Palestinian-Israelis "Push-it" at Demonstration @ US Embassy in Tel Aviv
by Eric Blair in Tel Aviv
April 12, 2002
We wound through downtown Tel Aviv, looking for the U.S. embassy and
marveling at the beach culture. Stylish, beautiful young Israeli men and
women wandered the boardwalk, trying too hard, in my opinion to appear laid
back. It must take effort. A block away is suicide bomb central, Ben
Yehuda avenue, and just an hour away by car less fortunate young friends of
theirs spend the day destroying Palestinian villages.
For us, things had not gone as planned. We were supposed to be thirty
internationals, or at least twenty, and we were six. We had rented a bus
from Jerusalem that would hold 55. We'd been taught an organizing less this
time - make sure your commitments are lined up before your logistics. But
my spirits were lifted as we rounded a corner and found, behind the U.S.
Embassy, a 500-strong crowd of demonstrators, the Mediterranean sea
sparkling behind them. Opposite, across a beachfront street were dozens of
police, armed with pistols and batons. Quite a relief after what we were
used to.
The sun was hot, the air was still, I could feel the skin on my bald
forehead burning as we held our signs over the police barricades. Rob
Liptin, a Jew from California told me that the Jewish groups present compose
Israel's "hard left;" their members are generally anti-occupation. Milling
through the crowd, I met Adam Keller with Gush Shalom. It was he who I'd
called when Nancy and I hatched the idea of internationals demonstrating
against Powell. But we had come with six, he'd brought five hundred
Israelis. I was surprised when he said to me, very generously, "You know it
is you who brought these people out. You called us just before our meeting
and we were trying to figure out what to do."
It was encouraging to see Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs working together in
such numbers. But sadly, I had hoped the Israeli numbers would have been
far greater, after over two weeks of slaughter in the West Bank. Most
boisterous in the crowd was a tight core of 100 or so Israeli Arabs who even
dared to raise the illegal Palestinian flag. The cops across the street
pointed and edged forward, but did not attack. The Arabs' zeal and the
special attention they got from the cops reminded me of the black block in
the U.S., and a similar uncomfortable dynamic between those willing to "push
things" and those who would prefer to hold signs in designated areas.
Today, I admit, I was among the latter. Most of us internationals were
flying out over the weekend and couldn't afford to be arrested.
At some point a letter was delivered to the embassy demanding that Powell
stop Sharon's violence. A spontaneously occurring counter demonstration
produced some excitement as two men approached the crowd screaming curses,
only to be pulled back and then shooed along by the police. But generally
things were quiet and orderly. Encouragingly, the buzz among the crowd was
about a convoy of medical supplies that Israeli civilians would attempt to
take to Jenin tomorrow. Rumors circulated that three thousand would come to
demonstrate when the convoy is inevitably stopped by the military.
* Eric is one of five members of the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace in
Palestine, joining hundreds of internationals in protesting Israel's illegal
military occupation of Palestine. More on his trip at:
www.ccmep.org/palestine.html