PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Israel and Hamas moved ahead on a key first step of the tenuous Gaza ceasefire agreement on Monday by freeing hostages and prisoners, raising hopes that the US-brokered deal might lead to a permanent end to the two-year war that ravaged the Palestinian territory, the Associated Press reported.
“This has just been a total horror show for the people of Gaza, and they have been subjected to a genocidal assault from the very beginning,” said Joel Beinin, part of the Jewish-Palestinian Alliance in Portland.
Beinin is also a former professor at Stanford University and a leading scholar on labor, politics and social movements in the Arab world. Since March, the Jewish-Palestinian Alliance has held weekly events each Friday at Pioneer Courthouse Square downtown in a shared call for peace across once divided lines.
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He also has a direct connection to the events in that region. He said Hamas militants took his Jewish niece hostage in November 2023 and held her captive for 54 days.
The day after she was released, he said, he learned her husband had been killed…