Ken L'Heskem, Ken L'Nikayon

It took me a long time, but I finally went to a peace rally in Israel last night. Thanks to the bitching of some friends, I only saw about 30 minutes, but I was fairly impressed by it while I was there. People actually attended, the director of the Fuchsberg center was there, and it seemed to be a fairly moderate crowd, not too radical. Then I left and there were some very insignificant counter-protesters. They didn't appreciate the word play I made with their signs (their sign said "Matai Nafsik Livroach" which means "when will we stop fleeing?"; I turned to Ari and asked, "Matai Naspik Livroach" which means "when will we have fled enough?"). Their response was phenomenal: they started to pray for me! It was the start of a great night.
After returning to Syndrome, where I had watched the spectacular Quami de la Fox, Ori Shohat and Sagol 59 two nights earlier, my friends and I were ready to just about call it an evening. We walked back home by way of Bet Nativ so I could see my sister (whom Ari was shocked to see had aged about 8 years since he was her counselor at Ramah) and we found that some orange ribbons had infiltrated Kikar Paris, the site of the peace rally earlier that evening. Ari did what any concerned citizen would do, and he started taking the orange ribbons off of the posts. I started to follow suit, and soon enough, I got in a shouting match with one of the anti-Israel protesters. [ed. by anti-Israel I mean anti-Disengagement, an act carried out by the Israeli army under the direction of the democratically elected government of Israel]. Sadly, I didn't know the Hebrew for "you're enslaving another people and making all Jews look bad for it," and I hadn't attended slichot, so I didn't feel comfortable pulling the hillul hashem card. Maybe next time.
In the meantime, I accomplished a few goals. I brought home a lot of orange ribbon, (safely removed from public spaces where they don't belong), and I picked up a lot of trash in the kikar. Maybe next time I'll get punched in the face by a settler.