Bullying comes of age

Bullying comes of age

By

Karen Nakamura

About 692 words

November 14, 2010 the quiet of the Sunday evening in Berkeley, California was shattered when Alexei Folger and Glen Hauer, members of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) were pepper-sprayed by Robin Dubner of San Francisco Voice for Israel/StandWithUs (SFVI/SWU).

This frightening incident was only one in a series of increasingly violent bullying tactics SFVI/SWU and other nationalistic pro-Israel groups are using against their political opposition in Israel, the United States and increasingly South America.

In the Bay Area, JVP offices were painted with offensive graffiti. The editor of Tikkun Magazine, Rabbi Michael Lerner had his home covered with threatening posters. SFVI/SWU and its sister organization, Facts & Logic About the Middle West or FLAME, are generally thought to have been behind intimidating advertisers of the Berkeley Daily Planet and the Coastal Post newspapers.

Internationally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insulted Vice-President Joseph Biden and the U.S. repeatedly over resumption of settlement building. President Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was harrassed in Israel during his son’s Bar Mitzvah for daring to approve of a two-state solution. There are plenty of other incidents such as trying to disrupt Pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Union Square in San Francisco.

The November 14 pepper spraying took placed in a Senior Center at a private meeting held of the increasingly powerful San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Voice for Peace group. The branch is both the founding and largest JVP branch. The mission of JVP is dedicated to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on democracy and full equality. Approximately 50 people were in attendance.

Speakers at the meeting included five young JVP members who had disrupted a New Orleans speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a week earlier. As the meeting proceeded, up to a dozen members of SFVI/SWU entered, espousing their political position while shoving cameras in attendees’ faces. FLAME member Dan Spitzer lambasted the speakers while defending Israel’s “right to defend itself.” Whistles were blown when the young speakers tried to begin again.

This frightened JVP members because in June, Women in Black members were filmed and harassed by the same group to the point JVP filed charges with the police. In this incident things were going far beyond the New Orleans encounter. One SFVI/SWU supporter shouted to JVP members:

“You’re all being identified, every last one of you… we will find out where you live. We’re going to make your lives difficult. We will disrupt your families…”

Two JVP members moved to protect attendees from being videotaped by non-violently trying to block Robin Dubner from taping attendees against their will. Wrapped in an Israeli flag, Dubner, an Oakland attorney, pepper-sprayed the two JVP members in the eyes and face.

One of them, Alexei Folger said: “I did not see it coming and all of the sudden there was gooey stuff all over my head and hand… my whole head felt like it was on fire.”

The second victim, Glen Hauer, a retired attorney and member of Congregation Sha’har Zahav in San Francisco, leads groups on healing from WWII and the Holocaust and regularly speaks to churches about anti-Semitism. He stated:

“When [Dubner] continued …filming people despite the facilitator and facility manager repeatedly telling her that she could not, I first asked her politely to please put away the video camera, then several times told her to put away the camera, and then tried nonviolently to stay in front of the camera with my body, even when she shoved me. I could have taken the camera but decided instead to talk to the woman and try to be the only person she photographed.”

Hauer continued: “In my mind was the history of targeting of Jewish peace activists by the right wing of the Jewish community, the posting of our photos on internet hate sites …followed by acts of vandalism at our homes and places of work. There were many in the room for whom I care deeply. I could also see that many at the meeting were new… and I did not want them to be scared away.”

Police ended up dispatching 6 squad cars and a fire-truck to quell the ruckus.

Film of the attack and full story are posted on the JVP website (jewishvoiceforpeace.org). Information was also gleaned from The Berkeley Daily Planet web site (berkeleydailyplanet.com).

Karen Nakamura wrote scathing diatribes on the Israel/Palestine conflict for 18 years until pro-Israeli advocates brought down her newspaper the Coastal Post May 31, the day of the attack on the Free Gaza Flotilla.