Local leaders react to Israel-Hamas ceasefire

He saw the darkness firsthand, now he’s seeing the light.

The first glimmers of it, at least.

Last January, Rabbi Sanford Akselrad, the spiritual leader of Henderson’s Congregation Ner Tamid as well as the president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern Nevada, traveled with 25 other rabbis from around the U.S. to Israel, where they visited numerous areas ravaged in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack. Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took another 250 hostage.

He saw ravaged homes, communities reduced to rubble. He met with some of the hostages’ families.

Now, more than a year later, Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire, set to take effect Sunday.

“The idea of a ceasefire is welcome,” Akselrad says. “Over the past year, we have seen — other than one instance where there was a ceasefire and some prisoners returned to Israel and some kind of tentative deal with Hamas — other speculation about deals that have all fallen through.

“This one seems to be really credible,” he continues. “Anything that will stop the carnage and save lives is to the good. Anything that will allow Israelis and other nationalities to come home from being hostages, that’s to the good. Anything that will lead to a lasting peace is to the greater good of both peoples, Palestinians and the Israelis.”

Across Las Vegas, the reaction to the news of a ceasefire has been met with a mix of relief, optimism and an awareness that while progress has been made in ending the conflict, the current pause is temporary and not all hostages will be returning home under the agreement between Israel and Hamas as it stands today.

“We cautiously celebrate the news of a deal to release dozens of hostages, create a framework for releasing all the hostages, and allow for a path forward,” Jewish Nevada President and CEO Stefanie Tuzman said in a statement to the RJ. “While Israel has tried for the last 15 months to put a stop to this, we are cautiously optimistic that we will see the remaining hostages come home and that we can begin to work toward an era of peace and rebuilding for Israel and its neighbors.”

In a social media post, Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley, a lifelong champion of Israel, expressed a similar concern for those who will remain in captivity.

“While I’m grateful that hostages are being released,” she wrote Wednesday on X, “it is time for all hostages to be released. I am saddened that these releases come too late for so many families.”

For the Palestinian community here and abroad, the ceasefire offers a measure of respite from the conflict’s terrible toll.

“Sadly, you have many Palestinian-Americans who have relatives, fathers, mothers, siblings, cousins, who are trapped in Gaza and who have been killed in Gaza over the past year or so,” says Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy executive director on the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington D.C. organization that also oversees affairs in Nevada. “You have people who have been killed, and their bodies have still not been recovered yet. You have Americans who are Palestinian, who have been grieving and who have been worrying about their relatives every single day.

“So this ceasefire deal is a moment of relief for them,” he continues. “They can now hope that their relatives who have survived will be able to carry on and that those who have been killed will be able to receive a proper burial. This has been a tragedy, not only for the people of Gaza, but also for Americans right here, our family trapped there.”

A further cooling of on-campus tensions

Though the University of Nevada-Las Vegas did not see the type of heated protests over the Israel-Hamas conflict that roiled schools like Columbia and UCLA, there was still some tension on campus in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. With a ceasefire, Gaia Steinberg, president of the UNLV chapter of Students Supporting Israel, predicts a further reduction in what little tension might remain.

“I think that among the student groups, that it will kind of cause some leveling out, there won’t be as much outrage on both sides,” she says. “I think that we will also see some more peace on campuses. UNLV has already calmed down a lot this school year so far, and I think that we’re going to continue seeing that happen as the ceasefire deal plays out.”

UNLV Professor Robert Levrant, chair of the university’s Jewish Faculty and Staff Group and a member of the college’s Jewish Affinity Group, also cites progress in the tenor of the discourse in recent months.

“Here on campus, over the course of this year, things have improved,” says Levrant, senior director of strategic initiatives and lifelong learning for UNLV’s Division of Educational Outreach. “The discourse has really stepped up. There’s been a lot of positive dialog, a lot of positive developments.

“I think with a potential end to this conflict, the conversation can move into more long-term discussions,” he continues, “getting out of the raw emotion period and being able to have some real dialog. I think it’s really impacted how we communicate, how we connect to each other on campus.”

The UNLV Students for Justice in Palestine and Nevadans for Palestinian Liberation did not respond to requests for comment.

For Steinberg, news of the ceasefire is encouraging, if overdue.

“Obviously, if you asked me a year-and-a-half ago how long this would go on for, I wouldn’t believe that it would extend for this long,” she says. “I’ve been hoping for this and wanting this for so long now, and I’m so happy that this could be an opportunity for a somewhat lasting peace for the people living in that region. They’ll finally get to rest a little bit easier have some loved ones back home.”

And so while the current truce is only temporary, ideally, the results will be lasting.

“The next six weeks are going to be telling, but if they’ve come this far, they’ve come this far,” Levrant says. “Hopefully this is the beginning of the end. We’ve been here before, but hopefully this time, it really is the beginning of the end.”

Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @jasonbracelin76 on Instagram.