Monday, October 8, 2007

Hecklers Abuse Genocide Survivors, October 7, 2007


This past Sunday, I went down to the plaza outside Boston City Hall to attend a rally protesting the targeting of the Fur, Zaghawa, and Massaleit ethnic groups by the Sudanese military and Janjaweed militias that receive weapons from the Sudanese government and with whom they often coordinate attacks. Though the United Nations has yet to do so, this human rights disaster, which has taken between 200,000 and 450,000 lives depending on who is doing the counting, is recognized by the United States and other governments and NGOs as genocide,.

The rally, organized by a coalition of groups including Dream for Darfur and Save Darfur was one of those few instances of an event that made my normally cynical self feel hope for humanity. The main part of the rally included speakers representing genocide survivors ranging from a 95 year old Armenian man, to Rosian Zerner, (a Holocaust survivor whom I have mentioned elsewhere), to a survivor of the Khmer Rouge's Killing Fields, to a young Bosnian Muslim survivor of the Srebrenica massacre, to a Tutsi survivor of the Rwandan genocide, to a Darfurian refugee currently attending Brandeis University, each passing a torch to one another and finally lighting an eternal flame for Darfur to bring to the 2008 Chinese Olympics to protest the People's Republic's financial, diplomatic and military backing of the Sudanese government.

However, every one of the speakers had to endure heckling from a tiny group of counter-protesters on the fringe of the rally. This group was identified by the
Boston Globe representing Boston Anti-Zionist Action and the Troops Out Now Coalition. These hecklers spouted verbal abuse at the survivors regardless of the survivors' native lands, skin colors, mother tongue, or religious belief. A quick check of the Boston Anti-Zionist Action blog shows them misrepresenting a protest that was calling for non-violent action as "a racist pro-war rally against Sudan organized by the [...] Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston." Leaving aside the general anti-Semitic tone of the slur, this sort of disinformation leads one to wonder how much else on their blog is false-- including which groups they are allied with. Does the Green party really want to be identified with people who abuse survivors of genocide? I suspect not-- but BAZA clearly wants to identify with the Green Party.

Needless to say, the six survivors on stage were unfazed, they had suffered and survived far worse than crypto-fascists posing as hippies, shouting slogans like "from Kabul to Jenin, victory to the mujahideen" and "From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free!"



BAZA protesting the Dream for Darfur rally on October 7, 2007. Note the anti-Semitic cartoon claiming Israel engineered the attacks on the World Trade Center.

At one point I noticed a young man standing to the right of the BAZA activists with a sign that read "<--- I'M w/ STUPID" and later a young woman walk up to them with a sign that read "Zionism is not murder." After signing a petition to the Chinese government and having my photo taken I approached the young woman and told her that the BAZA activists were likely a lost cause for persuasion.


Banner held by BAZA activists supporting the Sudanese government's atrocities in Sudan. Note the horrible grammar and the absurd claim that the United Nations is Zionist-- which it is only in the sense that it established a Jewish homeland in 1948.


One of the BAZA activists, a rotund bespectacled man with a sign reading "DIVEST FROM ISRAEL NOT SUDAN" yelled at me, "Stop denying the Zionist genocide!"

I responded with, "What Zionist genocide?"

"The one against the Palestinians!"

"For something to be a genocide, a people must be decimated. Where are the corpses?"

I started loudly talking to the young woman so that the BAZA activist could hear us, "Genocide is a clearly defined crime under international law and so there needs to be evidence before charges are brought."

The woman smiled and asked rhetorically "Oh, you mean that 'Genocide' is a word with an actual definition?"

"Yes!" so I turned to the BAZA activist, "So what evidence have you? Did you know that the GDP of the West Bank has increased since the building of the West Bank Wall? Did you listen to the speakers? Did it sound like their annual income increased while they were suffering?"

The BAZA people shut their traps, and I noted to my new friend, "These people live in an alternate reality where facts are trifles."

More seriously: falsely charging genocide is almost as trivializing of the crime as genocide denial and it abuses real victims of genocide. The BAZA activists could not accuse Israel of wrong-doing without compulsively attempting to denigrate every survivor who stepped to the podium, whether he or she was a European, an Asian, or an African, whether he or she was a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, or an Animist
.

15 comments:

MS said...

That is unfortunate to say the least. Support for Palestine is understandable, but for this group to heckle genocide survivors or to call their own situation a genocide merely undermines their own efforts. You have to wonder much the protesters knew about the people they were protesting against---or how much some of them knew about the company they were keeping.

Ian Thal said...

Mark,

I think that if one follows the link I provided to BAZA's website, one would see that they are a fringe group of ineffectual ideological extremists. They don't care about a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and so they don't think twice about misrepresenting history or current events-- after all, they are safely in America and so don't have to live with the consequences. It's a stance I call "morally unserious" and it's one I've noted with a similar (though better organized) group in Vermont:

http://ianthal.blogspot.com/2007/10/independence-paintings-in-burlington.html

Cooper said...

