Sara Onitsuka

Sara Onitsuka

Palestine rally

700 pro-Palestine Wisconsinites gathered October 5 to honor the Palestinian resistance and condemn one year of Israel’s escalated genocide. The protest was led by the Wisconsin Coalition for Justice in Palestine Janan Najeeb, co-chair and convener of the WCJP, kicked off the protest by affirming, “the resistance and the call for justice is not subsiding. It is growing.”

With recent escalations by Israel and the US bombing Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and threatening war with Iran, Milwaukee organizations have mobilized and demanded “U.S. hands off the Middle East.” Najeeb, who is also a leader of the Milwaukee Muslim Women Coalition, told the crowd, “The U.S. has over 750 bases in 90 countries to control their people and natural resources, but the people are winning!”

Since Israel escalated its genocide on the Palestinian people and stoked a regional war, the U.S. has doubled down and entrenched the war machine in support of the Zionist occupation. Locally, Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin back the Wisconsin Defense Industry Council (WDIC), which is complicit with genocide. Accordingly, the march made its first stop outside the WDIC, where Sara Onitsuka, chair of Milwaukee Anti-War Committee, stated, “Palestinians and other oppressed communities in the region will free themselves through their struggle and their resistance. But we will do as much we possibly can to weaken the U.S. war machine from the inside, build up the kind of strong organizing ecosystem here to take on our own government and its war crimes and win.”

Frida Rose Hamad, UW-Milwaukee student and second generation Palestinian- American, spoke on the direct links her family and many others have to the struggles in Gaza. She spoke of family members martyred by the Israeli occupation forces since 1948, with an aunt who was a speech therapist for children, and a great uncle who was older than the apartheid state of Israel being martyred since October 9, 2023.

The march then moved on to shut down the busy Wisconsin Avenue outside of Senator Tammy Baldwin’s office. Bryan Atinsky of Jewish Voice for Peace spoke outside of Baldwin’s Milwaukee office to call out the hypocrisy of U.S. politicians claiming to speak for all Jewish people. Speaking on his time as a journalist covering Israel’s crimes in occupied Palestine, Atinsky said, “In 2010, my daughter, son, wife, and mother in law were killed by the criminal negligence of the Israeli Defense Forces.”

Chris Van Valkenberg, of the Milwaukee Students for a Democratic Society, said, “After a year of genocide and nearly a century of Zionist occupation, the indisputable scholasticide is hitting students everywhere. We are inspired to rise up and fight against the billions of dollars that the U.S. has been sending to Israel to sustain the genocide The unwavering Palestinian resistance hasn't backed down, and we won’t stop either until the complete liberation of Palestine!”