[Peace-discuss] Repeat Response

[David Green]

I was told to send the message in plain text. I
apologize either for the repeated message or for the
previous message being difficult to read.

DG

In response to Lee Melhado’s letter in the N-G today,
let me make the following corrections:

First, I did not interrupt a questioner. The speaker
had indicated that he would be taking no more
questions, after giving long and rambling answers to 4
or 5. He was either on his last or next-to-last point,
which was a question on his part: How would we respond
if we had 3,600 rockets fired onto our land. At the
point, I asked a question (without raising my hand):
How would we respond if Canada occupied Montana and
established Canadian-only settlements and
Canadian-only roads?

I do not recall how I was “gesticulating,” nor could I
see whether my face turned red. I was certainly
passionate and angry, but not abusive in the least,
and in addition I was speaking loudly to be heard from
the back of the room. I’m not aware that it is a crime
to either turn red-faced or gesticulate. After
speaking for less than one minute (not “several
minutes”) Fred Gottheil interrupted me by shouting (as
I later was told) “We’ll bomb you just like we bomb
Hamas.” At that point, several other individuals
yelled at me (I think including Gottheil’s wife); the
infirm gentleman, Ehud Yairi, sitting near me, stood
up and shuffled toward me with his cane while loudly
and angrily berating me. I spoke for perhaps one more
minute after being interrupted, including a response
to a factual error that the speaker had made about the
percentage of “religious” settlers.

At that point, the speaker intervened in order to not
answer my question, but at least to conclude the
festivities. He did accuse me of making up facts.

Afterwards, I walked up to Yairi, getting no closer
than five feet. I very angrily said to him, twice,
“Don’t ever get in my face again.” At that point a
younger man intervened, and physical contact ensued.
It’s interesting that Melhado claims that I “attacked”
Yairi, while not claiming that the shoving was
initiated by me. In fact, it wasn’t, although I do not
recall exactly what happened.

Melhado’s assertion that I have a history of
disrupting Jewish-sponsored events is nonsense. I
disrupted one small conversation at Allen Hall in
November 2005, in response to condescending treatment
toward me by the speaker, Yossi Klein Halevi, which
was a campus-sponsored, not Jewish-sponsored, event.
Other than that, there have been no “rants.” The only
Jewish-sponsored event that I have attended in years
was a talk in February at the Illini Union by Provost
Brustein. In spite of a very tense and hostile
(towards me) environment, I said what I had to say in
a completely non-disruptive manner. In that situation,
Fred Gottheil had no choice but to behave himself. Not
so at Hillel.

Years ago, when Meredith Kruse was director of IDF,
she invited a Palestinian student from Iowa to speak.
She told me at the time that prior to the event, she
received a call from Gottheil, who was furious with
her. When Palestinian rights activist Mazin Qumsiyeh
spoke at the YMCA in April 2005 as part of the Wheels
of Justice tour, sponsored by AWARE, the directors of
the Y received a nasty phone call from Joel Schwitzer,
Director of Hillel, complaining that allowing him to
speak was doing damage to the relationship that he had
developed with the Y. This is the sort of “disruption”
that goes on.

Finally, Melhado’s assertion that the speaker, David
Makovsky, was “moderate” and “measured” is true only
within the limited framework of Zionist discourse. He
began his talk with the following summary of over a
century of Zionist/Arab history: The Jews came in
peace, but the Arabs wanted war. I kid you not. The
main point of his talk was that the Palestinians,
somehow, were not doing a good job of “economic
development.” Gosh, I wonder why? But Makovsky, on
behalf of the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, had made several trips over to talk to PA
leadership, and he was confident that they might be
making some progress with corruption. His conclusion
was that although he would like to see some
settlements go, it was not quite time for that yet.
Instead, he would like to see Palestinian life made
easier by Israel posting more soldiers at checkpoints
and making the process more “efficient.” I kid you
not. After all, how would we like 3,600 rockets?

I realize that I acted out of frustration and with
poor judgment at this event. I committed no crime and
abused nobody by speaking out in the manner I did. I
did violate decorum. Out of the 80 or 90 who attended,
only 4 or 5 chose to shout me down. Clearly, they were
ready to blow, as was I, although not with a personal
attack. After all, I do have a history in this
community of being disruptive by impolitely pointing
out that what we quaintly call “Jewish culture and
society” has been placed into the service of ongoing
ethnic cleansing.

I regret allowing these events to take us off topic.









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