Rally for Gaza Attracts Little Notice

Protesters at one of Dearborn’s less impressive anti-Israel demonstrations were sending unclear messages Tuesday night, from what I can gather in an article on the event in yesterday’s Detroit News. (“Rally protests Gaza violence”). The protestors, numbered to be “dozens,” were “decrying a recent Israeli military offensive that has killed more than 100 Palestinians in Gaza.”

The demonstration was organized by we couldn’t learn whom from the News account; the whole thing sounded like a jumble of Jewish peace activists, confused students, and Palestinians repeating the usual stuff about “occupation.” Protesters were chanting, “No justice, no peace™,” an expression now the practical equivalent of beach bums yelling “Surf’s up!,” or, better yet, directors barking “action!” to signal when cameras should start to roll. In this case, I don't think anyone bothered to bring a camera.

And speaking of incoherence, “participants toted child-like dolls and raised signs that bore messages such as ‘We refuse to be enemies,’ ‘Occupation = Devastation’ and ‘Wake up to the Holocaust in Gaza!’”

Then Hasan Newash, director of the Palestine Office-Michigan, told the crowd the deaths of men women and children are "abominable." Says Newash: "We demand justice." Which, as we all know, means, "we will keep using our grievances as an excuse for wanton killing of Israelis."

As often happens with these short articles, there is limited space to report details fully, which is probably why the story nowhere mentions the point of the Israeli offensive. Israel is destroying the Hamas criminals who orchestrate Gazans to launch Kassam rockets into populated Israeli areas. And the Kassam rockets, we are given to understand, don’t bear chalked-on slogans declaring “We refuse to be enemies.”

Nor is there mention why the deaths of Palestinian civilians should be credited to Palestinian militants, rather than on the Israeli Defense Forces, when, as reiterated by an Israeli spokesman, the militants “hide behind their own civilians, using them as human shields, while actively targeting Israeli population centre. They bear the responsibility for the results.”

So Newash demands justice, (or else no peace); but then for some of Newash's fellow demonstrators, “the overriding concern was peace”?

Which is it?