Minutes after Missouri executed Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams on Tuesday, his son, Marcellus Williams Jr., addressed a crowd of supporters that had gathered to grieve in front of the state prison in Bonne Terre.
Among them was Maha Odah, a Palestinian American activist with Al-Hadaf Kansas City, a Palestinian liberation organization, who had driven more than two hours to be there. When Williams Jr. began to grieve for his son’s stolen opportunity to know his grandfather, Odah thought of her own experience with loss.
Last fall, Odah’s grandfather in Gaza developed a kidney infection and, unable to access medical care because of Israel’s punishing blockade, he died in November. Israeli airstrikes and bulldozers, meanwhile, leveled the home that had housed several generations of her extended family. Odah had just seen her grandfather months before in August during a family trip, the first visit in a decade due to Israel’s policies that restrict movement in and out of the besieged Palestinian territory. Months later, her aunt was killed during the Israeli siege of Nasser Hospital, while her aunt’s son, a surgeon at the hospital, remains imprisoned with his whereabouts unknown to her family…..more