More than 800 people came to rally in the East Bay on the evening of October 10 to show support for Israel amidst its war with Hamas.
The rally took place in Walnut Creek’s Civic Park in front of the city’s library; among the signs that were there included pictures of social media posts and news headlines highlighting the barbarity of the Hamas massacre of Israelis as well as signs that said, “Hamas using child soldiers is a human rights abuse” and “Hamas thousands of deadly rockets destroy chances for peace.” Rallygoers also held signs saying, “Stand against lies & Nazis & terror of Hamas Hezbollah Iran Support Israel” and “The Gates of Hell are open Free Israel.”
Rally co-organizer Yanna Berger, an Israeli American, started the rally by saying: “Over the past four days, our children were kidnapped, mass murdered, women were raped, families were slaughtered. Our people look evil in the eyes and say, ‘Never again.’” The crowd shouted, “Never again” in response. “The state of Israel promises us never again,” Berger, who is also the Bay Area director of ORT America, later said. “We all know we have one country that is truly ours: Israel. Thank God for Israel. This is the worst time for Jews since the Holocaust. We will fight it, we have to fight it. And we will win. Am Yisrael Chai!”
The crowd then broke into “Am Yisrael Chai” chants.
The following speaker, rally co-organizer Siena Cohen, said that when she was speaking in Hebrew on her phone earlier in the day, “I felt like everyone was looking at me and I start to get a panic attack … I’m worried and scared to be a Jew here in the United States. I’m so scared! I cannot deal with it anymore … and I’m so happy to see all of you here support us. Am Yisrael Chai!”
Rabbi Daniel Stein of Congregation B’nai Shalom in Walnut Creek recounted how in 1903, the poet Hayim Nahman Bialik reported on the pogroms in Kishinev in Romania and “was shocked by the violence he saw but even more shocked at the apathy of the Jewish community around him.” Bialik conveyed the horror he witnessed through a poem.
“Thank God 2023 is not 1903,” Stein said. “Unfortunately we don’t need poems to show the horror of what’s going on around us. Our phones are flooded with terrifying, brutal images of violence we have not seen in years and years. But also, thank God that 2023 is not 1903. Your presence here today is a sign of profound solidarity. Our Jewish community stands here together as one. We’ve been able to put aside our many, many differences today for one reason: so we can follow the mitzvah in the Torah, ‘Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.’” He later added: “I know that the days ahead will be difficult, but I also have hope and faith for a time we will gather in joy and in celebration.”
Rabbi Jill Perlman of Temple Isaiah in Lafayette followed Stein by saying that “it feels so good” to see everybody at the rally “when all I am feeling is bad, all I am is feeling pain.” “How in the world are we possibly going to be able to hold this pain and go on to the next day?” Perlman asked. “But I remember that we have been here before, maybe not quite like this moment, but our people have been here before and we are a resilient people. We have fallen before, and I promise you: we will rise again … because we are strong. We are a family.”
Perlman urged rallygoers “to talk to everyone else who is not here.” “What I am seeing on social media already is horrendous,” Perlman said. “What I am seeing in some of our news, it is changing the narrative. We need to talk to everyone around us to combat the misinformation that is out there, to combat the hate that is out there. To help our kids have the conversations that they need to have to say, it is okay to not only be Jewish but to love Israel. We need to tell the world that we bleed too … there is no justification for what has happened in these last few days. No justification for going house-to-house. No explanation ever for murder, for killing grandmothers, for taking our children.”
She added: “I hope and I pray that we can remember what it means to be together that we can continue to speak up in solidarity each and every day and when we do we will thrive.”
