December 30, 2023 / By mobanmarket
SALEM, MA — Two Salem Councilors who attended last week’s Palestinian protest at Riley Plaza defended their presence at the event during Thursday night’s City Council meeting after multiple speakers addressed the tenor of the protest during the public comment earlier in the night.
City Councilors Lev McClain and Jeff Cohen both said that they are supporters of peace on both sides of the escalating conflict and do not regret being at the event that organizers said was in protest of the Israeli government’s counterattacks in Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and the United States’ ongoing support of Israel’s actions.
“There is a misconception that criticizing the state of Israel itself is antisemitic,” Lily Daigle, who helped organize the protest along with Palestinian House New England, told Patch on Friday. “It is perfectly appropriate to criticize the government of Israel given that they are conducting genocide right now.”
Daigle said a statement was made at the outset of last Thursday’s protest stating that “antisemitism, Islamaphobia and homophobia will not be tolerated.”
About 150 people attended the protest with a pro-Israel counterprotest reportedly drawing a couple of dozen attendees.
“I was very happy with the way the protest went,” Daigle said. “I was very proud of the people who came. The estimated 150 people who came is high for a protest in Salem. It was a good showing of our Muslim-American community as well as their allies.”
McClain said at the conclusion of Thursday night’s meeting that he felt compelled to discuss the protest after it was referenced multiple times in public comment.
“I want to address that idea of one of the slogans that were shared that multiple public commenters referred to, which is the idea of ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,'” he said. “What I want to say about that is that I want to point out that currently in Israel there are over a million Israeli citizens of Arab ethnicity. Most of them are Palestinian. It’s about 20 percent of the population. Most of whom are either people who lived there or are descendants of people who were living there when the state (of Israel) was established.
“The free movement of these people, of these citizens, throughout their country does not represent an existential threat to the existence of Israel. The idea that the freedom of Palestinians is in direct opposition to the well-being and existence of the state of Israel is wrong — it is factually wrong. The idea of a person being an inherent danger because of their ethnicity is wrong as well. …
“While we, of course, need to be ready to condemn horrific acts of violence. We need to, of course, condemn terrorist acts. We need to condemn the loss of innocent life. But we cannot then get into this cycle where we assume an entire group of people is at fault, where we assume an entire group of people is a threat, where we assume an entire group of people is destructive. That perpetuates the cycle of violence. That is not the way you achieve peace. There is a difference between vengeance and justice. Just requires the recognition of everyone’s humanity.”
“As a pacifist, I not only went to the rally, I spoke, and I don’t regret speaking,” Cohen said. “The premise of my speaking is that I do believe, and maybe this is a romantic thought — I hope it isn’t — that if there is space, sovereign space, for Palestinians and Israelis they can co-exist peacefully. Until we get to a place like that we are perpetuating innocent people dying.
“So I don’t regret what I did. Everyone has a right to speak publicly on this Council and I respect that.”
Daigle said organizers of the Salem rally plan to meet next week about potential additional protests or awareness events, possibly in neighboring cities or towns.
“The intention of our organizing is to create a space for concerned citizens on the North Shore to participate,” she said.
(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at [email protected]. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)
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