Tonight I crossed my first picket line.
It was a rather anticlimactic experience, actually. I had envisioned an angry mob of protesters waving their picket signs and struggling against the barrier; instead, there were a few sad-looking women holding Jimmy Carter quotes in the air and someone off in a corner with a Jordanian flag that nobody else seemed to want to associate with.
The actual gathering was enough to give heart to those lamenting the shrinking American Jewish community; I saw more yarmulkes this evening than I did in much of Israel. As a youth table, we and the JCHS delegation were put as far in back as possible to make sure we didn’t interfere with the proceedings and weren’t accidentally served wine. Even there we had a decent view of the stage.
After the obligatory introductions of major donors and visiting dignitaries (including a consul who affirmed Israel’s commitment to a two-state plan) the speeches began. There were two speakers: the first spoke eloquently and passionately about the legacy of the Holocaust and of the importance and power of a Jewish state in the modern world; the second sputtered angrily about Iran. It is a contrast emblematic of the present situation of the global Jewish community: we are a powerful lobby and a force to be reckoned with in the Middle East, and at the same time are still extremely vulnerable and still very, very scared.
I still don’t really know how I personally feel about all this, aside from asserting that I am a Zionist and in favor of a two-state solution without as good an understanding of the complexities of either position as I should really have. Given the nature of the fund raiser, I was expecting a lot more rhetoric-spewing, flag-waving and calls for the blood of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and all the little children in Palestine this evening; instead I found a room full of people who just want to make sure their children don’t have to live through what their parents did. It’s a complicated world.
Ben Odenheimer
on Thursday 20 December, 2007 at 4:11:05 am
sounds like it was a good event. i wasnted to go, but was busy.