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February 27, 2004/Adar 5 5764, Vol. 56, No. 23
Hague hearing fuels demonstrations
TOBY AXELROD
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
THE HAGUE - Holland turned into a staging ground for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this week, as demonstrators converged on The Hague to talk about Israel's security barrier and Palestinian terrorism.
As the International Court of Justice held hearings on the West Bank security fence, thousands of Israel supporters from across Europe, Israel and the United States gathered in the streets outside The Hague's Peace Palace.
On Feb. 23, the same square used by about 3,000 pro-Israel demonstrators later became the site of a pro-Palestinian demonstration of slightly smaller size. For the most part, Dutch police managed to keep the two groups apart, but the police's efforts did not temper demonstrators' vehemence toward each other - and for their cause.
"I came because of the suicide bombings," said Derya Yalimcan, 30, a Turkish student who came with a delegation of students from Germany to support Israel's cause. "You can't do anything about it and you feel helpless. What else can we do besides come to this dem-onstration?"
To make their argument more poignant, Israel demonstrators brought with them an Israeli bus mangled in a Jan. 29 Jerusalem suicide bombing, in which 11 people were killed. Dem-onstrators said a hush fell over the crowd when the flatbed truck bearing the shattered bus rolled in.
In a disturbingly familiar image, 10 members of Zaka, the fervently Orthodox rescue and recovery service that collects victims' body parts after terrorist attacks in Israel, stood around the bus in their yellow work suits.
Iris Boker, director of Zaka in Europe, said the bus had such a strong effect that it would probably be sent to other demonstrations rather than be returned to Israel.
Miri Avitan came to the demonstration at The Hague with a photo of her son Assaf, who was killed at his 15th birthday party in a suicide bombing in December 2001.
"He was celebrating his birthday with his friends and all his friends died," said Avitan, one of many Israelis who came to tell their stories of the trauma suffered by the death of a family member.
Bridgit Kessler's daughter, Gila, was killed in a suicide bombing on June 19, 2002.
"That was the day I died," said her mother, who has three other children.
U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), a member of the House International Relations Committee who came to The Hague, said, "The people who ought to be on trial today are the people who are training children to aspire to be suicide bombers, not people who build fences to protect innocent lives."
Much of the funding and logistical support for the pro-Israel rallies came from the Jewish Agency for Israel, which helped organize delegations of students to come to The Hague from Israel, France, England, Germany, Poland, Belgium and the Netherlands. Hundreds also came from the United States.
"After the lessons of Durban and Johannesburg, one cannot leave the street to the Palestinian propaganda," Michael Jankelowitz, a spokesman for the Jewish Agency, said, referring to the virulently anti-Israel dem-onstrations at the U.N. conference against racism in Durban, South Africa, in the summer of 2001.
"And it worked," Jankelowitz said. "There is balance only because of the power and feeling of the street that the Palestinians do not control the street anymore."
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