On Sunday, having thoroughly rested up, I headed to Union Square, to be a counterprotester against the pro-Hamas demo happening there.
Specifically, it was supposed to be candelight memorial service, to mourn those killed during Operation Cast Lead, and you sort of feel bad counterprotesting a memorial service. Until you show up, and notice the vile anti-Semitic signage, and the chants of "From the river to the sea", and QUIT standing happily out with their banner, and the paper-mache puppets, and you realize that this isn't a memorial service, this is another dang Hamas rally.
The opposition had the steps leading into Union Square, corner closest to the Powell Street BART, so we lined up on the opposite side of the street, streaming past Max Azria, Victoria's Secret, and the Westin St. Francis, which happened that day to be flying the flag of Saudi Arabia, just to make everything completely deranged.
A fairly low-key evening, really. Cold. Me clutching a sign with a message about gay Palestinians in one hand, and one with the faces of children killed in Sderot in the other, singing "Oseh Shalom" and stamping my feet. Assorted Japanese tourists took pictures--I suspect that we have ended up in many a photo album, as an example of real American protestors. We wound up around six o'clock.
One thing I have not entirely worked out is how to deal with the people who drive by in the stalled traffic in SUVs, waving Palestinian flags and screaming at you, when they roll down the back windows and encourage their small ones to do likewise. I am torn, between stony-faced "Am Yisrael Chai!" yelling, and smiling and waving at the children. Hard to do both, especially when both hands are full.
Meanwhile, Code Pink is still stalled in Cairo, although apparently a group of them are to be let through.
It still baffles me how anti-Semitism is so prevalant in the so-called "progressive" movement. When I was a young progressive activist- we had a zero tolerance to hate speech rule- any one who violated it was booted out of the clubhouse. In san Francisco, apparently anything goes. The mainstreaming of hate speech is alarming.
ReplyDeleteA Gazan friend living here, explained that Hamas used the Israeli incursion to assassinate their political rivals, and then report them as "civilian casualties" of the Israelis. Then, there's the issue of Hamas use of underage "child soldiers", whose casualties while engaging in armed conflict are reported as "dead children." There is no reasonable explanation as to how or why any clear headed civilized person would support a corrupt, oppressive, Mafia-like theocracy like Hamas. When the phrase "useful idiot" was invented, they must have had "Code Pink" in mind.
ReplyDelete"A Gazan friend living here, explained that Hamas used the Israeli incursion to assassinate their political rivals, and then report them as "civilian casualties" of the Israelis."
ReplyDeleteBECKY: And now the murdered FATAH members deaths are commemorated in the 1415 "stars" on Santa Cruz art teacher, KATHLEEN CROCETTI'S mural which she is donating to the GAZAN people as a propaganda gesture to benefit HAMAS.
Apaprently 2,000 Egyptian Riot Police are using water cannons to deal with the activists.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but blame Code Pink. A thousand people paid a thousand dollars each to participate in this colossal failure.