Chaim Amalek: “Until and unless Israel tears down its walls and barriers against African and Syrian migrants, I can see no moral basis for supporting it with arms or money. Liberal American Jews in particular need to lead the fight against ethnic particularism, whether in the West, or in Israel.”
Jewish Press: The Wailing Wall wailed just a little louder on Tuesday, when two Jewish American, Code Pink activists Ariel Gold, of Ithaca, NY and Ariel Vegosen, of Oakland, CA, unfurled a banner at the old Wall that read, “American Jews support BDS.” It may have been a historic low for the Kotel, built in the first century by a grandson of Herod, to support the Temple Mount compound above, which burned to the ground shortly after the construction was concluded.
Representing the women’s peace organization, Code Pink, the two activists—both named after an angel, a modern Jewish city in Samaria, and a Disney mermaid—proudly expressed their “Jewish opposition to the Israeli occupation of Palestine” and endorsed “the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement as a nonviolent strategy to bring about a just peace in Palestine and Israel.”
Last September 18, the third grade classes at the Beverly J. Martin School in Ithaca, NY, heard a presentation on human rights by Ariel Gold and Palestinian activist Bassem Tamimi, as well as the local chapter of the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace. Tamimi is the Arab lady who sends children, especially her own video star daughter, in front of unsuspecting Israeli soldiers, to scream at, punch and even bite them — and then she films their reaction, proving the cruelty of the occupation.
The Kotel has seen many sad things since that terrible fire in the year 70, saw poet Yehuda Halevi killed by an Arab horseman right by its ancient stones, and it has seen many tears and felt millions of hopes, in the form of notes to God that were tucked in its crevices. And now it witnessed two Jewish women who came over just to teach Israelis about justice and non-violence:
“At this moment of escalated violence in Palestine and Israel, we are here at the Kotel to pray for an end to the occupation, the root cause of the violence. … We support of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions as a nonviolent strategy to bring about a just peace and full equality for all people in Palestine and Israel. We call on all people to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and boycott Israel until Palestinians have equal rights and occupied lands are returned by Israel.”
