If anyone had thoughts that Marquette’s Gaza war protesters were going to disappear after Northern Michigan University’s spring commencement was over, what went on in downtown Wednesday should have dispelled those ideas.

While it wasn’t a huge number, an energenic group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators took up station on the sidewalk near the U.S. Post Office for several hours.

Prior to spring graduation, some of the same people demonstrating Wednesday in downtown Marquette were involved in protests on the NMU campus.

Wednesday’s gathering, however, was more than simply voicing opposition to Israel’s conduct in Gaza since the October Hamas terror attacks, it was to mark the Palestinian day of commemoration, Nakba Remembrance Day.

One independent organizer who has been present at most pro-Palestinian protests, Ian Watson, said that in light of Israel’s recent push into the Palestinian city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, now is the time to spread awareness and join their movement.

“We are honoring all the suffering the Palestinians have been through over the last 76 years on today’s Nakba Remembrance Day, reminding people that this is an ongoing struggle,” Watson said. “The Nakba is still going on. (The) Nakba did not end in 1948. They’re still being displaced, they’re still being mass murdered. They’re still being ethnically cleansed and wiped off their homeland so the fight continues until Palestine is free.”

Under any circumstance, we fully expect these kind of protests to continue in the Marquette area as long as the situation in Gaza continues unresolved.

And if the protests are peaceful, respectful and consistent with law, we don’t have a problem with that.