[Peace] Reflections on Saturday's Rally

[David Green]

A message from Rachel Kamel, a Philadelphia Jewish
activist who attended the D.C. rally on Saturday:

FINDING OUR WAY:

Jewish-American Reflections on A20

We knew we had to go to Washington on Saturday. I am
not a big Washington march person, but I deeply felt
the need to join with others, to give voice to my
outrage and my heartbreak at the devastating Israeli
invasion of the West Bank over the past six weeks.

In the end, seven of us went from the Jewish
Mobilization for a Just Peace (JMJP), a small handful
among the hundreds from Philadelphia who went 
to Washington. In DC, we teamed up with seven other
Jewish groups from around the country to form a
Jews-Against-the-Occupation contingent in the
Palestine solidarity march. There were scores of other
Jews there as well, people beyond the reach of our
networks, who were impelled by the horror of 
recent weeks to take a stand for justice and humanity,
to say, in a hundred different ways, “Not in My Name.”

Earlier in the week a few of us met to come up with a
slogan for a new banner. Our “End the Occupation”
banner has taken us through many vigils and 
protests over the past year, but we needed to reach
deeper into our hearts, to find words that were equal
to the unfolding tragedy in occupied Palestine. In the
end we decided on, “We Didn’t Survive Auschwitz to 
Bury Jenin,” superimposed on a large yellow star. Sue
stayed up almost all of one night to paint it (no
small thing at our age). “I have to do this,” she 
kept saying. “I have to.”

The Palestine solidarity march was one of four marches
on Saturday, and there were signs and slogans about
many issues —  but the urgency of the crisis in
Palestine overrode everything else. Estimates from the
media ranged from 75,000 to 100,000 people overall; at
the closing rally we filled two full blocks of the
mall in front of the Capitol.

The march was a profound experience on many levels. So
far as I know it is unprecedented for any part of the
Arab American or Arab immigrant community to claim
public space in such large numbers, let alone with so
much support from so many other communities. For this
to occur barely six months after September 11, in a
period when the unrelenting demonization of Arabs 
and Muslims has dominated the media, while their
communities have been terrorized by detention,
deportation, and hate violence, felt truly historic.

Being there as part of a Jewish group, together with
so many other Jewish organizations and individuals,
was also profound, not only for us but for many of the
Palestinian participants as well. Person after person 
stopped us to take photographs of our signs and
banners, to give us a nod, to thank us, to say how
glad they were that we were there. One woman came up
to us with tears welling up in her eyes and told Sue
she was the daughter of Holocaust survivors, and that
our banner said what needed to be said. I’ve heard 
story after story like this from the others, and read
many more as reports from other groups begin to
trickle in over the Internet.

The overwhelming tone of the solidarity march was one
of affirmation, humanistic values, and hope: a voice
of anger grounded in love. We called for the U.S. to
stop funding the Occupation through military aid to 
Israel; we called for an end to brutal and stifling
Israeli control over the lives of Palestinian
communities; we called out to honor the humanity and
the endurance of the Palestinian people. Fewer than
one sign in a hundred, in a march of many thousands of
people, voiced sentiments that I found difficult 
to support.

It must also be said, however, that this was not the
only story from Saturday. At one point a group of
about twenty or thirty men in identical black outfits
and black helmets, with insignia identifying them as
the "New Black Panthers” and viciously anti-Jewish
placards, burst into the march from a side street just
as the main Jewish contingent was passing. They 
stayed with us just long enough for reporters to take
pictures of us as hopelessly naïve Jews marching with
our enemies, and then disappeared. We’ve 
already heard from friends and relatives around the
country that this is the story they saw in their
papers — not the story of the march we attended. 
(Some coverage I’ve seen, particularly in the
Washington Post, gave accurate reports of the march,
rather than focusing on this obvious 
provocation.)

We’ve also heard many stories about one of the other
marches, the one sponsored by the ANSWER coalition. At
the ANSWER march, the issue of Palestine also
predominated — but put forward in a way that seemed 
designed to guarantee that Jewish people, and many of
our non-Jewish allies, could not support it. A common
graphic image was of an Israeli flag with a swastika
in place of the star of David; another had a swastika
with an equals sign and a Jewish star. At the march
itself and in the days since then, we’ve heard from
more than a few people who did not have the unifying, 
affirming experience we did, but felt isolated,
unsafe, and torn because they unwittingly attended
this part of the march. I’ve spoken with people 
who want to support Palestinian rights and freedom but
are beginning to wonder if there is a way for them to
do so with integrity.

For me the experience of Saturday crystallizes the
state of our movement at this particular moment.
Larger and larger numbers of people, in the Jewish 
community and the larger American public, are
beginning to identify with efforts to end the Israeli
Occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East 
Jerusalem. More and more people are openly beginning
to question why the United States continues to finance
the Occupation, while Israel invades Palestinian
population centers, decimates the infrastructure that
could one day serve as the foundation for an
independent Palestinian state, and builds 
even more illegal settlements with the express purpose
of making peace impossible. No spin doctor or pundit
has been able to cover up the carnage 
of the past month, and many in the Jewish community
are beginning to question how all this could possibly
be in our interests.

The conditions have never been better for a
broad-based, multi-ethnic, multi-constituency movement
to end the Occupation and oblige the U.S. 
government to stop financing it. The U.S. public is
beginning to realize what world opinion has understood
for some time: that U.S. financial and 
diplomatic support is the main factor permitting the
Israeli government to continue to violate
international law, human decency, and the best 
interests of the Israeli people, without facing any
consequences. Growing numbers of Israeli reservists
and conscripts have announced their refusal to serve 
inside the occupied territories. Even public support
for U.S. saber-rattling against Iraq is falling
sharply.

Right now antiwar forces have an unparalleled
opportunity to make our case to a very broad public.
In order to do so, however, we need to be able 
to articulate a politics that can work for everyone —
not a politics that asks people to choose one ethnic
group over another, one people’s historic 
victimization over another, or one people’s future
over another. Universalist values, like
democratization, demilitarization, and social 
and economic equity, are the only principles that can
lead us toward peace. The Occupation is not wrong
because it is run by Jews, but because it violates 
democratic principles and international law. Like
every form of oppression, it is ultimately harmful to
Jewish well-being along with the well-being 
of the Palestinian people.

U.S. activists who support Palestinian rights would do
well to consider whether they will be better served by
this type of unifying political vision, which has
never had broader acceptance — or by the politics of 
division, ethnic chauvinism, and, in some cases, hate
symbols and hate speech. On Saturday, unfortunately,
both types of politics were present. As 
best as I could tell, it was not Palestinian community
groups but some of their self-appointed supporters
that were largely responsible for the most divisive
messages.

I’ve seen similar dynamics in our local organizing
here in Philadelphia, with similar results. Both
locally and nationally, I have never seen a 
starker choice between the potential for unity and the
threat of divisiveness and defeat. U.S.-based activism
for a just peace in the Middle East is at a critical
juncture. Over the coming weeks and months, the 
choices we make as activists and the way we respond to
the politics of division will determine what type of
movement we are building, including 
whether, in the end, we are building anything at all.

	— Rachael Kamel, Philadelphia



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