MONDOWEISS ONLINE NEWSLETTER

NOVANEWS
08/23/2010

          Report from ground zero

Report from ground zero
Aug 22, 2010

Zach Morris

The new anti-Semitism
Aug 22, 2010 

Adam Horowitz

Last week Daniel Luban had an important piece in the Tablet comparing the current wave of Islamophobia, spearheaded by the opposition to Park 51 in New York, with “many of the tropes of classic anti-Semitism.” Luban notes the shameful, and given the comparison, ironic, role of Jews in this surge of hate:

While activists like Pam Geller have led the anti-mosque campaign and the broader demonization of Muslims that has accompanied it, leaders like Abe Foxman have acquiesced in it. In doing so they risk providing an ugly and ironic illustration of the extent of Jewish assimilation in 21st-century America. We know that Jews can grow up to be senators and Supreme Court justices. Let’s not also discover that they can grow up to incite a pogrom.

The video above shows a bit of what that pogrom might look like. It is from today’s rally in New York city against Park 51. From the video’s description:

A man walks through the crowd at the Ground Zero protest and is mistaken as a Muslim. The crowd turns on him and confronts him. The man in the blue hard hat calls him a coward and tries to fight him. The tall man who I think was one of the organizers tried to get between the two men. Later I caught up with the man who’s name is Kenny. He is a Union carpenter who works at Ground Zero. We discussed what a scary moment that was for him.

Lest you think this is an isolated event, check out this rundown sent out by the Council on American-Islamic Relations today:

CAIR-LA: Mosque Protests Louder in the Tea Party Era 
Aaron Claverie, North County Times, 8/21/10

Opposition to the construction of a mosque in Southern California is nothing new, but the tenor and the verbiage associated with the debate has intensified in recent years, according to area Muslim leaders. . .

According to [CAIR’s] Syeda, there has been an uptick in what she called “blatant Islamophobia” in the last year, a period that coincides with the rise of the tea party movement and comments by leaders such as Sarah Palin, the former Republican Party vice presidential candidate who came out recently against plans for a mosque near ground zero. (More). 

Rallies Over Mosque Near Ground Zero Get Heated
Verena Dobnik, Associated Press, 8/22/10

NEW YORK – The proposed mosque near ground zero drew hundreds of fever-pitch demonstrators Sunday, with opponents carrying signs associating Islam with blood, supporters shouting, “Say no to racist fear!” and American flags waving on both sides. (More)

Speaker Brings Anti-Islam Message to FL Tea Party Rally 
Jeff Barker, Daily News, 8/21/10

OKALOOSA ISLAND – Brigitte Gabriel, a prominent activist who says she’s fighting to keep the United States from being overrun by Islam, asked local tea party supporters to join her cause Saturday. (More)

CAIR Video: KY Protesters Aim to Stop Mosque Construction

View the video.

Protesters in Northern Kentucky are trying to stop the construction of a mosque. Flyers are circulating in Florence, Ky. asking that city government officials intervene.

Karen Dabdoub, Council on American Islamic Relations, said “I think a lot is driven by the New York issue and if it wasn’t for that and for election season, perhaps a lot of this wouldn’t have happened.” (More)

CAIR-NJ: S. Jersey Had Own Fuss Over Mosque
Shruti Mathur Desai, Courier-Post Staff, 8/22/10

As national debate focuses on an Islamic center and mosque planned two blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks, local Muslims of different backgrounds agree on one issue: The Manhattan mosque has a right to its place. . .

James Yee, a former Army chaplain and the new head of the New Jersey chapter of the Council of American Islamic Relations, said he understands the emotional associations with ground zero. But he is quick to add that Muslims died in the attack, too. (More)

The list goes on. This is a scary time in America. Ali Abunimah has written about how President Obama has failed to offer any leadership in the face of a nationwide hate movement. Who will be the ones to stand up? There was a counter rally today in support of Park 51 and against Islamophobia. I’m sure there are similar rallies in cities across the country where people are fighting back against this racism and intolerance. These are rays of hope in an increasingly dangerous time.

