Report on a rally for Israel in Washington, filed by non-Zio Brad Brooks-Rubin:
Today I saw hundreds of pre-teen and teenage kids cheering and
stomping at the talk of raining down vengeance on other people. What I
saw was person after person attempt to stand in front of and block the
view of my ever-so-incendiary sign that read “CEASE FIRE NOW” on one
side and “SUPPORTING WAR IS NOT REAL SUPPORT” on the other. Their means
of blocking the sign? Waving the Israeli flag in front of it.
No more powerful symbol have I ever been, wittingly or otherwise, a
part of: an Israeli flag used to blot out a sign simply calling for an
end to bloodshed, all bloodshed. And that’s what my community believes
and stands for now: whatever the Israeli government says obedience to
the Israeli flag means. Our values, our morality, our religion, our
tradition of independent thinking, our history of being the oppressed?
Well, they come second, or worse….
In 1994, an article in the Jewish Week
began “If Israel finds peace, American Jews may lose their identity.”
How true that remains. How did that happen? Can it ever be different?
Does anyone in the Jewish community even want it to? Maybe I was naive
all along to believe otherwise?
