How I Became an Anti-Zionist

About 65 people attended, including our wonderful security volunteers. There was no disruption by the people who've been threatening us for weeks and calling this an "anti-Jewish training session." Our goal was to reach the non-activists, Jews and non-Jews, who have had their default allegiance to Israel challenged by the events of the past two years, and give them an alternative. We reached our target audience, with a large number of new people in the audience, some of whom got up to speak during the Q&A.

The speakers were extraordinary: Holocaust survivor Suzanne Ross described her odyssey to become an activist for Palestinian rights; and Columbia student Aharon Akiva Dardik spoke about his journey from West Bank settler to IDF refuser to Columbia anti-genocide activist. I recommend them both to other groups for future events.

We would have been helped by more support from regional Palestine support groups, in terms both of publicity and attendance. I was surprised to see so few activists from other groups, even though we have been under attack weekly for two years. Maybe we failed to promote the event sufficiently? I'd be glad to hear some suggestions about this.