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San Antonio for Justice in Palestine (SAJP) organized Sunday’s rally and march to support the Palestinians in Gaza and to call for a ceasefire as Israel continues its retaliatory mass bombardment of the territory.
The Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 8,000 people, mostly women and children, since October 7, when a Hamas terror attack killed over 1,400 people in Israel, the vast majority of whom were civilians — according to Israel.
SAJP founder Moureen Kaki explained their central goal.
“We’ve been chanting ‘ceasefire now’ because our main goal is to try to get our representatives who are complicit in this genocide to call for a ceasefire at the very least, because that’s where the conversation needs to begin” Kaki said.
Hundreds of protestors marched in downtown SA today to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and to support the Palestinian people of Gaza. The protest was organized by San Antonio for Justice in Palestine. pic.twitter.com/BI0n2l14Vr
— Josh Peck - Texas Public Radio (@Joshua_Peck_) October 29, 2023
San Antonio Congress members Joaquin Castroand Greg Casar have both joined a growing chorus of congressional voices calling for a ceasefire in the Democratic Party.
She said local leaders have a responsibility to call for a ceasefire too, even if they don’t control those levers of power directly.
“I think our city council may just think that they have no voice in this, but the reality is they have political weight, that them calling for a ceasefire publicly would bring people’s attention to that in ways that we as individual people that are not elected officials don’t have,” she said.
Kaki thanked District 2 Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez and District 5 Councilwoman Teri Castillo for their public ceasefire calls. The White House has stood firm against a ceasefire.
The U.S. was one of only 14 nations who voted against a United Nations General Assembly resolution in support of a ceasefire last week. The White House has said a ceasefire would only benefit Hamas, which controls the territory and is placing civilians in harm’s way.
Kaki said that Mayor Ron Nirenberg can make a meaningful symbolic gesture globally by ending San Antonio’s so-called “friendship city status” with the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.
“That would be an urgent way for Mayor Nirenberg to stand on the right side of history and to sever ties with a genocidal state as a consequence for what they’re doing,” Kaki said.
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territories since 1967 has said the Palestinians in Gaza are at major risk of mass ethnic cleansing. She called for accountability for perpetrators of war crimes in both Hamas and Israel.
Israel has been accused of war crimes for cutting off power, water, food, fuel, and medicine to the entire population of Gaza, as well as for bombing civilian infrastructure, and allegedly using white phosphorus over civilian areas, which can burn flesh to the bone. Israel denies that it has used white phosphorus in Gaza since October 7.
Protestors at Sunday’s rally and march also called on the U.S. to end its financial and military support for Israel. President Joe Biden has asked Congress for over $14 billion in new aid to support Israel’s defense.
Maya Keith said she came to Sunday’s protest with her daughter from Stockdale because she couldn’t stand on the sidelines anymore.
“I see the reports all the time, and pictures on social media of kids her age — she’s four, and I have a seven year old too — and they look just like them, and they’re just lifeless,” Keith said. “And somehow people see that and it doesn’t touch them. They don’t see them as real people, and I want people to realize that they are real people to me and they should be real people to everyone.”
Keith brought a sign that she said her four-year-old daughter wanted to hold, which said “Israel is killing kids like me.”
Israel’s aerial campaign in Gaza continues, as do the early stages of a ground incursion into the northern half of the territory. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country has entered the second phase of what he expects to be a long war.
