As Palestinian flags fluttered in the wind outside the Daley Center downtown, Rama Atieh recalled her father’s experience of becoming a refugee when he was just 1-year-old.
“Their lives as refugees were never the same. The flavors of the sea and those olives and figs were a distant memory, and the sense of belonging — elusive,” she said. “Never again did my father or his parents glimpse over the hills of East Jerusalem.”
Atieh spoke in front of hundreds in the Loop Saturday afternoon, many of whom wore keffiyehs and waved small Palestinian flags. Chicago’s chapter of American Muslims for Palestine, an organization that advocates for and educates about Palestine, held their annual flag-raising ceremony to call attention to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the 76th anniversary of Palestinians’ mass displacement from what is now Israel in 1948.
Palestinians refer to this exodus as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” An estimated 700,000 Palestinians, a majority of the prewar population, fled or were expelled from what is now Israel in the months before and during the war surrounding its creation, in which Jewish fighters fended off an attack by several Arab states.
“The Nakba is the reason why the majority of my mom’s family reside in Jordan. The Nakba is the reason why I was born in Kuwait,” said Atieh, a board member with AMP. “The Nakba is the reason why I can’t take my children to visit the village I’m from. The Nakba is the reason why my father and his siblings live in different parts of the world.”
Amid the mounting death toll in Gaza, Atieh said Palestinians are “again living through the pain of displacement — this time live-streamed through our phones and TV screens.”
More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as Israel ordered new evacuations Saturday in the southern city of Rafah as it prepared to expand its military operation. Israel launched its bombardment of Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, where the group killed some 1,200 people and took 250 hostages.
Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, commended pro-Palestinian student protesters at the Saturday rally, saying they are “looking into history, and they’re not looking the other way, but they’re taking action … despite the police repression.”
“Students, time after time, have been on the right side of history,” he said.
The only remaining pro-Palestinian encampment in Chicago is at DePaul University, after Chicago police arrested nearly 70 protesters at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and university police raided one at the University of Chicago. In rarer instances, schools including Northwestern University, have struck agreements with protest leaders to restrict the disruption to campus life and upcoming commencement ceremonies.
President Joe Biden has defended the right to protest but insisted that “order must prevail” at college campuses, as some in Chicago’s Jewish community demanded action at local universities to prevent hate speech.
“The universities of today function as businesses, not as schools,” said Anuj Agarwal, an organizer with Students for Justice in Palestine at U. of C. “Schools don’t raid encampments at 4:30 in the morning for protesting genocide, and schools don’t fund genocide, apartheid, scholasticide and occupation.”
“This is why you see students all over the world setting up encampments after over half a year of protesting — universities largely haven’t budged an inch, so we will keep fighting until our universities meet our demands,” he continued. “We will keep fighting until our universities sever every tie and divest every dollar that funds and enables the occupation.”
U. of C.’s president Paul Alivisatos said in a statement after the raid that “safety concerns (had) mounted” and that the “risks were increasing too rapidly for the status quo to hold.” He said organizers’ demands for the university to disclose its investments and divest from those with ties to Israel or weapons manufacturers were “fundamentally incompatible with the university’s principled dedication to institutional neutrality.”
After the speeches, those in the audience turned to watch a large Palestinian flag go up between the American and Chicago flags. Many cheered, and took videos on their phones while music played in the background. Afterward, they marched on North Dearborn Street, chanting “Free Free Palestine.”
Noor Shadid, a senior in high school, also read a poem she wrote titled “the Tears of our Trees.”
“The world is trying to erase, but the flag flies everywhere, in every time, in every place. Our flag flies high with strength and great grace,” Shadid said. “Flying over the same lands trying to get it replaced, in every corner of the world.”
“One day it’ll fly in space, and today the city of Chicago is gonna come face to face with the red of our martyrs, the white of our peace, the black of our oppression and the green of our trees,” she continued.
The Associated Press contributed.
