The protest was outside Madison Square Garden in New York City.
South Asian activists and local leftists had called for a demonstration there against an event inside by the RSS, the fascist, Hindu supremacist organization behind the murder of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.
Al Jazeera: RSS chief’s visit to US denounced as ‘goodwill tour’ for Hindu nationalism. Activists say Hindu nationalists have sought to mask far-right politics through broad appeals to the Indian diaspora
Democratic Congressional candidate Brad Lander joined the protest, and evoked the memory of the 1939 pro-Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden, sponsored by German-American Bund, and the protests that accompanied that event, linking it to their protest against the fascist RSS in 2026.
Inside the 1939 rally: George Washington and The American Flag… and tons of swastikas…
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Ironically, Lander was soon confronted with some Nazi-like behavior by (apparently) pro-Palestinian activists who demanded Lander leave the rally immediately because, they said, he was a “Zionist”.
Video of the confrontation is ugly:
Brad Lander addresses getting harassed at MSG
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It’s worth noting that NONE of the people yelling at Lander were themselves Palestinian.
It’s also worth noting that the protest was about the RSS, not Gaza, and it was called for primarily by South Asian groups, not pro-Palestinian groups.
It was wrong for the pro-Palestinian protesters to try to hijack the South Asian rally for their own purposes.
By my count, there were only about eight people actively harassing Lander, with two men doing the majority of the yelling.
We can’t allow a handful of bullies out of a crowd of hundreds or even thousands to undermine free speech and democracy for the rest of us.
We can’t allow people at protests to be harassed and openly threatened with violence.
And we have to acknowledge when anti-Zionism crosses the line and descends into anti-semitism.
These bullies were yelling that Lander was a “Zionist” but they might as well have gone ahead and just said ”Jew”.
If the protesters were upset because they think Lander supports Netanyahu and the genocide in Gaza and doesn’t support a Palestinian state, they would be wrong.
Lander is Jewish, but has gone out of his way to condemn the Netanyahu government, to oppose U.S military aid to Israel, and to support a Palestinian homeland. That was one of the reasons he defeated incumbent Congressman Dan Goldman in the Democratic primary and is expected to win the race in November and become the district’s Congressman.
Obviously he’s an ally, and soon to be in a very powerful position. Why should he be chased from a rally because a handful of bullies have decided he doesn’t pass their purity test?
Perhaps they confused him with that “other Jew” that ran for the congressional seat, the incumbent, Dan Goldman. Goldman, also Jewish, supported Israel and U.S. aid for Israel.
The protesters didn’t condemn Lander for being a mainstream politician crashing a rally to score political points. There was nothing in his record specifically they objected to. They demanded he leave because they said he was a “Zionist”. How did that not mean they wanted him to leave because he is Jewish? He supports Palestinian rights and doesn’t support Netanyahu’s war, so how is Lander complicit in Israel’s war crimes?
The answer is, of course he isn’t complicit. He’s trying to be part of the solution.
Obviously, no one should be chased from a protest because of their ethnicity or religion.
If they were condemning Lander as a “Zionist” simply because he is Jewish, that’s wrong.
If they were saying Lander is a “Zionist” because he supports Bibi and doesn’t support the Palestinians, they would be wrong because the opposite is true.
If they are saying he’s a “Zionist” because he supports self-determination for the Jewish people, and a Jewish homeland, or even that he supports a Jewish homeland in The Middle East, that is altogether different. But still not a justification for the loss of rights and being subject to harassment and threats.
I can see protesting against someone who supported Netanyahu and his war, but clearly we can’t exclude people, in the name Free Gaza, simply on the basis of their being Jewish. Similarly, I don’t think it’s justifiable to exclude or target people merely because they believed in Jewish self-determination, or even if they supported a Jewish homeland in The Middle East.
It’s easy to understand why someone would be outraged about Israel’s war crimes, about Netanyahu, about the genocide in Gaza. It’s easy to understand that people would want Israel to return to its 1967 borders, dismantle the illegal settlements, give up the occupied territories in Gaza, The West Bank, and East Jerusalem, and stop trying to expand. But it is surprising how the complete elimination of Israel suddenly seems to be on the table. How that would occur and what would happen to Israeli civilians is an open and frightening question.
Many of the Free Palestine crowd (this is all since October 7, 2023, mind you. We’re not talking ancient history or anything) are also virulent deniers that Hamas committed war crimes like sexual assault against civilians and other prisoners on October 7th. The vehemence with which they deny that any rapes whatsoever took place on October 7th shows them at their most unhinged, most fanatic, their most detached from facts, evidence, truth, standards, and reality itself.
Watching the video of the protest, it was good to see some of the South Asian activists, including those who helped organize the event, come over and try to protect Lander. It would have been nice if more protesters had come to Lander’s defense in real time. They could have spoken about his support for Palestine or decried harassing him. That would have been nice to see.
The truth is, the organizers of the rally should have escorted the people harassing Lander away from their protest and had the police remove them if necessary. No one should be threatened or harassed like that for their ethnicity, identity, or merely for expressing their opinion.
