Say what you will about Ariel Sharon’s girth, but at least he fits into a car.
The same can’t be said for his likeness.
Last week, a group of U.C. Berkeley students hoped to demonstrate its anger with both the Israeli prime minister and Israel’s home demolition policy by doing a little street theater: The protesters — Students for Justice in Palestine — planned to use a huge Sharon puppet to depict the prime minister razing a Palestinian village.
But that’s not quite what happened.
Because Sharon wouldn’t fit in the students’ car.
A smaller puppet personifying greed and corruption, featuring a greenish face and pasted with numerous faux dollar bills, would have fit in the car, but one of the protesters said the use of such a figure would be “culturally insensitive and even a little anti-Semitic.”
So, absent the Sharon puppet, the group went to Plan B. At the campus’ Sproul Plaza, several dozen pro-Palestinians and more than 100 pro-Israeli counter-protesters watched, in varying states of disbelief, as a man wearing a suit and a dress shirt stuffed to Santa Claus proportions and carrying a large poster of Sharon’s face in front of his own, stomped on several green-, red- and black-painted cardboard boxes while women representing Palestinian villagers attempted, in vain, to hold him back.
“This shows you what house demolitions are really like,” said protester Will Youmans. The unintentional hilarity of his statement sparked a number of chuckles from the pro-Israeli members of the crowd.
Other elements of the Feb. 6 demonstration did not elicit laughs, however.
Speakers accused Israel of “ethnic chauvinism” and perpetuating “the myth of Israeli victimhood,” and blamed the United States for providing Israel with the means to erect “lavish settlements funded by taxpayer dollars.”
“This was typical of the [Students for Justice in Palestine] to come out and say things that they think appeal to the liberal mindset that have nothing to do with the facts,” said Oren Lazar, co-chair of U.C. Berkeley’s Israel Action Committee. “I think this group was not out here to raise awareness; they were here to be sensational and put on a show for the community and spout lies. The twisting of historical realities is itself offensive.”
“People aren’t going to go home and read the news after they see this,” added U.C. Berkeley senior Julie Berman. “I’m really frustrated with what I think isn’t the whole story, and even if it was true, it was only half the facts. And it was often inaccurate. It’s not acceptable to say these are just kids with rocks being oppressed.”
Crowd reaction to the demonstration — and its almost surreal street-theater interlude — was, predictably, varied.
“It had benefits and it had non-benefits,” said Aadil Maniar, a member of the Muslim Students Association. “It presented a differing view, and that’s the benefit. But it prevented the other people, who disagreed with the view, from presenting theirs.”
“I thought it was a beautiful act they did,” said Abdul Rahman-Rahim, a senior biology major. “Very well-portrayed. In my view, Israel’s got to go. Send them back to Russia, to Germany, to Poland. Palestine belongs to the Ummah, the Islamic community.”
And then there was this reaction from junior Dan Coates: “That looked like fun! They should have allowed everybody to jump on the houses.”
Other than a few shouts of, “Is Yasser Arafat not a terrorist?” and “Stop terrorizing our people!” from pro-Israelis, the demonstration was surprisingly free of strife. There were no shouting matches and no physical confrontations.
“Normally, I wouldn’t come out to defend Ariel Sharon,” said U.C. Berkeley junior Rafael Silberblatt. “But I felt the need to come out, if not to support him, to support Israel.”
Randy Barnes, the Israel Action Committee’s other co-chair, characterized the protesters’ lambasting of Sharon as nothing more than a red herring.
“The demonstration today was not about Ariel Sharon. It was about the existence of Israel as a Jewish state,” he said. “This group stands for the destruction of Israel, be it through bombs, ballots or demographics.”