The Audacity of Hope – the U.S. boat to Gaza
Aug 22, 2010| Adam Horowitz

Phil wrote about the event in the video here and here. Learn more about the U.S. boat to Gaza and donate to help make it happen here.

IDF doesn’t want Eden Abergil to become a poster child
Aug 22, 2010 

Philip Weiss

Eden Abergil’s puckish smile, as she humiliates Palestinian prisoners, is of course everywhere. Not in Haaretz. There her face has been blurred. Apparently this is the military censor’s work. Jerry Haber says the IDF censor has insisted on it. 

It can’t be to protect Abergil. She put up the shocking photos herself, under the title “IDF-The Best Time of My Life.” Everyone has seen that oval face. Is the IDF proving that it has the power to censor Haaretz? Or more likely, to prevent her image from becoming iconic, at least in Israel. Whatever the reason, they’re airbrushing the first draft of history.

New York Times vs. direct negotiations
Aug 22, 2010 

David Bromwich

The New York Times published two articles yesterday about the resumption of direct talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. Both address a reader who already knows what happened, yet neither opens with a sentence carrying the basic information: “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday announced that direct negotiations would resume,” and so on. Instead, a clause which contains that central fact has been embedded in the second paragraph of the second story, by Helene Cooper and Mark Landler, titled “Palestinians Resuming Talks Under Pressure.” It runs on page 6. This accident of omission and displacement betrays an editorial trouble of mind that is visible elsewhere. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/world/middleeast/21diplo.html

Meanwhile the Times leads with a “news analysis” by Ethan Bronner. So little is new in the analysis that it ekes out a thin conclusion on page 6 only by rehearsing many paragraphs of familiar facts. The reason for the top billing can only have been the headline “MIDEAST TALKS: SCANT HOPES FOR THE START” (the on-line version, “SCANT HOPES FROM THE BEGINNING,” is clearer in its pessimism). Bronner begins by observing that there is “little confidence–close to none—-on either side that the Obama administration’s goal of reaching a comprehensive deal in one year can be met.” His second paragraph adds that “most analysts” look on the direct talks as “pairing the unwilling with the unable.” A flippant statement by the usual standards of page 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/world/middleeast/21assess.html

The Cooper-Landler intended lead story and the Bronner substitute lead converge on a single thought: Mahmoud Abbas is in a weak position, Benjamin Netanyahu is in a strong position, and Barack Obama is taking an enormous risk. Abbas, according to Bronner, “has spent the past year and a half. . .hoping that the Obama administration would impose a solution.” A Palestinian academic, Mahdi Abdul Hadi, is cited to cast a presumption of incompetence on the part of the Palestinian Authority (something the Times has avoided in the past): “Abbas is naked before his whole community.” Yet the proportions of Bronner’s treatment permit the analysis to discredit the Palestinian Authority while barely mentioning Hamas. His analysis closes with a statement by Haim Assa, a former adviser to Yitzhak Rabin, which places all the pressure on Obama: “The main player is the United States.” 

Cooper-Landler have a separate paragraph on the risk to Obama in being seen as the main player. “For Mr. Obama,” they say, “the issue has domestic ramifications” because he “has always been viewed with a degree of wariness by some Jewish voters in the United States” (this questionable sentence would require a source without the weasel-word some). Accordingly the direct talks “could hold both opportunity and peril for him and his party.” The peril forms the subject of a third piece in the Times, an op-ed by the regularly featured opinion analyst Charles M. Blow.

Coyly titled “Oy Vey,Obama,” the Blow column wonders whether the president may not be in serious danger of losing support among Jewish voters. Conceding that Jews “are only 2 percent of the United States population,” Blow declares that “their influence outweighs their proportion”; he does not specify which opinion-makers and donors he has in mind, but the statement is anyway a corrective to the generalization of Cooper-Landler regarding “some voters.” The only poll the op-ed cites, however, is an April survey by McLaughlin & Associates, a Republican firm; and Blow interprets the numbers in a partial and misleading way. 42 percent of the Jewish voters canvassed here said they would vote to re-elect Obama: that, says Blow, is down from the 78 percent who voted for him in 2008. He omits to mention that the remaining 58 percent were not in fact anti-Obama but, rather, were divided between 46 percent who would “consider voting for someone else” and 12 percent listed under “Don’t know/refused.” http://www.mclaughlinonline.com/lib/sitefiles/National_Jewish_Memo_0410.pdf

