Link: Jews protest Israeli action in S.F..
A few hundred protesters chanted, beat drums and waved signs and flags Monday outside the Israeli Consulate during a rally organized by local Jewish groups to decry Israel's military actions in Lebanon and Gaza.
Police arrested 17 people who had linked arms and blocked Montgomery Street, choking off Financial District traffic at midday. The protesters were cited for traffic violations and released later in the day.
Oakland-based Jewish Voice for Peace helped organize the rally, along with Jews for a Free Palestine and the Break the Silence Mural and Arts Project. JVP director Mitchell Plitnick said "Israel bears an enormous amount of responsibility for escalation in Gaza and Lebanon."
...Ceanna Stephens, 29, of Oakland — among those arrested — issued a statement...saying "We do not condone any sort of violence, whether it comes from Hezbollah or the state of Israel.
"Israel's reaction to current events has been unbelievably cruel, and has caused intense suffering and death among many Palestinian and Lebanese civilians who have done nothing wrong," she said.
This Jew consider the others as fools and useless idiots and hope Hezbollah will be wiped out before a cease-fire... Lebanese didn't deal with it? Then they are fools and as guilty as Hezbollah...
Your whinming doesn't cut it at all... As usual arabs start and then whine when they have to pay the piper!
Posted by: Patricia | July 18, 2006 at 06:21 AM
Patricia, I think you need to learn to give a few seconds (at least) to seeing the world from the point of view of other people.
You may perhaps have heard of the Vietnam War (1956-1975). Note the dates. They are very far apart (19 years). During that time, the US government was spending about 1-3% of total US GDP trying to destroy a guerrilla movement in South Vietnam, which had about 4 times the population of Lebanon at the time. This was in an era when US officials were incomparably superior in skill, dedication, professionalism, and courage to those of today. With such serious commitment, we lost the Vietnam War. Over two million Vietnamese died in that war, so it can't be said we were "excessively squeamish" about collateral damage.
Incidentally, we had very good local allies in that war: the urban professional class of Vietnamese were, and are, dedicated, idealistic, superbly trained, and extremely knowledgable, and they loathed Communism.
The Israeli authorities occupied South Lebanon continuously between 1982-2000, with a 4-year period of constant intervention before that. Initially they fought Amal, which split into Amal and Hizbullah. Their intervention caused the deaths of at least 2% of the Lebanese population, without consequentially diminishing Hizbullah's elaborate social and logistical structure.
For this reason, it is unreasonable to imagine Hizbullah would be liquidated by this invasion. In the unlikely event that it was, it would be replaced by a new, adapted entity instead. Moreover, Hizbullah is widely perceived by many Lebanese (not all!) as being THEIR CHAMPION, the one entity capable of standing up to Israel.
From a sober, purely prudential assessment of Israel's own strategic parameters, I regard this operation as an unmitigated disaster, a purely political meltdown reflecting an extremely dangerous effort by Olmert to steal a march on rival political divisions within the Israeli polity. In plain English, Olmert's government is trying to wreck oppositional politics in the Knesset, much the way Bush is attempting to instigate permanent neoconservative mastery over the US government.
Posted by: James R MacLean | July 18, 2006 at 10:29 AM
I find it odd that the only coverage of anti-Israel or just anti-war protests is what I've seen on the BBC about the anti-Israel protests, which confuses the issue of Israel with Israeli actions in Lebanon. More comments on my blog http://arab-media.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Courtney | July 18, 2006 at 10:31 AM