Posted on 08/31/2004 5:31:14 AM PDT by SJackson
On Friday August 27, I read in a newspaper that a group called the Middle East Peace Coalition would be holding a rally the next day between 3 and 6 p.m. in Manhattan's Union Square Park. It was one of many street events of all political stripes timed to coincide with the Republican National Convention, set to begin August 30.
I want peace in the Middle East. So I decided to attend the demonstration. I had never heard of the Middle East Peace Coalition, but figured it would be nice for me, a Zionist Jew, to stand in solidarity with a coalition of folks wanting peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors.
I scrawled a handwritten sign stating, simply, "Zionists for Peace," and drew an Israeli flag with 1960s-era peace signs.
I attended the rally with a friend, Polina Valis. She is a survivor of the Dolphinarium Disco suicide bombing in Tel Aviv of June 1, 2001, in which five of her friends were among the 21 teenagers killed, Jewish and Christian. She herself spent two months in the hospital, underwent five operations (and needs another), carries nails and metal fragments from the bomb in her legs, back, and arm, and is permanently missing several chunks of her body.
She is also a Zionist, and she is also for peace.
As Polina and I waded into the crowd to draw nearer to the speaker, I realized that this peace rally might be not as advertised when I spotted a man I had once seen selling insignia pins of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The PFLP is a Marxist-Leninist gang specializing in wholesale civilian murder. The US Department of State properly classifies it as a foreign terrorist organization.
The speaker at the rally was holding forth on the Zionist cabal controlling America.
"Who is running American foreign policy in the Middle East? Who is in charge? Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Feith, Perle, Abrams: right-wing Jews who work for the Israelis."
Calling Rumsfeld a Jew was a minor flub compared to his later peroration on "Zionist death camps."
Polina and I had scant time to listen. When my fellow demonstrators read my innocuous sign, they accosted me. Zionists hate peace, they insisted. Someone called me a Nazi. Plucky Polina stood by me, trying to make sense of bellicose peaceniks.
Hovering journalists, sensing story potential, scribbled down bits of conversation and snapped photos as the Middle East Peace Coalition formed a circle around Polina and me.
A woman demanded that I put down my "Zionists for Peace" sign.
"This is a peace demonstration," I objected. "Who told you it was a peace demonstration, huh?" she said.
Alarmingly, she then yelled, "No justice, no peace!" Hoping not to be on the receiving end of "no peace," I pathetically stuttered: "Middle East Peace Coalition. It [the paper] says a 'peace demonstration.' It says 'peace' on my sign."
A dialogue of the deaf ensued. I asked why Jews can't have a state like every other nation, just like the Palestinians want. Or why Zionism is racism if fully 20 percent of Israel's population is Palestinian, while Arabs insist that all Jews leave the West Bank and Gaza so they can have a state without Jews.
Someone demanded to know why I had cited the status of the West Bank and Gaza as the sticking points rather than "the whole occupation." Then a guy wrapped in a Palestinian flag asserted that since all Israel is occupied territory and Israel's existence is therefore a crime against peace, a Zionist like me was, by definition, an intruder at a peace rally.
Someone added that the overwhelming majority of UN-accredited nongovernmental organizations at the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, had declared Zionism a racist, outlaw movement. I agreed that the United Nations, in the main, and the Middle East Peace Coalition held the same view of Israel.
Sensing checkmate, the man who seemed to be in charge of the event shouted, "Go back to your country!"
I guess he meant Israel, though I was born and raised in America. But how could Israel ever be my country if, according to them, Israel should not be?
Eventually they called the cops on me. A very nice policeman named Robert Chico asked me to leave. Although I did not want to give Officer Chico a hard time, I pleaded my case:
A Zionist for peace is a legitimate part of a Middle East peace coalition; this is billed as a rally for Middle East peace; New York City granted the group a permit to demonstrate based on this premise; either their permit should be revoked for being filed under false pretenses (I suggested in frustration that it should have been filed on behalf of the "Middle East Genocide Coalition"), or I should be allowed to stay and these agitators against peace be made to leave.
Observing the taunts and epithets hurled at me as I conversed with him, Officer Chico said he understood my position, but had to remove me for my own protection.
Polina Valis, with me throughout the peace rally, is an intrepid soul.
In July, she consented to a proposal by filmmaker Pierre Rehov that she meet the father of the Dolphinarium suicide bomber. (The father refused to meet her, and Jordan – where he lives – refused to grant her a visa.)
