Asheville locals are rallying in the hundreds against genocide. A look inside the largest march for Palestinian liberation in the city’s history
Above: A ‘Free Palestine’ sign at the Nov. 4 march
Hundreds marched through downtown Asheville on Nov. 4 in opposition to the Israeli regime’s horrific massacres of Palestinians that have murdered over 11,000 people, many of them children.
“The people of Palestine are nearing a month in a genocidal siege. There is no room for argument. There is no room for debate and disbelief. There is no room for neutrality. There are only seconds, minutes, counting down the scale between massacre after massacre,” said one speaker, who is Jewish.
The marchers and speakers, coming from a wide range of ethnic and religious backgrounds, weren’t divided.
“This is not about Muslim or Jew,” said another speaker, who’s Muslim.
“It is about racism. It is about white supremacy,” she said, speaking to the long and brutal history of Israeli colonialism and apartheid. That has, with U.S. government support, stretched back to the forced removal of Palestinians from their land – known as the Nakba, “catastrophe” – in 1948. In 2020, Buncombe county commissioners unanimously supported giving $27 million to Raytheon to build warplanes that will, among many other atrocities, help Israel kill Palestinians.
“My blood burns. Carrying the pain of genocide within my Jewish ancestry, and watching this eternal wound be inflicted as a weapon. We as a people have seen centuries of persecution. We give this pain witness in all of our ritual,” said a Jewish speaker, speaking to the Holocaust and the violence that preceded it.
“The pain is real, it is heard, and know this, our pain is not anymore deep or grand than any other persecuted and targeted people. We must denounce the weaponization of this pain,” they addressed the crowd. A car blared its horn.
“Let this pain be mobilizing. Let this pain be holy. A pain that says ‘never again. Never again for any people.’ A pain that says ‘not in our name.’”
They finished by leading a chant for “Free Palestine!” The crowd roared in turn.
A Palestinian named Alene took the mic in front of a banner reading “End Israeli Apartheid.” The shadows crept as she hammered the point home that the genocide that has targeted mosques, hospitals, schools, journalists in their homes, refugee camps, and basic utilities, displacing and murdering.
She spoke to the death toll: “These numbers are the ones we know. These statistics, these deaths don’t account for the people that are dying under the rubble, the people dying from disease, and the people who have yet to be found.”
“Children who have to write their names on their arms, just in case today is their last. Children who have death certificates issued before their birth certificates, and children who haven’t had a day of silence or peace since the day they were born. Every single day they are dying.”
“All they are asking for is not only a ceasefire, but an end to this apartheid,” Alene concluded. Applause reverberated in the plaza. “Please don’t stop talking about Palestine.”
A Lebanese speaker addressed American government support for Israel, giving it the largest embassy in D.C. and $4 billion every year. “Stop funding the Israeli war machine!” she exclaimed. The U.S. government is pushing to send over $14 billion to Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas that killed more than 1,000 Israelis, including police and soldiers.
After introducing the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement (BDS), the companies and industries it targets, and its goals, she finished with “Free, free, free Palestine!”
Soon after, a second Palestinian speaker added her story of growing up there and remembering the map in her home of the land that the Israeli state has stolen. “They’re trying to effectively erase history.”
“This is not a fight against Jews. I would like to say that. I personally thank all of my Jewish brothers and sisters who happen to be the biggest voice that are speaking for us. This is a fight against Zionism.” She paused, “This is a fight for humanity.”
“I have a daughter who is two years old. Today, she is wearing a keffiyeh, and she is carrying a sign that says, ‘Israel is killing children like me,’” the speaker announced, speaking to the many thousand who have died in Israeli military and settler attacks since October 7. She then explained that Palestinian families often huddle together in the same room during Israeli attacks to “die together in dignity than live separately oppressed, unable to have rights in their own land.”
She said boys like her 12 and 13-year-olds have been imprisoned, tortured, and mentally abused by the Israeli government for years.
The march took Patton Avenue with banners reading “Free Palestine” and “Never again means never again for any people.” The ‘Brass Your Heart’ protest band set the tempo. By the time it passed Pritchard Park, the crowd stretched an entire city block. By the time it passed the lopped-off Vance, it resembled some of the Black Lives Matter marches in June of 2020, numbering from 300 or 400s – probably the largest pro-Palestine march in Asheville history.
The march was so large that chants varied from front to back.,“Not another nickle, not another dime, no more funding genocide,” and blending into “Free, free Palestine!” and “Hey hey, ho ho, the occupation has got to go!”
Calls of participants echoed on the front steps of the Asheville police headquarters for several minutes. In Pack Square, a speaker who is a trans woman explained this stop.
“Last May on the anniversary of the Nakba, the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange [GILEE] and the Atlanta Police Foundation coordinated an international training with the Israeli occupying forces. At the same time, these same institutions are planning to build an urban warfare training facility in Atlanta’s Weelaunee Forest [“Cop City”] on land that was stolen from the Muscogee people.”
Boos emanated. The U.S. and Israeli police states are deeply entwined.
