 |
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 2008, pages 61-62 Waging Peace Little Dialogue Outside AIPAC Conference
LONG-TIME peace activist Brian Hennessey stood in front of the Washington, DC Convention Center on June 3 trying to engage in dialogue people headed toward the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) banquet to hear Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert speak. A record number of 6,000 participants attended the AIPAC conference. Some angry protesters near Hennessey had no interest in dialogue, however. In fact, one screamed into a bullhorn such slogans as “Israel is a terrorist state, you are supporting state-run terrorism.” Armed only with brochures provided by If America Only Knew and the Washington Report’s special Nakba issue, Hennessey approached every person with the question, “Would you like to know what really happened in 1948?” A couple of people took his materials, but the vast majority looked at him, then at the demonstrators behind him, and walked on without a word. One man who seemed to be the only Arab protester in the group approached a young conferencegoer from Oregon and proceeded to call him derogatory names. The Oregonian asked why he was so angry with Israel. The man, who was from south Lebanon, said that in the summer of 2006 the Israeli military, despite knowing that a cease-fire was imminent, dropped thousands of cluster bombs on Lebanon, some of which fell in his village. The AIPAC supporter listened as the Lebanese man went on to describe how a man from his village stood on a ladder, picking olives, dropping them to the ground onto a clear plastic sheet where his two children gathered the precious crop. The farmer reached for a branch, not seeing that resting on it was one of the brightly colored droplets of the cluster bomb. It fell, landing between his two kids, exploding and rending their arms and legs useless, the protester told the other man with such sadness in his voice. The other man said that was a terrible story and headed toward the hall. Also outside the convention hall was Rabbi Israel Dovid Weiss and his group of Hasidic supporters from Neturei Karta International, which is opposed to the establishment of the state of Israel and sees Zionism as a corruption of the true Jewish faith. And yet the rabbi was having a very honest and polite discussion with a group of Israeli teenagers who were in town for the conference. In the end they agreed to disagree and left each other with smiles all around. At one point, as Hennessey was attempting to pass out his flyers, an old man in a motorized scooter ran his vehicle into Hennessey’s shin. The man backed up and hit him again, and again, until a police officer approached. By this time, the old man’s son was pulling his father’s scooter back. Once the son had his father and his scooter out of the way, he told Hennessey he supported what he was trying to accomplish, and that the two groups had to learn to hear each other. He was terrified by what he was hearing inside the conference, he went on to say. “They’re beating the war drums against Iran,” he told Hennessey. At that point, the rain came down in buckets and everyone was far more interested in finding shelter than expressing themselves. —Jamal Najjab |
|||||
