Israel-Gaza War’s Grief Spills Onto Church St.

Half an hour into a tense and loud and flag-filled standoff between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protesters on the front steps of City Hall, city police brought in barricades to physically separate the two sides.

Those barriers successfully kept the peace — even as they kept apart Lynn Rabinovici Park and Karen Rabinovici, two sisters worried sick about the safety of their father’s relatives in Jerusalem, and Faisal Saleh, a Palestinian museum director worried sick about the safety of artists he works with across Gaza.

That was the scene outside of City Hall at 165 Church St. Monday afternoon during an at-times combustible, but never violent, set of dueling rallies sparked by the horrific bloodshed of the ongoing war in Israel and Gaza.

Several hundred people from across the city and the state turned out for the parallel protests, and spent much of the hour and a half between 3 and 4:30 p.m. shouting through megaphones and loudspeakers at one another as they waved the blue-and-white flags of Israel and the red-black-white-and-green flags of Palestine.

The two sides took turns, and shouted over one another, about the Israeli occupation, Hamas terrorism, open-air prisons and blockades, the kidnapping and murder of civilians, the righteous uprising of a dispossessed people, the righteous defense of democracy. Underscoring it all was a seemingly irreconcilable debate about the underlying causes for Saturday night’s attack by Hamas militants that have left 800 Israelis dead and 150 held hostage, and the response from Israeli armed forces that have killed more than 680 Palestinians so far, in a war that promises to be long and bloody.

“Free, free Palestine!” one side cheered over and over again at Monday’s rally.

“From Hamas!” cheered the other side in response.

The pro-Palestine protest was organized by a number of student and local lefty political groups, including the Connecticut Democratic Socialists of America, Yalies for Palestine, the Party for Socialism and Liberation — Connecticut, and Wesleyan Students for Justice in Palestine. On social media, the rally was billed as ​“All Out For Palestine!” and heralded the start of ​“an unprecedented anti-colonial struggle.”

“Over the past 48 hours we have witnessed Palestinians respond to over 75 years of oppression at the hands of Zionist forces,” one native New Havener of Pakistani and German descent said into a megaphone on Monday. ​“The violence of this conflict did not begin yesterday.”

The pro-Israel contingent, meanwhile, saw a mix of New Haveners and Connecticut residents, many who are members of the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic community, and nearly all of whom have close ties to and family and friends currently living in Israel. 

Everyone on the Israel side of Monday’s rally whom the Independent spoke with cited the social media promotional material for the pro-Palestine protest — and what they saw as a celebration of violence against their community abroad — as their primary reason for showing up. 

The pro-Palestine rally is ​“celebrating murder and rape and kidnapping,” New Havener Avi Meer said. ​“This is horrible.” The fact anyone could defend Hamas’ actions at a time like this is ​“heartbreaking.”

Both sides shouted throughout that they intended no harm to the other, that they came to have their voices heard as opposed to getting in any physical altercations with their opponents across the way. 

City police, led by Downtown / Wooster Square top cop Lt. Brendan Borer, put in place wooden barriers on either side of City Hall’s steps to keep a distance between the two groups just in case. The barriers worked; no punches were thrown.

But also, from what the Independent could tell, few stories were exchanged between members of the two sides about the very real human suffering that weighed so heavily on so many who showed up on Monday.

Joshua Pernick, the rabbi in residence and director of Jewish life and community relations at the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, told the Independent about his brother, who after a weeklong vacation in the United States returned to his home in Holon, Israel this weekend just hours after Hamas began its attack.

He and his wife and six-month-old child have been shuttling between shelters ever since, Pernick said. These are ​“liberal, Tel Avivian Israelis,” he said. ​“The problem of terrorism is it doesn’t discriminate. You’re not differentiating between fighters and innocents. You’re just slaughtering anyone you come across.”

Faisal Saleh, the founder and director of Woodbridge’s Palestine Museum, showed up to the other side of City Hall’s steps Monday to support those rallying for Palestine. 

Saleh was born and raised in the West Bank. He moved to the U.S. when he was 17, in 1969. He said he’s been communicating with Palestinian artists in Gaza who he knows through his museum work every few hours, just to make sure they are still alive amid the Israeli army’s strikes.

“Everybody is waiting to see what will happen,” he said.

Saleh said the photographs and videos he’s seen over the past few days — of Palestinian children killed, of ​“carnage” in Gaza — haunt him. ​“I’ve seen a lot of bodies” in those images, he said.

Meer, whose parents and sisters and brothers live in Israel, are safe for now. Relatively speaking. In and out of bomb shelters, terrified of Hamas’ attack, how safe can they be?

“All we want to do is live, and live in peace,” said Lynn Rabinovici Park, a Madison resident who showed up for Monday’s rally with her sister, Karen, in part because of how worried they are about their father’s side of the family in Jerusalem and how dispirited they were around the pro-Palestine rally across the steps. ​“Every single person knows somebody” who was killed or kidnapped or injured or threatened or fleeing for their lives at the music festival in southern Israel that was the scene of one of Saturday’s bloodiest attacks.

“What happens [to the Palestinians] shouldn’t happen to anyone,” said Kevin Menescardi, a native of Argentina and a Connecticut Democratic Socialists of America member who showed up for Monday’s pro-Palestine rally. He said the father of a former student of his at Southern Connecticut State University ​“fled from Palestine” last year because of just how much the Israeli blockade has hurt Gaza. ​“It’s hell to live in Gaza right now.”

“People in Israel are mobilized,” said Shmully Hecht, who said his nephew, Chaim Hecht, ​“just got on a plane at JFK to go fight” in Israel. ​“We have to end the occupation of Hamas” and stand up against ​“the rape of women, kidnapping.”

“We want peace,” said Ishfaq Ahmad, a Yale employee and Pakistani Muslim who showed up to Monday’s rally to support the pro-Palestine side. He said he does not condone any of the violence attributed to Hamas, the kidnapping of grandmothers, the killing of innocent civilians, nor does he support ​“bomb-blasting” on either side. But he does understand why the Palestinian people feel so oppressed by the state of Israel.

“My friends are safe. But everyone I know knows someone murdered, kidnapped, raped,” said Dan Walker on the pro-Israel side. ​“It’s out of a nightmare.”

Click on the videos below to watch excerpts from Friday’s protests.