Democracy Now Interview with Jewish Heckler against Netanyahu

In my last blog post, I discussed Mike’s article arguing that the real reason why Jackie Walker has been accused of anti-Semitism again, is not because she is a Jew-hater, but because she is an anti-Zionist Jew, and therefore represented a threat to the Israel lobby and the organisation that set up the Holocaust Memorial Day training event, the Jewish Labour Movement. This defines itself as a Zionist socialist movement, and boasts about its affiliation to the main Zionist organisations.

Mike has received a number of very supportive comments from his Jewish and non-Jewish readers. They also make clear the distinction between Judaism and Zionism. One of those supporting Mike is a gentleman, who has completed an MA in Holocaust Studies, and lost 14 members of his family in the Shoah.

I’ve blogged several times about the opposition to Israel and its persecution of the Palestinians by Jews and liberal Israelis, and the immense courage these people show as they are not only reviled as anti-Semites, but also as ‘self-hating’, and ‘not real Jews’. In a poll conducted a few years ago, a majority of Israelis responded that they believed that Israelis who sided with the Palestinians should be stripped of their civil rights.

In this interview from Democracy Now, the news programme’s anchor, Amy Goodson, talks to Rae Abileah, a young American Jewish woman, who was tackled and physically assaulted when she heckled Binyamin Netanyahu when he made a speech to Congress four years ago in 2012. Abileah is a member of Code Pink, and the daughter of an Israeli father. She states that she travelled to Israel, and saw for herself the oppression of the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including the Jews-only roads. She returned to America determined to speak out against it.

Netanyahu was given 29 standing ovations when he spoke to Congress, four more than Barack Obama. Abileah heckled him, shouting demands to end the occupation and persecution. She was wrestled to the ground by members of AIPAC, the American Israel lobbying organisation. This was so violent, that she had to be taken to a hospital to be treated for a shoulder and neck injury.

In the interview she not only discusses the incident, and her motivation in her personal experience of the persecution of the Palestinians, but also about the reluctance to speak out against it in many Jewish communities. She says that there is a ‘culture of fear’ that prevents many Jews from doing as she does. She states that Jews must get beyond the religious narrative, which supports Israel. This is not because she herself is an atheist or anti-religious. She says that she believes that Israel and its policies violate the fundamental tenets of Judaism as written in its sacred texts, and particularly Israel’s mission of tekunah olam, healing the world.

The description of the clip put up by the channel’s owner on YouTube, Ben Silverstein, states

Rae Abileah, a 28-year old Jewish daughter of an Israeli, is a member of Code Pink, a pacifist organization. She told Ynet that she had disrupted another speech by Netanyahu at the Jewish Federations General Assembly in New Orleans in November.

“We are a young generation of Jews who don’t intend to sit by in silence and allow prime ministers who commit crimes against humanity speak,” she said. “As far as we’re concerned he can speak at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.”

Abileah says she used a card procured by a friend to sneak into the House of Representatives. “When Netanyahu began to speak about Israel and democracy a got up to speak against its anti-democratic operations,” she said.

“I yelled, ‘Stop the occupation, stop Israeli war crimes’ and I called out for equal rights for Palestinians.”

Abileah claims that immediately after her protest she was attacked by activists belonging to the Jewish lobby.

“They assaulted me and I fell on the floor. The activists strangled me and beat me. Then I was dragged out by police who arrested me,” she recounted. She claims she sustained injuries to the neck and shoulders which required hospitalization.

After she was released from the hospital she was detained for a few hours by police.

Abileah says she visited Gaza a year ago and witnessed the destruction caused by Operation Cast Lead, afterwards deciding to devote her life to countering “Israel’s war crimes”.

Palestinians face home demolitions leaving tens of thousands homeless. Checkpoints within the West Bank humiliate Palestinians who have to wait for hours. They are not for “security” and are placed between Palestinian cities.

The apartheid wall is a giant concrete wall that dwarfs the Berlin Wall. The wal is not on the border, but 90% of it runs inside the West Bank, separating villages, and destroying homes and Palestinian farmland in the way of its construction

650,000 illegal Israeli settlers live in illegal settlements(colonies) on Palestinian land, destroying Palestinian homes and leaving innocent families and children homeless.
4.7 million Palestinians are classified by the U.N as refugees that were displaced from their homes by Israel.
The Archbishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela as well as other South African leaders have reported that the Israeli apartheid is worse than in South Africa.

“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians” – Nelson Mandela

Please spread the movement!!!!!!! It worked for South Africa, and it will work to free Palestine from Israeli apartheid.

Tags: AIPAC, Amy Goodson, anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, Apartheid, Barack Obama, Ben Silverstein, Binyamin Netanyahu, Civil Rights, Code Pink, Congress, Desmond Tutu, Gaza, Holocaust, Holocaust Memorial Day, Holocaust Studies, International Criminal Court, Israel Lobby, Jackie Walker, Jewish Labour Movement, Nelson Mandela, Occupied Territories, Palestinians, Rae Abileah, The Hague, Vox Political, West Bank, Zionism