Hatem Abudayyeh of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network reflects on the two years that have elapsed since Hamas’ attacks on Israel led to devastation in Gaza.
Hatem Abudayyeh, national chair of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, has organized many of Chicago’s largest pro-Palestinian demonstrations since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas that have prompted Israel’s two-year bombardment of Gaza, which has left more than 67,000 Palestinians dead. Abudayyeh reflected on the “somber commemoration” of Oct. 7 and renewed his call for an end to what a United Nations commission has deemed genocide by Israel in Gaza. This interview was edited for space and clarity. How do you describe what’s happening in Gaza?
What we’re seeing today in Gaza is what we’ve been seeing almost nonstop for two years. The Israeli government and military are on a rampage, bombing residential neighborhoods, bombing schools, bombing hospitals, killing people indiscriminately. Sixty-five thousand already have been killed [the Hamas-led Gaza health ministry said the toll passed 67,000 last weekend] and many others, including UN experts, mhave said that the numbers are much higher if you count indirect killings, meaning people who die not by being underneath a missile, but because of this genocide, are not able to get to a hospital, or the issue that we see now, which is the human-made famine that Israel has caused as well. That number could make the dead over 200,000. And it’s happening on our dime, the U.S. taxpayer’s dime.What are you doing about it?
We are trying to provide some level of leadership for the Palestinian, Arab and other communities that also want to organize around this issue, that want to be out into the streets, that want to challenge the genocide enablers, and those that are complicit in genocide, that want to go after the weapons manufacturers. The more difficult goal we have is to reach the broader U.S. public, the public that is not very politicized and doesn’t know that much or maybe doesn’t care about the issue. Finally, after decades and decades of organizing, people are finally seeing Israel as the criminal, racist, apartheid, settler-colonialist state that it is.What does Oct. 7 mean to you? Has Israel’s response been proportional to the 2023 attacks?
It’s important that we describe the last two years as accurately as possible, and the first way to describe it as accurately as possible is that this, this conflict, this war, this battle between the occupied and the occupier did not start two years ago. It started decades ago. We commemorate that day because it’s the beginning of the genocide.
