Another Musing from Phyllis Chesler
Celebrating and Protesting Israel’s Birth: From Jerusalem to the Sidewalks of New York
(Written with the help of Fern Sidman)
As a child, my mother took me to the Radio City Music Hall to see the dazzling, long-limbed Rockettes dance. For decades, the Music Hall symbolized glitzy entertainment, New York style. Radio City was also where I went when I was interviewed on NBC and when I dined at the Big Band-era Rainbow Room, a 65th floor precursor to and survivor of the World Trade Center’s Windows on the World. The Rainbow Room also has windows that look out onto the immediate world.
On Wednesday evening, May 7th, Jews around the world celebrated the miraculous 60th anniversary of the birth of Israel as a modern state. In New York City, an historic extravaganza took place at Radio City Music Hall. An attempt to Palestinianize this Art Deco palace also took place. It failed, it did not interrupt the considerable joy within but still, the Haters are everywhere, there is no event they do not picket.
Wherever one turns, one finds the same monotonous anti-Israeli, anti-American, and pro-Palestinian propaganda. It has invaded our air waves, our campuses, and the entire global internet. Complex realities and wrenching truths have been reduced to lying, paranoid hate speech which wraps itself in the righteous garments of “oppression” and “liberation.” On the march, its face is raging and hateful.
In Israel, its Arab citizens attended a mass rally and march to mark the 60th anniversary of “the Naqba” (Catastrophe). According to Ynet, Violence flared up when the Palestinian organizers failed to control their own demonstrators who repeatedly clashed with Israeli police and civilians. Five Israeli police were injured. A group of peaceful, young Israeli members who belong to the volunteer group,”If You Will,” raised an Israeli flag at a picnic-in their own country, as they celebrated their Independence. The Arab demonstrators demanded that they lower the flag. Arguments broke out. Violence ensued.
9 May, 2008 at 11:01 pm
“In Israel, its Arab citizens attended a mass rally and march to mark the 60th anniversary of “the Naqba” (Catastrophe)”.
Some catastrophe-these idiots live better in Israel than they could ever hope to do in the beloved ummah. We should all be visited by such a catastrophe.