SAN DIEGO — Scores of San Diegans gathered Saturday to support Palestinians and press for change in U.S. and Israeli policies.
Ringing cowbells and waving the familiar red and green flag of their relatives and ancestors, the crowd of demonstrators lined Sixth Avenue in the northwest corner of Balboa Park to protest actions by Israeli police, who stormed into the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem last Wednesday, striking worshippers with batons and deploying stun guns and rubber bullets to subdue the crowd.
“I’m here protesting the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people,” said Aydin Abudawas, a high school senior from Carlsbad who plans to study business when he leaves for college this fall.
“Israel has been the aggressor in every oppressive action they have taken,” said Abudawas, 18, whose father emigrated from the Middle East as a young man. “It takes decades to make change, and this is about raising awareness.”
Israeli officials said police entered the mosque — one of the holiest sites in Islam — after rioters and agitators had barricaded themselves inside. At least a dozen people were injured and more than 300 people were arrested, according to news reports.
The raid, which was condemned by Muslims around the world, unfolded on the first day of Ramadan, Islam’s month-long religious observance that calls for fasting, prayer and reflection.
It also came hours before sundown Wednesday, the start of Passover, the Jewish holiday that celebrates Jews’ freedom from enslavement by ancient Egyptians.
Jeanine Erikat of the San Diego chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement, which co-organized the Saturday afternoon rally, called the demonstration an emergency protest in direct response to the actions taken by Israeli police.
“We really just want to get the message across about the injustice that’s happening in Jerusalem,” she said. “Right now it’s Ramadan. It’s a really important month for all of the Abrahamic faiths.
“It’s disappointing we haven’t seen a wider media response (to the Al-Aqsa mosque raid) in the United States,” said Erikat, who works at a nonprofit that promotes racial, economic and gender justice for women. “They were brutally beaten.”
Summer Ismail is a junior at the University of California, San Diego who also helped organize the protest through the university’s chapter of the national Students for Justice in Palestine club.
The demonstration was aimed at “bringing light to the student body and community about the atrocities and injustice that Palestinians face on a daily basis,” said Ismail, a political science and international relations major who is thinking about going to law school after graduating.
“Until every oppressed person is free, we can’t all be free,” she said.
Motorists driving up and down Sixth Avenue honked in support of the cause throughout much of the flag-waving and speeches.
Two San Diego police cruisers were parked a couple of hundred yards to the north, watching the demonstration from afar but doing nothing to intervene. One officer said there was no specific threat, but they were monitoring the event nonetheless.
Nearby, Cathryn Rathsam of Pacific Beach said she attended the rally because she saw Palestinians suffer firsthand when she lived in the Middle East in the 1970s.
“I just felt I had to come and show my support,” she said.
