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Friday May 16, 2008

Protesters’ arrests at JCC don’t rain on Israel event

by andy altman-ohr
staff writer

They were loud and they were offensive — so said one of the organizers — but the protesters who entered the JCC of San Francisco during an Israel at 60 symposium there on May 8 didn’t ruin the event.

Twenty of the protesters, some or perhaps all of them Jews, were arrested and charged with trespassing.

The incident occurred about four and a half hours into the daylong “Israel at 60 Education Symposium” at the JCC, which featured workshops and lectures on various aspects of Israel and Israeli culture.

At around 2:30 p.m., approximately two dozen people entered the JCC’s atrium lobby carrying banners and chanting, according to Susie Crumpler, director of marketing and communications for the JCCSF.

The protest was organized by No Time to Celebrate, a self-touted Jewish-led group opposing the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

When the disruption didn’t cease and the protesters refused to leave, San Francisco police officers were summoned, Crumpler said. The SFPD confirmed 20 arrests were made, and that the people were cited and released.

“It did not have any impact on the program,” said Rabbi Doug Kahn, executive director of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council, which organized the event with the JCC. “The protesters were loud and offensive, but in no way did they impinge on the proceedings of the day.”

Some 115 people were attending the symposium when the protesters entered the atrium, Crumpler said. One workshop near the lobby was in a question-and-answer session, and with the chanting and ruckus nearby, continuing was difficult. “It was loud,” Crumpler said.

Kahn said: “I heard some noise from the lobby level. But most of the sessions at that time were upstairs and barely heard anything.”

The episode lasted less than an hour and there was never any safety risk, Crumpler said. She noted that the JCC had prepared for the event — which also included a dinner with dancing attended by about 250 — by beefing up security and police presence.

While the group in the lobby held a banner reading, “Jews in solidarity with 60+ years of Palestinian resistance,” another group of Jews and non-Jews demonstrated outside the JCC.

On its Web site, No Time to Celebrate claimed that all 20 people arrested were Jews.

In a radio interview on KCBS-740 AM, the group’s Libby Goldberg said, “We are here as Jews to break the perceived consensus that all Jews are in support of colonization and apartheid and genocide of the Palestinian people.”

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