'Blood' Flows in Gutter in Front of Israeli Consulate

Photos: Leon Kunstenaar

(San Francisco, Sept. 12) - When the Israeli Consul in San Francisco decided that red 'blood' in the street resulting from any demonstration should be hosed away, he was probably not counting on the symbolism of 'blood' flowing in the gutter in front of the Israeli consulate. The 'blood' flowed into the gutter as protesters drummed, banged on pots and pans, and blew horns. Others made bloody hand prints on an Israeli flag to protest the ongoing massacre by American bombs and starvation. Some held photos of skeletal starving children.

As Netanyahu escalates his final solution for Palestine, the Trump-AIPAC campaign to use antisemitism, the hundreds year old scourge of Jews, to justify a Hilterian genocide, the absurd hypocrisy of the smearing continues.

How do people of decency cope with this? They must note that in smearing those who oppose the slaughter as antisemites, they are also connecting the two. If protesting the slaughter is antisemitic then antisemitism is whitewashed. There is such a thing as real antisemitism among the fascists and bigots of the world but using the label against who opposed the genocide gives the antisemites an ethical sheen.

The way to defuse a smear is to appropriate it. The word "Yankee" was once an English insult to the American revolutionaries, but the Yanks made it into their proud label.

I am Jewish and lost family in the Nazi holocaust. But if opposing the Zionist holocaust on the people of Palestine makes me an antisemite, then call me antisemitic.

See all high resolution photos here.