49.0°,
Mostly Cloudy Thousands protest at United Nations
Rambam, HAFTR, Shalhavet lead cheers
By Michael Orbach
Special for the web on September 25, 2009/ 7 Tishrei 5770
Several thousand protesters, including students from a number of local yeshivot, gathered at the United Nations Thursday to protest the visit by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The protesters filled Manhattan's 47th street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue and police closed down the block. At the rally, organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council, the most impassioned speech came from the quietest voice.
“Leaders of the world, how can you accept this man in your midst without protest?” asked Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. Ahmadinejad should be brought before the Hague International Criminal court for inciting genocide, he continued, then exhorted the crowd not to listen to his “hateful propaganda” and instead listen to the “still voice of your conscience.”
Later, he asked reporters, “What kind of person is Ahmadinejad?”
Wiesel was joined by New York Governor David Paterson, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, former presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, and City Comptroller William Thompson among other political figures.
Protesters from the Israel advocacy group StandWithUs stood silently in front of the stage with black tape across their mouths. They held placards with messages such as “I am gay and in Iran I am dead," “I am a woman and in Iran I am stoned,” or “I am a minor and in Iran and I am persecuted.”
In his remarks, Governor Paterson spoke out against Admadinejad, saying in Iran "human rights are extinct."
"We who come here today; come here in peace; come here to celebrate the great democracies around the world; come here to celebrate Israel, which has been a beacon of light for the Jewish people and a lesson in humanity for all the people of the world," the governor said.
The rally was something of a moment of unity for Iranians and Israelis; the pre-1979 Iranian flag, a murmur of white, green and red with a lion and a golden sun, merging in the crowd with the white and blue of the Israeli flag and placards that read “Israel is here to stay.”
Khashayar Naghash, a Zoroastrian, who fled Iran with his parents in 1982 said he came to support his homeland.
“Freedom for Iran, freedom for my people,” he told the Jewish Star. “Freedom for students. Freedom for bringing peace — not even peace, but human rights. They're risking their lives, we want to show them we got their backs.”
Sally Goodgold, a JCRC board member and civic activist, wanted Ahmadinejad out.
“I have to stop wasting a day on him,” she said, “one day of Ahmadinejad is a month of hell.”
Shalhevet School for Girls, Rambam Mesivta, and HAFTR High School all attended the rally. Shalhevet and Rambam arrived early and took prime spots at the front of the protest. The girls from Shalhevet chanted, “Hey-hey ho-ho, Ahmadinejad has to go,” as they had done a day earlier outside the Iranian Mission to the United Nations where they rallied with Iranian expatriates.
Rabbi Zev Friedman, rosh hayeshiva of Rambam and Shalhevet, and Naomi Lippman, principal of HAFTR, said that while any actual results from the rally would likely be minimal, the teaching moment it represented was important.
"We want our students to know we have the responsibility as Jews to speak out when a regime like Iran violates human rights, represses its own citizens, denies the Holocaust and poses a potential nuclear threat in the Middle East,” Lippman explained. “We also want our students to appreciate the privilege we have as Americans to gather peacefully and raise our voices.”
”One of the big benefits is — you know something, we always talk about the importance of telling kids not to sit by when there is evil out there, to get actively involved to stop it,” asserted Rabbi Friedman. “I don’t think anything we can do or say is going to stop the UN from hosting him, but it does show the world that these guys are terrorists and must be marginalized and disavowed in the big picture. You can’t go on with life as normal when there’s a real threat to the Jewish people.”
Daniel Sobin, a tenth grader at Rambam who held a sign that said “No nukes for Iran,” said he felt he was there to “free the world from an evil person,” and that “fraud election equals an illegitimate regime.”
His friend, Zach Stern, also in tenth grade, added that they hoped to “free Iran for democracy.”
“We are telling the world leaders, Ahmadinejad and the rest of the world, that we will not stand silent while a murderer is allowed to speak in front of the UN,” said Devora Eisenberg, a 10th grader at Shalhevet.
Despite the large crowd, the protest was peaceful. A day earlier Rabbi Avi Weiss and 21 students of his rabbinical school were arrested while attempting to block the entrance to the United Nations. Some were handcuffed while wearing tallitot. An hour after the rally's official end, Iranian protesters coated the Brooklyn Bridge in green, a color symbolizing Ahmadinejad's political opponents in Iran's recent disputed election.
Irwin Gotler, a member of Canada’s House of Commons and former Minister of Justice, who was at the UN summit, said he had attended the anti-Iran rallies since they began three years ago.
“The enduring lesson of the Holocaust, Rwanda, and Srebrenica is that they occurred not because of the machinery of death, but because of the state sanctioned incitement to genocide,” he said.
Additional reporting by Malka Eisenberg
