Last Saturday I attended an extremist demonstration. Some 5,000 other dangerous fanatics and I gave up a small slice of our weekend to express our intolerably radical views to a hostile or at best indifferent public, surrounded by a thick protective wall of visibly disgruntled border police and a 20-foot wide cordon of metal barriers.
Some waved the [WHICH?] national flag; many carried signs saying things like “Stop the War” and “End the Occupation”. We chanted “Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies” and distributed bumper stickers with the subversive slogan “It won’t end until we talk”. One guy carried a clutch of olive branches. Tea candles spelled out the Hebrew word “Slicha” – forgiveness. The message was meant for the embattled Gazan civilians but it might as well have been for our colleagues, friends and relatives, many of whom would consider us deluded at best, traitors at worst. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of us hadn’t advertised our intention to attend the demo in advance; I certainly didn’t. Protest is one thing but the painful damage of political arguments turned tragically personal, the angry recriminations of loved ones – that is something I admit is beyond the scope of my bravery. I have had occasion to face potatoes lobbed at demonstrators from upper floors by small children and anguished accusations of indifference to my family’s safety before. I know which hurt more.
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