Salute to insanity

I went to the annual Salute to Israel parade here in New York on Sunday. Well, to the counter-protest at it, that is.

The parade has been around for years and is big; it seemed to be passing us at 58th street for an eternity. What's it advocating? Well, it seems to vary. Officially, it doesn't stand for anything too specific.

Some in the parade (not many) had signs for 'peace', which seemed nice, although who knows exactly what peace they were for. There was lots of blue, as one might expect, but there was also orange. That's right, the color that was used by the campaign against Israel's "withdrawl" from Gaza. woo settlers.

There weren't overly many t-shirts or signs that showed the shape of Israel, but of the ones that did, every single one I saw included the West Bank and Gaza. You'd think what essentially ammounts to an endorsement of ethnic clensing might draw news attention, but it didn't (see i.e. AP).

Most of the people marching in the parade were kids. Little kids, medium kids, big kids -- there with their Jewish day schools or their synagogues. Or, in at least one case, with the marching band of a public high school. (wtf???).

Indoctrination was in the air.

While we chanted "oy vey, oy vey, occupation's not the way", the kids in the parade varied between yelling and screaming at us and just looking at us with this curious, confused look.