I broke down and went to a rally and "march" in support of Gaza on Thursday evening here in Portland, OR. I say "broke down" because I think these events are vastly insufficient, but I wanted to see the scale of support for Gaza and anger at Israel in this city. This one was somewhat better attended, maybe 500 people, about half of them Arab or Muslim I would guess. A lot of PSU students, which is where the organization for the rally came from. Many are very angry, and at least one speaker had friends or relatives being killed in Gaza.
The next day, the Oregonian barely covered it, giving the fact of the 2+ hour event a perfunctory mention on its web site. There is certainly no organized or significant criticism of the role of the local Jewish community, or of the leadership of the Jewish Federation in Portland, in supporting the slaughter.
Life goes on very much like normal in dumbass insulated Jewish suburbia - the big concern is getting the kids to Jewish summer camp or making it to next Tuesday's Israeli Folk Dancing event, and they want all this bother to be over so things can return to "normal".
These are the kind of people I live among.
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I forgot to add: one of the speakers at the Thursday Portland rally was a representative of a PSU organization attempting to get PSU onboard with BDS. She reported on a meeting (or email exchange, I can't remember) with the university president, Wim Wievel, on this.
He adamantly refuses to involve the university in Israel BDS, making the typical claim that academia is on a higher plane of existence and international academic exchange shouldn't be sullied by base political matters. Right, as if academia isn't another human institution, and a vector of influence that isn't already sullied by all kinds of political and obnoxious crap, like tight integration with the US military in many fields.
The student representative also pointed out that Israel has destroyed or shut down many Palestinian academic institutions on all levels. Pretending that refusing to act against Israel or even criticize it in the academic arena is reflective of some kind of purity, is stinking hypocrisy.
Wievel is actually worried about offending his rich donors and damaging the university's "connections", and about being seen, within his elite club, as a guy who helped open the floodgates. That's the moral context of almost all executives in the nation's universities.
TS
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