4/9 National Campus Day of Action for Palestinian Rights - Berkeley Rally & March Photos

B,

Way to go, brah! Your photos refute the nay-sayers and corporate media accounts of the demo! For instance, take this one by MSNBC:


'Campus police arrest protesters'


AP


Berkeley, CA, April 9 - Campus police arrested 79 pro-Palestinian protesters who had stormed into a classroom building Tuesday afternoon.

Assistant Chancellor John Cummins said the arrested student protesters could face a semester of suspension, and that all the protesters - including about 20 non-students - could be prosecuted for trespassing.

He said police at the University of California, Berkeley, started arresting protesters around 2:45 p.m. after a noon rally turned into a march and nearly 500 people tried to enter Wheeler Hall.

Police blocked entrances to the building and asked the roughly 200 people inside to leave. Some students hung a Palestinian flag from a third-story window, while others marched and chanted in the hallways of the building, which houses classrooms for Middle Eastern studies.

Pro-Palestinian rally organizers outside said police were dragging people out of the building, and asked supporters to pound on windows. Some of those arrested yelled "Free Palestine" as they were hauled off.

Matthew MacLean, 33, a graduate student cited for trespassing, said the building's occupation represented the occupation the Palestinian people face in Israel.

Several classes and tests had to be moved and rescheduled because of the takeover.

"They are disrupting an academic building," said Cummins, who noted that the last arrests made on campus involved the same group of people when they tried to storm the hall last April. During that protest, 32 people were arrested, 19 of them students.

Nearly 1,000 pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian students and community members protested peacefully earlier in the day, but the verbal sparring was anything but sedate.

Speakers with Students for Justice in Palestine likened the current situation for Palestinians to the Holocaust, a comparison that riled Jewish students gathered at Sproul Plaza, long a hotbed of political activism and protest.

"They are trying to subvert language used in the Holocaust," said Eddan Katz, 26, a third-year law student and an Israeli-American. "I hear no one in Israeli politics today talking about the eradication of all Palestinians."

Micah Beazant, 28, a local community member, recited a Jewish prayer for the dead after calling for an end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank.

About 300 pro-Israel students booed, cursed and chanted "shame" at Beazant as he spoke. [Poster's Note: This is my biggest problem with this story. I counted two or three dozen Pro-Israeli protestors at any one time. Why did they exaggerate this figure so greatly?]

The pro-Palestinian students wore yellow armbands that read "Never again," words often invoked by those remembering the Holocaust.

About 100 feet away from the speakers, a small clutch of Jewish students in a tent took turns reading names from a list of Holocaust victims. It was part of a 24-hour vigil for Yom HaShoah, the Jewish Holocaust remembrance.

The protests and demonstrations came a day after UC Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl appealed for calm on campus between the groups. Protests have picked up across California and the nation as violence has escalated in the Middle East. [END STORY]

(Source: http://www.msnbc.com/local/KBWB/M169487.asp)

Notice the obvious slant towards the Pro-Israeli protestors. Worse yet, however, this story is an outright lie. There were never 300 pro-Israeli protestors at the demo, not even close to that number. Who's pulling the strings at MSNBC?

I have come to the painful conclusion that America is
backing the wrong side in Palestine. While the history
of Israel is complex the overwhelming fact remains,
Israel is committing a brutal genocide of the Palestinian peoples. The present Israeli regime is
little more than brutal war criminals mouthing
racist hatred against the Palestinian minority.

Right on Berkeley! No Justice. No Peace.

The poster expresses surprise at the inaccuracies of the media.

This merits much greater examination, and not a "who's pulling the strings?", "where'd they get that number?".

Indymedia needs more radical critique of media, including of itself.

http://www.swans.com/library/art8/rdeck018.html

For any American who supports the war on terror, they must support the Israelis actions against these terrorist thugs in Palestine. Til the Palestinians learn to value life, I say, "Keep doing what you're doing Israel!"