On Feb. 4, Bert James Baker was arrested for stabbing Zacharia Doar, a 23-year-old Palestinian man, after a pro-cease-fire rally in Austin. As a community, we need to reject the notion that anti-Palestinian violence is “on the other side of the globe,” per Mayor Kirk Watson’s public statement, because this hate crime has made it plain that it is here in Austin, too.
We are Jewish students and proud Austinites compelled to speak out about the local political climate that enabled this horrendous hate crime. Austin officials, through their silence in the face of a U.S.-funded genocide against Palestinians, have normalized their murder and emboldened racists in our own community. Our officials must take steps to ensure the safety of our Palestinian and Arab community members, which includes condemning anti-Palestinian violence from Austin to Gaza.
Mayor Watson’s statement reaffirms his opposition to a cease-fire resolution while touching only cursorily on the horrifying stabbing of Zacharia Doar. The statement fails to connect this attack with the rise in Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian violence locally and nationally. We are disturbed to see local officials – including Mayor Watson, as well as UT-Austin President Jay Hartzell, and others – parrot rhetoric that conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, and suggests Palestinian safety comes at the cost of Jewish safety. We are disturbed to see these same officials express concern about our community following October 7 without extending that concern to Palestinians.
As Jews, we reject wholeheartedly these attempts to speak on our behalf. The common root of anti-Palestinian and antisemitic violence is white supremacy. It is for this reason that we stand in solidarity with the family of Zacharia Doar in demanding that Texas leaders support an immediate and permanent cease-fire.
The stabbing of Zacharia Doar has made it plain that anti-Palestinian violence is here in Austin, too.
While our local leaders remain shamefully silent, the University of Texas at Austin continues to host public events with speakers who openly embrace genocidal rhetoric. At a recent talk on campus, Yaron Brook justified mass civilian casualties by arguing that Israel should consider the entire Palestinian population an enemy. As Jewish students at UT-Austin, we are alarmed and ashamed that our campus uplifts rhetoric that fuels extremism in the broader Austin community.
Over the last four months, the Israeli military has killed more than 28,000 people in Gaza, with many more missing or trapped under the rubble. Every day, we watch as Israel flagrantly violates the Jan. 26 International Court of Justice ruling by blocking aid trucks, targeting medical workers, and most recently bombing Rafah, despite there being nowhere else for civilians there to go. This genocide is fully funded by the United States government, which sends $3.8 billion in military funding to the Israeli government each year.
The targeting of people in our community makes Israel’s slaughter a local issue. We are tired of being told by City Council members like Chito Vela that a cease-fire resolution is not a local issue when extremists are attacking Palestinians in our streets. We would further like to remind these Austin politicians that there is local precedent for international resolutions, like in 2003 when the Austin City Council went on record in opposition of preemptive military action in Iraq.
We have spent the last four months witnessing a genocide unfold, watching death and destruction on our smartphones. The attack on Gaza is unprecedented by international standards in terms of the level of destruction and number of deaths in such a short amount of time. Yet the mayor fears that a cease-fire resolution might incite “division, shouting, and recriminations.”
To Mayor Watson we ask: What is “shouting,” measured against the slaughter in Gaza? What weight do “recriminations” carry when white supremacists are brutally targeting Palestinians in the streets of our own university campuses? We reject silence and so-called unity built on the suffering of our Palestinian siblings. We need a cease-fire now.
Sophia Schlesinger is a poet and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace. She is currently completing an MFA in the New Writers Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
Joshua Sklar is a member of Jewish Voice for Peace. He currently studies information science at the University of Texas at Austin.
This article appears in March 8 • 2024.