Norman Finkelstein reached his goal yesterday
afternoon, a quorum of at least 100 people to protest the latest Gaza massacre
outside the Israeli consulate in midtown Manhattan.
On Monday Finkelstein put a call for civil
disobedience on his website, announcing his intention to get arrested while
demonstrating at Israel’s mission to the UN. “However, I don’t believe in
individual acts of martyrdom,” he wrote. “It’s got to be a collective action.
If one hundred people either sign up to get arrested or to be there in
solidarity, I’ll be there too.”
Although Finkelstein had not quite collected that
many names as of Tuesday morning, he said he would go ahead head anyway:
“Politics is not just about quantity, it’s also about
quality.
We don’t know each other but
we are united by a common conviction:
The terror bombing and
blockade of Gaza must end now!”
In the event, more than one hundred people appeared
to be on hand, as well as dozens of police. At half-past noon a vanguard of
demonstrators lay in the crosswalk on Second Avenue, blocking southbound
traffic for several minutes, until officers began making arrests. Finkenstein
was adamant that the entire intersection not be blocked. Around 25 people were
cuffed and loaded into paddy wagons, including Finkelstein and Brooklyn College
professor Corey Robin.
As those in the street were rounded up, others
chanted and documented the arrests. Someone read from a pocket copy of the
United States’ founding documents; weirdly, the one phrase I heard her say distinctly
was “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
Familiar refrains were shouted—“Not another nickel, not another dime…”
“Occupation’s got to go”—but one in particular stood out, given the nature of
Operation Protective Edge: “Hey, Bibi, whaddaya say, / How many kids did you
kill today?”
No comments:
Post a Comment