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.
Wrong. They are both serious threats, because they're not really much different. They play at being at each others throat, but that's just two dogpacks snarling at each other. They'll unite against you in a heartbeat, as they have already united in support of the islamics as long as they kill Jews.
It's not just young people, my dear. Most adults, I fear, are precisely that way.Think of how many people inhale when journalists (self-marketing journalism) tell them that "objectivity" is just a dial-click away. The mercy is that most of them, most of the time, don't trouble to vote the convictions of the journalists.
If you're in doubt of that, just ask how many journalists disagree with the notion that journalism exists to "comfort the afflicted--and afflict the comfortable." Hardly any would strongly object to that. But then, how do they hope to accomplish that if not by influencing politics? And just what political influence would trying to get the government to "comfort the afflicted--and afflict the comfortable" be?
In the mouth of a journalist, "objectivity" is a codeword for socialism.
For what? Cluelessness? She said, "the past two years have been a perplexing time to be a young 'liberal' Jew in America." Two years, at least, that she has been at least dimly aware of the vile pro-terrorist stance of the left, and she was still surprised by this? Why?
There are also some strange things about the account. She refers to being "alone," but then says she has to leave because the "owner" of the Israeli flag wants it back. Huh? What? Who is the otherwise unmentioned "owner" of the flag?
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad she stood up for herself, disgusted that no one (including the "owner" of the flag???) came to her aid, and glad she told her story; but wish, instead of this rather breathless and staged sounding account, that she had been more straightforward and included more necessary details.
In addition to the "owner" of the flag issue, who organized the counter rally, how was it publicized, how did she find out about it, who was the neo-nazi group? Inquiring minds want to know.
So, should they do these things in the ABSENCE of a negotiated peace agreement, while Arabs in the territories are openly at war with them? You have noticed that Israel has made extraordinary efforts to conclude final status negotiations under Oslo, right, only answered with violence and murder? Apparently not, or you think they should capitulate to murder, and have no right to peace in exchange for land.
Yep. Radar ;).
Do you have anything constructive, except a little sly applause for that other guy who seems more or less convinced that the Jews rule America? Good old friends of now absent LarryLied, huh?
If they're liberal they are neither really American or really a Jew. You can't be good and evil at the same time. You can't be American and anti-american at the same time.
God Save America (Please)
Rotfl. A regular outlet for Sam Francis is "mainstream" and "not anti-semitic"? Pull the other one. This one got bells on it :)).
Well, welcome aboard! Paul experienced a radical conversion- the scales fell from his eyes. But I know, realistically, that everyone will not experience a similar conversion. With some people, they want to believe in liberalism so badly it takes a literal mountain of evidence to convince them. Some people are rational enough that it can simply be a key sentence dropped on them by a friend- they will ponder that phrase and its ramifications over time and arrive at the proper conclusions.
I would imagine some people, like this young woman, who are passionate and want to be involved in a "struggle for the truth" are doing just that- struggling to find the truth. It may take more such incidents with her, but I don't think she will ever be able to reconcile what has happened to her with liberalism- there's too much anti-Jewishness in leftist rhetoric nowadays. Just look at one of the heroes of liberalism- Cynthia McKinney. She and her father both voted out of office. It will take more time, but we are headed in the right direction regarding Jews.
Yes! Israel should stop trying to crush the Palestinians and get the hell out of the occupied territories. It should also end all forms of discrimination against Palestinians and welcome all Palestinian refugees who wish to return to Israel. Under those conditions, it wouldn't be hard for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians.
It also runs Paul Gottfried who is... Jewish.
I actually have e-mailed Brimlow and suggested that he only run Francis artilces relating to race and immigration, not foreign affairs.
Posting a single anti-Semite does not make them anti-Semetic.
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