As learned authorities on President Obama’s stance toward Israel, Blow cites two persons: John Bolton, who says Obama’s June 2009 Cairo speech was “the most radical anti-Israel speech I can recall any president making,” and Eric Cantor, who speaks of “the administration’s troubling policy of manufacturing fights with Israel to ingratiate itself with some in the Arab world.” Why are Cantor and Bolton taken to represent the drift of mainstream opinion among Jewish voters? But the slant of the column is plain enough by the end. Obama has a last chance, says Blow, to “reverse this perception,” when he decides “who gets the tough love and who gets the free love” in the direct talks. The column ends there

A player present but not accounted for in the Times coverage of direct talks is The New York Times itself. No organization has greater influence on the tone of educated American opinion on Israel/Palestine. But placed as they are, these articles–Bronner’s summary of the strength of Netanyahu, the impotence of Abbas, and the “shrug” with which the well-informed are greeting the talks; Cooper-Landler on the objective reasons for skepticism and the notable risk to Obama; and Blow’s numbers on the supposed fall of Obama’s popularity among Jewish voters—-together speak a message as plain and propositional as if they had been arranged for the purpose. Or rather, they yield two messages. First, to ordinary readers: “This president has taken a great many risks to oppose Israeli interests, with no visible political reward so far. Now, in a bad political season, he continues to push. Why?” The second message is addressed to President Obama: “You are treading now on dangerous ground. Fortunately for you, nobody expects anything of the latest round of talks. And it would be well, for your sake, if they came to nothing. Abbas is a cipher with no solid number to give him a meaning. Hamas is a word we do not speak (and you seem to agree). Whatever else you do, remember that Netanyahu is the only strong actor on the scene. Safety lies in not offending him.”

‘Israel was attacked in ‘47′ and other howlers from the pen of George Will
Aug 22, 2010 

Howard Kyle

Weiss: Praise the lord, George Will is in Jerusalem opining for the Washington Post in the most reactionary manner possible about the Jews’ ancient claim to the land based on a ring found near the western wall and other hokum. Max Blumenthal has a great response to Will that includes the statement: “To understand the sheer insanity of Netanyahu’s magical ring story, consider how I would be received if my grandfather, Hymie Blumenthal, changed his name to Hymie Quetzalcoatl, then I asserted a historical mandate to rule over Mexico because Quetzalcoatl was a deity of the inhabitants of the ancient Toltec city of Teotihuacan. I would have a hard time being taken as seriously as David Koresh or the Unabomber.”

Meantime, Howard Kyle, a longtime student of the issue, sent us a letter he has sent to George Will. Here it is:

The following is a response to your August 19 column, Skip the lecture on Israel’s ‘risks for peace’.

I agree with your main point that it is “fatuous” or “obscene” to lecture Israel on taking risks for peace. Instead we should be lecturing Israel on their obligation to comply with international law in order to achieve peace.

In July 2004, the International Court of Justice in an advisory opinion ruled that both Israel’s separartion wall and its associated regime of check points, settlements, and by pass roads in the West Bank were illegal. The ICJ further stated that an occupying power cannot claim that the lawful inhabitants of the occupied territory constitute a “foreign” threat for the purposes of Article 51 of the UN Charter. The ICJ noted that Israeli settlements and the displacement of Palestinians is a violation of Article 49, paragraph 6, of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The ICJ further cited Israel’s on going, oppressive policy of land confiscations, house demolitions, creation of Jewish only enclaves, restrictions on movement and access to water, food, education, health care and employment, as being in violation of its obligations under international law and the Palestinian right to self determination.

This is what anyone seriously interested in peace should be lecturing Israel about. All else, as they say, is just commentary. However, you completely ignore this most relevant point and go on to promulgate distorted history and and a completely Israelicentric point of view.

Let me start with this careless statement.

