Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Sunday night I attended a "Town Meeting" talk by Israeli Consul General Meier Shlomo (great name - Martin Solomon in Hebrew) and Boston Globe reporter Charles Radin concerning the Gaza Disengagement, "After Gaza: Looking Ahead." It was held at a Lexington (suburban Boston) Synagogue. Turnout was good -- I'm guessing around 2-250 people. Mostly an older crowd, as usual for these things.
I had thought it was to start at 7:00, so I was there plenty early for the real 7:30 start time. The first thing that struck me was how much security there was present. I've been to a fair number of these evening programs, usually with far more controversial speakers, and I've never seen this much security -- at least 15 police officers with metal detectors and a bag search and separate "Temple Members" and "Community" entrances. I figured this was overkill, but come to find out that the local "Peace and Human Rights" contingent was allowed out of McLean Hospital for the evening, so a serious armed police presence was considered necessary.
Since I was inside the hall reading a book at the time, I didn't catch the shenanigans going on outside until I was driving home. I missed this:
Boston Globe: Protester arrested outside Israeli's speech
Police had beefed up patrols at the event after a posting on an Internet site called for a citizen's arrest of Shlomo.
The arrested man, whom police later identified as Peter Lowney, was charged with trespassing, assault and battery on a police officer, and resisting arrest, said Lieutenant Detective Joe O'Leary. ''We're not going to let our officer get pushed like that," he said.
The Internet posting also prompted police to use metal detectors to screen many of the roughly 250 people who showed up for an event entitled ''After Gaza: Looking Ahead," said Rabbi Howard Jaffe of Temple Isaiah. The event also featured Charles Radin of the Globe staff, who recently returned from three years of reporting in the Middle East, and Jeff Robbins, former US representative to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
Jaffe said he learned of the Internet posting on Friday, when State Police brought it to his attention. ''It talked about making a citizen's arrest of Meir Shlomo and bringing him before the Palestinian people," he said.
A protester who gave his name as David Rolde, of Weston, said his colleague refused a police request for protesters to move to the opposite side of the street.
Poor Charlie Radin. He was the voice from the "Left" for the evening (obviously -- he's from the Globe, after all) and couldn't resist a couple of Vietnam references (message to MSM: find a new paradigm), and one 'just think, if Clinton hadn't overreached, maybe things would have turned out different for Gore in Florida.' It's not even Halloween yet and he was already trying to scare us! When I was driving out, there was a woman holding a hand-painted sign saying "IS CHARLIE RADIN A CLOSET ZIONIST?" (Hence the name of this post) Ouch. The things some people say. I mean that's really low. See Charlie, you just can't be far enough to the left for some people.
I have audio of the entire evening (I can't believe I forgot my camera), but it was overall fairly pedestrian. Charlie Radin told a couple of interesting anecdotes. One such was during the discussion of the use of Israel and the Palestinians as an all-purpose Arab excuse. Radin described being in the home of a Saudi Sheik who, after ensuring that neither he nor any member of his family had any Jewish blood, explained that it was really the Jews that were keeping the Muslims and the Christians apart, and that this was part of Jewish world plans -- something completely apart from anything having to do with Israel, and not at all a fringe belief in his experience. Nazi stuff.
Shlomo's opening speech didn't even mention the disengagement but was instead his boiler-plate on how awesome Israel is. He didn't discuss the disengagement at all until the Q&A.
Only one moonbat managed to filibuster the mic at all (the guy wearing a yarlumka in the top picture on this page, although he wasn't wearing it that night). They were mostly outside.
The bottom line from both the left and the right inside the hall that night is that no one knows quite what's next, but that the ball is more or less in the Palestinians' court, but that's certainly not the view, I think, from the Left outside the hall, either in close proximity or world-wide.
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Solomon,
Did you see this?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051025/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians
No, but I do wonder, given that it's an AP report, what the emphasis of Wolfensohn's remarks really were.