On Monday, a rally was held at Moore Square in Raleigh for the victims of the Mawasi massacre on July 13th that killed more than 90 people. Most of the rally’s organizers and speakers were unaffiliated, but some hailed from the Party for Socialism and Liberation Carolinas.
Between 50 and 100 protestors filled up a grassy corner of Moore Square by seven o'clock. As people waited for the event to start, Arabic music played from loudspeakers, an organizer strung up a dozen Palestinian flags in the trees by Hargett Street, and members of Triangle Democratic Socialists of America canvassed for a new campaign called “No Appetite for Apartheid”. The initiative aims to get local businesses to remove Israeli food products from their shelves.
The attendees stood up and gathered when the MC introduced the first speaker. Draped in a keffiyeh, a young activist gave a quiet speech, listing out Israeli crimes that drew either cries of “Shame!” or saddened silence.
“According to The Lancet, the genocide in Gaza has killed 180,000 people out of a population of 2.1 million people [x]. That is approximately nine percent of the population of Gaza. They are martyred. Shot by snipers, killed point-blank, starved, bombed to pieces, and some of them just died from being under thousands of pounds of rubble.”
Continuing, the speaker described the Mawasi massacre. Early in the war, Israel designated the Mawasi area as a safe zone, so hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to the area and set up a tent city. Israel has regularly bombed Mawasi since then.
An attack on Saturday, July 13th killed more than 90 people and wounded more than 300, according to Gaza health ministry. The New York Times said that 2,000-pound bombs were used during the massacre and noted that Israel bombed two emergency vehicles that arrived shortly afterward. [x].
A second speaker stepped up to address the attendees at Moore Square. She talked about the responsibility of Americans to oppose Israel’s war on Gaza, which benefits from decisive US military, diplomatic, and ideological support.
“I’ve said this a million times since October, but it’s our moral responsibility to stand clearly and firmly against the illegal settler colonial state of Israel, especially when it commits these horrific crimes. Whether it is 5,000 of us or it’s five of us, we must continue to show up.”
The world's governments are almost unanimous on how to respond to Israeli settler colonialism – accept its conquests of 1948 but reject those of 1967. More than 140 countries supported a two-state solution at a United Nations (UN) vote in 2024. The Palestinian Authority cannot vote at the UN but implored states to vote “yes”. The United States and Israel voted “no”, their ironclad position for a half-century [x].
A wide swathe of the pro-Palestine movement appears to reject the international consensus, calling for a one-state solution through now-famous chants and slogans. Monday’s rally at Moore Square featured chants like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” and “We don’t want two states, we want ’48!”.
At seven-thirty, the crowd prepared to march through central Raleigh. Organizers fanned out into the Hargett-Blount intersection and a police escort materialized. An older man gave away dozens of white hats with a watermelon logo and grasping hands emptied his plastic bag in 30 seconds. The crowd marched out into Hargett Street to chants of:
· “From the belly of the beast, hands off the Middle East!”
· “1-2-3-4, occupation no more!”
· “Gaza, Gaza, don’t you cry, Palestine will never die!”
Along the route, groups of teenagers joined the march. A few of them zoomed up and down the sidewalks on rental scooters, bobbing their heads to the call-and-response rhythm.
Among a small sea of flags and posters was a neatly printed sign from an organization called Shut It Down for Palestine that read “End All US Aid to Israel”. A home-made sign with block letters said, “Stop the Massacre of Khan Younis”. The sign had been hastily edited with blue sharpie to add the line, “US funded – that means me + you”.
The pro-Palestine movement in the Triangle has rallied and marched in Moore Square almost every week since October 2023. The crowds have fluctuated from few dozen to many thousands of people.
The durable, sustained movement for a ceasefire reflects an increased level of civilization in the US public since World War Two. In the 1950s, the Korean War killed three to four million people without much public opposition. Now, the government cannot even aid the war of a client state without an immediate eruption of fury from wide swathes of the public.
Everyone of good conscience in the Triangle will continue to hope and work for a ceasefire in Gaza. Across the US, the larger task is to pressure the owners of the country to put an end to their 400-year favorite pastime of continuous war.
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