Photos from downtown Miami protest against U.S. support of Israel’s reaction to Oct. 7

In a steady Saturday afternoon rain, about 70 people gathered at The Torch of Friendship to protest Israel’s ongoing reaction to the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas and support from the United States for Israel.

An 8-foot-high “Let Palestine Live” banner was held along Biscayne Boulevard behind a line of packages swaddled to resemble children’s bodies, symbolizing Gazan children in Israel’s counterattacks. The protest was organized by the South Florida Coalition of Palestine, which includes a number of different groups.

Civil rights lawyer Alan Levine, a member of the South Florida Jewish Voice for Peace, said Saturday’s protest was intentionally done two days before Oct. 7: “We want to make sure there’s a time in which those voices who are horrified by what has happened since last Oct. 7 get heard.”

Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attacks out of Gaza killed 1,200 people by the U.S. Justice Department’s estimation and included the kidnappings of hundreds of civilians.

“There is much mourning to be done about Oct. 7. On the other hand, Oct. 7 was the culmination of something,” Levine said. “You hold a couple of million people in what was called “the largest open-air prison in the world,” the prospect of a jailbreak is not so surprising. Oct. 7 was a jailbreak. Jailbreaks are often ugly and violent.

“I don’t mean to defend violence against civilians,” Levine continued. “If we’re concerned about civilians, we certainly ought to be talking about the Gazan civilians who have been murdered, maimed, displaced, deprived of everything dear to them. Their homes, their land is in rubble. That’s something we all ought to be mourning.”

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