On Friday, Oct. 11, the club Students Organizing Against Racism at Tulane University hosted a vigil honoring Palestinian lives lost over the past year during the Israel-Hamas war.  

SOAR is an organization “dedicated to humanistic, anti-racist organizing at an individual, institutional and cultural level” and has been on Tulane’s campus since 1999. 

Following the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, death tolls rose exponentially in the Middle East. In August, the United Nations estimated that 130 Palestinian lives were being lost per day.  

SOAR held the vigil on McAlister Plaza, accompanied by an open art installation with portraits of multiple individuals killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023.  

Both SOAR and the Tulane club Students Supporting Israel held vigils during the week of Oct. 7 to honor the anniversary of the day the war began.  

A column in front of the building showcased a sketch of 17-year-old Tawfic Abdeljabbar, framed by cardboard pieces painted with “Justice for Tawfic” and “Listen to the ICJ,” referencing the International Court of Justice’s opinion that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful. Abdeljabbar was a native of New Orleans and the son of Palestinian immigrants. He was killed in the West Bank in January.  

SOAR co-president and senior Etta Coleman hoped that the Tulane community would use this space to reflect upon the gravity of the human lives lost.  

“Our goal with this vigil is to hold space to recognize the thousands upon thousands of people who have died in Palestine over the past year,” Coleman said. “We just hope that people see this, these works of art, as a moment of beauty and of reflection and a memorial to all the lives that have been lost.”  

Following the events on campus on Oct. 7, 2024, where students were clearly divided, SOAR aimed to create a space where students of all beliefs could come together in recognition of the shared pain and loss.  

Freshman Sadie Goldberg attended SOAR’s vigil to support a friend who took part in its organization.   

“I’m Jewish,” Goldberg said. “I think it’s a Jewish value to show up for people who cannot show up for themselves. I think we all owe it to each other to show up for each other and to let people know that their struggles aren’t going unnoticed, no matter what religion you are.”  

The vigil opened with Coleman reading a poem titled “If I must die.” Palestinian professor and writer Refaat Alareer wrote the poem in 2011 and was killed by a strike in northern Gaza on Dec. 7, 2023. The concluding lines of the poem convey the message SOAR intended to set at the vigil: “If I must die/let it bring hope/let it be a tale.”  

Senior co-president of SOAR Madison Burnstein emphasized the importance of recognizing the human stories behind the many statistics being published from the violence in Gaza. At the vigil, Madison shared a story about one of her close family friends who was killed in Gaza in November.  

“The point of this is to get across that every human matters, and that we need to bring humanization back to people that have been dehumanized and degraded over the last year,” Burnstein said.   

Coleman invited members of the Tulane community to reflect on the importance of creating this space on Tulane’s campus.  

“I think there’s a lot of people on this campus who share these views and are scared to show up to things like this because of how ostracizing it can be,” Coleman said. “I think it can be hard and uncomfortable to try to stand up for what you believe in on this campus.”  

Coleman’s advice to students wanting to learn more about the conflict in Middle East is to read stories and consume art by Palestinian voices, and to participate in school-sanctioned events such as this vigil. “You don’t have to be out there on the frontline yelling,” she said.