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Around 75 Syracuse community members called on the Syracuse City Common Council to pass a resolution supporting a permanent ceasefire in Gaza at a ‘Cuse Ceasefire Coalition public forum Thursday evening.

CCC, a recently-formed Palestinian liberation advocacy group of 19 local organizations, hosted several community activists, who discussed why they believe the Syracuse community should support a ceasefire amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, in a panel discussion at the North Side Learning Center in the city’s first district.

The forum is the first of a multi-part series CCC will hold across the city’s five Common Council districts, said Dana Carmeli, event moderator and member of Jewish Voice for Peace.

“It has been 166 days and 75 years of Palestinian genocide. We need a permanent, lasting, just ceasefire,” Carmeli said.

Event organizers collected signatures for a petition which features the coalition’s demand that the local government propose and pass a ceasefire resolution which also supports the release of all hostages and an end to the “Israeli occupation (of Palestine),” Carmeli said. They also distributed letter templates and phone scripts for people who wish to speak with their district’s common councilor about sponsoring a potential resolution.

One panelist, Jaffe — a Syracuse community organizer and JVP member who did not give her last name — said CCC has made “great progress” with its proposal. She said the coalition has gained the support of two councilors: Chol Majok and Rita M. Paniagua, both at-large members of Common Council.

Majok, who was not a panelist but spoke at the forum, said he and Paniagua have used the feedback presented by CCC as well as referenced ceasefire resolutions by other cities nationally to generate their own proposal. He said that while a draft still needs to be reviewed by the city’s Corporation Counsel, he hopes a resolution will be ready to be voted on by the Common Council’s April 8 meeting.

“We have drafted a piece of something that we think will garnish support from other councilors,” Majok said.

Majok, who is Sudanese, is the first former refugee to serve on the city’s Common Council. He said his background as a survivor of war influenced his decision to support a ceasefire in Palestine.

In May 2023, Majok previously introduced a similar resolution that urged President Joe Biden and several New York legislators to call for a ceasefire between the Sudan Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces.

“There is nothing political about lives. There is no good war if it takes lives. None,” Majok said. “As a city councilor, as somebody that lived that life, that’s where I stand. My hope is to get the vote we need to push it through.”

Throughout the forum, several speakers said that while Syracuse is geographically distant from the war, there are many ties between the struggles of its communities and those of Palestinians.

“For many Syracuse residents and many people in this room tonight, Palestine is not some faraway place or an unknown geography of otherness … (Palestinians) are not, to us, strangers or bodies or numbers. They are our families,” said Dana Olwan, an associate professor at Syracuse University and member of the SU chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine.

Olwan, who “de-affiliated” from the SU’s Middle Eastern studies program in February because of its response to the Israel-Hamas war, called for the city of Syracuse to join the increasing number of United States cities passing their own ceasefire resolutions. She urged Syracuse to become an “active witness” to Palestinians’ suffering in Gaza, which she said has manifested over a 75-year history of “Israeli occupation.”

Olwan, a Muslim and Palestinian woman, also described the war as feeling increasingly “painful” during Ramadan. She said the “sanctity” of the holy month has been “shattered” for Muslims in Gaza as “Israel’s bombardment” has damaged buildings and led to hunger throughout the region, leaving them unable to engage in traditional religious observances, according to The New York Times.

Montinique McEachern, a community coordinator who has lived in the city for the past 10 years, spoke at the public forum about the solidarity she feels with Palestinians in Gaza as a Black woman in Syracuse.

“Black people who have considered themselves to be for-the-people have always connected our struggles here to those elsewhere,” McEachern said. “As exhausting as it is, white supremacy has forced us to pay attention to simultaneous struggles.”

McEachern highlighted Syracuse’s historical ties to the abolition movement, such as its underground railroad Freedom Trail and the “Jerry Rescue” of 1851. She said, despite the distance, these historical ties should foster solidarity between Syracuse and Gaza, since the city aided the effort to abolish slavery despite not being within a free state.

The city of Syracuse gives over $2 million to Israeli war efforts annually, McEachern said, citing a statistic from the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights’ U.S. Military Funding to Israel Map. This map estimates this figure by dividing the amount of annual U.S. military funding to Israel by the total number of households reported in the U.S. Census Bureau, then multiplying it by the number of households in a given city, according to its website.

She said the reallocation of these funds would help address ongoing local issues, such as the city’s child poverty and housing crisis.

“Syracuse city, the city that ranks second in poverty in the entire country … sends $2 million dollars annually to buy guns, drones, police salaries and bombs for Israel,” McEachern said.

Several attendees, including Grace Zelaya, an undergraduate student at SUNY ESF, attended the event to support the organizations in the coalition. Zelaya, a member of 315 Students for Liberation, said she is in support of the ceasefire resolution and that she is advocating for ESF to create a similar statement.

Zelaya said 315 Students for Liberation brought a permanent ceasefire resolution to ESF’s student government organization, the Mighty Oak Student Assembly. She said MOSA had just rejected its proposal the day of the public forum.

Jaffe said she hopes CCC will continue to “put pressure” on the city and continue to support councilors who are allies to the coalition. Several coalition members said they encourage their members to attend the council’s meetings.

“We’re all very interconnected on this issue,” Zelaya said. “It’s extremely important for our college campuses and city council to not turn a blind eye to this stuff just because it’s in the Middle East.”

Published on March 22, 2024 at 1:20 am

Contact Julia: jmboehni@syr.edu