Facing down hecklers in NY, Gideon Levy calls for equal rights for all in one state
Last night the Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy gave a thrilling speech describing the brutal tyranny of the occupation, the inevitability of the one-state solution, and the necessity of boycott and sanctions to cause Israel to change its conduct at the Greenburgh Town Hall in Westchester County, N.Y.. Levy was the guest of Jewish Voice for Peace and Wespac. Suhail Khalilieh of the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem also spoke on the settlements; I will get to his speech in the next day or so.
Levy’s speech was frequently disrupted by pro-Israel activists. The police refused to remove the hecklers on free-speech grounds, and the crowd was too leftwing to do much beyond singing We Shall Overcome and standing in front of the hecklers in an effort to maintain order. But the hecklers added value, I believe: Levy often used the hecklers against themselves. He addressed them at the very beginning of his speech, part 1 below– on my tape, you can briefly see Lauri Regan holding up a LEVY = HATE sign that Levy embraced — and many times after.
Source: mondoweiss.net