 

“On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations recommended a partition plan. Israel accepted the recommendation. On Nov. 30, Israel was attacked.”

Israel didn’t come into existence until May 14/15,1948. It was the Jewish Agency that accepted the partition plan on behalf of the Jewish Community in Palestine. The plan was rejected by the Arab community and for good reason. The partition plan gave 57% of the land as well as 84% of the prime agricultural land to the Jews who constituted only 33% of the population and most of whom were recent immigrants. Jews comprised only 7% of the population in Palestine when the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917.

Second, the recommended partition plan was just that – a recommendation. It did not have the force of law. That would have required a Security Council resolution. The partition plan also required certain preconditions be met. Among these were the establishment of both an Arab and a Jewish state as well an international zone to include Jerusalem for it to take effect. It was not a unilateral choice. The proposed states were required to adopt a constitution ensuring the civil and religious rights of all their citizens and to form an economic union. None of which ever happened. (Israel still has no formal constitution, generally considered a hallmark of a democratic state.)

You write sympathetically of Israeli parents, who ten years ago, during the intifada would put their school bound children “on separate buses to decrease the chance that neither would return for dinner.” Yet, you ignore the routine violence and harassment that Palestinian school children in the occupied areas experience today from ultra nationalist settlers.

Just this April, an Israeli settler deliberately drove his vehicle into a group of Palestinian school children as they walked to school in At-Tuwani. The children from this and the neighboring villages require a military escort to and from school because of repeated attacks by Israeli settlers from Ma’on settlement and Havat Ma’on outpost. You might find it enlightening to read The Closed Road to Education: Palestinian Students suffer under violent settlement expansion by a group called Christian Peacemakers Team (For your convenience http://www.cpt.org/about/mission)

You get in a dig about the late Yasser Arafat whom you describe as a “terrorist and Nobel Peace Prize winner.” Was it your intention to create the impression that this irony is unique to the Palestinians? You must be aware that former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. During the British Mandate era, Begin was head of the Irgun, which the British government declared a terrorist organization. Begin was responsible for the King David Hotel bombing in 1946 which killed more than 90 people and the massacre of 240 men, women and children on April 9, 1948 at Dier Yassin. Perhaps you buy into the discredited notion that he, unlike Arafat, was a “freedom fighter.”

You place responsibility for the intifada solely on Arafat, who you say “launched” it, even though a US fact-finding U.S. committee led by Senator George J. Mitchell reviewed such allegations and found “no basis on which to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the PA to initiate a campaign of violence.” However, Mitchell did note one cause:

Palestinians are genuinely angry at the continued growth of settlements and at their daily experiences of humiliation and disruption as a result of Israel’s presence in the Palestinian territories. Palestinians see settlers and settlements in their midst not only as violating the spirit of the Oslo process, but also as application of force in the form of Israel’s overwhelming military superiority.

You resurrect the old canard of Ehud Barak’s so called “generous offer.” You write that during the July 2000 Camp David meeting, then Prime Minister Barak “offered to cede control of all of Gaza and more than 90 percent of the West Bank, with small swaps of land to accommodate the growth of Jerusalem suburbs just across the 1949 armistice line” and by rejecting Israeli generosity those silly Palestinians missed an opportunity to have a state.

Let’s look at that so called generous offer in more detail. According to an analysis by Seth Ackerman:

The annexations and security arrangements would divide the West Bank into three disconnected cantons. In exchange for taking fertile West Bank lands that happen to contain most of the region’s scarce water aquifers, Israel offered to give up a piece of its own territory in the Negev Desert–about one-tenth the size of the land it would annex–including a former toxic waste dump.

Palestinians living in their new “independent state” would be forced to cross Israeli territory every time they traveled or shipped goods from one section of the West Bank to another, and Israel could close those routes at will. Israel would also retain a network of so-called “bypass roads” that would crisscross the Palestinian state.

Israel was also to have kept “security control” for an indefinite period of time over the Jordan Valley. Palestine would not have free access to its own international borders with Jordan and Egypt–putting Palestinian trade, and therefore its economy, at the mercy of the Israeli military.

