Revolution #152, January 11, 2009
Flash:
Watch interview with Alan Goodman
outside the Holocaust Museum
At 12 noon Sunday, January 4, Alan Goodman and Alice Woodward, correspondents for Revolution newspaper, displayed a 20-foot banner directly in front of the Museum of Jewish Heritage / Holocaust Museum at 36 Battery Place in Manhattan that read: “After the Holocaust, the worst thing that has happened to Jewish people is the state of Israel.”
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| Photo: Alex Rud |
Within fifteen minutes, the NYPD, along with the New York City Parks police, surrounded the banner and the people holding it with as many as 28 police cars with flashing lights. Citations were issued by the Parks police for “displaying a banner criticizing Israel” with “no permit.” A court date on these “charges,” which carry a fine of up to $1000, is set for Jan 21. After the citation was issued an intense standoff with police continued for two more hours. Squad cars with flashing lights closed the intersection near the museum, and police placed barricades in front of the banner and the people holding it, held out handcuffs, and repeatedly threatened to arrest those holding the banner if they wouldn’t move (which they would not). A photographer from the New York Post documented the standoff, and Alan Goodman was interviewed in the midst of the whole scene by phone by New York City’s WINS news radio, CNN, and Michael Slate of KPFK’s “Beneath the Surface.” After two hours, both the Parks Police and NYPD abruptly evacuated all their squad cars from the scene, and the banner continued to be displayed for a half hour after they left.
Those attending the Holocaust Museum in the midst of this were divided between people who were hostile to the banner—some of whom were willing to argue, if only for a minute—alongside other visitors who expressed angst and despair at the treatment of Palestinians but who argued that the horrors in Gaza were not inherent in the nature of Israel and its history. A number of tourists from outside the U.S. were more open to the position of the banner; one couple visiting from Australia stood and talked with those holding the banner for fifteen minutes during the siege-like situation. Other visitors to the museum expressed what they felt was basic agreement with the banner, but when struggled with over their role in making it the case that never again must the Holocaust to be invoked to justify Israel’s crimes, things sharpened up and what tended to emerge was great confusion and denial about the basic nature of the state of Israel, especially Israel’s origins in imperialist sponsorship and Israel’s foundation on the blood and bones of ethnic cleansing. People were unaware of the basic facts documenting this history that are in recent articles in Revolution (available at revcom.us). And there were sharp exchanges over the validity of the analogy between what the Nazis did to the Jews, and what the state of Israel is doing to the Palestinians—including stark and undeniable similarities between how the Jews in places like Poland were forced into concentrated zones in urban areas, and subjected to ongoing violence, and demonized, and the similar conditions the people of Gaza have been subjected to.
These exchanges highlighted the need for much more, sharp, intervention, education and struggle around the foundational, moral bankruptcy of Israel as envisioned and established by its founders, and as it exists today. In the highly charged situation provoked by Israel’s escalating massacre of the Palestinian people in Gaza, there are important openings for revolutionary truths to break through.
Read “Invoking the Holocaust to Silence Criticism of Israel’s Crimes? NEVER AGAIN!”.
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