People gather to share information, call for end to killing of civilians
By Morgan Rothborne, Ashland.news
Red ribbons fluttered between the trees in the Ashland Plaza Sunday afternoon as two days of peaceful demonstrations approached its end.
“We hang a red ribbon every 10 minutes, because every 10 minutes a child is killed in Gaza,” said Erin Moline, one of the organizers for the weekend’s event.
There is no formally organized group, she said. Through demonstrations over the preceding months, like minds met and began organizing more demonstrations. An information booth was set up Saturday, with a vigil that evening. Sunday afternoon was set aside as a time for children, she said, complete with a face painting station and hand-held bubble machines.
In a geodesic dome at one end of the Plaza on Sunday afternoon, attendees were busy making decorated paper birds with the names of children. They were working with stacks of printed lists of children killed in the conflict. As Moline held up a page, all those listed were until the age of 9. The youngest was 4.
Oshana Catranides said both Palestinians and Jews have ancestral trauma from fleeing one place and then another. But Jews have historically enjoyed general recognition of their persecution and were given a homeland.
“At this point, the disproportionate deaths means it needs to stop. It’s a rate of 30 to one, 30 Palestinians killed for every one Israeli. … In any battle, 30 to one should be enough,” she said.
Demonstration attendees are eager for the American government to act in support of a cease fire, Moline said, expressing frustration with President Biden’s policy in the conflict.
Benjy Ben-Baruch sat on a bench near the dome with his fellow longtime activist for the Palestinian cause, Brenda Gould. Ben-Baruch remembered living in Israel and protesting settler policies in 1970. After decades of activism for the Palestinian cause, he offered his understanding of the conflict.
“The biggest thing to understand at the present time is that this is a genocide,” he said. “Israel is not waging war against Hamas, the war would look a lot different if it was.”
Ben-Baruch said the state of Israel wants to clear the land of Palestinian people for its own expansion, which he said explains the high casualty count of children and other non-combatants. As he was explaining the complexities of Hamas’s history being both responsible for terror and civil administration of a territory, a man walked into the dome and raised his voice.
“All of you are so full of s— it’s coming out your ears,” the man said.
Rally attendees walked toward him and one could be heard saying, “I’d love to tell you the other side of the story.”
The man turned to Ben-Baruch and asked him if he had experienced his own children being killed and decapitated if he would react differently than the state of Israel.
“Yes,” Ben-Baruch said.
The man turned to the crowd gathering around him and said he was from a military family. That his family fought in World War II and therefore had a connection to the reality of persecution against Jews. He turned to Biblical references.
“They’re the Philistines, it’s David and Goliath, it goes back that far!” the man said.
“It’s just a story, it’s just an old story!” someone from the crowd responded.
Ben-Baruch continued recounting how Palestinian territory, until recently, had food, water, and electricity. Hamas, he said, has won elections for being able to provide those things and for representing the resistance against Israel’s expansion. The current conflict makes Hamas heroes, he said. While he couldn’t espouse the organization’s ideology, he said he could understand that people who feel oppressed are often attracted to political organizations offering retaliatory violence.
The man yelling was finally asked to leave by those in the crowd. Ashland police officers appeared near the face-painting station. Officer Andy Gomez confirmed that someone had called police about a disorderly individual and the individual had been informed, “you don’t have to like it, but these people are exercising their First Amendment rights.”
The individual forcefully defending Israel was a “unique event,” in these demonstrations, Moline said. People sometimes come through and ask questions, but it has not escalated this way before, she said.
Email Ashland.news reporter Morgan Rothborne at [email protected].
