TUMULTUOUSLY UPDATED

YESTERDAY EVENING - UPDATE ON SITUATION IN THE LAND - JCC & ISRAELI CONSULATE



Nothing surprising was said.

The consul comes across as a likable and intelligent person, thrown into a role where he has to assure people without saying much. He choses his words with care. Forthright yet guarded. There are nuances.


The auditorium would have fit a much larger crowd. But there were plenty of people there..... most of us in our thirties or older. Plus some people who look intense. Or just tense.

Security is tight but transparently variable. Several people are patted down thoroughly, their bags checked inside, out, sideways and upside down. Electronics examined, batteries tested, pockets emptied. Me, just a cursory rooting around in my backpack without really examing anything (everything feels like a book, nothing has edges or a suspicious weight). Shook the box in which I keep pipes for smoking, didn't open it, or any of the pockets of the pack. I guess I just don't project a troublemaker aura. Either that or my snoot is recognized (it's a possibility).

Or maybe I smell.

Let's not go there.


The introductory words are finally said at around 9:20. Devorah who has been back from the land for 72 hours gives a short talk. Then the consul, who has only been back for 48 hours, comes on stage.

His talk is punctuated a various points with disruptive action by disagreeable people.



Disruption one: Three women chanting loudly about occupation and holding a Jews for a Free Palestine banner stand up in the audience, ten minutes after the consul had started talking. Boos, hisses, loud yells in Russian-accented English. Plainclothes and a rabbi finally pursuaded them to leave.
They were very strident.

Disruption two: Large hairy monster female stands up and starts yelling. There is vituperation. By this time the SFPD on hand, and she is 'pursuaded' out. Her incomprehensible exclamations echo down the side passage into the unknown, and muffle as a door closes.

Disruption three: Agent-provocatrice filming the disruptions, and her goonish male companion, are pointed out, confronted, told to get out. With sneers and gloats, they evaporate.

Disruption four: A man and a woman stand up and loudly declare that they are Jews and 'as Jews bla bla bla'. Loud long confrontation, followed by the police escorting them out.

Disruption five: Indignant blonde (?) proves herself a member of the troll contingent. Out.

Disruption six: Person of indeterminate gender stands up, becomes a wherewolf, and is escorted out by the cops.


During the question and answer period a few people turn out to have a bug up their chamor, not to say rhetorically blessed points of view, that, because of a surfeit of commas, semi-colons, parentheses, and codicilliary amendations and sub-clauses, prove quite unintelligible.
The consul bravely resists the temptation to call queries containing semi-colons half-assed, and answers the first clear part of the question.

Many questions are actually the ones that everybody wants to ask - simple, straightforward, to the point, and well-informed. The answers are to the point, and reasonably informative.


As we leave I recognize at least one person - an Israeli who is probably in some way connected to something. Who has certain habits that are recognizable as inculcated and precautionary.