CLEVELAND —  In the seven months since the Israel-Hamas war started, Palestinian activists and their supporters across the globe have been protesting for an end to the violence.   

In Cleveland, local organizers have pointed their efforts toward city council, county council and institutions that invest in Israel. 

Activism has taken on a more important role in the protesters’ day-to-day lives lately, but many have work, families and other personal obligations to deal with when the rallies die down and everyone goes home.

On top of her duties as a mom, wife, professor, sister, daughter and friend, Shereen Naser is among the activists protesting the war. 

“A lot of people are always asking like, ‘You must be so tired or you’re so busy,’ and I’m not,” Naser said. “I’m energized. I feel for the first time in a long time that I’m doing work that puts all the pieces of my life together.”

For the past seven months, Naser has been helping lead pro-Palestinian demonstrations throughout Cleveland.

The eldest daughter of eight children to Palestinian parents who were displaced from their home, Naser was born in the U.S. but feels a deep connection to her homeland. 

“We don’t have the land that her [Naser's daughter] great-grandparents lived on anymore because it was taken from us,” she said. “So, for me, culture is the food that I cook for my children. Culture is the sewing that helps me relax at the end of the night, that I decorate my house with. It’s the language I try to teach my kids.”

Naser is a full-time professor at Cleveland State University, but still attends public meetings to call for divestment from Israel, holds space for healing with her community and supports the students at Case Western Reserve University throughout their encampment. 

“I don’t want to be spending all of this time away from my husband and my kids and my garden and my chickens and doing my writing,” she said.

But seeing so much death and destruction in Gaza is deeply painful for Naser, and she said sitting home isn’t an option for her.

“There’s this word in Arabic that does not have a good translation, but the word is, ‘Qahr.’ Qahr,” she said. “It’s like this intense feeling of just, it’s not quite anger, it’s not quite sadness. It’s like all of these things wrapped up together. It’s like deep, deep disappointment.”

Naser said her cousin was recently arrested by the Israeli military and is currently being held. 

She is angry that her tax dollars have been invested in Israel bonds, and the Israeli government can use that funding how it chooses.   

“I hurt knowing what she could be experiencing right now and what other Palestinian prisoners are experiencing,” Naser said. “And I often think that could be me. My parents were displaced. And if they weren’t, I might’ve been in the exact same boat.”

But one thing that’s keeping her strong is her community. 

“Palestinians, we have survived because we take care of each other. We rely on each other,” she said. “There are practices in Palestinian cooking where you make these big meals and they’re never made by one person and oftentimes they’re cooked in a village oven. And so this is the culture that I was raised in and to be proud of.”

The people who have come out to support the pro-Palestinian movement in Cleveland have come from all walks of life.

“It is multifaith. It is multiracial, is across economic lines,” Naser said. “All of the segregations that Cleveland has created have completely come down in this group, in this community that we’ve put together.”