[Peace-discuss] Talks about Israel/Palestine

[David Green]

Mort, thanks for going and having your say. I'm not sure I could have tolerated it, to be honest. It's amazing, I guess, that 200 people show up to be reassured that massacring civililans is justified. I'd be interested to know what proportion of the pro-Israel attendees were students. I naively thought that maybe Gaza would be too much even for some of the faithful, they'd at least be shamed into not want to hear all the propaganda. But you can see even from the letters to the N-G no such luck--the one yesterday by Silverman was particularly bizarre. It's pretty typical that questions and comments get filibustered by these people. That's what passes for "civil discourse." I don think that any significant presence at such an event will have to be organized ahead of time by students groups and AWARE, even the mosque. Either people don't know about it, or just see it as a Jews-only event, or don't see the point of being outraged, especially if they're in
 the minority. And it's usually on short notice, and in this case cold. If Carl's theory about weather and activism is right, perhaps the American intifada will start again in Berkeley.

DG



----- Original Message ----
From: Brussel Morton K. <mkbrussel at comcast.net>
To: peace at anti-war.net
Cc: peace discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Sent: Monday, February 2, 2009 10:51:43 PM
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Talks about Israel/Palestine

I attended the talk by the Israeli Consul General to the Midwest,Orli Gil, this evening with roughly 200 others, and two policemen. Also photographers of unknown origin.  As might be expected, this woman told us how wonderful Israel is; its culture, its achievements in science and the arts. She also told the audience of the terrible hardships the Israelis have been living under due to all the rockets and terrorists attacks on them. She also said that Israel wanted a two state solution wherein everybody would live in peace and security, that it was too bad that Israel had to defend itself, killing innocents who were shielding terrorists in their midst. Lots of crocodile tears. She said that Hamas was out to destroy Israel, and that therefore Israel would have nothing to do with them (She didn't quite say that they would all have to be annihilated, but that was the inference).

And so on, about the terrible dangers of a nuclear terrorist Iran, etc..

Of course, the audience was overwhelmingly receptive to this person and her message, but at least there were a few (young students?) from the Muslim community who attended and voiced their objections to her narrative. Comments after the formal talk were welcome, but after a comment there was invariably a long answering harangue and no possible followup. After expressing myself a bit, I left early.

But I am disappointed that no one else from AWARE and the progressive community showed up. At least I didn't notice them. Here was an opportunity to protest and show this character that we don't accept the lies, distortions and omissions of the Israeli propaganda mill. It could have happened…It could have been an opportunity to show that there are many who are outraged about Israeli behavior against the Palestinians—that we do not agree with our own administrations' support of Israeli actions and that we'll try to turn the tide of American support that has condoned if not encouraged that rogue state.

I went afterwards to see what was going on In Gregory Hall about the Crisis in Gaza, a talk by Eric Ruder. About 25 -30 were in the audience, and there was extended discussion after his talk. Ruder was very well informed and an excellent speaker. It was just too bad that his talk was in conflict with the Israeli talk; it had been planned well in advance.

--mkb

_______________________________________________
Peace-discuss mailing list
Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss