceasefire and end to the siege of Gaza. We cannot bomb our way to peace. We also condemn any hate crimes against Muslims, Jews, or anyone else,” their statement read. Slowly but surely, major unions began to sign on in support of this statement. 

Other unions joined the labor movement’s call for a ceasefire later on, including the United Auto Workers, one of the largest unions in North America, the two-million-strong Service Employees International Union (SEIU) as well as the over three-million-strong National Education Association (NEA).

October 30, 2024: Hundreds of mostly Jewish anti-zionist activists participated in mass civil disobedience in Grand Central Station in the heart of New York City. These activists were organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, and sought to shut down the station in opposition to the US support for Israeli genocide. Over 350 people were arrested. 

November 4, 2023: Half a million people traveled from across the country to Washington, DC on November 4 to participate in the “National March on Washington: Free Palestine” to call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to all US aid to Israel.

“We’re all afraid, but this fear does not compare,” said Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd, speaking from the podium at Freedom Plaza on November 4. “They want us to think that we are paying personal prices, but we have our community. They want us to think that we are alone, but we have our people supporting us. If they come for you, if they take your job, if they fire you from school, if they expel you, do not think of yourself as a casualty. You are not a casualty, you are fuel for the movement, you are part of the struggle.”

“Empire does not reward silence. It will crush us anyway, it will swallow us anyway, we will not sit in the corner quietly as they kill our people.”

500,000 rallied in Freedom Plaza for Palestine on November 4 (Photo: Sofia Perez)

January 13, 2024: Another national march took place on January 13, when 400,000 people once again poured in Washington, DC to take the Palestine solidarity movement straight to Biden’s doorstep. The mobilization was organized by the American Muslim Task Force on Palestine, which includes American Muslims for Palestine, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Circle of North America, Muslim American Society, Muslim Student Association-National, Muslim Legal Fund of America, Muslim Ummah of North America, and Young Muslims, and the ANSWER Coalition.

The hundreds of thousands who showed up in DC were joined by millions across the world who participated in a global day of action in solidarity with Palestine to mark nearly 100 days of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Rallies, strikes, and mass mobilizations were held in major cities of South Africa, Japan, Turkey, the UK, South Korea, Indonesia, Ireland, New Zealand, Ivory Coast, Sweden, Italy, Germany, Austria, Australia, Finland, as well as throughout the United States. 

Thousands shut down the Port of Oakland in California at 5 am on that morning, effectively shutting down operations at the port for the entire day, according to organizers. The action was staged by over 3,000 workers and community members, including members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10.

February 25, 2024: Aaron Bushnell, an active duty member of the US Air Force, set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC on Sunday, February 25 to protest Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and his country’s support to the war.

Bushnell live streamed his “extreme act of protest,” stating, “I am an active duty member of the US Air Force and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it is not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

March 2, 2024: 50,000 people marched in New York City to demand an end to Israel’s genocide and against the threatened ground invasion of Rafah, joining an international call to action. Over 100 protests took place on all continents as part of the “Hands off Rafah” global call to action which sought to increase pressure against Israel and its western backers who have shown no signs of letting up in their genocidal military campaign against Gaza.

Israel would stage this ground offensive later in the year in May. 

March 12, 2024: Pro-Palestine activists protesting “real estate event” selling stolen Palestinian land in the Long Island village of Cedarhurst on Tuesday March 12, were met with a crowd of hundreds of racist counter-protesters. 

Zionist protesters confronting members of Neturei Karta participating in a pro-Palestine protest in Cedarhurst, Long Island.

March 13, 2024: “Real estate event” selling stolen Palestinian event, organized by the real estate company My Home in Israel is cancelled in Flatbush, Brooklyn following mass outrage.

April 15, 2024: Protesters shut down Golden Gate Bridge, stopping traffic with banners that read “stop the world for Gaza” and “end the siege on Gaza now!” Protesters drove their cars onto the bridge, used their vehicles to block traffic before throwing their car keys into the bay, and chaining themselves together.

26 of these demonstrators now face felony charges following a decision by the San Francisco District Attorney. 

