Daily, desperately hungry people are being shot in Gaza queuing for food.  

Tens of thousands of women and children have been killed by bombs and munitions supplied by the U.S. and paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Almost all housing has been turned to rubble. Every hospital, school and college has been bombed. All critical infrastructure has been targeted. There appears to be no end in sight to the death and destruction. 

Saturday, July 5 a group of young people, calling themselves the ‘People’s Perseverance for Palestine’, organized a public meeting, hosted by the Second Congregational church in Newcastle, to try to make sense of how this immense tragedy could happen and why the killing, destruction, and increasing levels of starvation continue unabated.  

Speakers included Faisal Khan, a civil and human rights advocate and founder of the Carolina Peace Center, Claire Muscat from Jewish Voices for Peace, and Dr. Abigail Fuller representing the Maine Coalition for Palestine. 

Mr. Khan took the attendees on a journey from the early Jewish settlers in Palestine through the increasingly aggressive displacement of the indigenous Palestinian population, the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their ancestral lands and the flattening of their villages in 1948, and the current expansion of the settler movement in the West Bank with land seizures and the bulldozing of Palestinian homes and communities. 

Ms. Muscat described her personal journey from being an advocate for Israel ‘no matter what’ to recognizing that these policies of violent displacement and aggression against Palestinians are morally indefensible. 

Dr. Fuller talked about the need to organize and speak up: given the U.S. role in funding and arming Israeli aggression, our collective silence makes us complicit in the crimes that are taking place not just in Gaza but throughout the West Bank.  

All three speakers emphasized that to speak up against Isreali crimes is not antisemitism. Opposing starvation as a weapon of war is not antisemitic. Calling for peace is not antisemitic. Recognizing Palestinian humanity is not antisemitic. 

The People’s Perseverance for Palestine (PPP) is organizing another consciousness-raising event, the showing of the documentary "Israelism," on Wednesday, July 23in the Harbor Theater, Boothbay. Doors open at 5.30 p.m. All are welcome. 

For further information, contact PPP at Dignity4Palestine@proton.me