Two Hours In Times Square
Within sight of the glass-walled MTV studios where teenage girls usually jump and down waiting for the members of their favorite boy bands, Avraham Fried was performing. The sun shone brightly off the skyscrapers, metal and glass reflecting the light and heat like mirrors as Fried effortlessly danced back and forth. The youngsters who had come from their camps, the boys in orange and the girls in pink, repeated the song after him. Gush Katif, you are not alone. A black bicycle messenger rode by and flashed two fingers in a V — for victory and/or peace.
Orange was everywhere. Orange bracelets, orange t-shirts, orange buttons, even orange pants. One woman had dyed her dark hair bright orange. Girls tore strips from orange cloth and handed them out to people. Soon they were flapping as armbands, bandanas, headbands and neckties and wrapped around pony tails. The strips of orange cloth were passed hand to hand. Above them waved the green and yellow banners brought by Chabad. Poster boards were taken out and hand-lettered signs made. The crowds drifted in, filling up the area as the police continued to set up new barriers to accommodate the overflow.
I have been to a lot of rallies over the years since Israel began down the path of self-destruction, surrender and encouragement of terrorism. Rabin. Peres. Netanyahu. Barak. Now Sharon. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin stood on the makeshift stage and called, “Iyeka, where are you Arik? You who helped build the settlements?”
Rabbi Riskin had run the Lincoln Square Synagogue twenty blocks or so from here before moving to Israel. Now chief rabbi of Efrat, he has spent the time since Oslo struggling to understand what went wrong with the people who once supported the settlements. A gentle, soft-spoken man, he preaches conciliation, emphasizing that Sharon is not a dictator, appealing to him in the name of humanity.
Rabbi Riskin had once marched for civil rights holding a sefer Torah. In Israel he had been arrested and the sefer Torah taken from him. After the assassination of Rabin he had sat on a “Nightline” panel while Chaim Ramon and the left-wing panelists had blustered and threatened. “If you do not follow our democracy, we will crush you!” Ramon had shouted. He did not crush Rabbi Riskin, who had gone on trying to gently explain what was wrong with the situation.
At the hilltop the settlers had taken near Efrat, the police dragged him down along with his sefer Torah. They took the sefer Torah from him and he never became angry. He had not learned anger now, and he still had hope. He had not been crushed by becoming afraid and dispirited as Ramon and the other thugs of the Labor party hoped, or by becoming cynical, bitter and hateful. Instead he was the same gentle man appealing to Ariel Sharon, the prime minister who was sending out police to stop buses and arrest their drivers for merely heading in the same direction as Gush Katif. No, Rabbi Riskin had not been crushed.
Avraham Fried was singing and pivoting easily despite the heat, which nearly reached 100 degrees. He seemed to have boundless energy. A woman who had come in a wheelchair smilingly watched the children dance as he danced. The police waved taxis and trucks through. A businessman in the back of a limousine looked up from his Blackberry trying to make sense of the scene.
Another driver passing by yelled something out the window but it was impossible to hear. The diminutive Charlotte of AFSI (Americans For a Safe Israel), which year after year had been organizing rallies with much sparser turnouts, moved through the crowd selling orange bracelets for Gush Katif. Her head barely reached the blockades, and while she was mature in her years she was not the oldest one there. A man in his 80`s had come from Long Island. He had attended every rally. Even if Israel has given up on itself, he had not given up on Israel and never will.
So many Jews had come here now. At every rally you think no one will come. You saw the few who had gathered here behind the barricades and you judged the rally a failure, but then they came streaming in. Chabad chassidim in black hats and open white shirts. They tied orange ribbons around their hats like festive puritans. Campers came from day camps on worn yellow buses chanting “Torah Tzivah Lanu Moshe.” Women in tank tops and long dresses. Men in t-shirts and baseball caps. A black woman with a baby and a little boy with a yarmulke watched from her seat. An Asian group moved through the crowd, one of them wearing an orange yarmulke for Gush Katif. It was almost an ingathering of exiles from the four corners of the earth. A man passed by in a New York Yankees tee, his arms covered in tattoos. The tattoo on the back of his neck was simple: “Never Forget.”
That is what a rally truly is. Politicians do not listen to rallies, and if Sharon will not hearken to 200,000 Israelis, would he do so to several thousand in Times Square? A rally is an act of remembrance. We remember who we are. We gather together to remember the truth and make it clear so that others will remember it too. Throughout the shadow of Oslo we had gathered by the tens, by the hundreds and (rarely) by the thousands to remember what was true in a world overshadowed by propaganda and lies; a world where Israel is blamed for everything by the Europeans, by the Arabs, by the Left both here and in Israel. We remember the truth.
On the stage were several notables including Assemblyman Dov Hikind; Dr. Joseph Frager, who has fought tirelessly for Yerushalayim; Rabbi Pesach Lerner, executive vice president of the National Council of Young Israel; and Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, a once-moribund outfit that Klein turned into a true Zionist organization that had fought for Israel when AIPAC was busy showing Palestinian lobbyists around Capitol Hill and introducing them to congressmen.
Hikind finished his speech and wandered back into the crowd. Charlotte of AFSI passed him, her arm covered in orange bracelets. Banners and flags waved on all sides of the street. Radio host and former Nixon White House official G. Gordon Liddy spoke by cell phone but no one could hear him. The yellow buses took the campers home but the rally was still going strong.
On stage Rocky Ziegler sang “the enemy will not conquer us.” The crowd swayed and sang along. The sun, which had faded, came out again to shine its fierce light. There were no news updates but we knew that in Israel the true heroes and marchers were under siege now at Kfar Maimon. The burning sun we felt was only a little of what they were going through.
Men and women circulated through the crowd with water, pouring out something to drink for the rally participants. Water is spirit, and in sharing it a little of the spirit of Gush Katif was here too.
Daniel Greenfield is an Israeli-born artist, writer and freelance commentator on political affairs with a special focus on Jewish concerns and the War on Terror. Living near the World Trade Center, he came into close contact on 9/11 with the Islamic terrorism that has linked the U.S. and Israel against a common enemy. He maintains a blog at www.sultanknish.blogspot.com.
