Last Sunday, JEWISHColorado held the annual Celebrate Israel Walk and Festival in Denver, CO. This year, the festival drew many people from across Colorado and featured live music, an Israel pep rally and a walk-a-thon.

The festival coincides with the 75th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel and the Nakba, both of which occurred or began in 1948. Israeli Independence Day was celebrated this year between April 25 and April 26. The Nakba, which refers to the ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Palestinians from Palestine by zionist paramilitaries prior to and during the founding of the Israeli state, will be commemorated on May 15 on Nakba Day.

To Edina Segall, Director of Israel and Overseas Center at JEWISHColorado, the festival is about “celebrating the beauty and diversity of the land of Israel.” 

“It is a non-political celebration,” Segall said.

The small crowd of protesters gathered outside of the festival barriers disagreed. 

“To have any kind of event about Israel and not have any mention or discussion or navigation or basic wrestling of the continued Zionist violence that’s happening is political, right?” questioned Sarah Kaplan-Gould, a member of Denver/Boulder JVP.

“The existence of Israel is political,” added Joel Northam, a member of the Denver chapter of the Party of Socialism and Liberation present at the Sunday demonstration. “When you ethnically cleanse a population, when you actively…bulldoze their homes, when you bomb them constantly when you deprive them of basic human rights, that is a political issue.”

Waving Palestinian flags and holding up signs reading “Jews stand with Palestine,” the demonstration, headed by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), featured members of several organizations from the Colorado Palestine Coalition (CPC). 

As an M.C. cheered on festival-goers at the Israel pep rally across the fence, JVP and CPC speakers read Kaddish, a Jewish prayer of mourning, for several Palestinian villages destroyed during the Nakba and for a partial list of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in 2023.

Kaplan-Gould emphasized the role of the kaddish and Jewish rituals in their activism. “As JVP it feels really important to show up with that ritual and that culture… to bring our traditions of how we honor the dead to this space,” they said.

Some festival participants approached the demonstration waving Israeli flags and filming the protestors; most noted their presence and returned to the celebratory activities inside the barriers.

Segall brushed off the demonstration, saying “it’s a free country” and acknowledging the protestor’s right to assemble. Festival-goer Marianne Weiss said she “empathized” with the Palestinian cause; her counterpart Brandon Ratner emphasized that “Celebrate Israel” was about culture, not politics.

“There are real people on the ground that live there on both sides that have had their life affected and made worse off because of the violence,” said Ratner. “I think one of the fun things about this event is it actually celebrates Israeli culture and people as an independent entity that exists, not separate from, but in addition to, the political conflict there.”

The event comes during a historically deadly year for Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. As of May 1st, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have killed 94 Palestinians and injured 166 in the Occupied West Bank this year; Israeli forces killed over 170 Palestinians in 2022, the highest death toll since 2006. 

The U.N.’s most recent report found that 14 Israelis, 11 of which were settlers, were killed by Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied West Bank between Jan. 1, 2023, and Mar. 20, 2023.

While these current statistics alone highlight current violence in Occupied Palestine, demonstrators saw the ongoing occupation of Palestinian land and people as the real cause for protest.

“There’s people out here that are celebrating 75 years of ethnic cleansing, of apartheid, of settler colonialism,” said Northam.

 “We feel like it would not be right to not have a presence here…to remind the people out here celebrating Israel that we support our Palestinian brothers and sisters who are struggling to this day against the occupation,” he said.

As Celebrate Israel participants set off for the two-mile walk-a-thon, Kaplan-Gould and Northam gathered with other demonstrators on the banks of a small pond to continue telling the story of the Nakba. Their message was clear: as long as Denverites celebrate Israel, this group will show up in solidarity for Palestine as well.

Exact attendance figures for the Celebrate Israel event could not be obtained at the time of publication