JERSEY CITY, N.J.—Jersey City’s long overdue third annual Palestine flag-raising ceremony was finally held last weekend after being dropped for two years. The special event recognizing the city’s Palestinian population had not been held since December 2022. The first was in May 2021. This year, it was held on Friday, May 16, the day after Nakba (or “Catastrophe”) Day.
In a campaign that started on May 15, 1948, the day after Israel’s founding, 750,000 Palestinians were violently driven off their land and out of their homes by the Israeli army and Zionist militia forces. Hundreds of villages were destroyed, and thousands were killed in massacres. The State of Israel was immediately recognized by the U.S.
Decades later, however, the U.S. continues to refuse to recognize Palestinian statehood and block its membership in the United Nations, though it has officially claimed to support the two-state solution. The U.S. sends billions in military aid to Israel annually as it occupies Palestinian lands, imposing apartheid conditions and settler violence, and as it starves and bombs the people of Gaza.
“They said we would forget [the Nakba],” Jersey City Councilperson Yousef Saleh commented at last Friday’s event. “They said, ‘The old will die, and the young will forget.’ I’m here to say, ‘We remember, we will always remember, and we will not stop until Palestine is free.’”
The event was hosted by Saleh and the local Palestinian American Community. Saleh is one of two Palestinians elected to a City Council position in New Jersey, one of five nationally. It is the highest position currently held by any Palestinian across the state, though Saleh is now running for state assembly.
After a few addresses from local community leaders, attendees walked on to the municipal building’s balcony overlooking the shopping strip along Grove Street. The U.S. and Palestinian flags were raised, accompanied by a playing of the U.S. national anthem and “Fida’i,” the Palestinian national anthem.
Most attendees then re-entered the building to socialize and enjoy food, coffee, and watermelon juice from various vendors, including a mobile coffee cart called Coffiyeh. Amid heightened security procedures, however, police refused for a long time to re-admit those who had gone outside to view the flag-raising from the ground. Only through the intervention of Saleh—and because a vendor’s partner was among those kept outside—were others finally able to rejoin the celebration.
Back inside, a table was set up selling plants to raise money for a couple community leaders living, until recently, in Khan Younis, Gaza. There, the blocking of humanitarian aid and destruction of NGOs, combined with hoarding on the part of sellers, has meant what food is available is “incomprehensibly expensive,” as the organizer, Michelle Vera, told the attendees. “I learned that a bag of flour, as of yesterday, will sell for $400.… A can of beans is similarly priced.”
The ceremony opened with a moment of silence recognizing the tens of thousands killed in Gaza by Israel’s Netanyahu government since Oct. 7, 2023.
After some time, Saleh broke the silence, noting that no amount of time could be sufficient to recognize the scale of death and human suffering in Gaza.
“Our family has lost five of our family members in the West Bank. About 19 were abducted,” he said. “Being a Palestinian American that’s an elected official, there’s much expected of me, but … I grieve, too. My family grieves.… There’s not a day that I wake up and forget that I am a Palestinian American Muslim.… [and] I’m damn proud to be one.”
“When you come from various cultures,” Jersey City Council President Joyce Watterman said, “not everybody embraces who you are, and I know that because I am Black and I am proud.
“When you are in a political arena trying to do the best you can for your people, sometimes people don’t think that you are,” Watterman added. “I wanted to make sure I was here because I understand what it is to struggle and to be discriminated against.”
Councilmember Richard Boggiano also spoke at the event.
At the end of last year, Saleh twice introduced resolutions for a ceasefire to the council, neither of which passed. The resolutions were heavily attacked by the Zionist right locally, while some ceasefire activists were unsatisfied with the language and have sought stronger rhetoric from elected officials. Meanwhile, the local justice for Palestine movement has so far not been able to establish strong links with movements around domestic and local issues, leaving that pro-peace movement isolated.
A Jewish rabbi also spoke. “Raising the Palestinian flag is not antisemitic in any way.… Judaism is a religion, while Zionism is a political movement that does not represent the Jewish religion or the Jewish people.
“If we see crimes being committed, those crimes should be condemned regardless of the perpetrators,” he said, calling the atrocities a genocide. He pointed out that speaking as if all Jews support these crimes “is dangerous to the Jewish people.
“We lived in peace in Palestine; we want to live in peace in the future.”
Former President of the Jersey City Board of Education and mayoral candidate Mussab Ali, who co-sponsored the event, noted, “The country that claims to stand up for democracy, that preaches human rights across the world, has so often let us down right here at home.
“This is the largest global solidarity movement of our time.… It is about justice, freedom, dignity, for all oppressed people. When we say, ‘Free Palestine’ we are saying, ‘Free the colonized, free the imprisoned, and free ourselves from the lie that some lives are more valid than others.’”
Ali noted it was a special moment “because there were many times we were on the other side of the podium.”
Following this, Saleh led the assembly for the first time in a full-chested, City Hall–sanctioned chant: “Free, free Palestine! Free, free, free Palestine!”
Before the assembly left the council chambers to raise the flag and socialize, Saleh invited Michelle Vera to make a donation appeal for the Gazan families she was put in touch with. The families had been part of an encampment of about 100 people and worked to help bring food to their community. Now, however, they have been newly displaced, evacuated to separate areas.
“I was grateful to get to know them, since until then I had only seen the most horrific atrocities on my live feed,” Vera said.
“I learned first-hand the kindness of people who are actively being exterminated, since despite my taxes paying for the bombs that fall on them, they still write to me on WhatsApp and ask: ‘How are you? How are your children?’”
Vera added a strong human element to the event, describing the extreme physical and psychological torment that U.S. foreign policy is imposing on humanity everywhere.
“I learned what the buzz of constant drones sounds like.… [I saw] the bombs that are in the distance. … So, when we talk and they tell me how hungry they are and that the house across from them got bombed the day before yesterday and six people died, I want to say, ‘Eman and Sohaib, we are with you … people [march in the street with] the Palestinian flag and wear the keffiyeh!’ but … I’m embarrassed, because what is it worth to them to hear these words?”
Ahmed Shedeed, executive director and chairman of the Islamic Center of Jersey City and a leader of the Al-Tahweed Islamic Center, one of the largest and oldest mosques in New Jersey, thanked everyone for being there “to prove that we exist, that we have a community here, and to celebrate a country that everybody forgets about.”
Shedeed added that all should be able to at least agree on a ceasefire and that the two countries should be able to exist. “Everybody has a right to live,” he insisted.
As the rabbi speaker noted, the Palestine flag-raising in Jersey City was “a step for peace.
“This is for humanity, this is for the Jewish people as well,” he said, expressing the hope to see “peace and prosperity for everyone” in the future.
But challenges remain.
Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop did not attend the flag-raising, despite claiming support for Palestinian statehood, alongside that of Israel. He did, however, attend and speak at a previously held, and much protested, Israel flag-raising event. Over 1,700 people had signed a petition not to hold it. That event was also attended by Councilmembers Joyce Watterman and Boggiano. All the other councilmembers were absent from both events.
Perhaps now is the time to again put Jersey City to the test: Are we ready to pass a ceasefire resolution? Could a divestment campaign be successful? The key to victory is unity with broader labor and people’s struggles.
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