Rabbi Dovber Berkowitz of the Chabad of Contra Costa later spoke, saying: “We were all horrified hearing the news coming out of Israel. Many of us have family there, many of us have friends there. Many of us are worried sick. Is it one of my friends? Is it one of my family members? And this is something which touches the very core of who we are because at the very core, we are one people … many times we go about our life and we start forgetting the unity that we have, that we are one family, that we are one people.” Berkowitz added that attending the rally is a great way to show solidarity with Israel, “but it doesn’t have to stop there. It could continue from day to day. We need to share our connection that we have as a people. We need to share our connection that we have with Am Yisrael and Eretz Yisrael and the way that we share that is … Torah, tefillah and tzedakah.”
After attendees sang Israel’s national anthem “Hatikvah” in unison, they then marched throughout downtown Walnut Creek. Myriad cars honked their horns in solidarity.
The Journal spoke with multiple attendees who said they were heartened to see the Jewish community come together at this rally.
“I thought it was amazing to see our group of people come and support each other and unite to show that there are people that are hurting, there are people that are having families back home in Israel who are being slaughtered and killed and people that are leaving to help support the war that’s happening and fight against this terror,” attendee Sam Geller said, adding that “people can see from afar that we’re united and we’re there for them.”
Geller pointed out that some of the rally attendees have parents in Ashkelon who live next door to houses that were bombed. “My aunt lives in a town over,” he said. “I have a cousin who’s now in the IDF who went to fight, and my cousin’s wife’s cousin is there fighting, I have a friend whose husband died because of this, it’s just more painful as the day goes by to learn more and more.”
Michelle Mor, an Israeli Jewish woman, told the Journal that her entire family is in Israel. “Most of them are safe, some of them are no longer with us,” she said. “I’m not naïve to war and death, but it’s a whole other thing to see the world not care.” Mor argued that those who say “Free Palestine” are “basically saying it’s okay for Hamas to do what they’re doing.”
She called the rally “comforting.” “The last few days have been really rough and [I] kind of feel really alone,” Mor said. “Coming here, I think it was a good turnout and I think it really showed support, which I think a lot of us really needed to feel that right now.”
Attendee Oren Abrahams told the Journal that most of his family on his father’s side lives in Israel; they are all safe. He called the rally “beautiful” and “very much needed.” “It is sad and a little disheartening that this is why we have to get together,” he said, “but one thing about the Jewish people: We’ve been through this time and time and time again, from pogroms to persecution to Holocaust. And unfortunately we now have another chapter in our history and another date that we’ll always remember and another time that we’ll always remember, but with it we’ll always remember how we came together, how Israelis came together with other Israelis, how Jews across the world came together with other Jews. And like we always do, with dance, with song, with prayer, and love in our hearts we come together.”
Katherine Tottle, who is not Jewish, told the Journal that she came to the rally to support her Jewish friends and take a stand against terror. “I think that as a non-Jewish person this is the time to stand up and speak out and not be silent about it,” Tottle said. “Because I’ve seen too many people be silent and I just want to show the Israeli people and the Jewish people that I care.” She added that “as a human being, you don’t need to understand all the nuances to know that what is happening is horrific and just abhorrent and wrong.” “I’ve gotten into arguments with some of my friends about it and [I’m] just kind of aghast at the things that they’re posting in support of what’s going on.”
Berger told the Journal that she has family in Ashkelon, and her parents and her mother-in-law are “sitting in the shelters, can’t leave their house, they’re locked in their houses and the bombs and rockets keep flying and hitting the houses, streets, destroying entire cities.” She said it was “amazing to see the entire Jewish community come together and making a very strong statement.” “We are with the people of Israel,” Berger said. “We will support Israel. We will stand for Israel. We will stand against terrorism.”
Berger also told the Journal that “a small group of less than 10 people” had “tried to disrupt [the event] before we event started the program. The police came and told them to leave and we didn’t [have] any issues.”
The organizations that joined in on the rally include Congregation B’nai Shalom, Temple Isaiah, Congregation B’nai Tikvah, Chabad of Contra Costa, Chabad of Delta, Chabad of Danville, Contra Costa Jewish Community Center (JCC) and Contra Costa Jewish Day School.
