War in Gaza and US election factor into MLK holiday events

As communities nationwide celebrated the Rev Martin Luther King Jr (MLK) holiday last weekend, with events ranging from parades to prayer services, some people are taking a cue from the slain civil rights icon’s history of protest to demonstrate against the war in Gaza and draw attention to the looming US presidential election.

The Monday holiday also marked 100 days since October 7, when Hamas launched an attack in southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people and resulted in about 240 taken hostage. Since then, more than 100 Israelis remain kidnapped and more than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, as global health organisations have warned of a worsening humanitarian crisis there.

Perhaps the biggest organised event of the weekend in the US was held in the nation’s capital on Saturday – the March on Washington for Gaza, co-hosted by the American Muslim Task Force on Palestine, comprising some of the largest Muslim organisations in the US, along with antiwar and racial justice groups.

Thousands of people rallied near the White House to call for an end to Israeli military action in Gaza, with some holding signs questioning President Joe Biden’s viability as a presidential candidate because of his staunch support for Israel in the war against Hamas.

March organisers called on Biden to demand a permanent ceasefire and an end to the violence against civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. They also called for the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian political prisoners, and an end to “American unconditional financial support for the Israeli military”, according to Edward Ahmed Mitchell, AMTP media coordinator and deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The title of Saturday’s march evoked the famous March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, at which King delivered his historic I Have a Dream speech atop the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. That history, as well as King’s vocal opposition to the US role in the Vietnam War toward the end of his life, was a guiding factor for the organisers.

Mitchell, who called King’s legacy “multifaceted”, said King spoke up even if it meant getting vilified.

“He was considered un-American and called a traitor. Even the political establishment shunned him,” Mitchell said.

King’s daughter, Bernice King, has said her father was against anti-Semitism and also would have opposed the bombing of Gaza. The taking of lives through retaliatory violence is not the strategy he would want to see today.

“There is an opportunity for us to have a real breakthrough and get to some genuine conversations and actions that can allow people to co-exist in an area of the world,” Bernice King said in a recent interview from The King Centre in Atlanta, where she is CEO.