Posted on 09/10/2002 3:41:31 PM PDT by zapiks44
In 2002, 60 years after the Holocaust, a Jewish girl cannot go out to an anti-neo-Nazi rally and hold up the Israeli flag.
The past two years have been a perplexing time to be a young "liberal" Jew in America. As an Israeli American, I have often been required to defend Israel from her liberal detractors. An epidemic is crossing our nation's campuses, as confused college kids are lumping together the American civil rights movement with the anti-apartheid movement with the Palestinian independence movement.
Encouraged by groups like the Nation of Islam, black pride slogans have been appropriated for Palestinian protests and the language of Malcolm X has been subverted to serve the adherents of Yasser Arafat.
This has been particularly disturbing to me, as I have been extensively involved with attempts to heal the breach between the Jewish and African American communities.
During these troubling times, I remain proud of my Jewish heritage. During a mission trip to Israel with the International Hillel Organization, I learned that there are no absolutes in politics just as there are no absolutes in life. My sense of Israeli and Jewish identity was rekindled as I began to realize, together with my Jewish brethren in our homeland, that no matter how I or anyone else feels about the current actions of the Israeli government, the Israeli nation has the right to exist in its current form, as a homeland for Jews. I rediscovered that as an Israeli American, I could always hold my head up high. And I do.
Today I sojourned to the U.S. Capitol to join the counter-rally against a neo-Nazi demonstration. As I watched the neo-Nazis approach the south Capitol lawn, my ears were pelted with offensive slogans and vile rhetoric.
How can I describe my feelings as I watched them pass, with their swastikas, Aryan banners, anti-Israel posters and crossed out stars of David?
To these Nazi sympathizers, who applaud the victimization of minorities, of Jews, who extol the brutal slaughter of 12 million people including whole branches of my family tree, to them I wanted to sing out, "I AM A JEW! I AM AN ISRAELI AMERICAN! NOW IT IS YOU THAT ARE IN THE MINORITY. WE ARE STRONG AND WE ARE HERE FOREVER!"
Unfurling a blue and white Israeli flag, I walked briskly and purposefully toward the gathering of anti-Nazi protesters. Watching 300 neo-Nazis with their strident rhetoric, I felt small, isolated and helpless.
As I walked toward my compatriots, my fellow protesters, I felt more empowered with each step. These were people who believed as I did, rational tolerant people whose personal morality impelled them to stand together and denunciate hatred and intolerance. They would stand with me, protest with me, and perhaps attempt to educate -- with me.
Or so I thought.
As I walked deeper and deeper through the crowd of protesters, waving the Israeli flag high and proud above my head, I began to feel less and less welcome. I marched on, waving the flag even higher so each and every neo-Nazi could see the flag of the Jewish people.
Suddenly I realized that the cries and jeers at the sight of the flag, originated not from the neo-Nazis, but from the anti-Nazi protesters.
I continued through the crowd and tried hard to ignore the glares. Inevitably, I was confronted. Abusive, although not unfamiliar words assaulted me at first: "Israel is fascist!" "Zionism is racism!" An old woman with a sweet face screamed at me, "You are a Nazi!" she cried. What had started out as a protest against racism quickly turned into a forum of hatred and fanaticism. I and the flag I held were their targets.
What could I do? Would I turn around? Could I let them disrespect this symbol of my people, and retreat in fear? I held my flag even higher. And I attempted, among the threats, the jostling and chaotic vehemence, to reason.
"I am not the enemy! The enemy is right across the street. Please, let's share this common ground and fight together!"
Despite my intense rage, I stayed true to my nonviolent beliefs and fought her and the crowd that had begun to form around me, with my words.
The crowd of anti-Nazi protesters did not have the same nonviolent ideology. I was spat upon. I was physically and verbally threatened. Grown men accosted me and tried to rip the Israeli flag out of my hands. Several were very close to actually assaulting me. Police intervened and blocked the anti-Nazi protesters from approaching me. These were supposed to be the good guys, and yet the hatred they exuded was just as potent as that of the Nazis themselves.
When a police officer told me that I should leave for my own safety, I staunchly refused. With every shout, hiss, slur and threat, the Israeli flag stood higher in my hands. Blocking out all the defamatory statements about Israel, I stood at the forefront of the protesters and held up that flag as much for them to see as for the neo-Nazis.
I have never felt more proud or more alone in my entire life.
Eventually, I was made to relinquish the flag to its owner, who wanted to leave.
I didn't want to go and give them the satisfaction of my defeat, but I have never been so disgusted with humanity, and wanted to be as far away from these "champions of humanitarianism" as possible.
I wanted to show them the hypocrisy of fighting fascism by tearing down a flag and telling someone she does not have the right to be there because of her heritage. I wanted to give them glasses that would correct the myopic vision with which they saw as complex a situation as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one so clear cut and categorically absolute.
But all I could do was ask them, "Why are you doing this?" "Why are you doing this?" With all of the research I've done on the conflict, for all my convictions, all I could say was "Why are you doing this?"
I must admit that I, like many young Jews and Zionists my age, feel betrayed by American liberals. With regards to the Middle East, there seems to be no appreciation of the moral ambiguity, the political nuances, the multiple layers of media spin. Faced with such a complex situation, young people too often ask others to chew it, swallow it and digest it for them, and then tell them in absolute terms which side is most appropriate to their general belief structure.
