Minnesotans gather to show support for Israel, Palestinians

In the aftermath of attacks in southern Israel and retaliatory airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, two Twin Cities gatherings expressing divergent responses took place Tuesday evening. One, at a synagogue, underscored Israel's defense of its people as the other demanded an end to continued occupation of Palestinian territory.

Seated in the middle of some 1,700 people who'd gathered at Beth El Synagogue in St. Louis Park, Michel Rouache tried to make sense of the unimaginable. He lived in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv before coming to the U.S. some 30 years ago.

"It's something that you've never experienced in your life," Rouache said. "That something like this can happen."

The gathering, billed as "Solidarity for Israel," called for Minnesotans to "stand together" in remembering Israelis killed over the weekend in surprise, pre-dawn attacks by members of Hamas, a political organization that rules Gaza and is deemed a terrorist group by the State Department.

Amid prayers for those killed and still in captivity, songs of mourning and words of support from politicians of both major parties, those gathered on Tuesday — some with flags of Israel draped around their shoulders — spoke to the weekend's attacks in southern Israel with a sense of sorrow, reflection and also determination to support the Middle Eastern country with close ties to the U.S. in its campaign to defend itself against Hamas.

"It's sobering, it's somber, but it's the truth," said Steve Hunegs, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, "Saturday was the single largest loss of life for Jewish people since the Holocaust."

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar spoke about how her staff worked with the State Department to learn the fate of a man who had joint U.S. and Israeli citizenship and lived in Minnesota, only to discover he'd been shot in his car by gunmen.

Gov. Tim Walz, DFL, noting that many gathered at Beth El on Tuesday night have loved ones and friends living in Israel, said there was "not an inch of space" between the politicians seated in the front two rows about the next steps Israel should take to defend its people.

"If you do not find moral clarity about what was seen Saturday morning," Walz said, "you need to re-evaluate where you're at."

"That's not a geopolitical discussion," he added. "That's murder."

Five miles to the east, more than 80 people gathered in a lot next to the Midtown Global Market to hold a shiva, or Jewish mourning ritual, to grieve for Israeli and Palestinian lives lost and pray for justice and an end to "Israeli apartheid and occupation." Attendees at the event, sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace-Twin Cities and IfNotNow Twin Cities, held signs saying, "Our motto is life" and "Violence is inevitable in settler colonialism."

The Beth El Synagogue event "is about Jews standing first and foremost and only for Israel," Or Levinson, who with a group of Jewish friends organized the event, told mourners. "And it felt extremely important to us to provide as visible of a counternarrative as we possibly can. … It is so important for us to gather in a way that shows the world and shows those who would co-opt our grief and co-opt our fear that Zionism does not stand for Judaism."

"That is not what we think brings justice and peace," Rosenberg said.

A series of mourners shared the grief they held. For their friends and kin who died. For all those without electricity, medical care and water. For a childhood Hebrew teacher still missing. For the grandfather who would not speak of the friends he lost.