El Camino College students, faculty and people from outside the college came together to march and speak in support of Palestine on campus on Tuesday, Oct. 8.

The protest in support of Palestine was a student-run “Call to Action” that encouraged anyone to speak from noon to 3 p.m. It was the second on-campus protest regarding the Israel-Hamas war since May 21, 2024.

Throughout the event, the crowd chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” in unison.

Abiya Hasan, 17, a political science major, said it would be disturbing if the event wasn’t held since it would be acting as if everything was normal.

“I think it’s really important to disrupt the atmosphere on campus at times of such political chaos, social turmoil, and social tragedy. The masses should not be comfortable existing in such a world, they should be enraged, ” Hasan said.

“I come to work on this campus at 4:30 to 5 [a.m.] in the morning since I’ve been hired and the money will become missiles and other weapons of mass destruction that we will send to the criminal government that we have,” Ahmadpour said.

Ahmadpour said the United States is sending billions to Israel while people in America are struggling.

“When we have a great number of students who don’t have a shelter. When we have a great number of students who don’t have anything to eat. When we have a great number of people without insurance we are sending billions and billions and billions of dollars to the most criminal government on the face of the earth,” Ahmadpour said.

El Camino student Mason Klekotka was the only one who spoke in support of Israel during the protest.

His speech was interrupted several times and even told to “shut the f– up” by supporters of the event

Klekotka said Hamas and Hezbollah have committed atrocities worse than the Israeli Defense Forces.

“Israel is a sovereign nation, they are a country that is not run by paramilitaries like Hamas and Hezbollah want, they have a legitimate democratic process whether or not it is corrupt or going well. What we should focus on is that their [Israel] enemies are not righteous freedom fighters,” Klekotka said.

Klekotka said the priority should be getting innocent people out of harm’s way and letting the two sides fight.

“War is war and hell is hell, of the two, war is worse because there are no innocent people in hell,” Klekotka said.

Hakim Toudji, 19, a nursing major said that throughout history no matter what group or what they believe, there has always been suppression.

“Numerous nations have split apart and broken apart, it was always too late because no one actually stood up for it, yes there have been protests in the past, nothing has ever actually been done,” Toudji said.

Carmen Nichols, 22, a general science major and vice president of the Black Student Union said there’s an ongoing boycott for many big business chains that began a year ago.

“On October 8th, 2023 there was a boycott for a lot of businesses, especially Starbucks and since then any business that contributes willingly or supports a genocide regardless of what that company is,” Nichols said.

Nichols said she doesn’t want her money going to support Israel.

“Regardless, what country is conducting that genocide I do not want to be a part of it and therefore I refuse to use my purchasing power to buy those commodities,” Nichols said.

Editor’s note:

• Toudji’s first name was corrected on Oct. 15 at 9:55 a.m.
• A pronoun was corrected on Oct. 15 at 1:45 p.m.