From one JNF-USA event to another, chasing the anti-Israel vitriol of part-time protesters
The search for the perfect protester interview ended last weekend with the clash of a cowbell, two years and three conferences later.
Allow me to explain.
At the annual Jewish National Fund-USA event — in Boston in November 2022 — a ragtag group of three dozen or so anti-Israel protesters gathered outside the Omni Boston Hotel on an unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon. Holding makeshift signs that read “Kill colonialism,” “End all US aid to Israel” and “Land is the basis for freedom and quality,” and shouting inaudibly through a bullhorn, they slogged back and forth for about an hour, murmuring slogans that seem more irritating than foreboding. They were almost all young people, some draped in keffiyehs or Palestinian flags. Several news stories ran afterwards but nothing that made policy headlines or seemed at all prescient.
JNF was created in 1901, before establishment of the modern-day State of Israel. The pushke charity, known for its blue boxes, signified planting trees, and later, the conservation and reuse of water.
Some suggested that in the minds of protesters, JNF was about something else completely — being the usurper of land. Arab land.
That’s not the case, of course, but optics can be powerful. They can be transformative. And often very deceiving.
• • •
Fast-forward to November 2023, when the same conference was held in Denver under very different circumstances. It took place less than a month after the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7 — an assault that killed 1,200, wounded thousands, and saw 251 men, women and children taken captive into the Gaza Strip.
Emotions were raw — so raw that the proceedings drew 2,500 people for the chance to grieve and convene together.
To attend the opening plenary, attendees had to walk from the Hyatt Regency to the Colorado Convention Center one long block away. Police screened off a path of sorts to separate conference participants from the protesters. It didn’t work out so well; protesters spit, cursed, clanged cowbells, blew horns, and bellowed anti-Israel and anti-Jewish slogans.
One 20-something white male spewed: “How does it feel to kill a 5-year-old?” It was so random, yet so specific.
Warned by organizers not to engage, I cast him a motherly scowl and got a cold stare back; he looked through me, his face a block of stone. I wanted to quip that I happen to have four children, all of whom were once age 5, so it wasn’t for lack of opportunity. I doubt if that would have thrown him off his game.
I reconfigured, deciding that I would ask him or one of the others in that crowd out for a beer and an interview the next day. Surely, they would explain why they were standing in the cold screaming at the top of their lungs at Jewish Americans, a good number of them seniors. They could list their grievances and explain their motives. They could order a second and a third round, and by the time we left the city bar that I had already chosen for our little chat, they’d almost look sheepish, and head home to feed their cat and call their parents about their odd night out.
I never got the chance. The 100-plus-strong, tactical-gear-laden law-enforcement officers (local, state, even national) kept the protesters far from the attendees for the duration of the conference, save for a bit of pounding on the hotel windows one night.
• • •
The next few months turned into a bout of near misses. I’d be too late and they were already gone, police held them at bay and no one was allowed to approach, or they didn’t show up at all.
In one instance, student protesters threatened to shut down the showing of a music documentary as part of an Israel Film Festival, but the threat of a lawsuit stopped them. They still planned on disrupting the proceedings. With notebook in hand and a ticket to the movie, I arrived to find two women, cordoned off by police, standing across from the theater — one shaking a tambourine and another trying to draw attention to Native American rights. Some big story.
I’m not trying to make light of these protests. Many throughout the United States and the world have been belligerent, threatening, violent and dangerous. I am talking about the more benign demonstrators who show up to “hear themselves think,” as my mother would say. Many may believe in what they’re doing; many more simply lift a sign someone hands to them with words they don’t bother to understand. Often, it seems more about them than the people they’re supposedly supporting.
By the time I arrived for the 2024 Jewish National Fund-USA conference in Dallas (Nov. 14-17), I was a bit jaded. Still, I heard that demonstrators were coming on several buses to “shut down JNF.”
Their tactic was to make noise most of the night outside the Hilton Anatole hotel complex and keep conference attendees awake.
The problem? Everything is bigger in Texas. Protesters were positioned so far from the rooms (the hotel sits on 45 acres) that a dull roar could be heard — something a sound machine, TV or headphones could drown out. On Saturday afternoon, they pulled out their Boston playbook and walked the perimeter of the hotel clanging their bells and chanting their chants. The mild weather encouraged them, but most conference attendees were too busy with lectures and lunch to give them much thought.
• • •
Then came the denouement on Saturday night. They upped their game, determined to disrupt. Little did they know that the JNFuture After Party for young adults was in full swing with its own deafening music; other guests were at the bar or in bed. Many thought the ruckus was simply the sounds of the city.
I walked out to their perimeter at about midnight, where mellow police stood guard, and filmed them by phone for a bit. Popping out his earplugs, one of the officers said my head might start hurting if I stayed too long. I could have moved over to the rally line, could have gestured to a sign-holder and mouthed a few questions. I could have asked if they planned to sleep at all that night — whatever few hours were left of it — on the buses. Or maybe they had hotel rooms of their own, complete with a K-Cup coffee machine.
But it was late. The lure had left. The fix was over, at least until next fall. The conference is scheduled to take place in Southeast Florida, the third-largest Jewish community in America after New York City and Los Angeles. A good many Israelis live there, and Floridians tend to have thick skins, so we’ll see what transpires.
Still, a memory from last year in Denver remains with me. At the conclusion of the conference, as I was wheeling my suitcase along the sidewalk to catch a ride to the airport, I passed a trash can — one of those older, green metal ones with a wide rim. It was full of discarded coffee cups, plastic bags and food detritus, but on top was a large discarded flier. It read: “From Palestine to Philippines: Stop the US” with the graphic of an angry woman in jeans and a T-shirt, a keffiyeh wrapped around her dark hair, kicking the chest of a white man dressed in his work suit.
You’d think the holder would have kept it for future use or as a souvenir from their time on the frontlines. Or at least have recycled it.
Then again, maybe it was right where it belonged.
Carin M. Smilk is managing editor of the US bureau of JNS. To reach her, write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
