Mohamed Dahir holds the flag of Palestine and marches with other protesters from Fountain Square Park to the Warren County Justice Center on Sunday. “We’re here saying free Palestine because for the past seven years, the Israeli government has been killing, oppressing [and] land grabbing,” Dahir said. “The president of the United States is siding with an apartheid state that’s killing and genociding innocent people... And we will say free, free Palestine until Palestine is free and [it’s] not free until all of it’s free.” (Photo by Dominic Di Palermo)

GALLERY: Bowling Green residents unite for Palestine at downtown rally

Dominic Di Palermo··3 Comments·2 mins read

An organized group of Free Palestine protesters marched from Bowling Green’s Fountain Square Park to the Warren County Justice Center to protest the conflict between Israel and Palestine on Sunday.  

According to co-organizer Tamara Jaber, the peaceful protest drew a crowd of about 100 people who carried flags, signs and wore black and white Palestinian keffiyehs, a type of square scarf, in support of Palestine.

Jaber organized the protest with her siblings Wael and Lara Jaber. Their grandparents are originally from Palestine, but due to the 1948 Nakba, which, according to the United Nations’ website, was the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the Arab-Israeli war, they sought asylum in Jordan. Tamara and Wael Jaber immigrated to the United States in 2014.

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“I organized the protest because I wanted to raise awareness about the genocide that is happening in the Middle East,” Tamara Jaber said. “When I first moved to the United States, I always had this burden that I needed to prove myself, which is why I advocated for the freedom of Palestinians and the right to return to our homeland.”

From front, left to right, co-organizers and siblings Wael, Lara and Tamara Jaber chant and lead a protest for Palestine from Fountain Square Park to the Warren County Justice Center on Sunday. (Photo by Dominic Di Palermo)
A group of “Free Palestine” protesters chants in response to the conflict between Israel and Palestine at a pro-Palestine protest outside the Warren County Justice Center on Sunday. (Photo by Dominic Di Palermo)
A pro-Israel protester holds up the flag of Israel while a group of Palestine protesters walk from Fountain Square Park to the Warren County Justice Center on Sunday. (Photo by Dominic Di Palermo)
A young protester holds a hand drawn “Free Palestine” sign and chants at a pro-Palestine protest on Sunday. (Photo by Dominic Di Palermo)
Azza Jaber, 8, chants in support of Palestine while sitting on her father, Zaid Jaber’s, shoulders during a protest against the conflict between Israel and Palestine on Sunday. “To me and to my family (we are) too, too sad about that (and) we wish it stop,” Zaid Jaber said. (Photo by Dominic Di Palermo)
A group of “Free Palestine” protesters chants at a pro-Palestine protest in Fountain Square Park on Sunday. (Photo by Dominic Di Palermo)

Dominic Di Palermo

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3 Responses

  1. Israel left Gaza in 2005. Hamas has controlled it since 2006, and built it into a military base for sending rockets into Israel. Thousands of innocent civilians in Israel have been slaughtered by Hamas terrorists this past week. Groups of children bound together and burned alive. Women raped, tortured, beaten to death. A pregnant mother and father in their home: the baby cut from her womb, thrown on the floor and stabbed to death, the parents shot in the head. 40 babies with their throats slit. Hundreds of young people at a peace concert surrounded, trapped, herded toward an open field and shot, others hidden in shelters killed by grenades tossed into the shelters. Parents shot in front of their children. Children murdered in front of their parents.

    Israel built a barrier to protect themselves. That is not apartheid. People are not being held by Israel. The can freely travel to other countries. But Hamas says every Jew must die. Pure hate.

    Don’t support the hate. I stand with Israel.

  2. Lynne is 100% correct. Very well said

    As a proud former resident of Bowling Green, WKU alumni and Israeli citizen I was very concerned with the images lack of mentioning that this chant and slogan”from the river to the sea” is part of the Hamas Charter calling for the elimination of all Jewish people and a reference to the hope for one day eliminating all Jewish presence in their ancestral homeland. What that chant does is rationalize and normalize the idea of the genocide of all Jewish people in what is today know as Israel. The river referring to the Jordan river and the sea referring to the Mediterranean Sea.

    As is apparent from the bipartisan censure of Congresswoman Rashib Tliab today, the chanting, displaying or acceptance of such a statement has no place in the United States.

    I yearn for the day of true peace where both Palestinians and Israelis can live side by side but that will not happen when one side calls for the genocide of the other.

    I ask that you make a clarification as to the rhetoric that was displayed at the rally.

    Thank you for you time

    Jacob

  3. Lynne is spot on, lies and hatred will not solve the problems in the middle east and those who support hanas and the “palestinians” who are actually jordanians also support their hatred and lies. The real genocide is muslims killing jews and christians.

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