NOVANEWS
Mohammad Mahmud, a member of UC Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), sent me the following report:
This was the first time I attended a JVP meeting. I was probably the only person in the room who didn’t identify as Jewish. It was not the first time I thought about attending, but this time I matched action to intention and went, primarily to show appreciation for our colleague’s act of courage that touched me. The meeting was held in a space JVP rents regularly at the Berkeley Senior Center on Ashby, starting 6:30. I arrived at 6:40 and walked in. There was a large circle of some 50 to 60 seated attendees.
There was a stage to the right. The four guest speakers were sitting on the edge of the stage. There was obvious tension as I sat next to a lady friend. She mentioned that there was a group hostile to JVP in the room and that they were trying to start the meeting peacefully. I looked around the room and saw many familiar faces. Two women on opposite sides of the room had come to our (SJP’s) teach-in on the Gaza Flotilla back in September and tried to disrupt it. One of them goes by the name of Faith.
I noticed at least five more hostile faces which were familiar from recent SF City Hall and UIC Berkeley Senate sessions, where they had gathered under the organization name “Stand With Us (SWU).” They were dispersed in twos and threes throughout the room. It couldn’t be a coincidence, and later I would count at least 11 SWU people who worked in concert. Apparently, before I arrived, some of these hostile participants had tried to film the meeting, and JVP leaders brought in the night shift supervisor of the building who told everyone that they would have to leave the room if they disobeyed the organizers’ rules that prohibit filming.
The meeting started by going around the circle and introducing ourselves, our JVP membership status, and our plans for Thanksgiving. At least one of the hostile faces refused to state her name. Another attendee identified as a law professor and tried to go off on an angry lecture about Israel’s rights before being asked to keep it to later and allow the introductions to finish.
Cecilie Surasky, JVP’s deputy director, started the meeting off by a brief introduction of the 4 youth and then turned the floor over to Rae, the first speaker. As a video of Netanyahu’s speech in New Orleans was being setup to project behind her, she as interrupted at the beginning of her speech by a loud noise. Faith had jumped into the circle, blowing a whistle, then proceeded to read loudly from a printed paper what I learned later to be Theodore Herzl’s speech at the UN. It looked like a cheap reproduction of the famous scene from Mr. Smith goes to Washington. Some other SWU elements stood up and started shouting or filming.
A woman wrapped herself in the Israeli flag and started making statements about Israel’s right to defend itself while filming from one side of the room. The woman who had refused to state her name took out a pocket camera and started filming from the other end of the room. Some JVP members tried to block the cameras and to ask that they be shut off, others started recording what was going on.At one point, an attendee participant snatched away the text from Faith, and he received a disapproving rebuke from JVP’s Cecilie. Cecilie appealed for calm and for everyone to not engage the disrupters until the police came.
JVP members and their guest speakers starting singing “Shalom Aleinu” to drown out the shouting and pacify the hostile crowd, and some of them eventually started singing with us. Within this melee, I didn’t notice that the woman wrapped in the Israeli flag –I think she had identified herself as Robin– had used a pepper spray on two of JVP members, a man and a woman, who were asking her to stop filming. They ran out to wash their faces but the woman’s face stayed red thereafter. At this point, a number of the disrupters left the main room, as did some JVP leaders, and closed the glass doors to wait for the police.
I do not think that many people noticed the pepper-spraying incident when it first happened. The meeting resumed with Rae speaking. Once again, Faith interjected and had a burst. Most people stayed silent until she got back to her seat. Matthew, another guest speaker, interjected by coming to the center of the circle and suggesting that everyone take three deep breaths and try to calm down. On his way back to the stage, Faith made a mocking question which he ignored.
Rae turned the floor over to Matthew, after announcing that people who feel compelled to disrupt the meeting at some point will be afforded a 1-minute period to say what they have to say before the meeting resumes. During Matthew’s address, a man who had not stood up with the disrupters interjected with a question. Matthew started to respond by praising the question, but the man interrupted and kept going on incoherently well beyond a minute. When reminded, he insisted on “finishing his thought,” which never happened.
He was interrupted by objections from the participants a minute or two later. Matthew started talking again. A man in a baseball cap jumped in the middle and started talking in a loud voice – manifesto style. He taunted the participants and declared them “afraid” of being filmed, and unable to accept the same tactics they’d used in New Orleans. He sat down and left shortly thereafter, stopping to motion to another mustachioed attendee –who had not acted disruptively thus far– to follow him, thus identifying him as a SWU element.
After Matthew finished, Eyal started speaking. He barely started when a bearded man in a Michigan sweatshirt who was seated next to me jumped up and started shouting incoherent statements. At the point I noticed a policemen coming to the door. I walked over, and explained that this individual and others were disrupting the meeting and needed to be told to leave.
The policeman responded that he had to wait for his superior to arrive before “stepping into a free-speech matter.” I explained that this was not a public space, and that the event organizers had rented it and therefore should have the right to determine who is welcome to attend. He said that he could not make that determination.
Cecilie was moving to adjourn the meeting to avert chaos, when one of the four guest speakers suggested breaking up into four smaller groups where each of them would tell their story to take away the disrupters’ ability to sabotage the meeting. We started splitting into four groups of 10 or so, so that each speaker could tell their story to a small group. By that time I noticed the poice supervisor’s arrival. I informed Cecilie to go meet him and walked over to the first police officer to point out the location of the man whom he’d witnessed disrupting, and who had by now taken off his sweatshirt to reveal another green shirt underneath.
The policeman remarked that he “seems to be much calmer now” and took no action. As we broke into small groups, most of the SWU people left, except for two or three men who joined the group discussions and tried to challenge the speakers. One of them was the bearded man in the Michigan-come-green shirt. No disruptions took place, but they tried to dominate the discussions in their groups and control its terms. Matthew had two of them in his group and I noticed him calmly engaging them for a long time.
The group discussions were adjourned, and the SWU people left. JVP had an open circle to discuss and brief on what happened, and on what should happen next. Cecilie came in and announced that something like this had never happened at a JVP meeting. The attendees were visibly shaken, and wisely cautioned against people walking back to their cars alone. The two JVP members who were pepper-sprayed recounted their stories and one asked to leave as her face was all red and her contact lenses were burning.
They informed us that the offender had been handcuffed for a few moments but the police had then determined there was no sufficient evidence to arrest or press charges. That the options were either to perform a citizen’s arrest –at which point everyone involved gets arrested– or for both to walk free, since it is one word against another, forget about the pepper-sprayed face. By this point Cecilie and the guest speakers had left. I offered to walk the pepper-spray victim to her car outside.
Just outside the main door, I noticed two police cars still in the street, and I also noticed Faith and her mustachioed fellow lurking on the sidewalk. As the meeting proceeded inside, I opted to challenge them by standing there and enjoying the evening breeze. I was joined by a JVP member whom I’d known for years and only tonight discovered his affiliation (he’s very cautious about his politics). I prodded Faith by wondering out loud on how it feels for a middle-aged woman to make a fool of herself in front of many people and cameras like she did.
We had a mini-debate whereby Faith and her partner declared that they had decided to come show JVP “a taste of their own medicine,” that what these youth did was a shameful transgression, interrupting Israel’s titular head of state, that their parent musts be ashamed of their kids conducting themselves the way they did. I asked her what her parents would think of her whistling and reading manifestos to disrupt a meeting she disagreed with. She responded that her mother would be proud of her and that her father helped liberate concentration camps.
Remarkably, during conversation she kept dropping hints, Gestapo-like, about my name, where I worked, and what statements I’d made. It sounded eerily like a “we know where you live” hint. I did not see it incumbent upon me to advise her that she had mistaken me for someone else, or to offer her my business card. I just smiled, and commented that her father was a hero, but that didn’t absolver her from being a fool.
During our conversation, Robin the pepper-sprayer came from the direction of one police car. My fellow JVPer started asking a question but at that point another police officer came and asked us to leave to avoid confrontation with the participants from the meeting which was just getting concluded inside. Two of them got into their cars and left the parking lot. Faith, still Gestapo-like, walked down the street and around the corner to where she had obviously parked her car out of sight.
I was still dumbfounded by the police action, or rather inaction, I asked the officer a couple of questions. According to her, the pepper-spraying constituted a misdemeanor offense which the police had not witnessed. This makes the testimony of both parties equally valid, as the person who used the pepper-spray could claim that they were grabbed first and acted in self-defense. The fact that 20 witnesses could confirm one version was immaterial because they clearly belonged to one group. Several JVP members had walked out by now and joined the discussion.
The officer conceded that her understanding of the law is that if two people had a verbal altercation then one of them sucker-punches the other then claims that they had acted in self-defense, because they thought that the other person was going to punch them first, then their defense is admissible and no arrests should be made. And the solution, Officer, to people walking into private meetings with intent to disrupt and propensity to use violence than claim self-defense?
None that she could think of (as long as they stop short of pulling a gun, which constitutes a felony, not a misdemeanor). It is a sensitive issue, you see, because of free-speech limitations. She can get sued for infringing on somebody’s free speech. She is wrong. As I learned when I got home, Berkeley Penal Code S 602(o) states that a trespass is committed when a person refuses to leave a space not open to the public after being asked to do so by the owner’s agent, the person in lawful possession, or by a peace officer who is called by either.
Next meeting, I will have a copy of this law ready to show to the police when they come and sit there doing nothing.
I returned home, part disturbed, and part relieved that Faith had no clue who I was. Next time you meet Faith & co., be aware of what can happen and don’t always count on the police protecting you.
Or whatever. The histories are too topsy-turvy for “brown shirt” to be more than a vague analogy. But Stand With Us claims to be an “international organization dedicated to bringing peace to the Middle East by educating about Israel.” I guess when education fails by virtue of the fact that the truth is a problem for defenders of Israeli policies, you barge into information meetings and disrupt them with whistles and pepper-spray. What’s next, when that fails, because the Jewish community decides to stop indulging in thuggish intimidation?
Get Christian Zionists in there with baseball bats? And then will the police “not intrude” because it is a “free speech issue”? It is clear that if the police will not enforce the law, peace groups won’t be able to function.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestine, Stand With Us, Zionism
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