Anti-Israel Rally in Washington

Some insights on today's rally in Washington D.C:

The protesters had amassed themselves right in front on the Capitol, in the large grassy field the started the "mall" towards the Washington Monument.
We started walking past them in search of the pro-Israel group and saw a large stage set up with music playing and a LOT of people.
As we approached we realized that this unfortunately was NOT our group (it was a gay pride rally). We eventually wandered over to the right group.
At first I was kind of disappointed at the turn out for the pro-Israel counter rally. There couldn't have been more then 100 people there, compared to the 300 or 400 on the Capitol lawn.
But then I thought back to the Pro-Israel rally that took place back in 2002 and there, we had close to 10,000 people! I don't think that there is any doubt as to what the majority of America thinks about Israel.

One thing that I did notice was the difference in the signs of both sides. The pro-Israel rally had very straight forward posters like this:

And the Anti-Israel people were holding posters like this:

No offense, but to an outsider the 'Free Palestine" poster doesn't really mean anything. You can say that America should cut off it's support to Israel, but you have to explain why.
Stand With Us the organization that put the Stand with Israel rally together, did a much better job at getting the message across with their posters. A male Arab with the green Hamas bandanna (diaper) on his head, a gun in on hand, and a matching baby in the other hand, I think sends a stronger message, mainly because people already are familiar with the image of Arab terrorists.

Another interesting aspect of the rally that was pointed out to me was the types of people who were leading each one. The Pro-Israel rally was led and run by Christians, and unfortunately not many Jews were there. In fact I'd have to guess that about 60-70% of them were Christians. With numbers like that the "I can do more for Israel in the US, so I can't make Aliyah" argument is bogus. These people aren't turning up the to Israel rallies, so they might as well move to Israel and let the Christians take care of it.
On the other side I would occasionally hear the announcer introduce "So-and-so is a Jew and is against the Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria (OK they said 'occupation,' but I have an issue with that word)
Here a few pictures of the poor Jews who have been brainwashed into hating the country of their forefathers:


There's one picture of the Neturei Karta. The infamous Rabbi Weiss, marching in support of killing Jews.
We actually ran into a member of this (I can't think of strong enough word to describe these masters of the Chillul Hashem, so I'm leaving it blank) group on our way back sitting in front of the Capitol learning Mesechta Beitzah. Sitting in front of the Capitol building learning Gemara, supporting the killing of Jews, what a disgrace to G-d.
This led to a very interesting conversation with this poor hopeless Yid. He just sat there, spewing his propaganda and whenever we raised an issue that he couldn't answer he would tell us that he doesn't speak English very well, only the native tongue of the Jews. Hebrew? No, Yiddish.
He then went on to tell us that Rav Kook was an apikores and that we are part of a small minority of Jews who support the "Tzionim" and Zionist Occupation.
I didn't want to be the one to tell him that he was the one in the minority. He told us that he lives in Williamsburg, and there's a good chance he rarely gets to exit the little world that he's sheltered in.

This picture on the right has an interesting story behind it. Immediately after I took it, an Arab approached me and asked if I'd taken a picture of that sign. I asked why I shouldn't have. Then he said "well take a picture of this," and proceeded to make a very rude hand gesture. There was so much more hate coming from the anti people than the pro people.

The truth is I didn't think that either rally was very effective. The pro-Israel one was very isolated and the only people there were pro-Israel to begin with. The Anti-Israel rally I felt just made noise, and caused some people to shout at each other. A group of people standing around trying to get another group of people to think the way they did.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion (and I was glad to see that the opinion was not as a whole, anti-Israel), but the point of these demonstrations is not to convince the other side to change to your way of thinking. The goal is to educate the "salvageable's," the people who are indifferent to the situation and don't have an opinion either way.
The most successful activism will take Israel's problem and say that this is the prospects problem, or he will be presented with a reason to support Israel because it's "cool." To have one side yelling at the other side will only cause these people to want nothing to do with either side.