Israel Matzav

Netanyahu heckled in New Orleans by Code Pink-organized protesters

As I'm sure most of you have heard, Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech at the Jewish Federation General Assembly in New Orleans was heckled on Monday. Here's an excerpt from the uninterrupted part of the speech.

Let's go to the videotape.



But as I mentioned, Netanyahu's speech was disrupted. Here's a description of what happened.

"The loyalty oath de-legitimatizes Israel," a woman holding a placard yelled while standing on her chair, interrupting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's speech at the Jewish Federations of North America's General Assembly in New Orleans on Monday.

She was swiftly escorted out by security. However, moments later, another protester stood on his chair and shouted "the occupation de-legitimizes Israel." The man was also quickly taken outside. But then another, and another, appeared. Six in all. One of them was tackled by participants in the crowd and a short scuffle ensued until security reached him.

The protesters were part of Jewish Voices for Peace, a leftist organization of Jews which helped organize a recent boat that tried to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza and is attempting to pressure the planned Tolerance Museum in Jerusalem to relocated from the current, controversial building site.

"These actions are in part a protest of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) and Jewish Public Affairs Council (JCPA) newly announced $6 million dollar program to target campus, church, peace and human rights groups that are working to end Israel’s human rights violations through nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions pressure campaigns," a press release from JVP read. "The Federations and JCPA are calling this initiative the “Israel Action Network.”'

The group's aim was to draw attention to their cause, and to a large part they succeeded. Haaretz, Yediot Ahronot and other Israeli newspapers lead with the sensationalist news on their Websites. But the sentiments of the protesters did not reflect any greater discontent by American Jews with Israel based upon interviews with a sampling of participants after the event occurred.

Outside the plenary hall, it appeared cooler heads prevailed. A young group of Hillel students eating kosher sandwiches handed out by JFNA offered their opinions on the frucus which took part shortly before.

"If we allow five butt-heads to hijack the message here by standing on chairs with their homemade signs we're failing our roles as ambassadors to Israel," Daniel Friedman, a student at UCSD said.

Yes, that's the same 'Jewish' Voices for Peace (I am willing to bet that if we check, we will find that a substantial percentage are not Jewish under Jewish law) that is sponsoring 'Israeli occupation awareness week' at Brandeis this week. And I wonder if that's the same Daniel Friedman who has been sending me emails lately.

But I want to show you Prime Minister Netanyahu's reaction, so let's go to the videotape.



I wish the protesters had been arrested for trespassing. They were not. Three were held until Netanyahu finished speaking and two were let go (see next link below). I don't know what happened to the sixth one.

Lastly, I want to bring the astoundingly self-righteous reactions from the protesters themselves (Hat Tip: Republican Jewish Coalition Headquarters via Twitter) and I did promise in the title to tie these people in to Code Pink.

But the group’s pretensions to representing a generational voice, manifested in the publication of a document roughly outlining their positions and titled the Young Jewish Declaration, were called into question by the presence of scores of young, pro-Israel activists in the halls of the G.A.

“I think the point is more that there needs to be space for people like us, people who don’t fit into the paradigm that’s been laid out,” said a member of the protest group, Eyal Mazor, 22, a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, who was born in Israel. Though involved in planning the action, Mazor was not one of the activists who disrupted the speech. “We need to be seen as a legitimate part of the Jewish community,” he said.

...

Individual activists said in interviews that they supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel, and JVP supports the right to engage in BDS campaigns, although a document created by the group does not mention BDS.

The Forward was given limited access to the protesters before the disruption on the condition that the information not be published until after the disruption took place.

On the night of November 7, in a Unitarian Universalist church a few miles from the site of the convention, a dozen young activists sat in a room crowded with half-drawn signs, debating the contours of the next day’s protest.

The activists had been based in the building since November 4, two days before the general assembly’s official kickoff. Convened by JVP, the group of 14 had spent two days engaged in training and skills sharing and preparing for their actions. Members ranged in age from 17 to 39.

Activists initially told the Forward that they planned to silently hoist signs. But in the meeting the night before the action, the plan seemed to be shifting. Rae Abileah, a staff organizer for the anti-war group Code Pink, was arguing for the disrupters to shout while being removed from the room. Abileah said that the time between when the signs are taken from the protesters and when they were removed from the room could total 15 minutes — time that could be used to shout slogans.

“We are often far [more] concerned with being polite and being politically correct and being nice than we are with human rights, dignity, justice, and international law,” Abileah said later in an interview. Abileah said that she has participated in similar disruptions at two recent AIPAC conferences.

In the end, Abileah apparently won out. She was among those who rose to interrupt Netayahu.

Communications staff at the JFNA knew of plans to disrupt Netanyahu’s speech as early as the evening of November 6. Staff members became aware that at least one person registered as a member of the press was actually an activist. JFNA staff sought to intercept any protesters going in disguised as press before they could enter the ballroom. It’s not clear whether they were successful.

Asked about the JFNA staff’s concerns about a disruption of the speech hours before the second plenary, Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles president Jay Sanderson said, “I would rather my enemy be standing right in front of me than hiding. I’m not afraid of any kind of protest. At least we have an opportunity to respond.” Sanderson has been one of the architects of the Israel Action Network, the new JFNA anti-divestment initiative that has been a focus of the program at the G.A.

After the disruption, Jewish Council for Public Affairs senior vice president Martin Raffel, who is leading the Israel Action Network, said that the disruption demonstrated the atmosphere advocates for Israel face. “Trying to prevent the audience from hearing what the prime minister has to say is in itself a form of delegitimization,” Raffel said.

In other words, Code Pink organized this protest. For those who have forgotten about Code Pink's ties to Hamas, go here. For those who have forgotten about its ties to the Obama administration, go here. No, Mr. Mazor, by putting yourselves under the pink umbrella, you have forfeited any right to be viewed as a 'legitimate part of the Jewish community.' Go back to the unitarian universalist church. That's where you belong.

And the smug, self-righteousness?

“I think I’m very much succeeding in practicing tikkun olam and derech eretz by standing up for the rights for all people,” said Hana King, 17, a freshman at Swarthmore College. “It such hypocrisy for these Jewish leaders that I grew up admiring to say that, you know, that the Holocaust was a tragedy but what we’re doing to [the Palestinians] is fine.”

“We have to get their attention somehow,” she said.

Who the hell does this punk think she is and why is she throwing around terms to whose true meanings she is completely oblivious.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Code Pink, derech eretz, Jewish Federation General Assembly, tikkun olam

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:36 AM