April 17, 2024: A handful of students at Columbia University ignited a new phase of the solidarity movement by rushing onto the campus’ main lawn in the early morning hours of April 17, setting up tents in the first Gaza Solidarity Encampment, demanding that their university divest from Israeli genocide. The very next day, student organizers were mass arrested after their university President, Minouche Shafik, called in the New York Police Department to suppress the encampment. 

The mass arrest did nothing to suppress the student movement, in fact, it called students across the country and around the world into action. In the subsequent days, student organizers set up dozens of Gaza Solidarity Encampments, demanding that their own institutions divest from the corporations sponsoring Israeli genocide and revealing the extent to which higher education was complicit in the massacre of Palestinians. 

In subsequent days, students at more campuses launched their own encampments. In the early hours of the morning of April 22, students at New York University began an encampment on Gould Plaza, joining their New York City counterparts at the New School, which had launched an encampment the previous day.

In the Greater Boston Area students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Emerson College, and Tufts University set up encampments at their own universities. Students at the University of Michigan also launched an encampment on April 22, pitching tents outdoors with ice still visibly on the ground.

Gaza solidarity encampment. Photo: Wyatt Souers

April 30, 2024: Students valiantly braved state repression as well as vigilante violence by Zionist agitators. 

Hundreds of students, professors, and community members were beaten and arrested by police officers on the night of April 30, 2024 in New York City, following the NYPD’s repression of Columbia students’ seizing of Hamilton Hall, which they renamed “Hind Hall” after five-year-old Palestinian martyr Hind Rajab. 

At the University of California – Los Angeles, Zionist counter protesters conducted several rounds of attacks against the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Student organizers reported counterprotesters releasing bags of mice injected with an unknown substance, as well as cockroaches. Counterprotesters also launched fireworks at the encampment. Reporters at Left Coast Right Watch compiled a detailed timeline of the efforts of counter protesters to torment students. 

The police did nothing to apprehend the Zionist counter protesters, but instead raided the UCLA Gaza Solidarity Encampment on May 1, brutalizing students with rubber bullets, tear gas, and flashbang grenades. 132 pro-Palestine demonstrators were arrested.

May 15, 2024: In response to the repression endured by students at UCLA, as well as other universities within the UC system, United Auto Workers Local 4811, which represents 48,000 student workers across the University of California campuses, voted to authorize a strike on May 15 following police and administrative repression of pro-Palestine students staging Gaza Solidarity Encampments. 

Desmond Fonseca, UAW 4811 worker at UCLA, told Peoples Dispatch that the local “has long expressed our solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian working class for dignity, justice and liberation. Our bosses have clearly shown that they are on the side of oppression and exploitation and in doing so have attempted to brutally suppress our workers rights to free speech.”

“Our authorization of a strike shows that we will not back down when these institutions attempt to silence our right to peacefully protest a genocide, and that our union will utilize whatever legal means available to continue standing with the movement for a free Palestine. We see a clear path for the university to rectify its illegal activity and show that it is operating in good faith fit to its stated morals: amnesty for our workers who were unjustly arrested, and negotiations rather than repression with the student movement which is righteously protesting for divestment from the Israeli war machine.”

The strike by UAW 4811 workers was historic, representing the first strike in US history having to do with Palestine solidarity. The strike came to a close in June following the UC system’s use of the legal system against workers.

UAW 4811 members including Desmond Fonseca (leftmost) attend the People’s Conference for Palestine (Photo: Sofia Perez)

May 24, 2024: 3,000 pro-Palestine activists converged in Detroit, the metropolitan area with the largest concentration of Arab Americans, for the People’s Conference for Palestine in late May. 

The conference was been convened by Palestinian and anti-imperialist organizations from across North America, including the Palestinian Youth Movement, National Students for Justice in Palestine, the US Palestinian Community Network, the People’s Forum, Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, the ANSWER Coalition, the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), and many others. Almost 300 organizations have endorsed the conference, including Dissenters, Artists Against Apartheid, Autonomous Tenants Union Network, Black Alliance for Peace, Black Lives Matter-Canada, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Cooperation Jackson, and American Muslims for Palestine.

