Alex Kane at the Indypendent has a report on the silent march tonight by hundreds outside the Waldorf, where an IDF fundraiser featured the Israeli military’s chief of general staff, Gabi Ashkenazi:
“Our idea is to show the totally atrocious contradiction of having a $1,000 a plate dinner for people who a year ago killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians,” said Dorothy Zellner, a founding member of Jews Say No! “People who commit these kind of war crimes should not be celebrated and should not be welcome here in our city.”
Many lamented the fact that while [dinner speaker and IDF chief of general staff Gabi] Ashkenazi may be fearful of being arrested in European countries that adhere to the principle of universal jurisdiction, he is worry free about the United States.
“A terrorist, a war criminal, should not be dining in the streets of New York. He belongs in jail,” said Dima Abisaab, a Lebanese-American activist with Al-Awda New York: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, which organized a separate rally across the street from the Waldorf…
Amer Shurrab, a Palestinian from the Gazan city of Khan Younis and a graduate of Middlebury College, participated in the silent protest.
“I’m here for my two brothers, who were shot at by the Israeli army over a year ago. They were shot at, left to bleed to death by the Israeli army and denied medical help,” he said. “I’m here for them, and I’m here for the over 1,400 innocent civilians who suffered the same fate and were subject to Israeli army war crimes.”
How horrible.
RE: “How horrible.” – MRW
SEE/WATCH/LISTEN:Palestinian US College Grad Loses 2 Brothers in Israeli Shooting; Father Watched Son Bleed to Death After Israeli Troops Bar Ambulances, Democracy Now!, 01/21/10
Amer Shurrab is a Palestinian from Khan Yunis and a recent graduate of Vermont’s Middlebury College. On Friday, his father and two brothers were fleeing their village when their vehicle came under Israeli fire. Twenty-eight-year-old Kassab died in a hail of bullets trying to flee the vehicle. Eighteen-year-old Ibrahim survived the initial attack, but Israeli troops refused to allow an ambulance to reach them until twenty hours later. By then, it was too late. Ibrahim had bled to death in front of his father. Amer joins us to tell his story. [includes rush transcript]
VIDEOS
PART I – link to democracynow.org
PART II – link to democracynow.org
01/21/10 (above) should have read 01/21/09
ALSO SEE: ‘I waited for my fate,’ says Gaza father, By Yasser Ahmad and Ashraf Khalil, L.A. Times, 01/18/09
A farmer’s attempt to flee to safety with his two sons fails when Israeli soldiers fire on their car. It takes 20 hours for an ambulance to get to them.
LINK – link to articles.latimes.com
It was a very well-organized protest. Hundreds of us held signs and walked the block around the Waldorf for about an hour and a half, among a great deal of rush hour foot traffic. We were instructed not to engage hecklers, which was great advice. There were about a dozen or two counter-demonstrators, and several of them were ranting, more and more hysterically when none of us answered them. One woman was screaming at a Jewish man next to me that he could not be buried in a Jewish cemetery because of his heresy. We got lectures about God granting the land to the Jewish people and how we were supporting terrorism, racism and fascism. There were a number of people taking photos and videos, and a few were clearly from the other camp, attempting to intimidate us, I suppose. I was walking with an Arab-American woman and her college-age daughter, and several times I joked with them about how embarrassing I found these lunatics. Their vitriol, however, was quite genuine. We looked quite dignified in comparison. I think it’s great that Israeli political and military leaders know that even if they will not face any criminal jeopardy here, a trip to the US will invite protests and invigorate the Palestinian justice movement. Whichever direction Ashkenazi approached, he must have seen our impressive numbers.
David Samel, great that you protested.
BTW, David Samel, did anyone from your camp take pictures or vids that you know of?
Nevermind. I answered my own question. I went to indypendent.org.
This is the type of impunity they are afforded in the US. It is the same as the earlier colonials that were given money by host states by the elite. Since wealth is decentralized in the sense of corporations and private ownership this is how it is disseminated. It is also given under the rubric of “foreign aid,” and this when the aid is not needed by the recipient colonial enterprise for it to basically survive, Israel. It merely ensures their ability to continue in their crimes, like an aiding and abetting of a serial killer without the legal consequences. There is no need to point out anything else, and than people get angry at me when I say there is no rule of law.
Meanwhile… the US government (Obama’s included) attacks Palestinian charities with zeal — for the crime of helping needy families.
Good old fashioned Israeli kangaroo courts, US-style:
link to democracynow.org
It’s an old story now, but one worth remembering I think. I encourage people to watch the DN! interview.
Organize to help Palestinians who’ve had homes razed and family members killed? Prison term. Donate to wealthy Jewish land developers and settlers actively waging pogroms against a captive population? That’s kosher.
“Today’s sentences mark the culmination of many years of painstaking investigative and prosecutorial work at the federal, state and local levels,” David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security, said in a prepared statement Wednesday. “These sentences should serve as a strong warning to anyone who knowingly provides financial support to terrorists under the guise of humanitarian relief.”
As usual, Julian, you gloat in the favored position Israel enjoys among the powerful, but you are short on reasoned analysis. Last night, the IDF openly raked in well over a million dollars, and anyone with an open mind knows that this entity has been intentionally killing civilians for decades, with Gaza being only the most recent large-scale atrocity. Both the Israeli government and Hamas engage in a wide variety of activities, including providing benign benefits for their people and conducting military operations that kill civilians (with an enormous difference in the numbers killed). Yet supporting Hamas’s charitable work is a crime, while openly supporting Israel’s military “wing” is considered charitable. Rather than explain why this situation is morally defensible, you merely boast that it exists.
Julian will not be boasting after we shut this systemic activity down. That is, because it is apparent there is no rule of law for the few, they will be brought under its purview. When this happens, because it will, he will twist and scream and cry antisemitism to no avail – as the Zionist nightmare sinks like a ship at sea in to the long denied behest of justice.
Julian gloats that justice in this country has become a travesty of itself.
Julian voted for Bush.
Enough said.
Julian would vote for Cheney.
They should all go home, Jew and Arab both. Let them all make aliyah to the foreign lands, foreign armies, and foreign peoples they love so much and practice their tikkun olam on each other.
You realize that “going home” for many Israelis would actually equate to returning to Europe, Russia and the US?
American Jews who emigrate to Israel to make their aliyah also get to act out their white racist fantasies against in Israel and occupied Palestine. Are you sure you would want these white racists to return to the US?
As usual, no coverage of this event in the US.
Photos of screaming, hate-faced racists during the US Civil Rights protests were effective in mobilizing public opinion. The MSM won’t take the chance of letting public opinion be mobilized against the screaming, hate-faced racists in NY.
I admit I’m a little surprised there was no coverage at all in The New York Times today, not even a photo. I wasn’t born yesterday, and I know about bias. But the strong descriptions by David Samel, Phil in his post, and others make clear this was a story that Times subscribers would read, including — maybe especially — those who continue to heatedly support Israel. The paper’s desire to suppress unpleasant news was more important than its desire to sell papers.