The Palestinians would have permanently locked in place many of the worst aspects of the very occupation they were trying to bring to an end.

But don’t just take his word for it. Here’s what Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel’s Foreign Minister and key negotiator at Camp David had to say about the generous offer in a 2006 radio interview: “Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well.”

You write: “The creation of Israel did not involve the destruction of a Palestinian state, there having been no such state since the Romans arrived.” Yes, but Palestine was a defined territory when under Ottoman rule, and more importantly, was recognized as such by both the League of Nations and the UN. An indigenous population had been living there more than there for more than 1,000 years.

Under the League of Nations, Palestine was classified as a Class A Mandate. As such it was considered advanced enough politically and economically that a provisional independence could be granted, “subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance.” Upon termination of a mandate sovereignty was to be automatically vested in the people of that territory. Palestine was the only Class A Mandate under the League that was not granted independent statehood.

You write: “In the 62 years since this homeland was founded on one-sixth of 1 percent of the land of what is carelessly and inaccurately called “the Arab world,” Israelis have never known an hour of real peace.” Yes and was that not to be expected? No one forced Israel to declare itself into existence when and where it did. It knew the neighborhood and the risks. It knew that none of the Arab nations that would be its neighbors voted in support of partition nor would the partition resolution have passed in the General Assembly were it not for extensive United States lobbying.

By early 1948 it was widely accepted that the partition plan would not work. That is why the UN started to back away from it and began work on a U.S. proposed UN Trusteeship Plan for Palestine. Unfortunately, President Truman, yielding to Zionist pressure, killed this effort when he blindsided his own delegation at the UN by recognizing the new state of Israel 11 minutes after it declared its existence.

The Trusteeship Plan was intended to provide for a peaceful transition from the British Mandate into a new governmental entity in Palestine capable of serving and protecting all of its citizens – Jew, Christian and Moslem. It would have prevented the misery and suffering caused by the forced displacement of 750,000 Palestinian refugees by Israel In its War for Independence that is the root cause of the problems there today.

US Secretary of State George Marshall and Defense Secretary James Forrestal both opposed Truman’s rapid recognition of the Jewish state. Their opposition was based in part on the regional instability that would inevitably result from establishing a colony of 800,000 recently arrived European Jewish immigrants in the midst of 22 million Muslims sympathetic to the Palestinians.

You mention the 1936 Peel Commission which originally proposed a partition plan for Palestine that was shot down by both Arabs and Zionists. It would have been more appropriate to reference the 1946 Joint Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine whose report has more relevance to the current situation. Among the Committee’s key recommendations:

In order to dispose, once and for all, of the exclusive claims of Jews and Arabs to Palestine, we regard it as essential that a clear statement of the following principles should be made: That Jew shall not dominate Arab and Arab shall not dominate Jew in Palestine. That Palestine shall be neither a Jewish state nor an Arab state…We, therefore, emphatically declare that Palestine is a Holy Land, sacred-to Christian, to Jew and to Moslem alike; and because it is a Holy Land, Palestine is not, and can never become, a land which any race or religion can justly claim as its very own.

Truman rejected all of the Committee’s recommendations except one calling for a temporary increased Jewish immigration to Palestine.

Perhaps this “homeland” that, as you say, has “never known an hour of real peace” would have had a different fate if it had given the UN Trusteeship Plan a chance to achieve a peaceful resolution instead of undermining it.

If there is ever to be a resolution to the Palestinian Israeli issue, it will only be achieved by an open minded, thorough and honest understanding of the issues involved. A true peace, one that is just, sustainable and most importantly, grounded in international law, cannot be built upon myths and half truths. Your column does not help to achieve that type of peace. In fact, it does the opposite.

A hidden witness to the Brown Shirts now prepares to go to Gaza
Aug 22, 2010 

Lillian Rosengarten

As I wait to join a boat to Gaza with a group of European Jews, I am asked why? Trust me I say, I have to go, there is no choice. But why so adamant, what drives me? I have long pondered this question.

