– by Erez Bleicher – 3/3/2024 

On Friday, December 22nd I helped organize a public memorial as part of a coalition of solidarity activists based in Israel/Palestine whose members were personally grieving Gazan friends and colleagues murdered in recent airstrikes. We were heartbroken and determined to insist that occupation can only bring despair, and that the only way to end our collective anguish is to build a future of mutual prosperity beyond airstrikes, ground invasions, occupation, and massacre.

In a moment in which grieving Gazan lives was almost completely outside mainstream Israeli and Jewish discourse, my need to publicly mourn and uplift the memory of my beloved friend Khalil Abu Yahia was overwhelming since he was killed in an Israeli airstrike on October 30th, along with his wife Tasnim, and their young daughters Elaf and Rital. I could not allow a beautiful friend to be killed in his home, along with 30,000 others, and have the world continue without pause.

Our actions were echoed by Jews and Israelis in cities around the world who held their own solidarity vigils demanding the right to grieve and calling for a permanent ceasefire, including in London, Brighton, Rome, Zurich, New York, Philadelphia, Ottawa, Tucson, and Pittsburgh. 

I offer this picture and video essay capturing our vigil in Jerusalem in the hopes it can continue to uplift the memory of Khalil and all those who have perished in the Gaza Strip. 

We gathered at Gan Ha’atzamaut in Jerusalem and began the ceremony with the following words calling for ceasefire and an end to the US-backed assault on the Gaza Strip:

We continued with tributes, reflections, remembrances, and poems in honor of the deceased. We began with the following remembrance of Khalil from Professor Haidar Eid, who was his teacher and mentor, and is an Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature at Al-Aqsa University in the Gaza Strip. Haidar managed to flee from Gaza following October 7th  and is currently in South Africa. He shared the following words with us:

We then read an excerpt from Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “Under Siege” in honor of the Gazan poets, artists, cultural workers, and creatives who have been killed in this military campaign.

In the poem, the narrator encourages a soldier standing in the doorway to come in, drink a cup of coffee, and recognize their common personhood. Khalil was able to leave the Gaza Strip only once in his life for a medical emergency and many of us in Jerusalem got to know him first during that time. After his recovery in Jerusalem he traveled to Jaffa, where his family was from before being displaced in the Nakba, and was also able to visit the home of one of his favorite writers, Ghassan Kanafani, in Haifa. 

Here is a recording of Khalil joyfully drinking a cup of coffee on a balcony in Haifa with Neta Golan, the cofounder of the International Solidarity Movement, toasting to a future of justice, and saying that he is enjoying his time in the lands of 1948 but that the experience is not complete without his professor Haider Eid, his family, and all his friends across borders.

Next we were joined by Ariel Davidof, a recent high school graduate and military refuser active in the Mesarvot Refuser Network, to mourn the death of students and young people in the Gaza Strip. Since the start of this military campaign, at least 11,500 children have been killed. Their memories deserve to be cherished and mourned:

It is heartbreaking to know children are losing parents and parents are losing children in this violence, and sometimes both are being lost together. After Ariel, we were joined by Avigail Szor, a human rights activist and a member of Free Jerusalem, to share a reflection following the recent death of a Gazan friend’s mother.

At least 68 journalists and media workers have been killed since this military campaign began in the Gaza Strip. Despite this, Gazan journalists are risking their lives to document the violence and combat a reality in which massacre takes place with impunity. We were joined by Orly Noy, an editor at Sicha Mekomit, a translator of Farsi poetry and prose, and the chair of B’Tselem’s executive board, to speak about and mourn the killing of Gazan journalists and press.

As we neared the end of the memorial, we listened to an audio recording from a music video Khalil directed, in which Professor Haider Eid provides the vocals. Here is a description of the music video that Khalil wrote in 2018:

“A group of Gaza-based, Palestinian activists and artists has launched a video-clip titled ‘A New Day’ commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, the 51st anniversary of the 1967 Naksa, setback, and in support of the Great March of Return.

The original, immortal song was performed 51 years ago by the late, legendary, Egyptian singer Abdul Halim Hafez. The lyrics were written by the late Egyptian poet Abdel Rahman Alabnoudi and composed by Baligh Hamdi to express the state of frustration and melancholy accompanied by a strong will of defiance, steadfastness and unwillingness to accept defeat. The song, at the time, became an anthem of resistance against occupation.”

We closed by noting that even as we grieved, more people had been killed in the Gaza Strip. We endeavored to honor their lives and the memory of the 20,000 Gazans killed to date by working to build a democratic future beyond occupation where all are free, equal, and afforded the right to live.

Then we walked to the US embassy and laid the pictures of the deceased directly at their door, with white roses on each, and called for the United States to stop giving a blank check to Israel, as the police and guards began to gather around us.

Solidarity vigils in cities around the world similarly grieved the deceased and called for the United States, Israel, and the international community to end the ongoing violence:

A video compilation was made combining the readings of “Under Siege” by Mahmoud Darwish from vigils around the world. It showcases the ways our grief transcends borders as a transnational community working to end the ongoing Nakba in solidarity with Palestinians and build a future of dignity and collective freedom.