Demonstrators went to City Hall two days back to protest Bill de Blasio’s private pander to the Israel lobby group AIPAC on Jan. 23, when he promised to stand by AIPAC whenever it needed him and to defend Israel as part of his job description. Some great signs.
The best sign was the first sign – I’m guessing that why it was chosen at the top.
It’s the best because it gets to the heart of the issue in a way that is visceral. Someone should show him the footage of the anti-African pogrom that took place in Tel Aviv in 2012 and the unrelenting genocidal racist incitement that has spewed out in the aftermath, describing them as a disease that must be cured(and I’m not even talking about Miri Regev’s infamous comment before the riots).
Let’s show his kids and his wife Max Blumenthal’s video with David Sheen. Let’s see if he’s as sanguine about toiling for Israel then.
Great signs, and thank you to the activists!
On another note, just found another “American” saying this wrt Pollard when I was skimming:
“Former CIA Director James Woolsey says anti-Semitism could be a factor in the U.S. refusal to release Jonathan Pollard, the Jewish-American jailed for spying for Israel.
Woolsey told Israel’s Channel 10 on Saturday that Americans who spied for other countries including Korea and Greece were freed after short sentences, while Jonathan Pollard is still jailed after 25 years.
Pollard was a civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy when he gave thousands of classified documents to his Israeli handlers. He was arrested in 1985 and later sentenced to life in prison.
“I certainly don’t think that it is universally true, but in the case of some American individuals, I think there is anti-Semitism at work here,” Woolsey said. ”
More here:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.573178
I like the old guy with the fur hat in the last picture —you know at his obvious age he’s freezing his butt off out there, but yet there he is taking a stand.
How refreshing to see the demonstrators speaking as New Yorkers instead of an religio-ethnic subset of New Yorkers.
Sorry to rain on your “great signs” parade.
I personally fail to see how “New York, New York” is any better than “Israel, Israel”.
And I simply can’t believe that the irony is lost on the many commenters here who have on numerous occasions expressed their strong disapproval of the Iraq war and occupation.
Surely you remember what role “New York, New York” played in launching and sustaining that war?
Glenn Greenwald on the “quaint and obsolete Nuremberg principles”
http://www.salon.com/2011/05/13/nuremberg_5/