Since October 2023, members of the community have gathered on the Narrowsburg-Darbytown Bridge every Saturday evening calling for peace in Gaza.
Radio Catskill’s Rosie Starr spoke to some of the folks standing together in this vigil and has this report from the bridge.
Image: Local residents brave the rain to hold a peace vigil for Gaza on the Narrowsburg -Darbytown Bridge (Credit: Tony DiGeronimo /The River Reporter).
I have already spoken to Tim Bruno about holding anti Israel programs and not having a countering voice. But to no avail. Beverly Sterner and Jewish Voices for Peace is anti Israel and the organization has been since its founding. Beverly Sterner silences Jewish Voices for Israel on her Network while only inviting anti Israel posts. So much for Jewish Voices for Truth. To call what is happening in Gaza the “Worst Massacre of the 21st Century” is ignorance and to keep using a word invented in the Holocaust by a Jew who had no word to describe the attempt to blot out an entire ethnic group, is the misuse of a word. For incendiary purposes. Gaza is awful. Pain is horrible to witness. It is War, not Genocide, and the war was started by Hamas. In the worst pogrom in the 21st Century. To say there is no anti Semirtism in the Middle East. In 1948, most Jews were either slaughtered or kicked out of the 22 countries surrounding Israel. 800,0000 of them came to Israel as refugees and that is why so much of the Israeli population is Jewish/Arab. A peace vigil that is anti Israel and ignorant of facts does nothing but make people like me stop listening and donating to WJFF. If you disseminate misinformation and refuse to invite other opinions of people that actually have studied the Middle East, lived there, speak Hebrew. . .what good are you? I have yet to see a starving Palestinian even though I keep hearing about starvation. And most of the problems with food reaching civilians is because of Hamas. All war is hell, but the number of dead civilians in Gaza is not a staggering one, considering that, Hamas is supplying the figures, half of the dead are combatants and the Hamas hides in tunnels under civilian hospitals and schools and with 500 miles of tunnel in Gaza, have not given citizens the right to find shelter in them. I can go on with details and facts for quite some time, but are you at the radio station interested in facts or in just stirring up more anti Israel and anti Jewish sentiment? No one on the bridge asks Hamas to return the hostages, lay down its arms and stop the war. No signs like “Bring Them Home.” Nothing about Hamas at all. All Palestinians are victims. All Israelis are aggressors. The situation in the Middle East is very complicated. The solution if simple would have been found already.
Dear Judith,
If one were able to go back to pre-48 and comment about the ongoing evolution of the Jewish emigre experience, and its respondent reality vis a vis the presence of Palestinian Jews, Christians, Muslims, Armenian Jews, Christians and Muslims, one would say, “wow, this shit is really complicated.” As did u say. The ensuing decades, with Western Colonial control, infusion, intrusion, and imperial mandates, have truly made this situation “complicated.” Not gonna try to win u over in print, maybe in person/voice, but, there’s a line, Judith, and I have eaten your delicious food in years past, great food/menu, lines of people waiting to feast on your creations, the line being the sacrifice of one’s principles in behalf of the collective historical pain passed down across the progeny of four generations. You/we gotta put it all on the table and think. Think hard.
Chris
Justice is as important as peace. Evil exists and evil regimes exist. The Talmud says to be kind to the cruel is to be cruel to the kind. Anti semitism is the world’s oldest hatred. Anti semitism is up 400% in America; anti semitic pogroms, like Amsterdam are sweeping the western world. Hamas is an anti semitic evil terror regime that murders gays and non Islamists. 80% of Palestinians love Hamas. Peace wasn’t possible with the Nazis until they were destroyed. The Nazis were obsessed with killing Jews. Hamas and the Palestinians are obsessed with killing Jews and throwing them out of their homes. There will be no peace with them until their anti semitic obsession with killing Jews is destroyed. When the Palestinians realize they are defeated in their genocidal goal of making Israel Jew-free war will cease. Not every nation is nice; some are evil. The Palestinians have been consumed and defined by their crazed hatred of the Jewish people and by their refusal to make their peace with the Jewish nation.