Almoukdad wants to see "this immoral, illegal occupation" end, but he believes "Americans are really busy right now worrying about the economy", and have also been overwhelmed by the recent election, "which cost 5 billion dollars while people are hungry all over the world."
Although Almoukdad thinks the American public does know about the siege, a Press TV news report found that much of the public is actually unaware of the extremity of the crisis going on. However, some do know. L.A. Jews for Peace was among the groups at the Dec. 4th rally protesting the siege of Gaza. One of its members, B.J. Jordan, said "we all abhor terrorism, but we need to stop these discriminatory, hostile attacks" against Palestinians. She is a fan of the writings of anthropologist Jeff Halper, Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. However, she says "many Jews are afraid to speak up because everybody slaps them down."On the opposite side of Wilshire, facing the Israeli Consulate, a smaller counter-demonstration of supporters of Israel's policies held up flags and signs.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33069042@N07/3085860436/
One of a handful of counter-demonstrators who stuck it out until the initiating protest had left, Shai Abi, a recent UCLA graduate in History and Communications, brought a sign which said: "Enough – Heaven ran out of 72 virgins".Abi said he always comes out for events like these and believes "the Israeli government is doing everything it can." His view of a solution for the Middle East is: "When the Arabs love their children more than they hate us there’ll be peace." His female friend told him "that’s beautiful." Abi claimed "the Palestinian cause is a mask", since it brings in money for groups like Hamas from "rich sheiks"; though he simultaneously argued that "Palestinians have no support from other Arab states."
He didn’t want to talk much about Israel’s siege of Gaza, though he finally said he was "not in favor of any siege because a siege without purpose has no meaning". Abi was more intent on relaying that "Palestinians are the most educated Arabs in the region yet their schoolbooks teach them: ‘kill one Zionist plus five Americans, and how many do you get?’". A couple of his peers backed up his claim that Palestinians teach their children to add up to six with this example.
Allegations that Palestinian textbooks incite students to hate Israel have been made by those as high up as Israel’s former Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. A main voice critical of content in those schoolbooks is the Center_for_Monitoring_the_Impact_of_Peace
But according to a 2004 overview published by the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education Curriculum Development Center, the European Union, Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (in a report for the U.S. Congress), and various studies by academics at George Washington University, Hebrew University, and University of Rostock do not find these allegations to be true of new Palestinian Authority textbooks.
Another 2004 report, this time by CNN, gave a more complex overview of the cultural bias in both Israeli and Palestinian textbooks – but still didn’t report any instances of arithmetic instruction that involved indoctrination to murder.Speaking of indoctrination, a "news" story on the Dec. 4th protest against the siege of Gaza is up on a site called Democast. Readers of that piece would be pretty clear that the theme of the pro-Israel counter-demonstration was opposition to terrorism, but they’d have to take the anonymous author’s word for it that the rally organized by ANSWER and Al-Awda called for a "phased-destruction of Israel", that it was "culturally-insensitive", and that it consisted of "an unholy alliance of Islamist and Far-Left groups," since the reporter provided not one photo or video of the main protest, no quotes from any of the protesters against the siege, and no information as to why the protest at the consulate was actually called, except for speculation by the counter-protesters.
Incidentally, one of the counter-demonstrators chosen by the reporter for the edited-down video called himself a Christian, urged the nuking of Iran, and claimed that "God says ‘take ‘em out’". (The author’s byline does not appear with the piece, but an interviewer on the counter-demo side of the street on Dec. 4th told me he was Scott Jenkins from Democast.)
Interestingly, the full page of reportage on Democast padded its visuals on the counter-demonstration with a photo of a bustling crowd of pro-Israel demonstrators which a reader would probably assume is from the Dec. 4th, 2008 counter-protest in L.A.. However, since both it and a borrowed photo of the late Daniel J. Kliman appeared on the San Francisco Voice for Israel site in late Nov. 2008, it is clear that the photo in Democast’s piece on the L.A. event is from a different protest altogether – one that took place, in fact, on July 13th, 2006.
http://www.zombietime.com/israeli_consulate_protest_july_13_2006/P1010368.jPG Which explains why it doesn’t look anything like my photo of the 16 or so counter-demonstrators on Thurs.:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33069042@N07/3085860432/
Another reason it doesn’t look anything like the counter-protest outside the Israeli Consulate in L.A. is that it was in San Francisco -- as this YouTube video of both the strong, vocal protest against Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, and the pro-Israel counter-protest shows.
Perhaps Zombietime.com would not mind their photo being used to illustrate the Democast piece. Zombietime’s most recent – and anonymous – report at our time of publication was a photo essay on the Nov. 28th Iraq Veterans Against the War street action in San Francisco. It called IVAW members "anti-American" and alleged they were not really veterans, then claimed that the Iraq War is over.
http://www.zombietime.com/operation_first_casualty/
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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