“That is just one of the many ways that our future is interconnected with the future of the people of Palestine.” “Stop Cop City!” chants got the march moving towards the courthouse plaza and its glass exterior.
Chants of “Free, free Palestine” echoed for some time in the space before settling.
The same speaker tied the genocide in Palestine to local government, this time calling out Buncombe County government’s sweetheart $27 million deal with Pratt and Whitney, subsidiary of death merchant Raytheon.
“Right now, Israel is using Lockheed Martin F-35 aircraft powered by Pratt and Whitney engines to bomb Gaza. That means that the technology behind the genocide taking place in Palestine will soon be manufactured right here in Asheville. And the development of that technology is being paid for with your tax money. Our future is interconnected with that of the Palestinian people.”
Image from Reject Raytheon
With more enthusiasm than ever, the demonstration took College Street on its return to the federal building. Chants ricocheted off the tall facades of hotels, banks, and department stores. A volunteer handed out BDS movement fliers to tourists, locals, anyone who would receive them. With rare exception, the march was received well.
Back at the federal building, speakers shared information about teach-ins, mutual aid projects, and fundraisers to support Palestinians. The question of whether there will be future demonstrations was left open.
But local government’s not ceased its fearmongering about local leftist protest. In response to news of a minor protest Nov. 9, both city hall and county governments closed their offices early, running with far-right talking points claiming violent “Antifa” were about to overrun downtown.
Asheville is by some measures “the worst place to live” in the U.S. when it comes to making ends meet. Despite waves of gentrification and police repression making so many of our lives increasingly difficult, people are acting, fostering aid and education networks to support a people facing the final stages of genocide. Many queer and trans people, increasingly under attack by far right legislation in North Carolina, have taken the streets. Our movements are so deeply entwined.
Record demonstrations aren’t just happening in our city. By some accounts, the protest in D.C. was larger than the 2017 Women’s March after the election of Donald Trump.
But this can’t remain another solitary moment for Palestine. What is happening there is the culmination of more than 75 years of forced displacement and genocide by an apartheid ethnostate, a prop for Western colonial interests, a weaponized and very convenient act of “repair” by Western powers for allowing or inflicting the Holocaust, among other atrocities – Palestinians be damned.
Just because it’s not U.S. troops marching with the Israeli Defense Force into Gaza doesn’t mean the loss of Palestinian life is any less horrific. If there’s any time to call this out and act, it’s now.
Jewish communities lived in Palestine long before colonial British rule, the 1917 Balfour Declaration or the founding of the Israeli colonial state in 1948. People of many ethnicities and religions have all fully contributed to a rich Palestinian history.
Jewish people, just like Arabs and Muslims, should have the right to exist and live in dignity in all places including lands of religious significance, but that doesn’t include permission to colonize and dominate. The phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” isn’t complicated or antisemitic. It’s a powerful call to end what major human rights groups have explicitly called an apartheid regime.
“Amnesty International has analysed Israel’s intent to create and maintain a system of oppression and domination over Palestinians and examined its key components: territorial fragmentation; segregation and control; dispossession of land and property; and denial of economic and social rights. It has concluded that this system amounts to apartheid,” read a February 2022 report from the organization.
Israeli officials are openly admitting that they’re engaging in genocide and ethnic cleansing. The leaders of the far-right movements backing the far-right government don’t even mention Hamas but focus on conquest and stripping Palestinians of their basic rights. Every moment this is ignored is precious and will never be returned to those losing their neighborhoods and families in cold blood.
Refugee camps aren’t even safe from the constant barrage, and Israel is killing more journalists than any entity since the Committee to Protect Journalists began tracking the killings in 1992. It’s clear Israel and its Zionist supporters (many of whom are far-right Christians) intend to wipe Palestinians and the truth of this story off the map. Some 4 out of 5 Palestinian journalists are dead.
In many ways the Israeli regime is carrying out what plenty of others wish they could, and the weapons and tactics of oppression it uses will show up around the world. For this trans femme journalist, who’s been arrested for trying to cover the APD’s brutal attempts to make homeless folks lives impossible, it’s an important reminder. These struggles are linked, and we need solidarity more than ever.
A final speaker at the march turned on a recording by the artist Amal Albaz:
“Still they insist toddlers are terrorists?
Terror in children’s eyes. Bombs rain from the skies.
Calling for their mom who was crushed by a bomb.
You say we terrorize? Come and see our skies.
Yes that is a dare. See how much you bear.
No gluten for your bread? No graves for our dead.
Now power or water. Just barbaric slaughter,”
Albaz’s scathing poem and the event concluded,
“There must be judgment day, because there is a price to pay.
I heard a child scream, ‘I wish it was a dream!’
This is reality. Shame on humanity.
Time is ticking by. The world is standing by.
But decades from today, we can proudly say,
‘I felt a fire in my chest, and I passed this test.’
At least we say we tried to end this geno-
-cide.”
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Matilda Bliss is a local writer, Blade reporter and activist. When she isn’t petsitting or making schedules of events, she strives to live an off-the-grid lifestyle and creates jewelry from local stones
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