By Bruce S. Ticker
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — “Free, free Palestine?” Free us from the linguistic garbage that anti-Israel activists apply to distance themselves from murder suspect Elias Rodriguez, who repeated that chant in Washington, D.C., which we hear almost daily at anti-Israel protests.
“Such violence only undermines the pursuit of justice,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations correctly asserts in a statement, as quoted in The New York Times. “Peaceful protest, civil disobedience and political engagement are the only appropriate and acceptable tools.”
All true. Thugs in the movement that CAIR vainly tries to defend should follow this advice. Was it peaceful protest to attack and injure janitorial employees at Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall a year ago? To seize and occupy the same building? To block traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, the approach to Chicago’s congested O’Hare International Airport and the jammed southbound lanes of the 110 freeway below the iconic four-level stacked interchange in Los Angeles?
Most protests I have heard of are anything but peaceful, though that depends on how we define the word. Is it peaceful to install prohibited encampments at Columbia and other universities? Is it peaceful to harass Jewish students on campus? To vandalize college facilities?
Their ugly climate of incitement set the stage for the murders of Sarah Lynn Milgram, 26, and her soon-to-be fiancé Yaron Lischinsky, 30, who were gunned down last week outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., one mile from Capitol Hill.
In a television interview about a decade ago, Milgram voiced her concern about being vulnerable to violence after three people were gunned down outside Jewish facilities in Overland Park, Kansas, near where she lived in Prairie Village, suburbs located south of Kansas City. None of the victims was Jewish.
Milgram was Jewish and Lischinsky identified as Christian (his father is Jewish). He grew up in Israel and Germany. They both worked at the Israeli embassy.
Rodriguez, who lives in northwest Chicago, traveled to Washington with a handgun he legally purchased back home and chanted “free, free Palestine” when he was apprehended by police, according to the Times.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that an eyewitness told Jewish Insider that the suspect yelled, “I did it, I did it. Free Palestine. I did it for Gaza.”
Rodriguez was charged with two counts of first-degree homicide.
To read Saturday’s front-page New York Times piece, one would think that most protesters need not take indirect responsibility for the D.C. slayings. The article by Sharon Otterman, under the headline “Attack Complicates Pro-Palestinian Movement,” ignores all the aforementioned incidents.
The article reads, “The killings also risked painting all pro-Palestinian activists, the vast majority of whom do not engage in violence, with the same brush, which could lead to further repression of their movement.”
While the Times story acknowledges that some activists support violence, it also states, “In the United States, protesters who chant ‘Free, free Palestine’ are almost always using tactics of nonviolent resistance.”
The Times also quotes this statement from Jewish Voice for Peace: “We are grounded first and foremost in the belief that all human life is precious, which is precisely why we are struggling for a world in which all people can live in safety and dignity.”
Human life is precious? When JVP members blocked the 110 freeway in Los Angeles, did they regard as precious human life those patients who might be stuck in ambulances that were stopped in traffic? Or a potential crime victim anxious for a police car stopped by the congestion? Or the potential resident trapped in a burning home while the arriving fire truck is stuck in traffic?
I acknowledge that these activists have legitimate concerns. I do not understand Israel’s heavy-handed attacks on Gaza as a response to the massacre of 1,200 residents of southern Israel. These so-called protest activities may not usually constitute violence, but many are anything but peaceful.
Their actions amount to serious criminal offenses. They endanger peoples’ lives. They should result in the equivalents of such charges listed in Pennsylvania’s criminal code as reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct, not just trespassing and harassment.
This climate of incitement obviously inspires deranged individuals who take it a monstrous step further. One of them almost burned to death my governor and his family by igniting fires at the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Last September, Portland City Council in Maine insulted its Jewish constituents by voting to divest from Israel without consulting local Jews or even checking if they have investments in Israel. There were none at that time. Also, some Portland Jews supported the vote.
Portland Mayor Mark Dion subsequently apologized for voting for the measure, but nothing has been done to correct council’s action. Why should local Jews appreciate his apology when the damage is done without an effort to make it up to them?
Council’s vote encouraged future protests, especially a highway blockade in downtown Portland that began 5 ½ hours before Sarah Lynn Milgram and Yaron Lischinsky were shot to death.
The Press Herald of Portland reports that police arrested 20 protesters who allegedly obstructed the road at the intersection of Commercial and Pearl streets at 3:30 p.m. last Wednesday (May 21). Dozens of people had assembled on the street corner, the sidewalk and in the road, waving Palestinian flags, holding signs claiming that “Gaza is starving” and urging the jailing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
They were charged with obstructing a public way.
We cannot get too hopeful. Their attorney, Leonard Sharon, said he represented 11 defendants who were arrested at a February 2024 demonstration elsewhere in downtown Portland, and the charges against them were dismissed the following month.
Will the charges stemming from last week’s incident also be dismissed?
Abigail Fuller of Portland, a lecturer at the University of Southern Maine, told a Press Herald reporter, “We did this to demonstrate our commitment to the public, to bring the attention to our political leaders who have failed to institute any policy changes.”
Suppose some pro-Israel Portlanders blockaded her residence. Would Fuller accept that as “peaceful protest?”
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Bruce S. Ticker is a Philadelphia-based columnist.