Guest Editorial: Reading the Names, October 24 to October 27.
An event held in White Plains to "respectfully acknowledge, remember, memorialize and mourn the deaths of every innocent Palestinian man, woman and child who has been killed in the last 13 months..."
by Sherry Horowitz
Over four days at the end of October (Thursday, October 24th to Sunday, October 27th), the Read the Names event took place at Renaissance Plaza in White Plains, NY.
The event was organized and supported by a coalition of Westchester peace and justice organizations, including Westchester for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace - Westchester, We United, Black Alliance for Peace, Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies, Teaching Palestine and Westchester Muslims for Palestine. It was created as a solemn, peaceful vigil to grieve the immeasurable suffering and loss of life in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, to respectfully acknowledge, remember, memorialize and mourn the deaths of every innocent Palestinian man, woman and child who has been killed in the past 13 months, to demonstrate the enormity of Israel's unprecedented military assault against Palestinians and to speak out and stand up for a cessation of this brutal carnage.
The event began with a sunrise vigil and culminated on October 27th, the one year anniversary of the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza, with an interfaith Prayer for the Dead reflecting the Jewish, Islamic and Christian traditions. The ceremony was followed by a silent candlelight march through the streets of White Plains.
The reading of names started at 9:00 in the morning on Thursday and ended at 9:00 at night. It started again at 9:00 in the morning on Friday and ended at 9:00 at night. Hour after hour, day after day, the reading of names continued. All in all, the reading went on for 45 hours over the course of four consecutive days. In those 45 hours, 80 members of the participating organizations, as well as passersby who requested to be included, read the names of over 12,000 innocent Palestinian civilians, murdered by the Israeli government in Gaza and the West Bank. Names of babies, names of children, names of adolescents, names of teenagers, names of young adults, names of 20 year olds, names of 30 year olds, names of 40 year olds, names of 50 year olds, names of 60 year olds, names of elders. Names of journalists, names of doctors, names of health care workers. All slaughtered, all gone.
These 12,000 Palestinians represent a mere fraction of the over 44,000 Palestinians who have perished as a result of Israel's ruthless invasion. This number includes more than 16,700 children dead in Gaza. Seventeen thousand children have been orphaned, with the death of their parents. Countless other Palestinians have starved to death, are buried underneath the rubble of demolished structures, are maimed beyond recognition, or have suffered horrific injuries. And the killing continues, with no end in sight.
Those Palestinians who have somehow managed to survive continue to be bombed in schools and hospitals where they have sought safe refuge. They have been displaced many times over; they have been disappeared, detained, tortured, and burned alive. They have lost their homes, their schools, their hospitals. Infrastructure has been destroyed, sanitation systems are nonexistent, hastening death through illness and lack of medical treatment. Polio has reappeared. Israel has prevented the delivery of essential food and clean water, medical supplies, and electricity. The word apocalyptic is being used to describe the mass atrocities unfolding right before our eyes.
We all agree that the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023 that killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, was a horrific event; how then can Israel's massacre of 44,000 innocent Palestinians be justified? Are we actually, as global citizens, agreeing to live in a world where some people's lives are more important than other people's lives? Is this what our religious traditions teach us?
I am Jewish, and that's not what I was taught. In the Jewish tradition, all life is sacred. The loss of one life is the loss of an entire universe. Not only has each and every person murdered in Gaza and the West Bank lost their ability to grow and thrive, to experience the mystery of life and know the power of love, to dream, and to realize their dreams. But we, as fellow riders on this planet Earth, have lost all their potential for goodness, for discovery, for the innovation and creation of their ideas, their talents and possibilities. We are bereft; I am bereft.
Israel's clear objective, articulated often and with clear conviction over the course of these past horrendous 13 months of brutality and destruction, has been to remove Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli government has relentlessly carried out this murderous assault and has now expanded its carnage into Lebanon, destroying villages and murdering Lebanese civilians. Far from making the world a safer place, Israel has placed the entire global community in a much more dangerous situation. Isn't it time, past time, to say enough is enough?
I believe now, more than ever, that we must be the ones we’ve been waiting for. We must speak out and stand up for life, for liberation, and for equality and justice for all people, with basic human rights universally guaranteed. We must do everything in our power to bring peace to Israelis, Palestinians, the Middle East and the world. If you agree that an immediate and permanent ceasefire is a necessary first step in a movement towards creating global peace, I strongly encourage you to write to your Congresspeople to express that hopeful demand. You can also ask your Senators to support Senators Sanders’s, Welch’s, and Merkley’s six Joint Resolutions of Disapproval, the first legislative action to directly block the sale of arms to Israel. The JRD legislation may come before the Senate this month.
As playwright, novelist and activist Sarah Schulman writes in her new book “The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity,” “Solidarity is the essential human process of recognizing that other people are real and their experiences matter.” Let’s all act in solidarity to protect and champion our Palestinian siblings and to preserve our own loving humanity.
Onward, in solidarity, Sherry Horowitz, Citizen
Sherry Horowitz is a former member of the Croton-on-Hudson Board of Trustees.
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