Dispatch From NYC’s Celebrate Israel Parade
Where Mayor de Blasio boogied, and demonstrators parroted disdain for homosexuals
June 01, 2015
A scene at the Celebrate Israel Parade in New York City, May 31, 2015. (Eric Thayer/Getty Images)
On Saturday night, the towers of the Empire State Building shone with the colors of the Israeli flag, foreshadowing the 51st annual Celebrate Israel parade, which was planned for the next day. By Sunday lunchtime, Fifth Avenue was swamped by a mass of blue and white as thousands of people and countless Jewish organizations, charities, yeshivas, and synagogues came out to show their support for the Jewish state.
Despite mild splatters of rain that fell on marchers around 2 p.m., the day was hot and humid. Members of numerous marching bands looked uncomfortable in their uniforms, shifting their collars and unbuttoning their shirts in between their drum beats. In separate places, I saw Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo showing their support. De Blasio even joined hands with a circle of Chabad Hasidim for a spontaneous rendition of the customary Israeli celebratory song, “Hevenu shalom aleichem (we brought peace upon you).”
Outwardly, Sunday’s Parade seemed like a joyous occasion—chants of “Israel!” echoed up and down the street, music poured out of the speakers of the parade’s many floats, and groups of teenagers took advantage of the swarms of revelers by selling Israeli flags for 5 bucks a pop. Yet, as in previous years, the months leading up to 2015 parade have been blemished by debate surrounding who can and cannot legitimately march.
The furor surrounds progressive groups like the New Israel Fund. Their critics argue that the organization harbors secret anti-Israel sentiments. They point to NIF’s willingness to support a boycott of Israeli companies that profit from the settlement enterprise. The organization’s critics consider NIF’s policy on the settlements to be tantamount to an endorsement of a boycott of Israel as a whole.
At the start of this year, when the guidelines for this years parade were released, the New Israel Fund’s opponents had new reason to believe that the organization would be excluded from participating. For the parade’s organizers included a new rule, which explicitly banned groups that support the global BDS movement against Israel. And yet, all went off without a hitch, reported The Forward:
Despite the noisy attempts by a handful of activists to block their participation, members of the New Israel Fund and other progressive organizations marched uptown holding small clutches of flowers, without incidence.
However, they might have been met by a small chorus of boos as they approached the bottom right corner of Central Park, where a few dozen protesters lined the street holding signs emblazoned with phrases like “Homosexuals & BDS Marching in Israeli Parade is an Abomination,” and “Jewish Mothers with Short Skirts Shorten Child’s Life: 4 Inches Below Knee Is Torah Law.”
The woman holding the sign, The Forward reported, wore “a blue dress and matching high heel sandals—a dress, it should be noted, that was at her knee, not four inches below it.”
At the time, the irony appeared to go unnoticed.
Jas Chana is a former intern at Tablet.
