UNC Asheville’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society featured six participants holding Palestinian flags and signs with statements such as “End all U.S. Aid to Israel Now” during a protest staged downtown on June 7.

Chants included “Free, free Palestine, Democratic Palestine” and “Palestine is under attack... What do we do? Stand up fight back!”

“Many passersby seemed confused about this issue, but we received some positive feedback like honks and thumbs up and the like,” UNCA SDS spokeswoman Katie Campbell told the Daily Planet. “A handful of people came by to discuss what we were demonstrating about.”

Among the comments which she read were: “Why should we stop all aid to Israel?

“Israel’s agenda with Palestine is domination. The individual actions that desperate Palestinians have performed have primarily been in direct response to the human rights violations and overall oppression that Israel has inflicted on the people of Palestine for over three decades. If the people and leaders of the US believe in freedom and self-determination for our own people, we must apply the same expectations and rights to the rest of the world. We cannot say we believe in these principles and simultaneously fund Israel’s oppression of Palestine.

“We are in a recession. We need this money we’re spending there (more than 5 billion dollars a year) for health care and education, to name only two domestic necessities that never receive enough funding. However, if we’re going to spend that money internationally, we have a perfect cause today.