Local activists join D.C. march, urging U.S. to stop funding Israel's bombing of Gaza

A group of 52 Minnesotans boarded a bus Friday in Brooklyn Park to participate in the "March on Washington for Gaza" on Saturday, demanding an immediate cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war and an end to "U.S. funding of Israel's genocide."

Organizers said a second bus was scheduled to take participants to Washington, but they learned Thursday that the bus had broken down and couldn't be replaced. As a result, 22 people who had signed up for the trip were told they would be unable to go.

Other Minnesotans were said to be flying to Washington to participate in the rally, which according to organizers is expected to draw upwards of 25,000 from across the country. The rally is slated for Freedom Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue not far from the White House, according to the Washington Post.

The demonstration is sponsored by the American Muslim Task Force for Palestine, including numerous Muslim-American organizations, and the ANSWER Coalition, which has sponsored many national antiwar protests.

"I think it's important to make our voices heard," said Caroline Beail, 20, a student at St. Olaf College in Northfield, as she waited to get on the bus Friday.

Hamas's October 7 terrorist attack killed approximately 1,200 Israelis, including 900 civilians, making it the third deadliest terrorist attack worldwide since 1970, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza from Israel's bombing since Oct. 7 has reached nearly 24,000, including more than 10,000 children, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, the only official source there for casualties.

Among those going to Saturday's rally was Fadi Banat, 30, of Woodbury, who works at a local restaurant. He said he lived in Gaza until he was 25 years old, and that one of his cousins had been badly injured in his head and stomach by a bomb when he went out to get flowers.

"Most of my family lives there," Banat said, adding that some have died as a result of the bombings. "I'm trying to do something for them."

Simon Elliott, 29, of Minneapolis, who is a Quaker, carried a pillow to take on the bus for the 20-hour ride. He described the bombing of Gaza as "disgusting" and said the Biden administration was "not working to stop genocide but enable it."

"It's intentional, it's horrific, it has to stop," said Ange Ware, 68, a retired cashier from Minneapolis. "We don't want the Palestinians to be suffering the way African Americans have been suffering for 400 years."

The protesters said that opposing the bombing of Gaza was not an anti-Semitic act.

"It has nothing to do with religion," said Anne Minehart, 55, of Minneapolis, who works as a fraud investigator for a bank. Israel, she said, is "letting it be known how they feel about another race and it is utterly disgusting. It hurts my soul."

Mariam El-Khatib, 28, of Blaine, a member of American Muslims for Palestine and one of the trip organizers, said the Oct. 7 attacks on Israelis that preceded the Gaza bombings were "horrible," adding: "Everybody is against the killing of civilians."

But El-Khatib said the conflict didn't begin on Oct. 7. She claimed that Israel was responsible for "ethnically cleansing" more than 500 Palestinian villages in 1948, "driving 750,000 Palestinians from their homes" and imposing a "brutal military occupation" of the West Bank.

"Gaza itself has been under siege by Israel since 2007," she said.