The commemoration for 7 October, pro-Palestinian slogans at the university: Gaza is our Vietnam

Los Angeles. “For some, 7 October is just one of many dates on the calendar – a birthday, an anniversary – but in the hearts and souls of Israelis, 7 October is a day of tragic remembrance,” says Jonathan Aaron, who has been rabbi of Emanuel Synagogue for twenty years, in a solemn tone. Dawn has just broken in Beverly Hills and on the lawn of Rexford Mini Park – freshly mown the day before – a stone’s throw from the public library and the 9/11 memorial, some residents of Los Angeles’s most famous neighbourhood are commemorating the Hamas attack three years ago, “as dusk falls in Israel”. Following the minute’s silence, a spontaneous Jewish lament breaks out, praying for the victims’ peace in the afterlife.

Beverly Hills is home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the world, numbering tens of thousands, as the mayor, Craig Corman, points out to Il Foglio. His priority – security – stems in part from the anti-Semitic attitudes witnessed in America over the past three years. But he points up at a drone in the sky, which is filming the event from above. And then there are the police officers in full dress uniform and the CCTV cameras on street corners. “Fortunately, nothing has happened here, apart from a few swastikas on the walls,” he says, “obviously you never know what might happen, but we’re prepared.” With an eye to the demonstrations scheduled for this afternoon in support of Gaza—against the bombings and against Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies—he looks up and calls the situation “stressful.” “Because,” he says, “this situation has caused a great deal of stress throughout America.” He then announces the memorial the city will build, pending the raising of funds, right there in front of him. A permanent memorial, the rendering of which he shows to the Israeli Consul-General for the East Coast, Modi Ephraim, after the ceremony. The monument will bear the names of the victims of 7 October, which will be illuminated for 86 minutes once a year. Its title is ‘Light Shared Between Us’. Above all, says the mayor, it is “a monument against anti-Semitism”. “Never again”, they all repeat – mayors, rabbis, consuls. And regarding the march due to take place at the University of California this afternoon, Rabbi Aaron tells Il Foglio: “It’s disgusting”, not least because “behind the slogans there is nothing but emptiness”.

Here, too, are UCLA-style slogans, on a campus as neat and perfect as the decorative flowerbeds on Rodeo Drive, amid a clearance sale of posters for dorm rooms – Pulp Fiction, Klimt, Lana Del Rey – and students rushing to class with water bottles in hand. “From the river to the sea”, “Glory to the martyrs”, and “Intifada!”. And, of course, the G-word, and Israel becoming “the Zionist entity”. About a hundred young people, all with keffiyehs wrapped round their heads in fedayeen style, wearing sunglasses and Covid face masks over their mouths, because the first rule is not to be recognised – by the cameras or the police on bicycles who’ve formed a cordon and are filming everything – and there’s even a helicopter overhead drowning out the protesters’ voices as they speak through a megaphone. "Dress incognito," say the instructions on Instagram for taking part in the march, "don't speak to the cops." "As long as we show solidarity with the Palestinian cause, there will always be some form of oppression against us from the university and the government," one of the event's organisers tells Il Foglio, recalling the eleven people suspended from UCLA for taking part in the latest pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The main aim, they say, is “to call on the university to cut ties with companies complicit in apartheid and the occupation of Palestine”. But that’s not all. “We are here to honour the martyrs and those who are still fighting to defend their land and their dignity”. They read out the names of young people who have died in Gaza and share testimonies. A nearby group protests, waving the Israeli flag: some Jewish students with their faces uncovered, wearing Stars of David round their necks; one is wearing a T-shirt bearing the face of Theodor Herzl and the words ‘just zionising’. They repeat that on 7 October we should be remembering those killed by Hamas, and they almost come to blows, stopping in front of a Tesla Cybertruck until the ‘campus police’ separate them, shouting that blocking cars is an offence. The organisers disagree, because that date, 7 October, has also become a ‘crucial’ date for Palestine, because ‘that is when many people around the world – including themselves – realised the plight of the people in Gaza, and that is when the escalation of the genocide began’.

Although there are only a few of them at the march, in a university with 50,000 students, they assert that those who support Palestine are not a minority, and this “is evident from the efforts of the institutions to stop us and hinder us”. Ultimately, they declare, in all seriousness: “this is our Vietnam”.