Along with top U.S. lawmakers, educators, artists, students and relatives of some of the hundreds of hostages seized by Hamas spoke to tens of thousands of supporters gathered in Washington.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered on Tuesday on the National Mall in Washington in a show of solidarity with Israel as it wages war in the Gaza Strip in response to the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.
The rally, called the March for Israel, comes after large protests across the United States and in capital cities internationally that denounced Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which has been plunged into a humanitarian crisis.
The event is intended by organizers in part to be a response to critics of Israel, where about 1,200 people were killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
“There is no greater and more just cause than this,” said President Isaac Herzog of Israel, speaking to the cheering crowd via video feed from the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
“Today we come together as a family, one big mishpachah, to march for Israel.”
Eric Fingerhut, president and chief executive of the Jewish Federations of North America, which helped organize the march, said that despite polls showing that Americans “overwhelmingly” supported Israel in its battle against Hamas, “we were increasingly hearing from opposing voices who are on the fringe but who are very loud.”
The march was quickly arranged, and Jewish federations around the country, as well as schools, synagogues and community centers, sent buses of attendees. Shortly after the gates opened on Tuesday morning, the Mall was crowded with people waving American and Israeli flags and holding signs declaring support from Los Angeles, Houston, Boston, Philadelphia and other places around the country.
“It’s definitely a unity message,” said Tamara Wilkof, 71, who was among hundreds who had come to Washington on around two dozen buses from Cleveland. She said she believed people had been galvanized by the surge in antisemitism since the Oct. 7 attack; a fellow marcher mentioned that a Jewish cemetery in the Cleveland suburbs was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti last weekend.
Ms. Wilkof said demonstrating the solidarity of the Jewish community was an important signal to any politicians who may be wavering in their support for Israel. “This is saying: Don’t equivocate,” she said.
Educators, artists, students and relatives of some of the hundreds of hostages seized by Hamas were scheduled to appear. House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York were among the American political leaders who addressed the rally.
Most U.S. lawmakers have rejected calls for a cease-fire. They maintain that Israel’s military campaign — which the health ministry in Gaza says has killed more than 10,000 people — is justified by the imperative to eradicate Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza.
David Cohen, 64, of Cleveland, wanted the focus to remain on the brutality of Hamas and not just support of Israel. Holding a sign condemning Hamas as “anti-USA, anti-You,” he said that he wanted to “make the point that we’re the canaries in the coal mine here.”
“Hamas wants to eradicate Israel but they don’t want to stop there,” he said. “It’s anti-everything except them.”
While U.S. policy has been staunchly pro-Israel so far, there has been growing pushback in congressional offices and the Biden administration, as well as among Democratic voters generally, over how the war has been unfolding and its toll on noncombatants, especially children.
Ritchie Torres, a Democratic congressman from the Bronx and one of the most pro-Israel voices in the House, warned in a speech early in the program that the “narrative has shifted against Israel.” He insisted, however, that a cease-fire with Hamas should be off the table, saying that it would be like America entering into a cease-fire with Japan after the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
Mr. Fingerhut said the march was intended in part to remind the politicians in Washington that “the majority of the American people” support Israel’s actions, even if they disagree on other issues.
Many spoke of the surge of antisemitic incidents around the country in recent weeks. Both speakers and attendees talked of a newfound loneliness, as longtime friends took positions after the attack that seemed, to them, like barely concealed bigotry.
“I realized over the last month or so how often I don’t want to be seen as Jewish in public,” said Hallie Lightdale, 63, a psychiatrist from suburban Philadelphia. Coming to the Mall — to the largest crowd of Jewish people she had ever been in, she said — offered a reassuring sense of community. “I’m Jewish American — both Jewish and American,” she said. “I’m not one without the other. And Jewish Americans need our country to be with us.”
For many of those on the Mall, even those who disagreed with elements of Israeli policy, it was the rise in antisemitism in the United States, more than support for Israel, that had prompted them to join the march.
“It can be a step in the right direction, a show of unity on the basics, even if down in the nitty-gritty there are some fundamental disagreements,” said Max Nozick, 27, who said he had noted a frightening spike in antisemitic incidents in his community in the Maryland suburbs.
Some of his Jewish friends were reluctant to come to the march because they did not support Israeli policy, and he, too, has concerns about the Israeli government. But he said that denouncing the Oct. 7 attack — and anyone who endorses such violence — was not a complicated question.
“Oct. 7 specifically, I think we’re talking about terrorists,” said Mr. Nozick, who had a large Israeli flag draped across his back, like a cape. “I’m pretty comfortable picking a side there even if I don’t necessarily agree with all the policies of the country with the flag I’m wearing right now.”
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