UH Manoa group works to bring context to plight of Palestinians amid Hamas-Israel war

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - A UH Manoa group wants to raise awareness about what they call injustices perpetuated against Palestinians.

“Students and Faculty for Justice in Palestine” hosts events with Palestinian guest speakers who offer context to the complex conflict.

Cynthia Franklin, the group’s professor and co-founder, wants people to not just look at one side of the Israel-Palestine conflict but understand the deeper history.

“In 1948, with the establishment of the state of Israel that 750,000 Palestinians are displaced from their lands in what Palestinians call the Nakba or the catastrophe. And there has been since 1948 continuing practices of dispossession of occupation of settler colonialism that take different forms depending on where in Palestine you’re talking about. So in the West Bank or the occupied Palestinian territories, Palestinians there are living under martial law for the most part. They don’t have control over their own water or resources. They are subjected to military incursions, school closures, night raids, et cetera inside,” Franklin said.

Franklin said it’s a painful time for victims on both sides and knows friends and family members who have died or live in fear.

“I have a lot of very close friends and people I love very much who are in Palestine. I also have people I love very much who are Palestinians living, you know, in the diaspora or they should talk including in the United States... and, you know, I also feel very badly about the loss of life that Israeli Jews have experienced. My heart just breaks for people who are living in this kind of terror with their lives in danger and, and then having politicians and the media, you know, add to that violence through, you know, kind of horrific depictions of them,” Franklin said.

“Students and Faculty For Justice in Palestine” is hosting an event with Malak Matter, a painter from Gaza, on Thursday, Oct. 19, at UH Manoa. There is also an Art and Activism panel on Saturday, Oct. 21.

For more information, visit SFJPUH on instagram.