NOT QUITE A DAY OF RAGE: PROTEST AND COUNTER-PROTEST AT AIPAC EVENTS

SAN FRANCISCO, MID-DAY - MOSCONE CENTER SOUTH

Before actually describing today's events, let me quote from the e-mail I received regarding yesterday's action in Sacramento:
"The protests typically are only nominally about AIPAC and mostly about demonizing Israel. This was proven earlier today at the Sacramento event where protestors held viciously anti-Israel signs and yelled anti-Semitic slurs at those coming to the lunch. "

Anti-Semitic slurs. Oh my.


Which made this morning's events a mechayeh of monumental proportions, gashmius to da max.

Why?

Because the sitra achra (affectionate nickname for the sonei-Yisroel side) spent about an hour demonstrating at the wrong place. At the wrong time.

For some bizarre reason they went and rabbled rousingly over at Fifth and Mission, instead of on Howard Street between Third and Fourth. Which was slightly over two blocks away, nowhere near the entrance to the event, and out of the direct line-of-sight.

They never figured out that they were barking up the wrong tree.


The result was that our side was not outnumbered, unlike at yesterday's event in Sacramento, about which I heard from one of the participants this morning. And the attendees of the AIPAC lunch were probably not even aware that there were any haters in the vicinity, and were in any case not bothered or harassed.

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OAKLAND, EARLY EVENING - MARRIOTT ON BROADWAY

I wasn't planning to attend this evening's love-fest. But I did. And I brought someone from the office with me (and thank you, SHN, for being there).

The two camps were about evenly matched, and mingled freely to muddy each other's message.

I got into a shouting match with two people.

The first one being a belligerent Edomite who started by vociferating at me, although to be fair, he was coming down off of a hollering match with someone else, so he was already wound up. I'm sorry I called him a haramzad and a murderous harakati and a few other things - more because he probably didn't understand certain eloquent Persian terms, than out of any sense of propriety (most of that side are so staggeringly ungifted linguistically that no offense to propriety could be registered).

The second recipient of my spleen was a young lady of anti-Semitic persuasion whose convictions got my dander up - which is where my dander was already, seeing as I had just finished yelling at the party previously mentioned. She stood too close with her prop. Wrong place, right time.

Miss, if you are reading this, I apologize for calling you a severely defective human, and casting aspersions on your moral grounding and quotient of social-functionability. You are of course utterly wrong, your political ideas are reprehensible and odious in the extreme, and I furthermore question your choice of comrades (and wish a plague upon all of you), but I'm sorry that I was not entirely gentlemanly.


Other attendees

One of the other people I ended up having a very enjoyable conversation with was a delightful old-style communist, of the type one doesn't see much anymore. He was on the wrong side, of course, but as the last of the Bundists, he probably felt he was adding a tone of perspective and nuance to the other side. Preventing them from being entirely mono-dimensional, much like some of us refuse to let the hate-Israel side dominate the discourse.

There were one or two confrontations that nearly required police intervention, especially as both sides were constantly moving around to obscure each-others flags and signs. They brought their mock-up of the wall, we blocked it with our flags.

And there were also a few certifiables - one person on their side clearly ascribed to several variations of the theory that Jews control all parts of the known universe and Pluto besides, another person was convinced that the newsmedia were paid by the Israeli Propaganda Ministry (there is such a thing? - Hey guys, howzabout sending me some money too? I promise I'll spend it on cigars.).


Shaukat

One of their people (salam and howdy, ya Shaukat) wore a tee-shirt that said "I am not a terrorist" over a Palestinian flag. The last time I had seen him was in front of City Hall, when he and his friends were screaming their hero-worship of Sheikh Hassan Nasrullah (laqnatullah anhu). I had wondered what had happened to him. His buddy is the one who spent five days in jail and got three years probation for the flag-burning incident (silly boy, you shouldn't have brought along a can of gasoline - that's probably what really got you in trouble).


Gebrochts

Some of the signs on the opposite side urged a boycott of Israeli products.
I wish them well finding such things - other than certain medicines, computer parts, sequences of software programming codes, and the Israeli flags I keep in my cubicle, I'm having the darndest time finding Israeli products to DIS-boycott (or un-boycott - what is the correct verb?). Really. It's so hard to locate Israeli stuff here in the Bay Area that I'm even thinking of buying shmureh matzos this Passover, just to support the Israeli economy in my own little way, and perhaps prepare an entire year's supply of gebrochts in one fell Pesachdikke swoop.

Which if I do, I will need recipes that use gebrochts. So please, if you're reading this, send me some recipes. Give me suggestions. Do any of you have a recipe for that Sefardic cake that uses matze-meal and orange liqueur? I really would like a copy, please e-mail me at [email address subsequently deleted for anonymity - if you know me, you already have it].
A groisn dank foroys.


Hatikvah

Blowing the shofar and singing Hatikvah at the end was a nice touch. For future reference, seeing as my Hebraish is limited, and I haven't got it memorized (yet), here are the transcribed lyrics of The Hope:
Kol od baleyvav pe'nimah,
Nefesh yehudi homiyah;
Ulfa'atey mizrach kadimah,
Ayin le Tziyon tzofiya.
Od lo avda takvateinu,
Hatikvah batsh'not alpayim;
Lih'yot am chofshi b'artzeinu,
Eretz Tzion v' Yerushalayim.


Final note

Like at many of these occassions, it was truly a pleasure to see the people I know on our side. There's a certain brash cheer which permeates us, a sense of community, and a sense of shared or overlapping knowledge sets, points of reference, and ideals. So even though it may sound strange, I'm hoping that we will see each other many more times.
Forverts, und sey gazunt.