“Make some noise if you’re standing on the right side of history,” a member of the group Maryland 2 Palestine said to a crowd gathered at Lawyer’s Mall in downtown Annapolis on January 7.
The First Amendment/Palestinian Solidarity Rally was organized by 22 groups, including the Maryland chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, The Black Alliance for Peace, Jewish Voices for Peace – Baltimore, Teachers Against Genocide, and more. It was held in the shadow of the Maryland State House, just before the state’s General Assembly was set to begin a new session. The timing wasn’t a coincidence.
Organizers said they were sending a message to local leaders to halt this country’s funding of the assault on the Gaza Strip. They also wanted to highlight the way they said pro-Palestinian voices have been silenced.
On October 7, the Palestinian group Hamas launched an attack on Israel. The group killed 1,400 Israelis and took more than 200 hostages. In response, Israel initiated an aggressive assault, dropping bombs and laying siege to the area. Although the Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has had the full support of the United States, many people, both here and across the globe, have condemned the military onslaught.
People who sympathize with Israel say the attacks are warranted to eliminate the threat that Hamas poses to the Israeli people. However, many people have rallied around Palestinians, saying that the incessant bombing, which has killed over 25,000 Palestinians — including a large number of children and infants — constitutes genocide and is only the latest act in a long history of settler colonial violence.
“Critics say Israel’s overwhelming military response — which includes dropping 6,000 bombs on Gaza in the first six days of the conflict alone — amounts to collective punishment against a population living in what human rights groups call the ‘world’s largest open-air prison,’” journalist Jaisal Noor reported for Baltimore Beat in October. “The term [apartheid] has also been used to describe Israel’s five-decade brutal military occupation of Palestinians, enforced by suppressing nonviolent protests and confining their populations into scattered enclaves using Palestinian-only roads and military checkpoints.”
Recently, a panel of 17 judges at the International Court of Justice weighed in on the issue.
“Today, in a landmark interim order, the court determined that South Africa has legal standing and ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent acts of genocide,” Time Magazine reported on Jan. 26.
Many who have spoken out about the plight of Palestinian people have reported being punished for their support. In November, Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown removed Zainab Chaudry, director of CAIR’s Maryland chapter, from her post on the state’s Commission on Hate Crime Response and Prevention over social media posts she made that were critical of the Israeli government. She was reinstated when it was discovered that Brown didn’t have the power to remove anyone from the commission before their term was up.
Last November, immigrants’ rights group CASA de Maryland drew controversy when they tweeted a statement that expressed support for Palestinians along with a condemnation of attacks on innocent Israelis.
Last November, immigrants’ rights group CASA de Maryland drew controversy when they tweeted a statement that expressed support for Palestinians along with a condemnation of attacks on innocent Israelis. A group of Maryland lawmakers released a letter denouncing the statement, saying “We cannot and will not allow taxpayer money to subsidize hate speech.” CASA de Maryland later apologized for their statements.
Standing before a crowd of over 100 people, speakers at the January rally highlighted these incidents, as well as other incidents like it.
“While the horrors of this occupation occur in Palestine, our local, state, and federal institutions have manufactured a culture of fear around speaking out against these atrocities,” the speaker from Maryland 2 Palestine continued. “In a country that prides itself on the so-called rights and freedoms that it offers to its citizens, they are actively repressing our free speech when we say we do not want to fund or support genocide.”
Other speakers at the rally included Towson University college students who said they are being unfairly punished by the school for a November “die-in” protest action and a Montgomery County teacher who was placed on leave for using the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” in her email signature. Attendees marched around downtown Annapolis, circling the historic St. Anne’s Episcopal Church and heading down West Street. As they marched, they were slowly trailed by Annapolis police in marked police vehicles.
The rally represented a broad coalition of groups who have come together as the longstanding conflict has dominated news cycles and images of death and destruction have taken over social media feeds. These groups have pressed local leaders like U.S. Representative Kweisi Mfume and U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen to call for a cease-fire. They have also organized marches through Baltimore and at events like the annual lighting of the Washington Monument last December to raise awareness about the plight of Palestinian people.
