The degree of polarization achieved within the Jewish community by the topic of Israel was witnessed last weekend in San Francisco, when organizations of differing perspectives, peace activists from the Bay Area Women in Black and Jewish Voice for Peace, confronted members of StandWithUs/SF Voice for Israel. The peace activists were holding a silent vigil outside the main entrance to the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation while it was celebrating an annual event, “Israel in the Gardens.” The StandWithUs group lined the street.
Here is a video of the confrontation:
Just in case the comments from the StandWithUs group cannot be read off the video, here is a sample:
“Nazi, Nazi, Nazi!” – this done as a group chant
“You’re all being identified, every last one of you…we will find out where you live. We’re going to make your lives difficult..we will disrupt your families…”, all on above video.
“Sink the flotilla–and you on it!”
“Terrorists, terrorists, terrorists.”
One man yelled (to someone who may have looked heat exhausted) “I hope you stroke out, old man!”
“Ugly bitches” said to older women.
“You’re not a Jew! you gave up your Jewishness!”
“Witches in black! Bitches in black!” (hard to tell which one it was, or whether they alternated the chant)
“You fucking…!”
“Bin Laden loves you! you support terrorism!”
“Is there a coroner in the house? Women in Black are dead!”
“Is there a doctor in the house? Women in Black are sick!”
“End the occupation of our sidewalk.”
“Remember 9/11, they were dancing in the streets.”
“Asshole!”
“Anti-Semite!”
“Bigot!”
“Sharmuta!” this was chanted for a while (means “slut” or “whore” in Arabic and which was particularly shocking for Arabic speakers to hear)
“Commit suicide!”
“Anti-women, anti-gay, why support Hamas today!”
They were also lesbian-baiting, even though they were chanting “Anti-women, anti-gay, why support Hamas today?” One guy yelled “lesbian” at me and my friend (correctly assessing our sexual identity) and maybe the same guy yelled at someone else, “When’s the last time you dated a man?”
Information about recent encounters with StandWithUs can be read at Muzzlewatch, a subsidiary of Jewish Voice for Peace, which also covered the weekend confrontation.
Watching these two groups interact, it is evident that the peace activists are parading quietly and reserved, apparently not responding to the jeers, while the pro-Israel StandWithUs group are highly aroused, hostile, and even threatening, at least verbally.
Watching these two groups, I wondered: what makes a Jewish person join one side as opposed to the other? Immediately the thought came, one side, the peace activists, must be Judaic, while the other, the pro-Israel group, must be Zionist. Other contrasts I thought of were the usual political ones, liberal-conservative, Democrat-Republican, but how can one know? A search for studies of personality trait differences among Jews that might affect their feelings toward Israel came up empty. A 2007 study claimed a generational factor, that attachment to Israel was declining among younger Jews, but that finding was contradicted the next year by another study that found no such decline. Besides, a look at the participants in the SF confrontation video clearly showed persons of all ages on both sides.
So what’s the deal?
I returned to Muzzlewatch report on the SF confrontation and found this, written by Cecile Sarasky:
You will see a lot of Jews protesting Israel’s actions silently, and look at the response. It’s not considered, it’s fearful and angry and hateful. There are numerous threats against the demonstrators. There is the Animal Farm scream that is in my headline, repeated and repeated. As Max Blumenthal says, American Zionism is turning into a tea party. This is exactly like the screaming I noticed at our silent demo outside the Waldorf IDF fundraiser back in March. The fervent lobby has lost its solid rank and file. It is left with the fringe.
So it was a mainstream versus fringe confrontation. Simple enough.