Multifaith prayer vigil in Palo Alto calls for peace in Israel-Hamas war
Through song and prayer, people of multiple faiths came together outside Palo Alto City Hall Saturday to call for peace amid the Israel-Hamas war.
Samina Sundas, founder of the American Muslim Voice Foundation, said the war has brought out highly charged emotions on both sides of the conflict.
"When there are issues about Palestine and Israel it's very touchy, because there are rabbis and there are Muslims, and it is very difficult to feel the pain of others, and that's what it takes, compassion and all the things we're talking about," said Sundas.
There were no Palestinian or Israeli flags displayed in the plaza, just hearts and minds that were thinking of the lives lost in the war.
Farha Andrabi Nabaid, president of the Mountain View Palo Alto Musalla, said the gathering was healing.
"It felt like a utopia, and this is not just a Jewish and Muslim thing, for me, it's a human thing you know," Nabaid said.
On Saturday, Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a ceasefire would only be possible if all 239 hostages held by militants in Gaza are released.
More than 11,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, have been killed since the war began.
"I've been most personally moved as a mother, as a grandmother, imagining the deep sorrow of moms, grandmothers, parents of everyone on all sides," said vigil organizer and Presbyterian minister Diana Gibson.
Robin Severns from the Palo Alto Quaker Meeting was pleased to see the turnout.
"I was one of the people who brought chairs, and I didn't think we were going to need many chairs," she said. "We need to understand that we're all human beings, we have common needs and desires."
Sundas said she's experienced a heightened sense of Islamophobia in the last few weeks. She said she was too emotional to participate in the program as a speaker.
"I held it together pretty well, throughout the evening, but this last song, even though it was a song, for me it became a prayer," she said. "That's why I raised my hands. In two words, we really need peace, Shalaam Shalom, in our world."