Tom Nagy doesn't recall a previous Israeli massacre that provoked reaction
in the U.S. as extensive as last week's.
When Menachem Begin conducted his aerial bombing campaign against
Beirut, on the excuse that it was sheltering Arafat's forces, two women at
KPFA, one a Lebanese (then the only Arab associated with the station, who
had hitherto confined herself to convincing the world that Arabs are human
by playing their music; she is married to a Jew) and a South African Jew,
both friends of mine, drew up a petition signed "Menachem Begin Does Not
Speak For Us." It was signed by four hundred San Francisco Bay Area Jews, of
whom not more than ten per cent were Left in any sense. Published as a large
ad in the S.F. Chronicle and then in the New York Times, it was the first
ever expression of Jewish opposition to Israeli military policy taken
outside Jewish circles as such. That was the beginning of the constantly
broadening public opposition to Israeli policy among American Jews, just now
given particular publicity by the statement of Rabbi Michael Lerner, who
long ago was a leader of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley.
William
Mandel
Tom Nagy wrote:
> Radman,
>
> Thanks for your posting of the large protest in San Francisco
> against the Israeli massacre of Palestinians. For those who feel the
> term "massacre" is to strong, I propose a thought experiment: Suppose
> that Palestinian police had employed the same tactics against rock
> throwing Israeli settlers. What word do you think the U.S. media use to
> describe such a hypothetical event?
>
> The size of the protest is most encouraging because I can't
> recall any previous Israeli massacre that generated a single large
> protest in the U.S.
>
> Tom Nagy
>
> radman wrote:
>
> > For Mr. Bill "Feh!" Mandel:
> >
> > October 6, 2000: San Francisco. Over 3500 protestors gathered in
> > front of the israeli consulate in san francisco for yet another
> > awesome protest against the genocidal activities of the israeli
> > government and its killing machine. The protest started at civic
> > center plaza in front of city hall where friday prayer was attended
> > by over 2000 muslim brothers and sisters--it was an incredible site
> > to see and hear, very moving and very powerful. Marchers made
> > there way to the israeli consulate and were joined by another 1500
> > demonstrators and the entire street in front of the consulate was
> > closed. we marched in a circle chanting "stop killing children" and
> > "palestine will never go", etc. The tension was very high. Speaker
> > after speaker denounced the atrocities and murders of palestinian
> > innocents and children. There was extensive media coverage from
> > major tv, radio, print media.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 10/08/00 EDT