With blue, white and red lights — the colors of the French flag —  shining on Hall of Languages Sunday night, the Syracuse University community honored the victims of recent terrorist attacks, including those in Paris.

About 150 community members gathered  for the candlelight vigil, which was held at the Wall of Remembrance.

The vigil was organized by the Remembrance Scholars, who saw connections in the recent attacks — especially on Russian Metrojet Flight 9268 — with the 1988 attack on Pan Am Flight 103 that killed 35 SU students.

“No more innocent lives should be claimed in the name of terrorism,” a Remembrance Scholar said during the ceremony. “Tonight we banish all hateful thoughts with our light.”

The death toll in the Paris attacks is 132 as of Sunday, according to The Guardian. About 40 people were killed in the Beirut bombing and all 242 passengers on Metrojet Flight 9268 were killed. In total, nearly 400 people were killed in those terrorist attacks alone.

After a moment of silence, Marjorie Galelli, a French teaching assistant in the languages, literatures and linguistics department in the College of Arts and Sciences, said in a soft voice that she still isn’t able to fully process how many people were killed in Paris.

A small ribbon with the colors of the French flag was pinned to Galelli’s scarf.  She said she was watching television and grading papers Friday night when she got a message from her mom. She told Galelli not to worry. Her sister was safe.

“I was very fortunate enough to hear the news in this way,” Galelli said, as she started to cry. “All my thoughts go to the people who were still waiting to hear from their loved ones and to those whose news were not as good as mine.”

She added that she is grateful for the outpour of support from people all around the world. Paris is the capital of art, romance, astronomy and more, she said, and now it has become a target for terrorists.

“I don’t know what their message was and I don’t care,” she said. “It is all of mankind that they betrayed by taking the lives of people who were not doing anything but spending some time together with their friends and family after a week of work.”

Galelli ended with a call for peace and unity in response to not only the attacks in Paris, but to the recent atrocities around the world, including the bombing in Beirut and the attack on Metrojet Flight 9268.

 

Published on November 15, 2015 at 10:26 pm

Contact Rachel: rsandler@syr.edu