Set against the backdrop of mass demonstrations at college campuses nationwide, the Hudson Valley Coalition for a Free Palestine chose to shut down the block of Wall Street in front of congressmember Pat Ryan’s uptown Kingston office on Sunday, April 28.
Lamppost to lamppost, the street was roped off for traffic. A painted banner suspended over the rainbow-painted crosswalk read: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.”
Guarding the ropes were individuals wearing orange hi-vis roadwork jackets. One passed the time blowing bubbles. The area had been declared “a liberated zone.”
A little after 1 p.m., police vehicles with sirens flashing were placed at the head and tail of the one-way street. Set back a discreet half-block from the intersection, police officers in three City of Kingston SUVs waited at the ready.
The officer in command provided no comment. “Let me just coordinate with my guys,” he said, begging off.
Confronted by the blockade, a passing driver was able to confirm that event organizers had neglected to obtain a permit. Wearing sunglasses, the older bleached-blonde woman complained loudly from her car to the two police officers loitering outside their cruiser.
“I promise I’ll get this shut down,” she assured them. “I know the mayor. This is ridiculous.”
The Mid Hudson Valley DSA and the Jewish Voice for Peace Hudson Valley were behind the civil disobedience pop-up. The event resembled a farmers’ market. Over 150 individuals milled about, and children sitting on a section of cloth-covered asphalt painted kites. Arabic music played through the PA system. Under the shade of a canvas tarp, the Garden Café of Rosendale provided food, including mahkloubeh, spiced chicken, humus, falafel and muhammara.
Hand drums set in an open box were available to all.
The day was sunny. When the crowd was well-fed, the music was replaced by speeches, sloganeering and chants.
One after another, the speakers heaped invective on Pat Ryan for voting to label the phrase “From the River to the Sea” anti-Semitic. They found fault with his calling for a conditional ceasefire. They accused the United States government of abetting the Israeli war machine with the tax dollars of its citizens. They contrasted the apartheid which once existed in South Africa, to the situation for Palestinians in Gaza. The speakers were unequivocal in their characterization of what was happening in Gaza, which they termed genocide.
Regardless of what it’s called, without a ceasefire the number of dead children is sure to increase. Answering a war crime with a war crime doesn’t make both perpetrators even. It just makes two war crimes. Sprinkling bombs down among two million people in order to eradicate 30,000 targets, amounts to punishing the entire population for the acts of some.
Ahmad Katnani, a wide smiling 71-year-old, was the media contact for the coalition who explained the purpose of the day’s gathering.
“What everyone is calling for, is a peaceful settlement,” said Katnani, “where Jews and Arabs and Muslims, whatever you call them, whoever inhabits Palestine, to live peacefully together, under the same rights, the same dignity, the same self-determination.”
The activist groups continue to call for an unconditional ceasefire.
“So we give them billions to make war on the Palestinians,” said an attendee of the event wearing the red-and-white checkered keffiyeh, who introduces himself as Solomon, “and then we give them billions more to treat their injuries. Makes perfect sense.”
It disturbs Katnani, an American citizen, that Israel’s prime minister has been voluble on the subject of how these students should be treated.
“When you hear Netanyahu going on our TV channels,” he said, “and saying, that those students should be jailed and should be sent to the army to take them out of the campus, I mean, he’s calling for that. From Israel, a foreign government, asking our government to stampede free speech and put an end to demonstrations by brute force. I mean, imagine.”
“Anti-Zionist student groups,” says an article printed by the organization, “have established ‘encampments’ in recent days to ostensibly protest Israel’s actions in Gaza and their academic institutions.”
Solomon, a college student at Bard and a Jew, sees the effort to paint the protests as anti-Semitic as standard operating procedure for the ADL.
“They’re targeting critics of the Israeli war effort for punishment, plain and simple,” asserted Solomon, “in the same way AIPAC is rewarding those politicians who parrot the party line, and it’s more effective if you’re basically calling your enemy racist. Who wants to sympathize with racists?”
Presented with Solomon’s theory, Katnani offers a saying similar in spirit to an American saying about a bear in the woods.
“Is Jesus a Christian?” Katnani asks. “In general if you say Semite and anti-Semitic it has an original meaning. Arabs are also Semites. Arabs and the Jews have the same grandfather. Abraham. But to equate anti-Semitism to anti-Zionism and anti-colonization is the mistake. Right away – poof — you are anti-Semitic. Anyone says anything against Israel or anything against Zionism is anti-Semitic. Even Jewish people, who are the majority that are organizing and putting this event on are Jewish.”
The solution of eradication gave pause to Solomon.
“Eradication is an ugly word and it’s a fantasy word,” he said. “It doesn’t work like that. Think of all the civilians killed so far. For every child murdered, Israel is sowing the seeds of a permanently bitter fruit it will have to eat. It poisons its own future. Hamas did the same on October 7, no doubt. This all ends with a ceasefire and with the monsters, on both sides, brought to justice. To protect the rest of us.”
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