Protestors at street fair denounce Zionism
Teaneck police estimated that more than 6,000 people attended the Ben Yehuda Street Fair on West Englewood Avenue between Palisade Avenue and Queen Anne Road on April 6. The fair was a celebration of Israel’s 60th anniversary.
Miriam Allenson of the United Jewish Federation in River Edge said she had given directions to the fair to callers from as far as Monmouth County and Queens.
"The fair shows that the community can celebrate Israel not only in crisis but in times of peace and quiet," she said.
However, the fair included a reminder of a darker side of Israel’s history, unplanned by fair organizers. On the east side of Queen Anne Road, about a dozen Orthodox men from Neturei Karta, a community of Orthodox Jews who oppose Zionism and the State of Israel, staged a peaceful protest. They were joined by a handful of Palestinian and Arab demonstrators.
According to its Web site (www.nkusa.org) Neturei Karta was founded in Jerusalem in 1932 after breaking away from an earlier group of Jews founded in 1912, also for the purpose of opposing Zionism.
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Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss speaks at the demonstration surrounded by supporters at the Ben Yehuda Street Fair. The speech is available to listen by calling the number that appears on the big banner photographed (which is 212-461-2830).
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Neturei Karta spokesman, Rabbi Dovid Weiss said in an interview with Teaneck Suburbanite that Jews and Arabs had lived together peacefully in Palestine for hundreds of years before Zionism brought strife and violence to the region.
"Zionism transforms a religious ideal and replaces it with materialism and nationalism," Weiss said. "Zionism and the State of Israel have stolen our identity and misrepresented Judaism."
He said that the Torah specifically forbids Jews from returning en mass to Israel.
"The state of Israel is desecrating God’s name and Judaism. It is the root cause of the suffering of Jewish people and non-Jewish people alike through wars and bloodshed."
He said that he and other Neturei Karta members have been beaten by Israeli police when they have demonstrated in Israel.
"We have an obligation to sanctify God’s name wherever an injustice is being committed," he said. "Even though we are attacked, we speak up and try to educate out Jewish brethren that Zionism is not representing Judaism."
"We hope to build bridges to stop death and suffering of Palestinian people," he said.
While most of the crowd focused on street vendors and entertainment, a minority shouted angrily at across the police barricade separating demonstrators from fair goers. One man attempted to wrest a sign from Weiss’s hands, said Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian Christian who lectures throughout the United States on peaceful cohabitation of Palestine by both Jews and Arabs. Qumsiyeh, who has a Ph.D. in medical genetics, is the author of "Sharing the land of Cannon."
Following the incident, police set up a second row of barricades, further separating the crowd from the demonstrators.
"Some of the people accused the rabbi of sympathizing with terrorists," said Qumsiyeh. "They used Yiddish words like Goim (gentile) and Abaran (Arab). When I tried to speak with them, they refused."
One man, Qumsiyeh said, was especially hostile.
"He said he was a big guy and it was scary, When I said to him ‘Let’s have a dialog, he said that he does not talk to Arabs. When I asked why he said he had been a sniper in the Israeli Army and shoots Arabs."
But not everyone was hostile. Weiss said that about half of the fairgoers who approached him were seeking information.
Qumsiyeh noted a man who identified himself as an Israeli emissary to Bergen County engaged him in conversation.
"He seemed interested. He asked some good questions about the refugees, but said that he feared for the fate of Israeli Jews if Palestine were to become united."
Teaneck resident Rich Siegel organized the demonstration, although he did not participate in it because of a work commitment. In an interview, Siegel noted that as a teenager he was an ardent Zionist. While living and working in Israel he began questioning his presumptions.
"I knew that what I had been taught just couldn’t be the whole truth so I began reading deeply in the subject," he said.
Siegel, a member of the Dier Yassin Remembered Memorial committee, an organization formed to commemorate the destruction of a Palestinian village by Israeli forces, noted that that event occurred on April 9, 1948.
"Israeli independence actually was declared in May 1948," he said. "I find the date chosen for this street far highly objectionable," Siegel said. "This week marks the 60th anniversary, not of Israel, but of the Deir Yassin massacre, in which Jewish terrorists killed many Arab civilians in a village that was friendly to Jews, which had actually signed a non-aggression pact."
Israeli historians disagree as to whether Dier Yassin was a massacre or a battle, said David Hyman, an Israeli representative to the United Jewish Federation.
Hyman and Allenson declined to comment on the demonstration.
