January 19, 2024

On January 13, I attended the March for Gaza in Washington, D.C.  I wondered, who are these protesters marching in solidarity with Hamas?  Hamas is the terrorist group responsible for the October 7 massacre of more than 1,200 innocent Israelis, including children, and the capture of 240 hostages, including Americans.  Surely some of these protesters would also demand through their megaphones that “Hamas, free the hostages now!” or that “Hamas surrender now!”  As Israel stated many times, there would be a ceasefire if Hamas released the hostages.

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It was my first event after ankle surgery.  I went alone, so I needed to keep a low profile.  Several blocks away from Freedom Square, where the protest began, I heard the chant “ceasefire now!” in the background.

I came across about 50 people parading in the street, led by a well nourished American black woman with long dreadlocks.  From her megaphone she belted out, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”  Here in the nation’s capital, I heard a call for the genocide of the Jewish people.

What intrigued me at the march were two distinctive LGBT flags flapping in the breeze among the screaming protesters.  I thought, “Don’t these marchers understand that homosexuality is a capital crime under sharia law, and Palestinians who openly express their gayness are often killed?”  Yet, in Israel, the very country they accuse of genocide, homosexuality is not only legal, but openly embraced.  In fact, many LGBT Palestinians have sought asylum in Israel.  As I pondered the irony, I noticed that the marchers, with their professionally made signs, changed their loud mantra to “intifada revolution,” a call for violent revolution and overthrow of Jewish Israel.

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Closer to Freedom Square, the crowds thickened to an estimated total of around 10,000.  There were throngs of Muslim immigrants from all over the world.  Many brought their families, and I tried to avoid bumping into their baby strollers.  Food trucks lined the streets, with the protesters using a nearby park as a giant picnic ground.  The number of young women at the march surprised me.  I talked with one Afghani girl, about 20 years old, who had no qualms calling for a Jewish genocide.  Later, I met “Aisha,” a university student from Morocco, holding a sign that said, “Abandon Biden.”  She apparently had no problem criticizing President Biden, yet if she was in Morocco with a sign that said, “Abandon King Muhammad VI,” she would be arrested and sentenced to many years in prison.  Another woman from Russia held a sign that said “Sugardaddy Bundy AKA Biden.  Stop giving Israel my money.”  When I asked her how she found out about the march, she said, “No English.”  Impressive for a Russian Immigrant, who doesn’t speak English, to be so knowledgeable about the 1970s American serial killer Ted Bundy.

Protests are like the weather; they can change quickly.  One minute, I was in a group of families and felt safe.  Another minute, the crowds pressed into me, and I couldn’t move.  I became concerned about my ankle, but then realized that this was the least of my problems.  I heard a large group of young men shouting, “Allahu akbar!”  Several keffiyeh scarf–wearing men had climbed atop a bus stop platform, also shouting, “Allahu akbar!”

My goal was to get out of there as quickly as possible. I gently pushed through the crowd down the street, ultimately standing next to a young clean-shaven Palestinian man named Khaled.  Khaled told me that he was from the Jenin Refugee Camp.  I said, “Oh, wow, you guys are tough.”  He looked surprised and said, “You know about Jenin?”  Followers of Israeli news will know that the crowded Jenin refugee camp is a hotbed of terrorist activity, frequently subject to Israel raids.  What he said next amazed me: “I was born in the U.S., but my parents moved us back to Jenin.”  I thought: “Isn’t Jenin a refugee camp?  Why on Earth would a Palestinian family living a life of freedom in America willingly move their children back to a terrorist-filled refugee camp?”  The media programmed me to believe that refugee camps were places people wanted to leave and not go back.

As we continued talking, I asked if there were gays living in Jenin.  “Oh, no, that’s not allowed,” he quickly responded, shaking his head.  “You definitely wouldn’t want to advertise that you’re gay in Palestine.”  The young man may have said this because he remembered what happened to Ahmed Abu Marhia, whose severed head was found on the side of the road in the West Bank after Islamists murdered him for being gay in 2022.

As I walked to a less crowded corner of the protest area, I met “Tom,” a Caucasian man from Seattle with long curly hair.  Tom stood next to a table with signs and brochures representing the International Socialist Alternative, a radical socialist organization, calling for the end of capitalism.  Tom rambled on about how capitalism is bad and how the U.S. and Europe should embrace Marxism and enforce a complete embargo on all ships coming or going from Israel.  I asked Tom, “Then how will the Israelis get their food to eat?  Tom coldly replied, “Well, that’s a good question, isn’t it?”  Tom also told me that he moved to D.C. to be an environmental consultant with the EPA, focused on environmental justice issues.  As I began to walk away, Tom assured me that he would never work directly for a colonial government like the U.S.

The protest was a display of the failures of the Obama/Biden administration’s immigration policies — policies that have opened our doors to virulently antisemitic immigrants from the Islamic world who have no intention of embracing our freedoms, but instead insist that Americans embrace Islam.