UPDATE: Well, it is happening, but maybe not quite as expected. For some participants, who are members of the older or traditional Israeli elite, this was a “baptism” in activism. Haaretz reported here that the announcers were heckled, disrupted — and then, probably for the first time, they got no support from the police: “Leading left-wing cultural leaders, including several Israel Prize laureates, were verbally accosted on Thursday during a rally in support of an independent Palestinian state. The rally, taking place outside Tel Aviv’s Independence Hall, was reportedly disrupted by right-wing activists equipped with bullhorns, who called out: ‘leftist professors, it will all blow up in your face’, ‘Kahane was right’ [?], and ‘traitors’. Rally organizers and participants, who included 17 Israel Prize laureates, said present police forces did not separate rally goers from objectors, as they usually do during right-wing events. The speech by Israel Prize winning actress Hanna Maron was disrupted several times by right-wing counter-protesters, who yelled out ‘fifth column’. Disruptions reportedly continued even after attempts by organizers to quell the anti-rally sentiment by mentioning Maron lost her leg during a 1970 terror attack on an El-Al flight”…
The “police forces did not separate rally goers from objectors” …
YNet reported that some of the right-wing counter-protesters even called the demonstrators “Jewish Nazis” — and “some even cried ‘You forgot about the children who were slaughtered in Itamar’.” This is reported here.
The YNet report added that “The organizers of the event are a number of artists and academicians who have recently published petitions warning of the rise of ‘fascism’ in the Israeli government”.
The Jerusalem Post later reported here that the right-wing crowd nearly drowned out the people making the Declaration of Independence from Occupation, and hurled “insults”, as “shoving matches broke out”. The JPost report said that “The demonstration had a largely volatile edge to it, but was eventually dispersed shortly after 3 p.m. without any injuries or arrests made”.
These Israelis who stood behind the Declaration of Independence against the Occupation took a public stand today — and they stood up for it (so far, at least).
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Here is what we posted earlier:
(1) In just over an hour, it is scheduled to happen … in the middle of the Passover week vacation and celebrations in Israel, a group of eminent Israelis from the mainstream of public life in the country are going to issue a call from Tel Aviv declaring the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land (and lives) that began with the June 1967 war.
On Thursday, the right-wing [meaning, in the Israeli political spectrum, pro-occupation and pro-settlement] Israel National News reported here that “Radical left professors and others are accused of siding with the enemy in planning a ceremony at which they will ‘declare’ a Palestinian state”.
Not exactly…
Haaretz reported Wednesday here that “Dozens of public figures will stage a protest on Thursday at 2 p.m. in front of Independence Hall on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard, where David Ben-Gurion declared Israel’s statehood in May of 1948″ …
The people behind this Declaration are from the traditional elite of Israel…
