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When An Anti-War Protest Becomes A Pro-War Protest

By David Packman

I heard there was going to be a protest march today against the war going on in Gaza so I decided to go and take a few pictures...


It really did seem to be an anti-war protest, intermixed between the Palestinian flags were some of the stock protesters that seem to be at any given anti-war protest of any stripe. Personally, I'm not a big fan of war or violence as I'm the overly optimistic type and like to think most people are the same way and would rather be left to their own devices like I do... though I too know there are people out there who's devices include a unfathomable desire to hurt others.


I digress though... except for the tactic of using children who probably had no idea of the role they were playing out for their parents in this spectacle of a protest, I generally supported what I thought the point of it was, that Israel and Palestine should just stop shooting at each other and try to give peace another try.

However, after the march came and went through where I had set up to take pictures, I found out the protest was about something else entirely... something I just can't support.


My wife and oldest son left afterward to do some shopping and on the way home happened into a few groups of these protesters... their chants of "Stop The War" earnestly delivered for the media had changed into angry shouts of "Death To Israel" and "Death To The Jews" once the cameras had left, and my wife and son were caught in the crossfire.

My wife, who does happen to have some Jewish ancestry, never thought she looked that Jewish... neither did I. But the protesters did, and they made their anger known with louder shouts of "Death to Jews!" as they glared at her and started following her down and my son the street... not once, but twice when she got away from one group only to run into another.

She got away, a bit shaken and angry, but that's only part of the point.


It wasn't a peace march, it was a war march. They weren't asking for Israel to leave them alone, they were telling us that the only peace they can accept will come from the death of others... through more war, not less.

They weren't asking for acceptance as humans, they were asking for hate towards those they considered as less human than themselves... which included my family apparently.

It was a point that the media here, who put a good bit of sympathetic bias towards the protesters in their stories, apparently missed... but one I would have too if they didn't let their hate bleed out in front of my son and wife. It was a message that said "The only peace we can understand comes with your death..."

It was a message which only asks for more war, not less.

Full post as published by Injustice in Seattle on January 04, 2009 (boomark / email).