A white tablecloth adorned with flowers laid at Bernie Milton Pavilion. Plates, bowls and pans filled the altar, each bearing the name of a child who died from starvation during the past few months in the Gaza Strip.
Banging pots and pans, over 80 pro-Palestine protestors shut down the street in front of the display on Aug 1. Protestors filled East Seneca Street, where they chanted, waved Palestinian flags and held up signs denouncing the famine. The protest garnered mixed reactions from drivers, with some yelling at protestors for blocking traffic until the Ithaca Police Department shut down East Seneca Street.
The Ithaca Committee for Justice in Palestine organized the rally to raise awareness for the ongoing famine and starvation in Gaza, calling for Ithaca to “Stop Arming Israel, Stop Starving Gaza” in an Instagram post promoting the event. Speakers emphasized the increasing severity of the starvation and urged attendees to contact local representatives to take a stance on the issue.
After hearing from speakers and participating in a Mourner’s Kaddish prayer remembering the lives lost in the war, protestors took to the streets. They walked through downtown Ithaca, shouting out chants such as, “In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians” and “Josh Riley, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”
This is the second protest organized by ICJP in the past two weeks that aims to draw attention to starvation in Gaza. In a May 2025 analysis, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification platform, which investigates global instances of food security for international agencies and governments, reported that half a million people in Gaza are facing starvation. Additionally, hospitals have treated over 20,000 Gazan children for acute malnutrition since April 2025.
Protesters heard from six speakers, including Adam Hart, an activist with the Ithaca Communist Party USA, who spoke first.
In his speech, Hart spoke about the Israel Defense Forces interception of the Handala, a Freedom Flotilla Coalition boat that aimed to provide humanitarian aid and end the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, on July 26. Braedon Peluso, a constituent of congressional district NY-19 under Josh Riley, was also aboard the ship and arrested by the IDF. The U.S. government reportedly did not contact the detained American crew members, and it is unclear whether any contact has been made since their detention. All seven members have since been released from Israeli prison.
“The U.S. Embassy did not show up,” Hart said. “If [the arrest occurred anywhere] else and U.S. citizens were not actively rising up against [the Israeli blockade], the U.S. would have been all over this. ... They would have done everything they could to get their U.S. citizens back.”
Like speakers at the July 22 “Stop Starving Gaza Now!” rally organized by ICJP, Hart called for demonstrators to sign a petition urging Rep. Josh Riley (D-N.Y.) to “take a stand against Gaza’s man-made famine.”
After Hart concluded his speech, Beth Harris, a professor of politics at Ithaca College, read a poem by Palestinian poet and Syracuse University visiting scholar Mosab Abu Toha. After reciting the poem, Harris tried to illustrate starvation in Gaza and called for Democratic congresspeople to denounce the war.
Harris said that although it is difficult to understand what Palestinians in Gaza are going through, it is important to try. She quoted Gazan journalist Asem Alnabih, who wrote, “Only people who have lived through a genocide and felt it in their bones can truly understand what it means — the constant fear of death and loss, physical hunger and yearning to feel safe.”
“For most of us, we fear really understanding it because it is traumatic,” Harris said. “I suggest that we must strive to take in the trauma without disabling us to react to the urgency.”
Before demonstrators walked down East Seneca Street, Ariana Taylor-Stanley, an organizer with Jews for Mutual Liberation under ICJP, led a Mourner's Kaddish prayer for those who have died during the war.
Stanley said Aug. 3 marked Tisha B’av, a Jewish holiday of mourning traditionally kept for the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. During the prayer, participants were asked to say the names of people who have died during the war and rip a piece of cloth in remembrance.
“So this year, as Jews, we join the world in mourning the immense catastrophe of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, which is now a campaign of forced starvation through blockading food aid,” Stanley said. “And we mourn our own ability, over nearly two years, as a people, as a part of U.S. society, to stop this catastrophe.”
ICJP said it will continue to host similar protests to raise awareness for starvation in Gaza and call on representatives to denounce U.S. support for Israeli military practices.
“We know that people in Ithaca mostly don't support the genocide, and we know that they are silent — too silent,” Harris said. “We need to spread the resistance and make it impossible for our representatives to continue to support mass starvation and genocide.”
Shubha Gautam is a senior writer for The Cornell Daily Sun and is working as an intern this summer at the Ithaca Times. This article was originally published in the Ithaca Times.
Shubha Gautam is a member of the Class of 2028 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is a senior writer for the News department and can be reached at sgautam@cornellsun.com.
