The several dozen Jews and Israel supporters gathered outside the Palestinian mission to the United Nations in New York City on Tuesday afternoon had no delusions that their protest would sway any of the diplomats in the nondescript mission on E. 65th St.
The ostensible protesters convened amid the U.N. General Assembly, on the day before Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas was slated to address the global body. The gathering was organized by Betar and Americans Against Antisemitism and lasted about an hour and 15 minutes.
Sophie Sassoon told JNS that part of the reason she attended the protest was due to “the manipulation that the Palestinians have been able to perpetuate for decades.” That deceit, she said, “is that they’re not free, that they’re persecuted.”
“It’s paid for them to be the underdog,” Sassoon said. “It’s paid for them to fake human-rights abuses because they don’t care about freedom.” Sassoon, a business development professional who lives in New York, told JNS that the world pacifies terrorists because people are afraid.
“If we learn anything from history, you can’t pacify people that are intent on slaughtering all of Western civilization,” she said.
AJ Edelman, a Boston native who has competed in the Olympics for Israel, spoke at the protest on Tuesday. He told JNS that he wanted to impress upon listeners that “a generation of Palestinian youth are raised to believe that all of their problems are due to the person next door, due to the evil people who have murdered their family and have taken everything away from them.”
Those in attendance were largely “fighting for a future, in which we don’t have to go into urban warfare, in which we actually do live together,” Edelman told JNS. “This is the end result of generations of neglect and misuse of Palestinian argument.”
Edelman doubts anyone from the Palestinian mission would come out to speak with the protesters, and even if they did, he figures they’ve already made up their minds.
“If there’s someone who wants an honest dialogue, that conversation probably would revolve around where do you see your children in 40 years and is Israel still around?” he told JNS. “Do you really want a future, in which your children, your grandchildren, their children don’t have a future other than blowing up a bus? Is that what you want to enslave their future to?”
An attendee who identified herself only as “Bellamy” told JNS that there needs to be more dialogue, rather than internal conversations, among Jews. With people supporting terrorists and burning Israeli and American flags in the United States, “everything’s very upside down right now,” she said. “It just doesn’t make sense to be on the other side.”
She added that those in the adjacent Palestinian mission are hiding. “What is so difficult about showing your face if that’s really something that you are such a firm believer in?” she said. “We’re out here showing our faces, so why aren’t you?”
In his speech, Edelman said that there must be a better future for Palestinians than what their leaders are pushing.