I was 18 months old on November 13, 1936 when I emigrated from Nazi Germany in the arms of my mother to sail on the SS Bremen to New York . Because of the ingenuity of my father, family money and contacts we were able to leave. You see, the United States had a strict quota system for refugees and before he was able to secure our visas, my father was required to have a sponsor who would provide him with a job. One was also required to have a place to live. When we came to America, my parents, near penniless, were severed from their beloved Germany, friends, family and affluence. Settling in New York with their little daughter, they found themselves at sea in a stranger’s land, unmoored from their station in life and terribly unhappy. They brought with them a darkness that became for me a personal symbol of the nightmare of Hitler’s Germany.

My exodus although not in my conscious memory is imprinted into my very being. It planted early in my childhood seeds of rootlessness, feeling disconnected, different and apart. The dark shadows of my refugee experience, reinforced by my parents’ unhappiness, my lonely and difficult childhood, makes clearer my passion and interest in breaking down barriers and fostering understanding between people. In addition, my empathy has always been with the underdog. This is no surprise for I felt like an underdog as a child.

Try to imagine a beautiful evening in the fall of 1934. My parents decide to take an after dinner stroll in the elegant neighborhood where they lived on Feuerbach Strasse in Frankfurt. Linden trees grew tall and the air was filled with blossoms. They walked along the quiet street when suddenly from nowhere out sprang a group of young men. “Brown Shirts “ they were called, a precursor to the SS, the feared Nazi police. That was how it began, the debauchery of Germany. The men marched up to my parents and simultaneously clicked their heels. They were no more than 18 years old, clean shaven angel faces hardly out of childhood indoctrinated with hate. Were they children once? Five brown shirts, high boots laced over brown pants, Nazi flags pinned on brown caps, swastika armbands in red white and black. In high spirits they were on a path to lunacy where linden trees would bloom no more.

One Brown Shirt stepped up close to my father, a finger on his nose. He laughed then circled about. “Come see the Jew nose,” he bellowed. The others cursed and mocked. My father, elegant in a tailored suit, silk tie and expensive overcoat wore fine black leather gloves. A small Florentine gold pin engraved with a diamond “L was visible on his tie. I would see it often as a child just as I had heard this story from my father so often. My mother pregnant with me wore a sable fur hat to match the collar and cuffs of her stylish coat. As I lay inside my mother, I became an unseen witness. Perhaps that can explain my lifelong vulnerability and sensitivity to racism and fascism.

Number two kicked, taunted, cursed, then punched my father in the face until he bled. The others kicked him onto the ground. The Brown Shirt angel faces in high spirits kicked some more and marched away. This episode was a deciding factor in my father’s decision to leave Germany. It took him two years to get us out.

My earliest memories are of a lonely child who did not know whether she was German or American. As much as I longed to be American, I felt different, sensitive to criticism from my parents who raised me in with a strong, critical hand. I tried to push the German part of me underground until I was ready many decades later to explore my history and roots. I cannot remember a time when I did not identify with the underdog, the oppressed and suffering. I learned oppression as a child and lived it through my parents. Who’s to say all the factors? I am a pacifist and believe that underneath the skin differences, cultural differences and past all the indoctrination and prejudice (more or less learned behavior,) we are all connected and long for dignity and personal freedom. We witness the generations of hate perpetuated between Israel and Palestine whereby the “other” is no longer human.

Is not my story everyone’s story? Am I different from a Palestinian or a Jew or Mexican? Am I different from a Syrian or African ? It is only the story that differs. Dig deeper and we find mirrors of ourselves in everyone. Now this elder hippy grandma shouts to all who will listen, NO MORE WARS, NO MORE GUNS, NO KILLING, NO BRUTALITY, NO OCCUPATIONS, NO MORE ORPHANS OR LANDMINES OR BATTLEFIELDS OR NAKED ROTTING CORPSES THAT HOLD SECRETS OF DREAMS SNUFFED OUT.

park51protest

August 22, 2010 protest against Park 51. (Photo: asterix11)

At first, I thought it was just me. I’d witnessed dozens of far-right demonstrations over the years, but this was the first which literally sent chills down my spine.

