Occupy AIPAC

Pennsylvania Plaza in Washington, DC was a busy place on Monday, March 5, as Vietnamese, Orthodox Jews, CodePink, the Falun Gong, Jews for Jesus and one man who wanted to Bomb Iran all competed for space in hopes of catching President Obama's eye, or at least that of the many photographers, none of whom looked like they were from the press.

CodePink had planned its demonstration for the time that President Obama was meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. By the time they arrived around 12:30, the US Park Police was closing off the plaza so that the Israeli delegation could walk across the street from Blair House to the White House without seeing any protestors. All of the demonstrators were shuffled to the northeast section of Lafayette Park for the duration of the meeting.

Organized in 2003 to oppose the invasion of Iraq, the women’s peace group shifted its focus to Palestine as the Iraq war wound down. Among other protests against Israeli policy toward Palestine, it has organized several demonstrations outside the annual meeting of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, which calls itself "America’s leading pro-Israel lobby." Netanyahu came to the US to address AIPAC, hence the timing of the meeting with President Obama.

This year’s protest stretched over the entire duration of the AIPAC conference and included an all day conference, two days of demonstrations, a few zap actions, a press conference, newspaper ads and some lobbying. CodePink’s efforts were augmented by those of several other groups, especially the two DC Occupations, who helped with the many props and gave this year’s protest its name – Occupy AIPAC.

That term led to some amusing chants as demonstrators tried to distinguish good occupations from bad ones: "Occupy Wall Street, not Palestine" and "Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Occupation has got to go." (Mayors and police chiefs would agree with that sentiment).

While the President probably didn’t see them at the White House, the demonstrators did catch the President’s motorcade as it exited from the DC convention center after his speech on Sunday. Clustered on three street corners behind yellow tape, cop cars, and a dozen DC police, a couple hundred protestors held up signs saying "NO WAR ON IRAN" and "STOP FUNDING ISRAELI TERROR" as the motorcade sped by.

Once the President left, demonstrators congregated on the sidewalk in front of the convention center, where they spent several hours loudly chanting, singing, dancing, making speeches and waving catchy signs. A line of DC police kept anyone without an AIPAC badge from getting within ten feet of the entrance to the building.

The protestors returned the following evening while AIPAC’s gala was going on. This time they also demonstrated across the street so convention-goers could see their signs from the upper floors of the building. Motorists were stopped as banner-bearers crossed and recrossed the street, chased by police who didn’t want them to block traffic.

At all of these demonstrations a small group of orthodox Jewish men wearing traditional black hats and side curls put up their posters saying that "Judaism Rejects Zionism and the ‘State’ of Israel" (among other things). Originally founded in Jerusalem by anti-Zionist Jews, the offshoot NKUSA is based in upstate New York, with three synagogues in Brooklyn. (NK stands for Neturei-Karta; for more, you’ll have see its webpage). They regularly come to DC to participate in demonstrations against Israel, and proudly fly the Palestinian flag.

Veterans for Peace joined with CodePink to hold a press conference before going to Lafayette Park on Monday. Two retired military officers, Army Col. Ann Wright and Navy Commander Leah Bolger, expressed concern that public opinion is being manipulated and mobilized to support an attack on Iran, as it was before the invasion of Iraq.

CodePink is very skilled at getting its people inside places they aren’t supposed to go. More than once during the conference, protestors managed to disrupt AIPAC speakers and workshops before getting tossed out. They unfurled a banner saying "Don’t Bomb Iran" while Senator Carl Levin was speaking and "mic checked" during a presentation by Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Outside, CodePinkers and others paraded in cardboard boxes made up to represent illegal settlements, paper mache heads of Obama and Netanyahu, and a costume of Hillary Clinton as "Lady MacDeath." They carried numerous puppets and signs and stopped people at homemade checkpoints while carrying cutouts of machine guns. Here, Muslims and Jews were truly working together.

News and Issues, Issues, Politics, Senior Women Web, Articles, Jo Freeman, Authors

Occupy AIPAC

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