Call for ceasefire takes to streets
Truck will cross state to raise awareness of growing crisis in Gaza
A truck with digital images depicting the suffering of Palestinians will be driving across Connecticut Friday to raise awareness of what the United Nations called a “catastrophic humanitarian situation” in Gaza.
The truck is one of two — the other driving across Massachusetts Friday — that will display digital slides calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-hamas war and an end to antisemitism and Islamophobia in the U.S.
The effort is organized by a group of families, mostly Muslim, from Connecticut and Massachusetts. Among them is Melaqa Samdani, a native of Pakistan who was naturalized as an adult.
“It’s literally families from Massachusetts and Connecticut who have come together since Oct. 7 to mobilize and pool resources to make the public aware of what’s really going on. There’s a sense of frustration that mainstream media does not cover the conflict and the devastation as objectively as they should,” Samdani said, noting estimates that 18,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict.
“This is a very informal group of 40 families who just within the past week got together — regular, ordinary people who feel very strongly about what’s going on. … This is our way of making sure that people remember what’s going on.”
The primary goal is to raise awareness of the situation in Gaza, Samdani said, but the group also hopes to show the repercussions the conflict is having in the U.S.
“I’m personally Muslim but as a Muslim mother, when I see young Jewish kids or young Muslim kids, it really pains me to think of what’s going on in the Middle East and how this is going to impact them here. They’re targets. Whether they’re Jewish kids or Muslim kids, they’re impacted as the violence goes on,” Samdani said. “The primary concern is the humanitarian catastrophe that has been unfolding in Gaza, but we also want to
show the repercussions we’re seeing here.”
The group’s message also targets U.S. involvement — that “our taxpayer money is going to contribute to this effort, what that means to people here who can’t afford housing or health care, but billions of dollars going to a military that is committing war crimes.”
The message differs from that of many in the Jewish community in Connecticut.
David Waren, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford, has said, “The blame for those casualties lies with Hamas, which aims to wipe out the Jewish State and launched a genocidal attack on October 7. As Secretary of State Blinken said on Sunday, Hamas is ‘hiding behind civilians’ and it ‘could put down its arms tomorrow, it could surrender tomorrow, and this would be over.’
The trucks will stop at the offices of congressional representatives as they pass through the states, hoping to pressure politicians to call for a ceasefire.
“When Oct. 7 happened, my heart went out to all of my Jewish friends who have friends and family in Israel and all the hostages who were taken,” Samdani said. “Every time I called my representative I would say ‘Of course they need to be released,’ but just the asymmetry of the carnage — every single life is sacred and precious — we’re trying to take a humanitarian perspective but the way the U.S. government is behind this war chest, just continuing this carnage, that is something we can’t forget, the asymmetry in the power dynamic.”