Hebrew-Speaking Workers of the World Unite!!

ANSWER and friends had a big anti-Israel get-together on Saturday morning at San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza, and San Francisco Voice For Israel gathered to counterprotest. I missed the counterprotest because work demanded that I be administering an entrance exam to a pack of nervous eighth graders. I did, however, manage to convince Mr. Bluejeans Sr. to attend, and met him for lunch afterwards.

By the time I arrived, the ANSWERniks had gone on their march, and come back again. As I approached the plaza, the speaker on the stage was shrieking at the crowd to go on supporting the Palestinian struggle. A drunk crossing the streets behind me screamed "Yeah, you do that! I support the Jews, and I'm a ****ing Catholic! **** terrorists!"

All the usual signs, except for a new contingent from SocialistWorker.org. A small group had strung up a clothesline with 'bloodstained' onesies. A table was selling olive oil. The usual. As I was crossing the plaza, a teenage Palestinian-American poet was called up to the stage to read her free verse. I learned that her cousins in Jordan do not understand the struggle, that her uncle does not know who Che was, and that some Zionist once told her there was no such thing as Palestine.

I feel bad for her cousins in Jordan, if they have to hear about this on a regular basis.

Mr. Bluejeans reports that an earlier speaker rejected a two-state arrangement, in favor of one state, "for the Palestinians and the Hebrew-speaking workers".

Gee. If Pharaoh's bureaucracy had only been delicate enough to call us "Hebrew-speaking workers", who knows how history might have come out?