Here are two interesting reactions to the Salute to Israel parade that Antony Loewenstein reported on for us yesterday. The first is a reaction to Loewenstein’s piece, and the second is an oped by Rabbi Sidney Schwarz in The Jewish Week entitled “This Is Zionism?“:
First, Mondo reader Rob Browne sent the following in reaction to Loewenstein’s report:
As a father and uncle of Jewish Day School students and a member of a very Zionistic extended family, I have great troubles with the parade every year. I have not gone to the parade since I have been more educated about the conditions in Israel. After many difficult discussions, my immediate family has avoided it, as well, in the last two years.
The schools, synagogues, and affiliated families I know view this parade with great pride. No one in these groups has been willing to listen that the parade supports a fantasy “Leon Uris-like” view of Israel. The reality is that the parade is completely exclusionary to certain religious and ethnic communities of Israel. Antony’s comment that “They may have loved Israel, but it wasn’t a real country, rather an abstract nation in the Middle East that defended democracy, human rights and freedom.” is completely correct, not only in reference to the participants beliefs about the parade, but to Israel in general.
If more people, like Antony and Max Blumenthal, can continue to show how the “mainstream” insitutional elements of the Jewish community educates people in a naive and dangerous manner, the better it will be for all concerned communities.
Next, Rabbi Sidney Schwarz expresses his dismay at a concert in Central Park that followed the parade in his Jewish Week oped “This Is Zionism?“:
Then a band launched into a rousing rendition of Am Yisrael Chai. I spent more than 25 years as an activist for Soviet Jewry. This was our theme song signaling solidarity both with the history of our people and with all those oppressed Jews in the world whose cause we championed. A group of young men in their 20’s with kippot and tziztzit were right in front of me dancing in a frenzy. But they alternated the verse that meant “the people of Israel lives” with “all the Arabs must die.” It rhymed with the Hebrew. Given the way all joined in, it was clear that this was not the first time it was sung.
I leaned over to a young man who was next to me, also wearing a kippah and tzitzit. I nodded at the dancers and asked: “Does this song bother you?” He looked at me with a suspicious look and replied: “This is Zionism.”
