“It’s crazy. Three months ago you wouldn’t have thought people would be chanting free Gaza in Kingston,” marvels Sandra O’Sullivan, a resident of New Paltz standing at the edge of the rally outside congressmember Pat Ryan’s office. “How invested in Ukraine everybody was three months ago, you wouldn’t think they’d have moved on. It’s really crazy to me.”
Here in Uptown Kingston, it takes twelve steps to cross Wall Street from sidewalk to sidewalk. It’s less distance than that which separates the growing ranks of supporters of the rally for a ceasefire in Israel on the west side of the street from the considerably smaller group of counterprotestors standing at the curb across the street in front of Howard Hannah Rand Realty.
These counterprotestors bear signs like “Hamas = ISIS” and banners featuring the Star of David and the blue-and-white Israeli flag.
The cop presence is calm and steady, the cops assigned to the rally are built sturdy like linebackers, and wear uniformly neutral expressions. One state trooper looks about seven feet tall from the bottom of his boots to the top of his wide, straight-brimmed hat.
Outside an SUV blocking the intersection at John and Wall streets, undersheriff Eric Benjamin stands casually kibitzing, keeping an eye on the growing crowd while more police cruisers pull in at the far end of the block.
“It’s a nice gathering,” he says. “I can’t see far enough down there to estimate the size of the crowd, though.”
The deputies from the sheriff’s office are here to assist the Kingston Police Department, Benjamin says, ““We’re just making sure they’re okay. So far, everybody’s been behaving themselves. Good turnout.”
Many people carry handmade signs rather than the pre-printed stuff handed out for a staged photo op. Mottos by marker.
It’s a call-and-response scene. A chant leader for the rally shouts through a red-and-white bullhorn, firing up the faithful.
“Hey, hey, ho, ho, the occupation has got to go.”
Crossing from one side of the street to the other means becoming immersed in differing messages.
“Condemn hate, condemn murder, condemn abductions” and “Defend Israel. Mazel Tov” is shouted at the curb out in front of the shop windows of Howard Hanna Rand Realty.
Cross to the other side and now it’s “Let Gaza live. Free Palestine” and “Cease fire, cease genocide.”
In the middle was a liminal space where the cognitive dissonance of “Free the hostages” and “Decolonize Palestine” meld together.
Some attendees believe that the terrorists counted on the outrage their actions would cause to summon an Israeli military response so merciless and outsized that surrounding Arab countries would have cause to sympathize and intervene. As the cruelty of the Israeli military response visited upon the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip became known around the world through picture and video, Israel’s image would suffer. To indulge its vengeance, Israel would have to surrender the moral high ground.
In the 30 days after the group of Hamas militants launched a surprise attack from inside the borders of Gaza, slaughtering 1400 human beings and kidnapping 241 more, Israeli military airplanes have dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip below, where an estimated two million people live, most of whom had nothing to do with the terrorist actions of Hamas any more than a checkout girl at Hannaford’s should be held responsible for a U.S. Army drone strike ordered on a hillside in Yemen.
“We’re here today to call on our representative Pat Ryan to sign the ceasefire resolution to stop the massacres that are ongoing in Palestine,” says Mie Inouye, a member of mid-Hudson Valley, Democratic Socialists of America. “We believe in the value of every human life .… Israelis have the right to safety and freedom and dignity, but we believe that bombing Gaza will not bring about any of those things. Destroying entire families and neighborhoods will not bring safety to Israelis. It will just perpetuate the cycle of violence that is destroying thousands of lives.”
Inouye predicts the horror will reverberate for generations.
Introduced by Missouri congresswoman Cori Bush, the resolution Inouye refers to, “Ceasefire Now,” urges the Biden administration to immediately call for and facilitate a ceasefire in Gaza, send humanitarian aid and assistance, and save as many lives as possible.
Three of the twelve members of Congress who signed onto Bush’s October 16 resolution represent districts in New York, Hudson Valley congressmember Pat Ryan was not among them. Protestors point to Ryan’s acceptance of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) money as motive for his inaction.
Unaffiliated with conventional police forces, numerous participants in bright neon vests calling themselves safety marshals patrol the penumbra on the edge of the opposing groups, diffusing shouting matches and steering those picking a verbal fight to calmer shoals. John Schoonmaker is one of these marshals.
