SEATTLE — High school students across western Washington walked out of class Tuesday, calling on the U.S. to stop supplying Israel with weapons in the war against Hamas.
"People are dying – why wouldn't I be upset about it? said August Donica, a Garfield High School student. "It's a genocide. You gotta be a special type of person to just not care about it, and not special in a good way."
The protests come after the first night of Passover, which began Monday evening, a day of celebration for the Jewish community.
Washington state student organizers said in an Instagram post, “Being silent is complicit in these crimes against humanity.”
However, many in the Jewish community have said protests at college campuses across the country have led them to feel unsafe as they reported offensive and antisemitic language and actions.
Schools in districts in Seattle, Redmond, Renton, Issaquah, Woodinville and others participated, in addition to local colleges and universities.
In Seattle, some students filled out civic engagement activity forms two days before the walkout, allowing them to receive excused absences for participating in the protests.
"We would like to show as much as we can. So if that means skipping class, if that means walking out, if that means disrupting the norm at our school or our communities, we will do so in a peaceful manner," said Garfield senior Nola Watson.
Hundreds of students met at Cal Anderson Park for a rally on Tuesday morning after the walkout.
Maysun Dawahare, a Garfield High School student who joined the walkout, is Arab and feels affected by the violence in the Middle East.
"It connects with me personally on a daily basis," Dawahare said. "It's important because people are starting to forget."
Jewish leaders in the Seattle area have expressed concern over the protests, worried it will fuel rising antisemitism. In 2023, there were the most incidents of antisemitism in America since the Anti-Defamation League started keeping statistics 45 years ago.
There were 8,873 in 2023 – a 140% increase from the previous year. Washington had the most incidents in the Pacific Northwest with 190 – up from 65 in 2022.
Protests have roiled many college campuses since Hamas’ deadly attack on southern Israel, when militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. During the ensuing war, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and non-combatants but says at least two-thirds of the dead are children and women.
On Monday, Columbia University in New York canceled in-person classes, and dozens of protesters were arrested at New York University and Yale during demonstrations.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.