SABBATH AMONG THE SAVAGES

This past Saturday the Nakba crowd had a hip-hop music party down at Civic Center. A little friendly hate-fest to introduce that segment of the population that listens to rap to the concept of reviling the Jews.

At least, that is what they intended when they first came up with the idea several weeks ago.

Instead they had to opt for a 'family event' - more because they couldn't get the headliners they wanted and were afraid that too few people would attend than that they disagreed with their own message (destroy Israel and drive the Jews into the sea). So desperate were they for attendees that instead of appealing to disaffected urban teenagers they begged middle-aged householders to bring the weib and kinder.

By all standards, the event was a failure. A few hundred local Palestinians, a handfull of the 'already-converted', and their friends, relatives, fetishists - not a success. Not the mass-happening of righteous indignation and au-courant musical taste they were hoping for. Not a mob-scene of angry urban angst and fervor.
More of a "what-ever" than a "wow, dude!"

[That can't have pleased the pro-Palestinian 'gender-ambiguating' Jews who helped organize it - Perry Bellow-Handelman, Libby Goldberg, Kinneret Israel, Sarah Kershnar, et al - they were probably hoping for a young angry crowd that could be moved to riot righteously and revolutionarily. "Onward the proletariat, comrades. Loot a FootLocker. Break a window. Show the pigs, yeah." Alas. Sorry that you couldn't squeal and wet your panties this time, gals.]


No matter their change of audience, we still disagreed with their message. So we showed up to counter-demonstrate. Yes, I know that's 'carrying on shabbes'. Think of it as part of a milchemes mitzva.

[The 'we' in this case being San Francisco voice for Israel. http://www.sfvoiceforisrael.org/ ]


I can't say I found the music entirely to my taste. The lyrics left a lot to be desired - particularly the song in which every other word seemed to be "da-joo" (or "da-jooz"). Most of the time actual words were unintelligible, no matter which 'artist' was representin'. A big fan of hip-hop I'm not.
Bring on the accordions.

Just after we arranged ourselves on the library corner, a few angry Nakba-Jews came over to carefully photograph all of us individually (probably for the wanted posters - smile at the mangy heffalump, chaveir).
A pro-Palestinian female with pearcings and tattoos who loudly insisted that she was Jewish, and her ill-looking companion, got into a long bitch-fight with a lone policeman, who insisted that they go back across the street.
A revolutionary black woman screamed a string of filthy terms at us.
A giddy Arab kept dancing out into the intersection waving a Palestinian flag and looking for a fight - the same policeman kept firmly directing him back to his side. Some little boys had fun waving bloody fist resistance banners. And periodically people passing by would demonstrate vocally that San Francisco is indeed ground-zero of anti-Semitism and lunacy west of the Rockies.

Or leastways, ground-zero of the under-medicated.

We have stellar nutballs in this town. I wonder whom they intended to convert by yelling obscenities and threats. Certainly not us. Perhaps the grim folks on the other side. Maybe the Palestinians will give them a sandwich if they but demonstrate their deep-seated grasp of revolutionary terminology.

And possibly remember them favourably when they hang out in front of the liquor store.


On the other hand, I did have a few pleasant exchanges with Arabs heading past. One in particular with any entire family about keffiyot, red fabric dye versus shocking pink underwear, and made-in-China versus local manufacture. Of course they disagreed with our message - but they were very pleasant people. Precisely the kind of people whom you wouldn't mind having as neighbors.


If it weren't for the fact that it left me tense and drained, it would've been a very nice Saturday indeed. Hate-fests in Civic Center could well become the ultimate San Francisco experience. You haven't really visited San Francisco until you've been drenched with angry rhetoric.