A 22-year-old Jewish woman was repeatedly shoved at a rally in Oakland last week after scrawling in chalk the Hebrew expression for “the people of Israel live.” And it was all caught on video.
Hannah Larson, a U.S.-born Seattle native who made aliyah in 2010, accompanied friends to a March 13 rally, billed as “A Feast to the Global Resistance.” The event was staged at Oakland’s Frank Ogawa Plaza to mark the fourth anniversary of the wounding of Tristan Anderson, an Oakland resident injured in the West Bank while protesting against the Israeli military.
In the video (www.bit.ly/ZCrD0h), Larson is seen taking a piece of chalk to the plaza’s bricks and writing, in Hebrew, “Am Israel Chai.” She wrote it in an area designated for chalk comments with the words “Freedom to Speak” written in huge letters nearby.
Within moments, several people approached Larson, with one woman later identified as Gabby Silverman of Oakland grabbing the chalk from Larson’s hand, cursing and violently shoving Larson repeatedly, even as she is attempting to walk away from the plaza. As seen on the video, Silverman continues shoving Larson all the way to the street, though Larson is not resisting or being confrontational.
San Jose resident Daniel Wencel, 63, caught the event on video. “[Larson] was very incensed when she saw the anti-Israel messages” at the rally, he told j. “She’s a passionate Zionist. They were giving out chalk to write on the pavement and she said [she’d] take them up on the offer.”
On the rally’s Facebook page, a user identified as Gabby Silverman wrote of the incident, “We created a space at the plaza to chalk the names of our dead friends and imprisoned comrades and these zionist pieces of s—- chalk ‘am yisrael chai’ over it. This is exactly the settler colonialist mindset that we are fighting against, putting their right wing bull—— over the space for our dead friends.”
Larson, who served in the Israeli army, could not be reached for comment, but Wencel said he did not believe she was pressing charges.
Dr. Michael Harris, a spokesperson for the Bay Area chapter of the Israel advocacy group Stand With Us, said this was not an isolated incident.
“This is not the first time that we’ve seen violent responses from members of anti-Israel groups,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that some of the same people who support Hamas violence against Israelis are getting violent toward Israel supporters here.”