War in Gaza touches off week of rallies across metro Detroit

Although Hamas' terror attack on Israel last week occurred halfway across the world, it touched off a wave of reaction here at home.

In the week that followed, rallies and vigils across metro Detroit offered public displays of sorrow, outrage and support from metro Detroit's Jewish and Arab American communities and their supporters.

There were three rallies in Dearborn last week in support of Palestinians and at least one in support of Israel, at Congregation Shaarey Zedek on Monday, at which Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., spoke. Peters later in the week visited Woodward Avenue Shul in Royal Oak, a synagogue that was vandalized earlier this year with antisemitic graffiti, to show support and talk about security concerns.

On Saturday, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in the cold and rain in Dearborn to decry Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza as “genocide” and call for an end to the occupation protesters believe precipitated last weekend’s attacks by Hamas.

Draped in black and white keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags, the crowd chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied” and “no more money for Israel’s crimes.”

Ahmad Farah, 48, of Trenton, whose father fled the region before the 1967 war and who still has relatives in the West Bank, blamed what he called decades of Israeli oppression for the current situation.

Last weekend’s surprise assault by Hamas — the militant group that controls Gaza — killed scores of Israeli civilians, touching off a war due to intensify as he spoke.

“The news does not show all the brutality against Palestinians that’s been going on,” he said. “They have been abused for 75 years; they were kicked out of their homes and killed. They’re treated like caged animals, they’re forced into a corner.

“You do that with anybody, they’re going to come out fighting.”

Now, he said, Israel is using the escalation as an excuse not only to root out Hamas, but to “root out all the Palestinians.”

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“Bar none, it is genocide,” he said. “They are trying to get rid of every Palestinian in that land. This is no different than any other genocide that’s ever occurred, except it’s being accepted.”

Already, more than 2,200 Palestinian civilians have been killed in the week of hostilities, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The number of people killed in Israel is reportedly 1,300.

Gaza, which has been locked down for a week, was on Friday issued by Israel what a UN spokesperson called an “impossible” evacuation order affecting more than 1 million residents. As protesters gathered Saturday, an Israeli ground offensive loomed; hours earlier, Israel had announced it was prepared for a coordinated response that also included air and naval forces.

Many metro Detroit Jewish people support Israel’s response, saying the country has a right to defend itself against an enemy intent on its destruction. Israel has in the past blamed civilian casualties on Hamas’ use of residential centers and hospitals to hide weapons and soldiers.

A rally Monday in Southfield brought out Israel's supporters. On Friday evening, some held a moment of silence for victims, local Jewish leaders said.

The Jewish Community Relations Council of metro Detroit/American Jewish Committee said the moment of silence would honor "the victims of Hamas terror and those who have been kidnapped and still being held hostage," and "all those innocent Palestinians who will suffer or die as a result of this necessary war against Hamas terrorism that Israel is bravely waging."

Friday was "Israel Solidarity Day" across North America, the council said. People were encouraged to wear Stars of David outside, display an Israeli flag or lapel pin, or wear a religious head covering, or kippah.

Estie Tolwin, a Huntington Woods resident who, with her husband, runs AISH Detroit — a Jewish nonprofit offering educational and prayer services — said that while all Palestinian civilian deaths are a tragedy, Israel has no choice but to destroy Hamas. For Tolwin, the attacks — the deadliest in Israel's history — were reminiscent of the past genocide of Jews.

“It’s our 9/11,” she said. “It’s kind of like the Holocaust in a way.”

Tolwin spent the week after the attacks in touch with family in Israel — she has two sons studying in Jerusalem and an estimated 150 other relatives there — and coordinating efforts to support the military campaign in Gaza. That includes soliciting donations for soldier meals and recruiting local Jews to pray for specific members of the Israeli Defense Forces — some still missing since Hamas' assault.

Though she and a handful of Jews — some Orthodox, some reform— gathered at her home for Shabbat dinner Friday said they support Israel's response and that most, if not all, of the Jews they know locally do, too, Israel has its Jewish detractors.

At least several attended Saturday’s protest in Dearborn. Alexa Eisenberg, a 33-year-old Detroit resident, stood toward the back in a kippah.

“My Judaism is … liberation-focused, it’s inseparable from Palestinian liberation and entirely separable from Zionism,” said Eisenberg, who was raised in a large reform congregation whose teachings on Israel they've actively worked to unlearn. “I’m absolutely horrified by the way that propaganda and racism and collective trauma are being wielded by the Israeli and U.S. governments to justify genocide in my name.”

A March Gallup poll found that sympathy for Palestine correlates in part with age. U.S. millennials are almost evenly split on whether they align more with Israelis or Palestinians. Limited data suggested that members of the younger Generation Z hold similar views, while older generations remain more sympathetic to Israel. 

On Friday evening, a few hundred people gathered outside Henry Ford Centennial Library holding up signs that read: "Resistance is a human right!!," "Free!! Free!! Gaza," and "Zionist Apartheid: Not on Our Dime!!" The rally featured speakers who called for Palestinian resistance and praised the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran and the late Qasem Soleimani, killed in a U.S. strike in 2020. Behind the speakers, a man held up a photo of Khomeini and one held up an Iranian flag along with the numerous Palestinian flags that were waved. It was organized by the Al-Quds Committee and the event was called the “Al Aqsa Flood Protest,” according to flyers announcing it on social media.

The Jewish Community Relations Council of metro Detroit/American Jewish Committee emphasized that Israel's fight is against terrorism.

"We are asking Jews and our non-Jewish allies to stand up to any threats they may have heard and to stand in solidarity with Israel in its war against Hamas terrorism," the group said. "We are all grieving, but we cannot let the world think we are cowering to bullying and terror."

Chris Kenning, national correspondent for USA Today, contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Metro Detroit Jewish, Arab communities speak out on Gaza