A “Stop the genocide” banner deployed on El Capitan

Pro-Palestinian demonstrations against the war between Israel and Hamas, which have multiplied on university campuses, have now reached national parks. SFGate reports that four climbers stopped halfway up Yosemite’s El Capitan on Monday, not to rest, but to unfurl a 25-by-15-foot banner in the colors of the Palestinian flag that read “Stop to the genocide” (see a photo here). ). The outlet notes that the grassroots group Climbers With Palestine stayed with the banner all night Tuesday to ensure no one would be in danger, then began descending that afternoon.

Climbing Magazine Identifies the four climbers as Miranda Oakley, Alix Morris, Alexa Flower and Henry Whittaker. They erected the banner about halfway up El Capitan’s 3,000-foot-long “Nose” road. “Martin Luther posted his theses on the church door,” said Emily Weinstein, co-founder of Climbers With Palestine. “We put our message on the world’s most iconic climbers’ noticeboard.” Weinstein, who is Jewish, created the California-based group with Oakley, a Palestinian American climbing guide, to support “equal rights in Palestine/Israel and around the world,” according to a recent Instagram post.

Weinstein notes that Yosemite advertises in bars, but she doesn’t think that’s what her group is guilty of. “It’s not an advertisement,” she told SFGATE. “This is about exercising our free speech rights as Americans.” Morris tells Escalation that the group had debated what message to put on the banner, and that in the end “we chose this wording because what we are trying to say is unequivocal. It’s powerful. It’s simple. It’s “We need to stop killing people today.” It is unclear whether the group will face any repercussions from the park, which was not informed in advance of its protest. . (More stories from El Capitan.)