A double major in political science and history at the City University of New York, she has debated Muslim classmates here who advocate suicide bombings against Israeli Jews, and never revealed that she herself was a victim of such an atrocity.
After Officer Chico removed us from the peace rally, brave Polina commented that she had thought nothing could frighten her anymore, "but the Middle East Peace Coalition did."
The writer is managing attorney of the American Legal Response Team for Democracy (www.alerted.org).
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Islam can not be trusted. The Demo-rats starting with JfnKerry can not be trusted. When a Demorat or Muslim screams "Peace"!...make sure the spelling is correct.
Who are these people? Are they affiliated with the Dems? They sound like Nazis!
I guess I learned my lesson back on the schoolyard playground that it takes two (reasonable people) to make peace, but only one unreasonable person to make a war (or fight). Radical Islamists are anything but reasonable. They won't rest until the state of Israel no longer exists. Those who support Israel's right to exist as a free state had better learn that fact of life, and take appropriate action. Trying to talk reason with one who would murder you gets one one thing: dead.
"Middle East Genocide Coalition"
That says it all!
It makes me sick that Americans can act like this toward brave Israelis.
I honor the courage of Polina.
Agreed. Their hatred is palpable.
Those who have been everywhere and seen everything are seldom surprised at unlimited human extremes; however, this degree of naivity is a new one on me.
In fact, it's not naivete. Its denial. The two must not be confused.
In fact, denial is the most dangerous thing there is. It must not be confused with anything.
POLINA VALIS, 18, is a fragile young girl whowalks and speaks with deliberation that suggests both a profound trauma and a lot of quiet determination. Polina has fragments of explosives in her back and her arm. Pieces of muscular tissue were torn out in the knee area on both legs. An eardrum was shattered. Another fragment is stuck in the sole of her foot. "I realize the terrorists have succeeded in ruining many lives," Polina says. "But I have decided for myself that I'll be happy and joyful, that I'll dance and live my life fully. And that will be my revenge."
You have definately got a lot of grit. I would watch my 6 in a crowd like that.
I think you have more courage in your right arm than I have in my whole body...
As is their ignorance.
Seriously, who other than a rabidly ignorant know-nothing would refer to a Jew as a "Nazi"?!
Not me, I just posted the article, didn't write it.
If all the kerry supporters could only live in her skin for
an hour or two, there would be fewer kerry supporters.
A lovely young lady, to have felt and seen so much pain, in
only 18 short years.
I was just surfing around and noticed this thread. I'm the guy who wrote the Jerusalem Post / WorldNetDaily article that's the topic of the thread. I've now posted a thumbnail bio here on Free Republic, by the way, in case of interest.
I have video clips of the rally that I'm trying to upload to www.alerted.org. I'm not a web designer type, so it's taking me a while. If you or anyone you know has web skills and can help make the www.alerted.org website into something presentable, Polina Valis and I would be really thankful. By the way, besides the film "Empty Rooms," Polina was featured in a movie called "Heroes," and has appeared on TV several times.
The day after the "Middle East Peace Coalition" demonstration, I attended the huge anti-Bush march. I spotted all the folks from the "peace rally" the day before. They bloviated in Union Square Park again, and the main speaker actually hit a guy with his sign (which read: "Tel Aviv [get] out of Washington").
I challenged them again. I was aided by an Egyptian attorney and history professor who held up his index finger for all to see; it had been mangled by Egyptian police in a torture session after he participated in a demonstration as a student. He opined that Arab governments fixate domestic opinion on the Palestinian issue because what they perpetrate against their own populations is so truly unspeakable, that they need to channel popular fury outward. He argued that the Middle East Peace Coalition had been sold a bill of goods by the medieval monarchs, military dictators, and megalomaniacal tyrants who rule the Arab world, and that if they want to see a resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli issue then they must first demand reform of Arab regimes, and support the project underway in Iraq. That way, the domestic rage fomented by Arab autocrats would not need to be sublimated against the 5 million Jews in Israel who just want to be left in peace by the surrounding 350 million Arabs and 1.2 billion Muslims. He repeatedly referenced his own status as an *Arab* observer of Arab society to persuade that he has no ulterior agenda.
Of course, the ringleaders of the "Middle East Peace Coalition" seemed unmoved, but hopefully some of the hangers-on will remember the Egyptian's testimony.
I remember how "peace protestors" attacked and injured recruiters during Desert Storm.
Can you guys help this fellow out?
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