Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters marched from the Boston Common and through Boston on Sunday before blocking traffic and rallying outside the Israeli consulate.
Protesters rallied to criticize Israel’s military actions on Gaza since Oct. 7 and its escalation into neighboring Lebanon.
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The protest route, which Boston Police Department (BPD) officials said did not receive permits through the city, looped from the Common along Beacon Street before coming to Storrow Drive. Protesters entered its eastbound lane, forcing a traffic stop, with many motorists exiting their vehicles and either cheering in support or watching silently, before continuing through Beacon Hill.
One year ago, Hamas killed 1,200 people and took around 250 people as hostages, including civilians in attendance at a music festival on Oct. 7, in the deadliest attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust. The attack initiated an ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. Since then, more than 41,000 Palestinians and 1,139 Israelis have died in the war, while around 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced as a result of Israel’s targeting of Hamas.
The conflict continues to escalate today, as other countries, including Lebanon and Iran, have recently gotten involved. Israel took responsibility for an attack on Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah, a militant group in the country. In support of Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran launched a missile attack on Israel on Oct. 1.
Before the march, thousands of protesters convened at the Boston Common bandstand at 1 p.m. with dozens of police present. BPD reported no arrests in connection with the rally.
Organizers from the Boston Coalition for Palestine (BCFP), an association that includes 44 local member groups including the Palestinian Youth Movement of Boston and Emerson Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, participated in chanting with the crowd and organized speeches from guest speakers.
Organizers led chants like “Hezbollah will prevail, Israel go to jail” and “From Palestine to Lebanon, Israel will soon be gone.”
One speaker from the coalition emphasized the upcoming anniversary and key issues of protest for the event.
“Almost exactly a year ago, Gaza broke down the prison doors,” they said. “For 365 days, the settler colonial monstrosity that is the state of Israel has genocided our people throughout the region.”
Jean-Luc Pierite, president of the North American Indian Center of Boston’s board of directors, spoke to the crowd, saying all Indigenous people “have a right to return back to their original homeland.”
“We understand that our battle, our fight, our solidarity comes from the nature of all of our struggles,” Pierite said. “We say today, no more, end the occupation.”
Ahmad Kawash, president of Palestine House of New England and a founder of the Boston Coalition for Palestine, compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.
“The only difference is the name,” said Kawash, who then described his family’s experience living in Lebanon.
“The firefight around Beirut last night … was horrible. I can hear it while I’m talking to my family there,” Kawash said.
The next speaker, a local 7th-grade student, addressed the crowd saying he wanted to speak for kids like him in Gaza.
“Look at my life and look at theirs,” he said. “I’m waking up to an alarm clock. They’re waking up to bombs and gunfire.”
As of April, children make up a little less than half of the population of Palestine in the West Bank and the Gaza strip, according to the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics.
“All organizations that are supposed to stand up for children’s rights, where are you? Children in Gaza are not any less important than any of the children in the world,” the speaker said.
Sabrina, a member of Northshore for Palestine and president of Salem State SJP, was called up and addressed the crowd as a Jewish American in opposition to Israel.
“My family is the one perpetrating this genocide, and today I am here to speak out,” she said.
Organizers then passed out flyers that allowed people to donate to mutual aid funds before rallying the crowd to march through the streets.
As protesters marched on Storrow Drive, they waved signs and flags at on-coming traffic in the opposing westbound lane of the highway, met with blaring of horns in support. At one point, a BPD squad car flashed its sirens and pulled over before the officer in the driver’s seat flashed a thumbs up to the crowd, to which they cheered.
State Police stopped highway traffic with Storrow Drive for roughly half an hour, reopening the roadway at around 4 p.m. that afternoon.
Protesters chanted “While you’re shopping bombs are dropping” as they circled back into downtown through Charles Street, a prominent commercial area, before ending the march at the Israeli consulate by the Park Plaza Hotel.
While protesters were speaking at the bandstand, a lone counterprotester stood on the outer edge of the Common holding an Israeli flag and wearing a face mask. He was approached by several opposing protesters, while several unaffiliated ACLU Protest Watch members stood nearby.
Eventually, the counterprotester’s flag was forcibly removed from his hands, prompting a chase and eventual fight between the two men. Organizers quickly separated them, and the counterprotester promptly returned to his original position nearby. Members of the ACLU stood around the counterprotester for the remainder of the event, preventing any further altercations.
“All I’m trying to do is exist and live and you see that I get attacked violently,” the counterprotester told The Beacon following the incident. “Do you see any parallelism here, any connection? This is the day before Oct. 7. Same thing.”