“We’re going to be de-escalating and making sure this goes smoothly,” says Schoonmaker. “Everyone has the right to freedom of speech here, and we just want to make sure everyone can be heard and that we’re able to express our feelings”
“They don’t even live here,” shouts an old man, incensed by the gathering. “Fucking Bard students, go back across the river!”
At full swing, the rally for the ceasefire has brought out over 400 supporters pressed in to hear the speakers.
The crowd is led through its chants.
“No more weapons, no more war, ceasefire’s what we’re calling for.”
“Not another nickel, not another dime, no more funding for Israel’s crimes.”
“Ryan, Ryan you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!”
As the chants are taken up, the tempers of the counter-protestors begin to fray. They don’t have their own bullhorn. With only about 30 members, they’re badly outnumbered.
“Shame on you for supporting Islamic terrorism!” screamed a woman. Responding to another rallygoer who gets too close to her. she screams “Get out of my face, you piece of shit!”
State troopers and three Kingston police officers amble calmly over, waiting and watching under the nearby canopies, standing against the brick wall like a police lineup in reverse.
Ryan was among 22 Democrats who voted with 212 Republicans, including Marc Molinaro, to censure Michigan Democratic congressmember Rashida Tlaib for her rhetoric after Israel’s military response began. The daughter of Palestinian immigrants, Tlaib had called Israel an “apartheid” state and accused president Joe Biden of supporting the genocide of Palestinians. She also shared a video featuring pro-Palestine protestors chanting “from the river to the sea”.
While Tlaib herself has called the chant “an aspirational call for freedom” and not “death, destruction and hate,” there is another interpretation. The sea is the Mediterranean and the river Jordan. Israel is between the two. The destruction of the Israeli state can be inferred when groups like Hamas wield the phrase.
When the red-and-white bullhorn reaches reached Andrew Hiller, a member the Mid-Hudson DSA, he shares his message. “Like you. I’m here tonight because there’s a genocide taking place in Gaza right now,” says Hiller. “And we’re horrified that our representative in Congress Pat Ryan is supporting it in our name.”
Hiller said he stood in solidarity with the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).
Touted by those who disapprove of what they see as Israel’s system of occupation and apartheid in the treatment of Palestinian people within Gaza and the West Bank, the non-violent tactics of BDS were used to dismantle the apartheid system in South Africa.
The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy group, has labeled the movement anti-Semitic. The group frequently struggles to differentiate opposition to Israeli government policy from the racial antipathy aimed at the Jewish people. A sign held above a rallygoer’s head reads, “Saving Palestinian Lives is not anti-Semitic.” Another reads, “Lebensraum for Israel.”
Hiller claims grandparents who survived the Holocaust. His mother was born as a displaced person in Bergen Belson, a concentration camp in northern Germany during the Second World War.
“We are socialists,” said Hiller. “We stand in solidarity with anyone resisting oppression. We are against anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. We are against the killing of civilians. We are here because we believe in human life.”
Across from the crowd and the speakers, the counterprotestors occasionally shout back when they object to messages amplified by the bullhorn.
“Israel is defending themselves, and they are doing what they have to,” says counterprotestor Mark Klein. “Israel’s always under attack, and when Israel defends themselves everybody goes crazy. Meanwhile, hundreds and thousands of Arabs kill Arabs and nobody says anything. But when Israel defends themselves, everybody wants to kill the Israelis! This is obvious and this is growing through college campuses. All throughout the country, colleges and universities are being affected by foreign entities to cause anti-semitic anti Israeli situations.”
Klein declines to name the foreign entities corrupting college campuses. Along with Hamas and Hezbollah, he says, 35 other organizations are being sponsors for terrorism. Confronted by the bombing of civilians in Gaza. Klein says: “Obviously we’re in war, and war is rough.”
Bruce Tuchman agrees.
“You can’t just let them drop bombs on innocent people in southern Israel,” says Tuchman. “The whole thing was a provocation to force Israel’s hand to retaliate. It’s not about land, it’s about wiping out Jews. That’s what it’s about. If I’m in my house, and I’m shooting bombs over to the other side, you have to shoot bombs over to my side. You can’t hide in a hospital and say, ‘Why’d you bomb the hospital?’ There’s arms in hospitals.”
A chant starts up among the counterprotestors: “What do we want? Peace. What do we want? Free the hostages!”
A woman shouts out to the supporters of the ceasefire: “We’re on the same side!”
As far as the expressed desire for peace, that may be so. In terms of how to resolve their conflict, the two groups remain 71 miles apart, searching for solidarity somewhere between the river and the sea.
Join the family! 
