Wasn't this supposed to be a major peace rally?
Park Peace Protest Is Riddled With Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism Riddles Protest
BY DAPHNA BERMAN
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- The anti-war demonstration in Central Park yesterday, one of several across the country over the weekend, was riddled with anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment, and in some cases classical anti-Semitism, as thousand of protesters assembled for what was ostensibly a show of harmless political dissent.
Estimates of the number of protesters in New York ranged between 3,000 and 10,000, with people arriving from throughout the tri-state area. Many combined their opposition to President Bush’s plans for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq with hostility to Israel. One protester even cited the classical anti-Semitic forgery known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
While stars like Susan Sarandon and her husband, Tim Robbins, made appearances at the rally, protesters held banners like “shmush Bush,” waved Palestinian flags, danced to music, and called for a change in American policy in the Middle East. The rally was organized by a group called Not In Our Name, which has produced a statement signed by liberal luminaries such as playwright Tony Kushner, feminist Gloria Steinem, and “politics of meaning” champion Michael Lerner of Tikkun magazine.
“Bush and Sharon are warmongers and are itching to go to war so that the U.S. can be the predominant power in the region,” said a retired war veteran, David Silver of Manhattan. “We need a regime removal in the USA. We should dump Bush, not our allies.” Other protesters called Mr. Bush a “racist” and an Israeli “puppet,” urging for a cessation of American aid to the Jewish state.
“We’re standing with the people of the world against an atmosphere of war and oppression,” said Elana Garcia, a New Yorker who was wearing the Palestinian head scarf known as a kaffiyeh. “Bush has unleashed Israel, and people resisting occupation are now called terrorists.” She called Israel “the attack dog of the Middle East.”
One protester, who identified himself as Amir Forghany of Queens, said the rally was a civic duty. “A voice of dissent is a form of patriotism,” he claimed. “Some wars are justified, but this one [in Iraq] just isn’t.” Mr. Forghany asserted that “big business” is the source of American policy and the reason for the war on terrorism. “There are interest groups who want Israel to dominate Palestine. If Bush goes with them and is too critical, he might lose [their] support…the international financiers have their hooks in everything.”
Ayman Asawa, who called himself a peace activist, agreed. “Bush is more Israeli than the Israelis themselves. He is a puppet of the Zionists [who] control the media, the government and the economy. The Jews’ book — the Protocols of the Elders of Zion — explains how they control the world and how they make people fight against each other.” His reference was to a notorious Russian forgery that has been a centerpiece of anti-Semitism since Czarist times. “The American government,” Mr. Asawa said, uttering another allegation frequently heard from anti-Semites, “is controlled by corporations and the corporations are controlled by Zionism.”
By no means all of the protestors in Central Park bought into the kinds of theories Mr. Asawa was pushing. But many expressed hostility to the Jewish state while opposing the nascent war against Iraq. Pete Rupert, for one, said his condemnation of Israel was simple. “I know a lot of Palestinians, and I’ve hung around with too many Jews. I’m not anti-Semitic, just anti-Israel.”
Another, Karen McCarthy of Staten Island, said “America’s support of Israel is unconscionable.” She said she didn’t “want my tax dollars spent going towards Israel’s disenfranchisement of the Palestinians.”
“Israel is creating a holocaust of its own. I sympathize with [the plight of Jews in] the World War II Holocaust, but that doesn’t give Israel the right to make their own of the Palestinian people. There are powerful Jewish people in the nation — wealthy lawyers and bankers. They control a lot of the money and Bush doesn’t want them to be upset,” said a 15-year-old protester, Nester Bailly, of Manhattan.
A protester from Atlanta, Janx Morris, who was also wearing a kaffiyeh, said, “Israel is and has been an outpost of US imperialism throughout the region — culturally, economically and politically.”
“Bush has to deal with the Israeli lobby. These corporations and business interests in the U.S. influence Bush… they try to persuade Bush to totally push the Palestinian people out of Israel. They have lots of money and have more or less bought out Bush,” said Todd Wilkerson of Queens.
“Israel is the bully of the whole neighborhood,” said one protester, Nihaya Dugan, a Palestinian Arab who moved to New York in 1998.
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