By Kirk Boxleitner

Since November, groups of demonstrators between 23 and 84 years old have been holding signs at the Tyler Street Plaza and Chimacum Corner Farmstand. Every Friday, they come to show their solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

While some have only recently become aware of the situation in Palestine and its history, others have lived and worked in Gaza and the West Bank, and a number of the demonstrators noted that they hail from Jewish backgrounds.

The Leader asked a few of the demonstrators what drives them, what they’d like for the public to learn and do, and what they themselves plan to do during the state’s presidential primary.

Mike Ferguson was one of the earliest demonstrators at the Chimacum Corner Farmstand. He’s been aware of the situation in Palestine since Olympia activist Rachel Corrie was killed by the Israeli military in Gaza in 2003.

“What drove me to help initiate Jefferson County Palestine Solidarity is knowing that we are witnessing some of the most oppressed people in the world be slaughtered with the full support of our government,” Ferguson said.

Ferguson’s grandfather and his family, as Alaskan natives, were forcibly displaced from their homes in the Aleutian Islands during World War II, and interned for three years in camps where 10% of the population died due to poor conditions and neglect.

Daniel and Dena Bugel-Shunra both grew up in Israel, with family and friends on both sides of the Gaza divide, including one friend, Refaat Alareer, who was killed with his sister and her children in Gaza in December.

“I come to every demonstration with the words ‘Love, Not War’ in Hebrew,” Dena said. “Some of the funniest, dearest, most charming, most creative people I know live in Palestine and Israel. I want them all to thrive.”

Daniel’s grandparents were in the anti-Nazi resistance in the Netherlands.

“They took great risks to save the lives of people they did not know, and they made sacrifices,” Daniel said. “They were driven by a strong belief in humanity, and I see that as a legacy, albeit one that I cannot just claim. I have to work to claim it.”

Marga Kapka and her husband, Hendrik Taatgen, lived and worked in Gaza in 2005 and 2006, where she taught middle and high school English, and he served as director of the American International School in Gaza, which Israel bombed in the Gaza War of 2008 and 2009.

“In 2021, Israel also bombed the residential building where my wife and I lived,” Taatgen said. “So I was familiar with Israel’s destructive powers long before it started its genocide campaign in Gaza in October 2023.”

“That was an eye-opener for me, as it would be for any American who knows next to nothing about life for Palestinians in Gaza, who live under a rigid Israeli blockade that curtails all aspects of life,” Kapka said.

Quilcene’s Marny "Kit" Kittredge became involved with Palestine when she went to Gaza with a CodePink delegation, following the Gaza War of 2008 and 2009, and a tour by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East left her “horrified, heartbroken and angry” to see the aftermath of Israeli bombing, which made use of American-made munitions.

“My world changed radically then,” Kittredge said. “I returned to Gaza five more times, with different humanitarian aid and peace delegations.”

Likewise, trauma therapist Daniel Rosenberg visited both Israel and the West Bank of Palestine in 2017. “It took very little time for me to recognize the oppressive conditions the Palestinians were living under, imposed by the Israeli government,” he said. “It was my duty, as a Jewish person, to work for peace and justice for the Palestinian people.” This is particularly because an “identity as an American Jew” lends Rosenberg what he believes to be an important role in “the liberation of the Palestinian people.”

All demonstrators who were asked agreed that the American news media earned low marks for the accuracy of their reporting of the events in Gaza.

Ferguson accused the media of a pro-Zionist bias that he said leads them to push unsubstantiated stories, while Dena despaired of that news coverage’s lack of historic context, since she deemed “the displacement of Palestine” to be “a fairly recent political dispute,” rather than one that’s spanned “thousands of years.”

“If the Irish troubles could come to a peaceful end after 800 years, and the South African apartheid system could come to an end after about 300 years of various stages of struggle, Israel's 76 years of existence, and Zionism's 130-ish years, can be brought in line with the concept of mutual thriving,” Dena said.

Daniel, Taatgen, Kittredge and Rosenberg all concurred that the mainstream media are guilty of Palestinian erasure due to pro-Israeli bias, which Kapka suggested people can remedy by reading Palestinian historians, poets and writers, as well as Israeli writers such as historian Ilan Pappé and Avi Shlaim.

All demonstrators who spoke to The Leader welcomed members of the public to join Jefferson County Palestine Solidarity by sending an email to jcpalestinesolidarity@gmail.com, or coming to one of their weekly demonstrations. Each expressed their intention to write in either “Uncommitted” or “Ceasefire” on their presidential primary ballots.

“The call from Palestinian community leaders is to send the loudest message we can to President Biden, that we do not support his funding of genocide,” Ferguson said. “That means following the lead of Muslim and Arab-American leaders in Michigan, who delivered more than 101,000 ‘Uncommitted’ votes in their state’s Democratic primary.”

“It signals to the DNC that they should not count on our vote in November if they do not change leaders and policies,” Daniel said. “Given our two-party reality, I am aware that people will eventually vote for what they consider the lesser evil, (but) genocide is not a lesser evil that I will compromise on.”

“Every time the U.S. vetoes a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire, I increasingly lose confidence in President Biden as a candidate for the Democratic Party,” Dena said. “But I have faith that he can still take steps to end the fighting. Maybe if he hears how important this is to voters, he'll take those steps? I hope so.”