Are you in favor of affirmative action? Are you for civil liberties and women's rights? Why, then, you must be pro-Palestinian! Anti-Globalization? Humanitarian? Pro- Palestinian! Ever voted Democratic/ Libertarian/Socialist or even abstained from voting for a Republican? Then Palestine is the side for you!
Strongly held political views in no way justify acting in such a callous and hateful way toward a fellow human being. With their blind hatred of Israel, these anti-Nazi protesters treated me as roughly as the neo-Nazis on the other side of the partition would have, had they but had the opportunity.
Today, I held my head -- and the Israeli flag -- up high; not in Israel, but in what I had previously considered to be a safe environment. For what better place to applaud the existence of a state for Jews than at a Neo-Nazi counter-rally on Capitol Hill?
I was sadly mistaken. As I went out to face the neo-Nazi demonstration, I found myself hated, both by the neo-Nazis and by those who were there to protest against them. I found myself alone in the middle. And for the first time in my life as an American, I truly understood the crushing impact of anti-Semitism.
In a very palpable way, I was an outsider, hated by everyone. With rabid anti-Semites on one side and anti-Israel fomenters on the other, surrounded by bystanders willing to do nothing as I suffered horrid abuse, I wept É and as Jews must do in this post-Holocaust world, I stood my ground. Truth.
A District resident, Sarah Kopelovich, 21, is a senior at George Washington University.
What kind of fool would expect a leftist lynch mob to act civil?
Why should she think they are a leftist lynch mob? I hate neo Nazis myself. I mean I HATE them. There is nothing uglier than an American saluting a Swastika and paying homage to Hitler. They are the lowest scum in our country. Any true conservative should have been in that anti Nazi crowd protesting against those sh!theads- I know I would have been.
I expect people to behave themselves in public, yes I do. This is part of being a conservative. I don't care what the situation is, nobody had the right to spit on her or rough her up- lefty or righty- and she, as a citizen of a civilized country, had every right and reason to expect that she could stand on the sidewalk and wave a flag without being assaulted.
A typical Neo-Nazi or KKK demo with attendant counter-demo these days? 10 Nazis, 200 police to protect them, 5000 counter-demonstrators. And guess who starts smashing windows and overturning cars? And comparing even RINOs to the Nazis?
On one side, David Duke, a bunch of old-style segregationists from his district, and a few scattered scary bozos. I don't say ignore them, but for now I'm not worried.
On the other side, radicals on most college campuses, especially the prestigious ones. Major "official" intellectuals. Congressdroids. "Community leaders". Respected media figures (and not just movie actors). That worries me.
Jews in America will be conservatives before too much more time passes.
According to Israeli law, a Jewish immigrant has a right to Israeli citizenship, but other immigrants are on a case by case basis. Understand this is for the secular Israeli definition of Jewish which is a good deal more permissive than the religion. This was originally so that WWII era refugees didn't have to prove their religious status (Hitler didn't care either).
Thus also the recent controversy about some of the post-Soviet Russian immigrants.
This "right of return" doesn't mean that the Israeli authorities systematically put up with a lot of nonsense. They have been known to extradite Jewish criminals to the United States with the understanding that they could come back to Israel to live after serving their time in the USA.
This has been going on for 40 years during which the neo-Nazis have made no progress and have caused no serious damage of any sort, but look at the Reds - they sneaked one of their own to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for 8 whole years and later into the Senate. And to think that so many well meaning conservatives buy into this neo-Nazi threat propaganda instead of seeing it for what it is - a calculated deception by the Communists and their dupes in the media! A fine mess, I tell ya!
Are you in favor of affirmative action? Are you for civil liberties and women's rights? Why, then, you must be pro-Palestinian! Anti-Globalization? Humanitarian? Pro- Palestinian! Ever voted Democratic/ Libertarian/Socialist or even abstained from voting for a Republican? Then Palestine is the side for you!
Strongly held political views in no way justify acting in such a callous and hateful way toward a fellow human being. With their blind hatred of Israel, these anti-Nazi protesters treated me as roughly as the neo-Nazis on the other side of the partition would have, had they but had the opportunity.
This girl is all slogan and no principle.
I could accept Palestine if it abandoned Arab exclusivism and welcomed back returning Jewish "settlers" as well as Arab "refugees."
Turnabout is fair play, Kudzu.
Always pleading with the leftwingers, "Please like us, look at all we've done to stick it to those icky Baptists and Republicans in the past. Now it's those same icky Baptists and Republicans who seem to be our only friends, and I just can't stand the idea of rubbing elbows with Their Kind!"
Just how much garbage from the likes of Jesse J and Hillary do liberal Jews have to take before they wise up?
I've spent too many years watching conservatives and evangelicals being tarred with the undeserved "antisemite" label, for specious and trivial reasons, to have unreserved patience. I have more sympathy for Israelis than liberal American Jews...
Well, they sure must be as busy as little bees- the ten of them. They've got a few thousand web sites on the net, loads of music CDs, and Doc Martens has been making a load of money off just a handful of people.
On the other hand, why do the Nazis hate a nation state with a defined ethnic core?
Teh reason is that Nazis hate Jews above all else.
AS for your comment, the freest Arabs in the Middle East are the 1.1 million Arab-Israeli citizens of Israel.
Teh Nazis don't believe in rights for minorities.
See teh difference?
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