Swans

Dear Assemblyman Karben:

I well remember February 1939, when the world was already aware of the evils of the Nazis, the American affiliate of the Third Reich, the German American Bund, held a George Washington's birthday rally at New York's Madison Square Garden. Although the Bund was widely despised the rally was not only held but was able to attract twenty-two thousand supporters. Tens of thousands of anti-Nazis turned out to protest. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, whose mother Irene Cohen was Jewish, provided 1,780 policemen to insure that the rally could be conducted peacefully. LaGuardia knew that the First Amendment applied particularly to those who are out of favor and that they must be afforded protection if the Bill of Rights is to have any meaning. Although 29.5% of New York City's population was Jewish, they did not retaliate against the courageous mayor. He won reelection for a third term when he ran again in 1941. As a Jew, an American, and a Rockland resident, I am very disappointed that another Jew and a government official no less should be attempting to deny the fundamental First Amendment rights to a minority group that is now encountering discriminations similar to what we suffered not many years ago. Philip Greenspan

...In the service of free speech (including distorted and misleading speech), I urge the Jewish community not to attempt to stop the show. Instead, Jews will be standing outside the hall with leaflets expressing a more balanced picture of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (much as WESPAC routinely leaflets outside pro-Israel events). In our version, wrongs have indeed been inflicted on the Palestinians, though not primarily by Israel, but rather through the actions and omissions of Arab states and self-serving Palestinian leaders. In our telling of the story, most of what Palestinians describe as Israel's military brutality is in direct response to some of the most horrifying violence ever directed at a civilian population...

. . .there was a revealing exercise in art, tolerance and the predictable choreography of the cultural amplification chamber in the way an obscure Westchester County art show, which didn't even display the art under attack, became, briefly, an international cause célèbre. In the end, the would-be censors didn't get their way, and a crowd far larger than organizers had originally expected turned out yesterday to see it . . . an event almost no one in Westchester knew about was all over the news and the Internet. By midday Friday, the county had received 367 phone calls and 1,140 e-mail messages, the vast majority opposing the show . . . One oddity was that the show wasn't even remotely controversial in Houston, where it was displayed two blocks from the city's Holocaust Museum. It received favorable news coverage, drew 20,000 people and sparked much discussion. If everything in America these days gets played through a political prism, we in New York are the ones trying to censor -- they're the ones open to viewing the art.

Hundreds of people came to the show at the Westchester County Center, some waiting downstairs because the exhibit room upstairs was too crowded. . .Rabbi Michael Cahana . . . said he wanted to see for himself what the art was about. . . "The problem is that there's no context. . . While we're talking about the suffering of people, and I understand that suffering, we're not talking about realities of terrorism. We're not talking about the realities of corruption that have really robbed the Palestinian people of their livelihood, their future." Cahana spent a few moments chatting with Nada Khader, the director of WESPAC, after viewing the show and said he was interested in building bridges between the communities. "I think it's the beginning of an important dialogue that needs to happen between the Palestinian and Arab community in Westchester County and the Jewish community." Khader said. That dialogue went somewhat less smoothly outside the county center, as a small group of pro-Israel demonstrators protested the exhibit . . . "Fascist," a man going into the exhibit yelled at the group. A young woman leaving the show came over to the demonstrators and said "You don't know what art is," and walked away. . . Spano's position led to a flood of angry e-mails, 1,140 by late Friday afternoon, to his office. Most came between Thursday and Friday, when news about the controversy was posted on the Web site, www.honestreporting.com . . . about 150 of so of the messages were from Westchester residents, the rest came from across the country and around the world.