Hundreds of Washingtonians arrived at the Capitol Campus last week to mourn, share words of hope, and demand justice and peace in Palestine.
At the Feb. 13 event, attendees meditated at an interactive art installation under gray skies. The sidewalk leading to the Winged Victory Monument was lined with grayscale portraits of people killed in Palestine, including two Washingtonians: Rachel Corrie and Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi.
Corrie was a 23-year-old Olympia native and graduate of The Evergreen State College who went to support Palestinians whose homes were being demolished in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip. In March 2003, an Israeli bulldozer fatally crushed Corrie as she tried to stop the destruction of a Palestinian family’s home.
Eygi was a 26-year-old Turkish-American woman who grew up in Seattle. The University of Washington graduate had traveled to lend support to Palestinian villagers, but was killed by Israeli forces last September while participating in a demonstration, according to the BBC.
Thursday’s event calling for peace in Palestine was the latest to be held at the Capitol in Olympia. A tenuous Gaza ceasefire deal was struck in January, about 15 months after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in Israel ignited a bloody conflict.
Some 1,139 people in Israel and 62,614 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, according to a live tracker published by Al Jazeera.
‘So many stories lost and forgotten’
Sabrene Odeh came to the Capitol Thursday to advocate for Palestinian human rights. Many Palestinian Washingtonians have been hurting for the past 15 months, she said, and they want to make sure that they’re heard, seen and represented.
“I think there’s a lot of elected representatives that aren’t even willing to hear us, to have conversations with us, and that’s extremely problematic,” Odeh said. “We’re their constituents, right? They represent us, too.”
Odeh wants lawmakers to demand an independent investigation into Eygi’s death and to sign onto a resolution recognizing Palestinians in Washington.
“There’s a lot happening in the U.S., and here in Washington, I know there’s a lot of our communities that are feeling unsafe,” she said. “I think the key takeaway that I’m hoping that people leave with today is that we’re much stronger together.”
Diana Fakhoury, an artist based in Seattle, volunteers with Washington for Peace and Justice, which organized the event in partnership with the Rachel Corrie Foundation and the Council on American Islamic Relations.
Last year, Fakhoury led a flag-memorial installation to honor the nearly 13,000 children who had been killed up to that point in the war. She described that experience as traumatizing: connecting with each death in a tangible way.
For this installation, Fakhoury said, certain pieces represent grief in grayscale “in which we’re honoring our martyrs from Washington state and some of the child martyrs in Gaza.” But other artwork features pops of color, helping to convey themes of healing.
The community was encouraged to send in messages expressing both sorrow and hope, which were then transcribed onto paper and pasted onto the art, she added.
In addition to portraits of Eygi and Corrie, two others represent Palestinian children killed in the conflict, she said. One was a little boy who had the same name as Fakhoury’s son.
“I fell in love with him when there was a video of him where a journalist was interviewing him, and he had found some food from an air drop, and he was the only one out of all of his friends that was able to find food,” she said through tears. “He was so heroic, and also so humble and sweet. And obviously from the name, but also something about his spirit, really reminded me of my own son.”
A few months later, Fakhoury said, she learned that the boy had been fatally struck by another air drop.
“There’s so many stories like that,” Fakhoury said. “There’s so many stories that are just being lost and forgotten. So that’s why I wanted to highlight an unknown martyr.”
Gaza recently logged the highest number of child amputees in modern history, according to the United Nations.
Fakhoury said the violence and dehumanization endured by Palestinians is effectively sponsored by the U.S., which has supplied weapons to Israel for use in the war in Gaza. She wants state elected officials to start undoing that harm — to hear Palestinians’ stories and recognize their pain.
Yes, there is grief — but there is also healing: Fakhoury hopes that people understand the power of coming together and lifting each other up.
“I think it’s what’s carrying us forward to do this work,” she said, “and hopefully impact change in the future.”
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