The first big pro-Israel counter demonstration was on Sunday in Los Angeles, home to large Israeli and Jewish populations. More are planned in the coming days. by Miriam Jordan, Reporting from Los Angeles New York Times, May 3, 2024 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/03/us/college-protests-encampments-israel.html
At a rally at the University of California, Los Angeles, last Sunday, Elan Carr, the leader of an Israeli diaspora group, told more than 1,000 demonstrators that Jewish mobilization at universities was beginning. “We will take back our streets. We will take back our campuses from Columbia University to U.C.L.A. and everywhere in between,” Mr. Carr, chief executive of the group, the Israeli American Council, told the crowd. The U.S. and Israeli national anthems were sung, and there were prayers, speeches by Jewish leaders and Israeli pop songs. But close to the rally, hundreds of pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian protesters faced off, shouting insults and threats. Fights broke out after a barrier that the university had erected to separate the two sides was breached. It was a volatile start to what would become one of the most violent stretches of campus unrest. Days later, scores of counter demonstrators stormed the pro-Palestinian encampment at U.C.L.A. and clashed late Tuesday night into early Wednesday morning. In an interview, Mr. Carr said the Israeli American Council, which describes itself as a nonpartisan group representing Israelis and Israeli Americans, did not condone the violence. But the nonprofit organization’s plans to stage more counter-protests on or near other college campuses has raised the prospect of further confrontations between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian factions. “The fear I have is that this is a combustible situation aggravated by agitators who seem intent on escalating the level of violence against the other side,” said David Myers, a U.C.L.A. professor of Jewish history who, with colleagues, tried to act as a buffer between the two sides. “This could spread like a contagion.” . . . Jews have joined the pro-Palestinian protests in many places. But many Jewish students have reported feeling unsafe amid the protests and facing harassment. Mr. Carr says his organization, in partnership with other Jewish groups, is responding to that climate of fear. The time had come, he said, to shift from “just condemning” the pro-Palestinian demonstrations to “being proactive and bringing real support to Jewish students and faculty who are really suffering and feeling abandoned.” He said that the Israeli American Council was “leading, or integrally involved in, multiple events” across cities in coming days, some of them planned to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorated in Israel on May 5. A post on the organization’s Facebook page listed rallies in Austin, Las Vegas and New York, among more than a dozen places. . . . The I.A.C. started as a small grass-roots effort in the [San Fernando] Valley in 2007 and grew rapidly after it received multimillion-dollar gifts from the casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who died in 2021, and his Israeli-born wife, Miriam Adelson. The organization’s income was $18.6 million in 2022, up from $5.5 million in 2013 and about $500,000 in 2010. It now has chapters in 21 cities, from Atlanta to Las Vegas. The I.A.C. supports a range of programs for Israeli Americans in Los Angeles and elsewhere, including youth leadership training for pro-Israel advocacy and activities to strengthens participants’ Jewish identity and connection to Israel. On Wednesday, individual donations from across the United States poured in. A small window that popped up in the corner of the I.A.C. website identified the donors by their first name, the amount they gave and where they lived. . . . A former prosecutor in Los Angeles and a U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq, Mr. Carr was the special envoy to combat antisemitism during the Trump administration. He was born in the United States to Israeli parents, and he became I.A.C.’s chief executive in October, just days before the Hamas attack. . . . -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#30213): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/30213 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/105903977/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: marxmail+ow...@groups.io Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [arch...@mail-archive.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