I was reminded of the recent incident in San Francisco with Scott Wiener, also Jewish, also running for Congress, also harassed by Gaza activists at an event that was also not about Gaza. In this case, Wiener, like Lander, also should have been protected by the march organizer’s security team, or by the police, if necessary.
These incidents, the harassment suffered by Brad Lander and Scott Wiener, speaks to the issue of “Gaza Derangement Syndrome” that has affected large swaths of the Western left. It dictates that Gaza became the predominant issue of the day, more than local issues like homelessness and affordability, more than systemic issues like global warming, capitalism, racism, and sexism, more than international issues like Ukraine, Sudan, and the coups in the Sahel. In fact, they consider “Free Palestine” to be the only struggle worth fighting, or even talking about. Even though Iran and Lebanon have been suffering severely for the past year from the U.S. and Israeli attacks, we haven’t heard much from the Gaza crowd about the war in Iran. They prefer to focus almost exclusively on Palestine.
Not to trivialize the suffering of the Palestinian people. Perhaps 70,000 - 80,000 or more have died since October 7, 2023 as of this writing, and many more having injuries or having suffered in other ways. Israel, especially under Bibi Netanyahu’s Likud Party, has been extraordinarily intransigent and is guilty of numerous war crimes. Palestinians absolutely deserve a homeland as part of a two-state solution.
But at the same time there are lots of other things going on in the world too. Things worth working on. Like Ukraine. Like Global Warming. Like Racism. Like Homelessness. Like Homophobia. Like Economic Inequity. Like Medicare For All. We ignore at our own peril the authoritarianism in places like Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, North Korea, and Nicaragua. Or the U.S. for that matter. Or extremism in India, the actual focus of the Madison Square Garden protest. Some want to do activism or journalism. Others want to do art, education, promote peace and love and the values of the counterculture, do public service, foster joy, foster meaning, foster community… The point is…
We can work on more than one issue at a time.
It’s not always about Gaza. Singer Dolly Parton recently died and the first comment some people had was complaining she hadn’t taken a strong stand on Gaza. But her life and career were not at all related to Israel or Palestine. Similarly, this protest outside Madison Square Garden was about, the RSS, a dangerous Hindu nationalist group, trying to expand their influence in India, the U.S., and beyond. They seek to give hegemony in India to Hindus at the expense of Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, and others. Their agenda resembles the racist, bigoted, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic agenda of the far-right in North America and Europe, or Israel for that matter. The tide of fascism needs to be opposed. This protest wasn’t about Gaza and to try to hijack it and make it about Gaza is an insult to all the victims of Hindu nationalism. It also shines an unfavorable light on the Gaza movement, with such behavior.
In the end, to focus on Palestine exclusively is both ridiculous and wrong.
Especially because all too often, these people have never been involved in politics before and will never be involved again. They are bandwagon jumpers and virtue signalers, whose outsized passion and vitriol for the topic carries the familiar scent of the recent convert and newly-minted fanatic. In some cases, it’s clearly mental illness and other personal problems that is clouding their judgment on the issue.
Focusing exclusively on Palestine automatically means we are spending less time on other important issues.
Many new Free Palestine supporters do not possess a deep understanding of the Israeli/Palestinian issue in particular and The Middle East in general. All too many of them automatically support groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, the PFLP, and The Houthis, or even Russia, China, and Iran, merely because they are declared opponents of the U.S. and Israel. To gloss over the war crimes and human rights violations of Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah is negligent, lazy, and wrong. It delegitimizes any positive results you might have otherwise obtained.
And then there is the issue of anti-semitism. I have never believed that criticism of the Israeli government automatically made a person anti-semitic. I myself have often been very critical of the Israeli government too, going back to the late 1970s. You can be opposed to the Israeli government and not be anti-semitic. Indeed, many Jews are also opposed to the policies of the Israeli government and many have demonstrated that fact repeatedly since October 7th. You can be opposed to Zionism or opposed to how it is implemented today. But you can’t oppose “all Israelis” or “The Jews”. The conflating of “Jew” with “Israeli” with “Zionist” with “Supporter of Genocide” is wrong and dangerous. Individual Jews in Israel or elsewhere in The Diaspora are not responsible for the crimes of Israel and it is wrong to target them as if they were. Spreading anti-semitic conspiracy theories is harmful and toxic.
The fanaticism, dogmatism, extremism, and hatred on display in the video of the attack on Brad Lander is indeed shocking and deplorable.
We can do better.
I had heard about the 1939 rally at the old Madison Square Garden previously, but hadn’t seen many images from the event. Looking at them now, and with today’s context, I found them fascinating:
“A Night At The Garden” (7-minute video of the 1939 Madison Square Garden rally):
The program for the rally. Note the hammer and sickle on the head of the serpent.
Poster announcing the event
At The Garden
“Sieg Heil!”
German-American Bund leader Fritz Kuhn at the Madison Square Garden rally in 1939. (National Archives/Wikimedia Commons)
Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze at the Madison Square Garden Rally in 1939.
(National Archives/Wikimedia Commons)
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New York leftists called for an anti-fascist demonstration against the rally:
Isadore Greenbaum being beaten and subdued by Nazi storm troopers at Madison Square Garden, February 20, 1939. (Photo: New York Times)
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The crowd outside The Garden
Classic Photo
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