Indiana Center for Middle East Peace sponsored seven of our Millennial and GenZ leaders at the People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit last weekend, August 29-31. Board chair, Pam Etheridge also joined them. I was able to attend on Saturday.
In the midst of the US and Israeli genocidal project against the Palestinian people, 4500 gathered in Detroit, most of them under the age of 40. A sign of hope, energy, courage. and sumud. Here are a few of the things we heard:
Rep. Rashida Tlaib: “What’s been tested on the killing fields of Gaza is already being deployed right here on the streets of America. What our government is willing to do to Palestinians, it is willing to do to all of you. … A government that doesn’t value human life in Gaza, will never value human life in our country.
Abu Baker Abed: “Journalism in Gaza is genocide reporting.”
Abu Baker Abed: “The New York Times, CNN, and the mainstream media – ‘The Genocide Enablement Apparatus.’”
Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitteh: “Gaza is now a Level 5 famine. What does this mean? It doesn’t just mean that children are starving and dying. It means that even for those who survive, there are changes to their DNA, to their genetic structure that will be passed down to generations. Israel and the US are not only stealing their present but also stealing their future for generations to come.”
Dr. Mahmoud Mustafa: “Gaza is the mirror in which the world looks at itself. What do you see when you look into the mirror?”
Dr. Mahmoud Mustafa: “We are witnessing not just Israeli attacks on hospitals, schools, mosques and churches, cultural institutions, but a ‘machinery of death.'”‘”
Gaza Soup Kitchen co-founder and UNRWA Senior Director of Philanthropy, Hani Almadhoun: “700,000 children are now in their third year of no formal education.”
Our friend, Huwaida Arraf: “We Palestinians don’t want your charity and aid. We want your solidarity and action.”
Huwaida Arraf: “Israel cannot be allowed to determine what aid gets to the people they are trying to annihilate.”
Electronic Intifada‘s Nora Barrows-Friedman: “AIPAC could disappear tomorrow. The US and Israel would still be settler colonial states.”
Nora Barrows-Friedman: “Isolate. Expose. Make costly. Dismantle.”
Belal Muhammad: “My people taught me something that no opponent, no cage, and no loss can take away. Palestinians, we don’t give up. We endure. We resist and we rise. And Inshallah, Falasteen will rise again. We will be free again. “
Palestine Youth Movement leader, one of the conference organizers, Lamees Mehanna: “These times demand that we be something more than we are. What we’ve done so far, as much as it has been, has not stopped the genocide.”
Lamees Mehanna: “Health care is being sabotaged by design. Why is baby formula forbidden? Why has milk become a weapon? Why is seeking bread a killing field? Why is saving a child’s life a crisis? Why is nursing a child an act of resistance?”
Imam Omar Suleiman: “We are not seeking your distorted reflections of us, we are demanding our full, substantive liberation. We are not looking for optics, we are demanding outcomes. We are not looking to be seen, we are demanding that our people be safe. We are fighting for something meaningful.”
Dr. Thaer Ahmad: “It’s not just about hospitals being attacked, it’s the erasure of Palestinian society in a devastating way. The Israeli military policy is against life in Gaza. They are attempting to make sure that life is not sustainable and people cannot remain there.”
Professor Ashraf Hazeyen: “If you want to know someone’s secrets, check their laundry. Israel does not do its own laundry, they send it to Washington.”
Professor Ashraf Hazeyen: “US dollars turn into Israeli bombs which become Pentagon contracts which become US campaign contributions.”
Professor Ashraf Hazeyen: “Israel and the Zionist lobby not only build bombs, they build metaphors, narratives, frameworks. Gaza is being destroyed twice – once with bombs, the other with re-writing its story. Zionists want us to believe that genocide is complex, that occupation is security, that resistance is terrorism.”
And finally:
Professor Hatem Bazian: “I hear from some people, even religious people, they don’t want to keep hearing about genocide because it makes them feel uncomfortable. Genocide should make you feel uncomfortable. Don’t tell me your god wants you to remain silent during genocide.”
The courageous former Columbia University graduate student, Mahmoud Khalil, detained illegally by ICE: “Gaza is the measure of our humanity, our moral compass, a litmus test. Silence is not an option.”
Huwaida Arraf: “We must globalize the intifada. From every river to every sea, every people must be free.”
And our friend, my fellow Friends of Hebron board member and Palestine House of Freedom‘s Miko Peled: “Palestine liberated me. It’s liberating all of us.”