It seems like they are fairly uniformed and under-educated as well. I understand support for Palestine as well, but I do not understand ineffectual heckling or their own misguided interpretation of history.

i've never heard of them though so they can't be doing much in the way of propagandizing.

Ian Thal said...

Cooper-

BAZA is a local group (I never heard of them either, until the Boston Globe identified the group by name and I found their webpage) and they exist in their own hermetically sealed ideological bubble where they can't be bothered with facts. These fringe groups exist all over the place and on all over the ideological spectrum. Education will not help them because they are anti-intellectuals who will refuse to be educated. They are not even naîve people with good but misguided intentions-- the way they treated every single one of the survivors who came to the podium just showed they were filled with hate.

The plight of the Palestinians has gone this many years without just resolution because too often it was people who behave in this manner who had the loudest voices.

Anonymous said...

So disgusting.But thanks for attending the rally.In the coming days, you receive a link from my blog to this post :)

Clement Nyirenda's blog world

Gregg Jocoy said...

Hey Ian,

You are of course right in saying that there are fringe folks in every group, and some folks are motivated exclusively by hate, but I think it unfair to paint all we Greens with the same broad brush.

Here, for example, are three articles from gp.org, the national Green Party website, which address the genocide in Darfur:

http://www.gp.org/press/pr_07_19_04.html

http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2006_05_22.shtml

http://www.gp.org/greensweek/2004_04_23_gwk.shtml

On the local level Greens across the nation are doing what they can about the genocide. But, to blame us for the crisis, and to say that one state chapter or individuals represent the majority Green opinion is just unfair and inaccurate.

Gregg

Cleary Squared said...

Outstanding job, Ian! The points you made were very intelligent, informative, and thought-provokingly clear.

I linked your post and U-Hub's to my blog. My political acumen stretches all over the place, but after I read what happened, I was itching to respond. Thanks!

Ian Thal said...

Hi Gregg-

My intention was to communicate that I regarded BAZA's claim of association with the Green Party to be disingenious. I certainly cannot imagine the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party endorsing the actions of BAZA. BAZA is an extremist group that misrepresents itself as part of the legitimate progressive movement by claiming an association with the Greens. I stated that I did not believe the Green Party would want anything to do with them.

I am sorry if I did not present that observation clearly.

Speaking of BAZA-- one of their activists attempted to anonymously post a litany of anti-Semitic slogans to the comments section of this blog. I did something I very rarely do-- reject the comment.

Ian Thal said...

After looking at the splash that this entry has made in the blogosphere, it appears that the "rotund bespectacled man" who was heckling Holocaust survivors was David Rolde, party secretary for the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party.

I would like to believe that most Greens would not want to be represented by an individual who would verbally abuse a genocide survivor, and hope that they consider replacing him.

Sources:

Green Party loons heckle survivors of various genocides

"Anti-Zionists" Heckle Survivors at Darfur rally

Anonymous said...

It just somehow does not seem right that hate and lies qualifies as freedom of speech...

In addition to heckling genocide victims these type of people have been caught trying to influence youth in public schools using their positions as teachers...

There was a case in Canada not to long ago where it took a community years to get rid of a teacher who was trying to poison the young students'minds by teaching them that the Holocaust did not happen and this was merely propoganda by the zionists who secretly control the world etc.....

The case took years to wind its way through the canadian courts on the basis of racist funded legal arguments regarding constitutional freedom of speech etc.

We must never forget the people those genocide survivors represent...

Ian Thal said...

Gerry-

The Canadian school teacher you are speaking of was a very well known case, though his name is escaping me and I am not up to going through my reference materials at the moment, I would note that was was notable was not how many years it took to remove him from his teaching position, but how many years he was able to get away with teaching Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories without either parents or faculty objecting.

Ian

Ian Thal said...

1.) Once again, I have rejected an anonymous comment to this blog entry. The reason being that it made a false charge of a on-going genocide in Palestine. I have dealt with the reasons why this is a false charge throughout my critique of Bread & Puppet founder and artistic director, Peter Schumann.

2.) The school teacher to whom gerryplanetearth refers maybe James Keegstra who was stripped of his teaching certificate in 1984. He appealed the case and it was not until 1990 that his appeal was dismissed. He also served as mayor of the town of Eckville, Alberta, and was removed from office for his denial activities.

Anonymous said...

Many Green Rainbow Party members support BAZA and some of them were there protesting with BAZA.

Ian Thal said...

Karzi:

If one reads the comments to this article or its follow up one would see that by October 9th, I became aware that at least one person who holds leadership positions in both BAZA and the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party.

Ian Thal said...

Interestingly enough, David Rolde, the apparent lead heckler, came to protest a reading of my play. Funny thing is that my play, Total War, isn't about the Middle-East. I suppose the problem was that the playwright is Jewish.