I spoke to a few activists who’d effectively made attending, confronting, and exposing these sorts of things into their life’s work, and had witnessed hundreds of events staged by all manner of racist groups, from the National Alliance and the Minutemen to the Teabaggers and the National Socialist Party.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before”, one said, as another nodded his head in agreement. “The rhetoric, the music, everything… it was just… overwhelming. Did you see the effigies? I don’t even know what to say.”

photo“Jesus died for you, Allah wants you to die for him!” (Photo: Matt Berkman)

I didn’t either. I’d spent the first hour or so listening for amusing quotes from the speakers to broadcast via Twitter. Then I began paying closer attention not only to the increasingly strident words emanating from the podium, but to the tone, the gestures… and to the response from the crowd.

It stopped being funny.

By the time I arrived home, having had a bit more time to process the experience, I wasn’t even the slightest bit surprised to see a YouTube clip of an African-American construction worker at the rally, mistaken for a Muslim (apparently on account of his hat), being harassed and nearly assaulted by the crowd. The whole event was beginning to feel more and more like the pre-game show for a televised lynching. It hardly mattered if the victim was a real Muslim or not.

There had been numerous streams of stimuli to process. The words were the easiest, at first; I’d heard them all before.

It was “a slap in the face” to build a mosque here, they said.

It would “only add to our pain”.

“No place would be far enough.”

“Civilizational conflict!”

“Tell everyone who will listen, at every PTA meeting!”

“Mohammed was a pedophile!”

For every incendiary statement from the podium came an even more vitriolic response shouted from one location or another within the crowd, back and forth, with the orators seemingly drawing strength from the crowd and projecting it back in magnified form.

And there had been music, of course, after every speaker. Booming, everpowering. The generic patriotic musical interludes were easy to scoff at, but the instrumentals seemed to gather, solidify, and animate the tension in the air.

notoneinch(Photo: Matt Berkman)

Then there were the visuals. I’d missed the effigies, but every variety of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sign I’d ever seen was well-represented, some waved by small children from their fathers’ shoulders. Lots of flags, mostly American, a handful of Israeli. One JDL shirt with “Gush Katif Forever” emblazoned on the back.

I’d gotten the impression that that despite the shirt and the flags and the one family I overheard speaking Hebrew, I was actually one of very few Jews here. I wondered if there had been more before I got there, who perhaps felt something unsettling about the atmosphere and decided to leave.

There had been a definite tension between various types of people that the rally had attracted. A handful of people in the crowd apparently made some limited effort to diffuse the episode with the African-American consruction worker. Others had mildly chastised the man shouting that “Mohammed was a pedophile”: “That’s not helpful”, they said.

There was clear disagreement on what constituted the most appropriate means of expressing xenophobic bigotry. Some attendees seemed genuinely uncomfortable with what they were seeing, like a cat startled by its own reflection in a mirror.

These, unfortunately, were apparently the extreme minority. Most seemed thoroughly enthralled and invigorated by the moment, reveling in the sense of shared outrage and collective determination to do something about it.

 

It became increasingly clear what I’d found so disquieting about the experience of bearing witness to this. I’d been able to write this phenomenon off as a lunatic fringe movement before. It was certainly no more sane as a result of my having been there, and there had been no more than five hundred to a thousand people in attendance, but I could no longer simply write it off. I’d stood in the heart of it, surrounded on all sides by a teeming sea of hate, and felt its potential. It was utterly terrifying.

The rhetoric of national humiliation, of “us” and “them”, of the enemy within, of the state as the vehicle for asserting the supremacy our way of life, and the need to sieze control, in one way or another, should the state continue to be an obstacle to realizing these grand dreams.

I’d never experienced this so directly before, only through multiple levels of abstraction. Only through newsreels.

Despite this deep sense of dread, and the queasiness I feel when playing those newsreels over in my mind, I find one thought reassuring:

These echoes from the past originate from a period before that movement had passed the point of no return, when ordinary people still had the power to stand up and prevent things from going any further.

It wasn’t too late then, and it isn’t too late now, to say…

¡No Pasarán!

Zach Morris is a Jewish activist closely engaged in both Palestine solidarity and antifascist struggles.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *