Jewish Voices For Peace of The Bay Area Boycotts And Protests Israeli Philharmonic Concert Today

SAN FRANCISCO - March 23, 2025 - PRLog -- Posted Courtesy of Wright Enterprises Community Spotlight San Francisco~Dallas
The views expressed are solely of the writer, Anh Lê.

SPECIAL FEATURE ARTICLE
By Anh Lê

The anti-war organization Jewish Voices for Peace of the Bay Area (JVPBA) is organizing a boycott and protest of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco on Sunday, March 23 at 6:30 pm, an hour before the orchestra's scheduled concert.

The protest is organized by members of Jewish Voices for Peace of the Bay Area and other groups including Code Pink of Berkeley, and Artists Against Apartheid.

Jewish Voices for Peace of the Bay Area and the protest organizers are inviting people to show up at Davies Symphony Hall to protest loudly Israel's killings of Palestinians in Gaza.

The protest at 6:30 pm coincides also with a pre-concert dinner and post-concert dessert reception that will be held at Davies Symphony Hall at 5:30 pm.  The ticket price per person for the dinner and reception, sponsored by Friends of the Israeli Philharmonic and Pfizer Pharmaceutical, is $350-$25,000.

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is a trauma and critical care surgeon from California.  He volunteered as a surgeon at European Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza in March and April 2024.  He wrote an Op-Ed piece, "65 Doctors, Nurses, Paramedics: What We Saw," which was published in The New York Times (October 16, 2024).  Dr. Sidhwa shared the harrowing stories of the Palestinian children and other casualties in Gaza from Israel's bombardments and ground attacks of their land.  Dr. Sidhwa spoke of the CT scans of the very young Palestinian children, children who had been shot in the head (the bullets still lodged in their skulls) and children who had been shot in the chest.  Although The New York Times published several photos of the CT scans, they called the corresponding images of the children too graphic to publish.

Dr. Sidhwa and Dr. Mark Perlmutter, a volunteer orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina who worked alongside with him at European Hospital, wrote a 13-pages letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris (October 3, 2024) to let them know the horrific suffering they and the other American medical professionals witnessed in Gaza and urged President Biden and Vice President Harris to call for a ceasefire and an arms embargo to Israel.  Dr. Sidhwa and Dr. Perlmutter wrote, "Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets.  Our bombs are cutting down women and children by the thousands.  Their mutilated bodies are a monument to cruelty.  We urge you: End this madness now."

Israel resumed heavy air strikes on Gaza earlier this week, shattering a fragile ceasefire lasting less than 2 months.  In the first day of the air strikes, over 400 Palestinians were killed in one night.

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa was working as a MedGlobal volunteer surgeon at Nasser Hospital in West Gaza.

In an ABC News interview on March 19, Dr. Sidhwa stated, "One of the first patients I saw was a 3 year old girl with multiple shrapnel wounds, she couldn't breathe properly, her pulse (was life threatening).  So I had to just tell her dad it was nothing we could do, she was going to die."  Dr. Sidhwa stated, "Over the next 10 to 12 hours, we performed 10 operations.  It was just carnage (everywhere around us, from the Israeli attacks)."

Dr. Sidhwa stated, "When you drop bombs on tents, this is what's going to happen, especially when half of the population is children.  For the Palestinians, it's 'Death and Hell.'  The displacement, the evacuation orders."

In the same ABC News program, the reporter stated that UNICEF said with over 130 Palestinian children killed on the first day of the resumed air strikes, it was the deadliest day for children since the war began.

Dr. Sidhwa stated that the dire situation was becoming worse.  Dr. Sidhwa said there was no resupply of medical supplies.  The warehouse supply had been burned.  The Palestinian people are malnourished and starving.  There is no clean or potable water. The electricity was cut.

Earlier this week, the Israeli military blew up the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital and Medical School.  The Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital was the only cancer hospital.

Since the resumed air strikes began this week, over 700 Palestinians have been killed.  According to the Gaza Health Ministry, since the beginning of the Israeli bombardments and ground attacks in Gaza following the Hamas attack on October 3, 2023, over 50,000 Palestinians have been killed, over 113,000 Palestinians have been injured, and untold tens of thousands of Palestinians have been missing or presumed dead under the rubble.  These are vast undercounts, due to the challenges in the reporting system during this war.

The killings of the Palestinians in Gaza and the destruction of their homes and land by the Israeli military and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been referred to the International Court of Justice by South Africa and other nations for the ongoing Genocide and War Crimes committed.

Steve Minkin, a Jewish peace activist and author, wrote an Op-Ed piece, "Never Again - Not In Our Name" (Common Dreams, March 21, 2025).  Minkin stated, "'L'Chaim' is the toast to human life - the value of all human life.  After the Holocaust, the Jewish people said, 'Never Again.'  Today, we who oppose the Genocide in Gaza are shouting, 'Not In Our Name.'"

We must reclaim our belief in the Sanctity of Human Life.

Let us work together for Peace and demand the end to the Genocide and War Crimes in Gaza.

Anh Lê is an Independent Journalist.