Conference attendees heard from key figures of the global Palestinian movement, including British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah, Sana’ Daqqah, activist, journalist, and the wife of the martyred Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqah, and physician and activist Mustafa Barghouti, secretary general and co-founder of the Palestinian National Initiative. 

“What does it mean to generate crisis for the ruling class of this country?” asked Mohammed Nabulsi, a leader in the Palestinian Youth Movement, in a speech during the conference. “It means to make the continued prosecution of this war politically, socially and economically untenable. It means to create further divisions, ruptures, conflicts, and problems for and amongst the Western ruling class, the Biden administration, the Democratic Party and the base of the Democratic Party.”

“We are one front. We are not the sole front. We are not the front. This genocide will come to an end, in part, because of all of the work that we’ve done. But that’s the key word here: in part. Not because of us,” he said of the North American Palestine solidarity movement.

Attendees chant at People’s Conference for Palestine (Photo: Palestinian Youth Movement)

May 31, 2024: Massive pro-Palestine action is held at the Brooklyn Museum, organized by groups such as Palestinian-led community organization Within Our Lifetime. Organizers demanded that the cultural institution recognize the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Protesters were met with unprecedented brutality by the New York Police Department. 

June 8, 2024: Mass mobilizations continued throughout the summer. Over 200 organizations came together to hold the demonstration and to organize dozens of buses to bring demonstrators from all over the country to converge in Washington DC on June 8. 1,000 protesters traveled overnight from Tampa, Florida, and more protesters came from as far away as Detroit, Iowa, and Kentucky. Convening organizations included the Palestinian Youth Movement, National Students for Justice in Palestine, The People’s Forum, Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, US Palestinian Community Network, and the ANSWER Coalition.

100,000 demonstrators formed a “red line” around the White House, a miles-long red banner, parts of which were inscribed with the names of the 40,000 Palestinians killed by Israel in the ongoing genocide since October.

The demonstrators were denouncing Biden’s previous claims that the invasion of Rafah by Israel would be a red line for his administration, even threatening to withhold weapons shipments when Israel was still threatening to invade.

July 24, 2024: Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Washington, DC on July 24 in opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu’s joint address to Congress. While war criminal Netanyahu received a standing ovation from both chambers of Congress and both major establishment parties, thousands took to the streets directly outside the US Capitol building to register their disgust with the US’s support for and complicity in the genocide against Palestinians. 

Shortly before the mass mobilization against Netanyahu, seven major trade unions in the United States, including the American Postal Workers Union, the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, the National Education Association, Service Employees International Union, the Association of Flight Attendants, the United Auto Workers, and the United Electrical Workers, took a significant step by demanding that the United States end all military aid to Israel and that the US help secure a ceasefire in Gaza. The unions represent a total of six million workers, which is nearly half of all unionized workers in the US.

Police forces launched pepper spray at demonstrators and made several arrests, but demonstrators, who came as individuals or part of organizations of the working class such as student groups, labor unions, and tenant organizations, overcame intense police repression in order to assert their right to protest.

September 26, 2024: Netanyahu once again visited the US to speak at the United Nations General Assembly in late September. Thousands took to the streets of Manhattan on September 26 ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s UN address, denouncing US complicity in Israel’s genocidal rampage across Palestine and Lebanon. 

It was from his New York City hotel room that Netanyahu ordered the strikes that would assassinate Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as well as Lebanese civilians, using US-supplied 2,000-ton bunker-buster bombs. 

October 5, 2024: 20,000 people march from Times Square to Washington Square Park in New York City to mark one year of resistance to genocide, from the US to Palestine. Contingents include Artists Against Apartheid, City Workers for Palestine, Nodutdol for Korean Community Development, and Anakbayan USA. Actions happened concurrently in cities such as Chicago, Washington DC, Dallas, Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Raleigh, Tampa, Cincinnati, and Rochester, NY.

“We will never succumb to despair. We will continue struggling, continue marching, continue fighting, and continue organizing because the struggle has just begun,” said Layan Fuleihan of the People’s Forum, addressing the crowd in Washington Square Park.