“The reason why he is getting all the heat is because these people do not understand the right of Israel to have their own land,” said Filip, a research analyst from Boston, who witnessed the altercation.
BPD confirmed Monday that no report was filed concerning the incident.
Eli Gerzon is a member of the Boston Chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP Boston), an “anti-Zionist Jewish organization that supports Palestinian liberation,” and part of the BCFP. JVP Boston mobilized its 50-plus members for Sunday’s protest wearing shirts reading “Not in Our Name,” and holding signs that said “Boston Jews say: Stop arming Israel.”
Reflecting on Oct. 7 and the events of the last year, Gerzon expressed a desire to see an end to all violence. “At the same time, we understand that the violence didn’t start on Oct. 7,” Gerzon said. “It’s been going on for 76 years, and an overwhelming majority of the violence has come from Israel, from the Zionist state, backed by the United States.”
Groups criticized the organizers’ decision to protest a day before Oct. 7 and during the High Holy Days. However, Gerzon said that it is important to the Jewish identity of JVP to uphold the idea of “never again.”
“If we do not speak out, if we do not protest to try to stop this genocide then … we are going against the sacredness of our own ancestors and what they have suffered through in very recent memory,” Gerzon said. “To me, that’s awful, and it’s really disgusting to have support for genocide mean, ‘I support Jewish people,’” Gerzon said, condemning politicians for providing Israeli aid packages as a showing of standing with Jews.
Around the grassy lawn of the Common where thousands gathered were many other activist organizations and individuals hoping to spread their message, holding up signs with messages like “Hands off Lebanon Now!,” and “Palestinian Lives Matter,” or adorned with keffiyehs, watermelon-themed clothing, and other expressions of their support for Palestine.
Nancy Aykanian, a newly retired member of the Mass. Teachers Association (MTA) and former Westwood educator, attended the rally along with other Mass. teachers in an unofficial group to express support for an arms embargo on Israel and the removal of Anti-Defamation League teachings from schools. While the MTA signed a ceasefire resolution last December, “we felt that more action needed to be taken,” Aykanian said.
“We have to be teaching accurate history and no longer some of the one-sided history with a sort of exceptionalization of antisemitism,” Aykanian said, “which is real and affects people, but perhaps not to the extent and the way that the ADL is addressing it.”
Around the edge of the protesters wearing keffiyehs over their lab coats were members of Boston Healthcare Workers for Palestine.
“I think from the healthcare perspective, it’s quite important to us that all people of Gaza are protected,” Anand Chuka, a member of the organization, said. “All the things that make up an important healthcare system have been destroyed by the Israeli government.”
Chuka added that it has become hard for both incoming European and American physicians as well as Gazan and Lebanese physicians to offer proper care since Oct. 7.
Jeff Parente, a Boston local and Philly native who served during the Iraq war said he didn’t “sign up to have my government support a genocide.”
“We’ve always been told growing up that we’re the good guys and we prevent genocides. But instead, we’re funding the genocide and we’re arming the genocide,” Parente said.
Dakota Castro Jarrett is a member of Socialist Alternative, an international socialist organization with chapters all over the world including Israel and Palestine.
Jarrett said that while the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is facing budgetary shortfalls during a devastating hurricane season, in “that same week, the United States passed an $8.7 billion military aid package to Israel.” He said that this is evidence of the need for a government that better allocates the money of its citizens.
“There are these direct connections between the lack of money we’re putting in our own country to actually serve the interests of working people here, and the money that’s being used to hurt and divide people, like, across the world,” Jarrett said.
Will N., an organizer for The Revolutionary Communists of America, criticized both political parties for their involvement in sending funds to Israel.
“Both parties, Republicans and Democrats, are warmongering parties,” he said. “So we’ve got to build that revolutionary alternative. He said that the working people who move cargo should organize a general strike against moving weapons to Israel in support of Palestine, following this week’s dock worker’s strike, the largest in 50 years, that halted the flow of nearly half the country’s ocean shipping.
In the upcoming election, Will said he encourages people to withhold their vote from either candidate as a measure of protest.
“No vote is better than a vote that’s actually actively counterproductive. A no vote actually, in a sense, is a measure of sentiment too,” he said.
Gabriel Conolly, another protester, took to the common waving both the flags of Palestine and Lebanon.
“This has always been an issue that’s been important to me for at least 15–20 years,” Connolly said. “But since Oct. 7, I felt like I’m not alone anymore.”
Beacon Staff Arthur Mansavage contributed to this report