Full disclosure: Spurred by the unprecedented attack on Palestinian journalists, Baltimore Beat was among signatories to a letter that urged Van Hollen to call for a cease-fire.
Erica Caines of The Black Alliance For Peace was at the rally. She said her organization has an obligation to support the people of Palestine.
“The Black Alliance for Peace is an alliance of organizations and individual members, but first and foremost it is an anti-war, anti-imperialist alliance. It models itself under the Black radical tradition of the peace movement,” Caines told me in a phone interview a few weeks after the rally. “So in that vein, we sort of have an innate responsibility to internationalism.”
Caines said that Palestinians have a right to exist in Palestine — and to defend themselves. She also said this issue isn’t a new one, and bonds between Black people and Palestinians have been established for some time.
“Palestine has been dealing with this or dealing with the question of settler colonialism, we could argue, for 100 years,” she said. “Africans have kept up to date with what’s been going on, but also been able to recognize the deeper connections of settler colonialism, the question of land, the question of self-determination, the question of sovereignty.”
She said that Palestinians have historically shown up for Black people, as well.
We can talk about African and Black people being in solidarity with Palestine, but… Palestinians have also been in solidarity with Africans…particularly in the Black Lives Matter moment in 2014.
Erica Caines, The Black Alliance For Peace
“We can talk about African and Black people being in solidarity with Palestine, but… Palestinians have also been in solidarity with Africans…particularly in the Black Lives Matter moment in 2014.”
She highlighted that police in Israel often train with departments in the United States, including Baltimore’s police department.
Zackary Berger helped organize a Hanukkah event at Van Hollen’s office late last year and also met with the senator over Zoom to plead activists’ case. Berger is a member of the Baltimore chapter of IfNotNow. The organization describes itself as “a movement of American Jews organizing our community to end U.S. support for Israel’s apartheid system and demand equality, justice, and a thriving future for all Palestinians and Israelis.”
On January 21, Van Hollen called for a cease-fire in addition to the return of hostages.
“There is a lot of good organizing against the war in Gaza and against the ongoing mass murder of Palestinians. And that is really heartening,” Berger said. “I’m glad that there are people waking up to this in the Jewish community, and in Baltimore generally and on the left.”
He also said it’s important to identify and eliminate hate — wherever it pops up.
“Understanding that there is antisemitism on the left, just like there’s racism on the left, and we need to confront these and speak about them openly,” he said.
Organizers from the group Greater Baltimore Residents for a Ceasefire say that there is still much work to do.
“We know that the only way to fight organized money is with organized people power, and making sure that we actually brought all of the various groups in Baltimore together under this message that we all believe in really strongly,” said Anna Evans-Goldstein, speaking on behalf of the group.
Calling for a cease-fire publicly is really the bare minimum…. An overwhelming majority of Democrats, want a cease-fire and want our government to call for a cease-fire, and it is, frankly, absurd that we have been needing to do this much work to convince our elected officials to do the bare minimum.
Anna Evans-Goldstein, Greater Baltimore Residents for a Ceasefire
“Calling for a cease-fire publicly is really the bare minimum…. An overwhelming majority of Democrats, want a cease-fire and want our government to call for a cease-fire, and it is, frankly, absurd that we have been needing to do this much work to convince our elected officials to do the bare minimum.”
The group is currently collecting individual signatures for a letter asking Maryland’s congressional representatives to support a cease-fire. They are also asking Marylanders to email lawmakers here asking them to co-sponsor Montgomery County Delegate Gabriel Acevero’s cease-fire resolution.
“This fight is still ongoing,” Evans-Goldstein said. She said people should join the fight and also support the businesses that have already called for a cease-fire.
“There’s a lot of small businesses that signed a letter … I’d encourage people to frequent their business there because across the board, organizations and businesses…[have] been targeted for speaking up about this.”