Soccer Dad: A skeptic goes to save darfur

April 30, 2006

A skeptic goes to save darfur

I went to today's Darfur protest in DC as a skeptic. I came back a skeptic.

Our Shul (synagogue) travelled in 3 different vehicles. Eventually we found parking (separately) and arranged a meeting place. While waiting for the occupants of the third vehicle to arrive we saw the group from the American Jewish Committee walking toward the rally site from a subway. (left)

When all three groups hooked up, we, too, headed south. As we crossed the mall it became clear that there was quite a crowd headed to the rally. (right)

I guess the last time I was this close to the Capitol building was four years at the rally for Israel. But I didn't have a chance to photograph it. But the building is so impressive up close, I couldn't resist taking pictures.

The first thing that struck us is that it seemed that every group we saw had was Jewish. Maybe it was only the case in the north-eastern corner of the rally, but throughout our time there the crowd seemed mostly Jewish. (We were near people from USY and from Cleveland.) There were some small groups of African Americans but the makeup of the crowd from my perspective was disproportionately if not majority Jewish. (For reference, here are a list of the member organizations of SaveDarfur.org.)

When we arrived the first speaker we heard was Capt. Brian Steidle who told of how he was viewed as a savior when he arrived in the refugee camps. He emphasized how we couldn't let them down.

Michael Steele

For the most part the speakers emphasized cliches like "Not on our watch" or "Never again," staying away from any specific policy recommendations. There were exceptions though.

Lt. Gov. Steele of Maryland (and senate candidate) spoke well and listed a series of steps he suggested that the government could do to protect the refugees as well as getting the state of Maryland to divest from the Sudan.

(As a political side note. Steele's likely challenger in the general election, Ben Cardin was not among the scheduled speakers. If the groups attending are seriously committed to the cause of Darfur, Steele may have made some headway in reaching Jewish liberals.)

Marc Schneier

Rabbi Marc Schneier (who was two years ahead of me in YU) spoke earnestly of the cause of Darfur reconstituting the great civil rights coalition of African Americans and Jews.

Schneier was followed by his friend, music mogul, Russell Simmons. Simmons seemed anxious for something to be done, but he seemed unsure of what needed to done except getting everyone to give everyone a big hug. He ruled out regime change and seemed to be rejecting any sort of military force (and implicitly taking a dig at the president.

Of the speakers, the one who moved with the crowd the best was Rabbi David Saperstein with a speech called "I have a nightmare." He was brilliant and really stood out among the speakers.

But working against any of Schneier's notions about a reneweal of a grand civil right coaltion was the presence of the final speaker we were there for. In fact given that the rally was about an issue of conscience the presence of Rev. Al Sharpton a vicious demagogue with absolutely no conscience was inexcusable.

Sharpton is certainly a rock star. He got the loudest applause when introduced. (Given the Jewish makeup of the audience, I found that especially appalling.) And as we left the area it was clear that his doggerel, so skillfully delivered, was eliciting the loudest response. It galls me that a man who led a demonstration that led to a massacre remains a "civil right leader" untainted by any reference to his sordid past.

To be sure I understand those who say that Jews should speak out against such atrocities because of our own status as victims of the Holocaust. However I have some hesitations in universalizing the lessons of Holocaust. The "never again" that was repeated so many times yesterday has a place in my mind as a declaration that Jews will never again be the victims.

Yesterday's rally did nothing to alleviate my hesitations even if the Washington Post reported Divisions Cast Aside in Cry for Darfur. Yes we should speak out against tyranny. But we also must not forget the mass killing of Jews over history. Whether it was at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, or the Crusades, or the Chelminski massacres, the Jewish existence in the world has often been tenuous.

The reconstitution of a Jewish state after two millenia is a necessary corrective tto the problem of continued Jewish survival. And yet, even now, we find that state's legitimacy under attack for its supposed misdeeds. Supporters of Palestine use the language of freedom to demand the creation of a state that denies the Jewish historical connection to the land.

And when I saw some of the speakers and the groups they represented, I saw many who are ambivalent, if not hostile to Israel's existence. James Zogby - one of only three speakers I heard who mentioned the Holocaust (as he listed a series of crimes; the second of which was Hiroshima) - couldn't avoid mentioning "Palestine," as a place of concern.

When I saw he was a speaker at the rally, I looked up Imam A. Rashied Omar. Among the points he's made in his writing is that Osama bin Laden should not be viewed as following the dictates of Islam and that Jihad means struggle not Holy War. (In fact one of his children is named Jihad.) And what was missing from Omar's writing (or anything that I found) was any mention of Judaism or Israel. He did call for concilliation between Muslims and Christians but Jews were conspicously missing from these calls. So I can't say that when he called for an International Criminal Court to punish the perpetrators of the massacres in Darfur that he wasn't casting a wider net.

And of course there's Al Sharpton who's references to Jews matches those of David Duke and yet is regarded as some sort of mainstream civil rights leader.

I guess that's why I remain a skeptic. Nothing I heard yesterday convinced me that, despite the good intents of many there, there was an appreciation of the Jewish "never again" among many of the speakers. Call me parochial or overly self-interested. But yesterday's rally was evidence of good intentions imperfectly expressed.

UPDATE: As Kesher Talk blogged in A Feel-Good Exercise, Meryl Yourish commented and Pillage Idiot mentioned in an e-mail, while the message was that the speakers (and the crowd) want something done, it's unclear what they want done. (Although Russell Simmons, I suspect, was probably not alone in eschewing military action, he was the only one I heard who openly objected to it.)

So perhaps these advocates of "doing something" have some intellectual honesty and object to the use of force now just as they did three years ago in Iraq. Of course that honesty would also mean that they have no idea how the world works and would perhaps would be better purusing some other goals than world peace.

UPDATE: This post is included in this week's Carnival of the Vanities.

Technorati tags: darfur, Israel, Washington D.C., Capitol.