By Austin Fisher

Posted August 22, 2024

 

 

Yousef Aljamal’s family consider themselves lucky their home is still standing.

 

“It’s overcrowded with 35 relatives,” said Aljamal, the Gaza coordinator for the Palestine Activism Program run by the Palestinian-led organization American Friends Service Committee, which has offices in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

 

So far, Israeli air strikes have left more than 42 million tons of debris across the Gaza Strip, according to the UN. Most of the debris is destroyed housing, Bloomberg reports.

 

Aljamal lives in Gaza, but his words were shared by his coworker, Sayrah Namaste, New Mexico Program director for the American Friends Service Committee, during a rally on Sunday at Tiguex Park in Albuquerque. She shared his and others’ messages from Gaza because she doesn’t want people to see Palestinians as numbers.

 

If I’m not fighting against fascism, who is?”
Jillian Grandenetti, Student, University of New Mexico

 

One of the hardest moments during the last 10 months, Aljamal said, was when his father died.

 

He could not bury him.

 

Israel has killed so many Palestinians, Aljamal said, families have had to bury them in mass graves, or dig up the graves of other family members to put new ones in.

 

“Even Gaza’s dead are denied the respect and dignity of a proper burial,” Aljamal said. “No one should have to live like this.”

 

The rally, followed by a march around downtown Albuquerque, happened on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, at the same time as other demonstrations in 85 cities across 34 U.S. states, with protesters demanding the U.S. implement an arms embargo on Israel.

 

“We want a permanent ceasefire and not one more bomb, not one more dollar to fight the genocide,” Palestinian-American organizer Samia Assed said. “No more of our tax dollars going to support the heart-wrenching genocide in Gaza.”

 

Justin Rogers, who was a Vote Uncommitted NM campaign organizer, said activists from across the country from the Palestinian-led campaign “Not Another Bomb” are circulating a petition telling Harris to call for a ceasefire and an arms embargo.

 

Eight of the 45 delegates from New Mexico to the DNC have signed the petition, Rogers said.

 

‘The bomb that blew up our office came from my country’

 

In October, the Israeli military bombed the American Friends Service Committee office in Gaza, destroying it.

 

“Most likely, the bomb that blew up our office came from my country,” Namaste said.

 

Serena Awad, 22, lives in Gaza and is the Gaza Program Officer for the American Friends Service Committee. Namaste also shared her words on Sunday in Albuquerque.

 

“Sometimes it would be easier to be dead than to live each day where nowhere is safe and you don’t know if your family has survived another night of bombing,” Awad said.

 

Awad said she and another coworker recently contracted Hepatitis.

 

“When you look around Gaza, everyone is yellow,” Awad said.

 

A Hepatitis outbreak in the Gaza Strip was caused by the Israeli military bombing Gaza’s sewage systems.

 

In recent weeks, Awad said she and the others distributed more than 2,600 essential kits containing baby formula and diapers to 2,000 children in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

 

“Famine is growing in Gaza. Many newborns are unable to breastfeed because their mothers can’t get the minimum nutrition needed to produce milk, which forces them to rely on baby formula,” Awad said.

 

These challenges are compounded by the constant displacement, Awad said. She has been displaced eight times, Namaste said.

 

“Like many places in Gaza, Palestinians sheltering have been forced to leave their homes or tents multiple times in a single month,” Awad said. “The relentless cycle of displacement makes life incredibly difficult, especially for women who just gave birth and have young children. Each time they have to dismantle their makeshift shelter, set them up again in a different location, which adds to our physical and emotional toll.”

 

‘We demand to be heard, and we’ll vote accordingly’

 

In March, an overwhelming majority of the New Mexico Democratic Party’s membership voted in favor of a permanent ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza, an end to the blockade on humanitarian aid, a pause on U.S. military aid to Israel and the release of hostages on both sides.

 

Samia Assed, a Palestinian-American organizer in Albuquerque, told the crowd on Sunday it’s their responsibility to lift their demands to the party and ensure Kamala Harris hears the call for an arms embargo.

 

“We’re here to shake up the party,” Assed said. “It’s our party, and we demand to be heard. And we’ll vote accordingly, to how she stands.”

 

Assed said Harris should “respect the Leahy Law,” which is the federal law barring the U.S. from providing assistance to foreign security units who have committed violations of human rights such as torture, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killing, or rape.

 

“We do not want more weapons overseas,” Assed said. “There’s no accountability in what’s happening overseas. We keep funding, but no transparency and no accountability. We’re done.”

 

Jillian Grandenetti, an Arab-American student at the University of New Mexico who participated in the Duck Pond encampment earlier this year, asked how anyone can claim to be neutral during the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

 

“As a UNM student, I have continued to be very vocal about where I stand on the issue of my tuition money being used to fund a genocide,” Grandenetti said. “And not only a genocide but the genocide of my people. I am Lebanese and have seen the atrocities carried out by weapons my tuition payments have funded. It is a feeling of despair like none other I have experienced before.”

 

Grandenetti brought up a question that she said everyone should be asking.

 

“If I’m not fighting against fascism, who is?” she asked. “I say this in hopes that if the time ever comes when you need someone to stand up for you, hopefully, someone will be there to do that.”

 

Aljamal said Palestinians in Gaza urgently need Americans and the international community to stop the genocide.

 

“Every day we wake up and go to sleep with the news of death,” he said. “The sound of bombs and drones are the soundtrack to our lives. Gazans spend every waking hour with one question in their mind: When will this nightmare end?”

 

 

Austin Fisher is a Senior Reporter with Source New Mexico. This

article is republished from Source New Mexico under a Creative Commons license. Source New Mexico is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.