Finding a sense of strength and community at a pro-Israel rally

This past April 15th finds me at the pro-Israel rally in Washington, D.C. The first truly hot day of spring. The sky is liquid, without a single cloud, just a huge expanse of crisp light. Pink cotton balls cover the trees, I can smell the heat and sunshine, the bodies around me. I am the epitome of hackneyed symbolism, hiding from the sun under the large American flag sprawling over the crowd. My arm is numb from holding the corner of the flag, so my father takes over. Behind me, two others are struggling to keep the flag up, trying to find any way to hold it that is at least somewhat comfortable.

The fatigue is gone. Three hours of sleep last night, but I am throbbing with heat and energy. Behind me, back on the air conditioned bus tanning in the parking lot, is my backpack, crammed with textbooks that I have long forgotten about.

Somewhere in the stuffing of the yellow pillow I left on my seat, are the classes I should have been in today. The chemicals I should have been mixing and swirling in lab. The essay I was supposed to hand in. The Spanish test I was supposed to take.

Instead, I am here, under the still burning shade of the flag, standing next to my father, eating an occasional plum to stay hydrated. I am close to the stage, but I can't see the illustrious speakers, Elie Weisel, George Pataki, Natan Sharansky, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Gephardt, Benjamin Netanyahu, Rudolph Giuliani. All I see are flags, flags and a platform where the reporters roost with their cameras. They watch the speakers they are blocking and turn occasionally to look at the crowd. I am amazed that they don't look longer at the line, that they look at the speakers at all.

"Turn around," my father says. I do, even though I know what I am being pointed to, I have seen it already, I was taken by it before. I turn and am confronted again with a sea of Jews, rolling down Capitol Hill, spilling into the reflecting pool, swinging around to the left and right. It's hard to explain such a thing and why it would make my insides tingle. They say there were tens of thousands of us there, some put the estimate at over one hundred thousand. It doesn't matter. That on a Monday, a work day, professionals called in sick, schools and universities packed up their students on buses, people from the West Coast and Midwest flew in, so many people converged on Washington to actively support Israel, to finally agree on something is surreal to me. So many Jews agreeing for once. Imagine that.

Since the war began nineteen months ago, it has consumed me. Before I came to Princeton in the fall, however, I was in an environment where everyone agreed with me and where everyone was equally emotionally engaged. Now, I find myself on a largely silent campus, where the only voices I hear are ones that vilify Israel. I feel guilty for being comfortable and safe in America, while kids my age are in the army fighting my fight, while Israelis can't go to the supermarket or board a bus without being blown into bloody shards, for not doing anything to help Israel in its fight for its existence. After despairing quietly alone about the situation, I could not pass up the opportunity to attend this rally. Classes could wait, homework could be made up. Some things were just more important. It was the least I could do for Israelis risking their lives every day so that every Jew could call Israel home. Why was I not helping them to do my work?

On the bus, I woke up to see caravans of tour buses with Israeli flags in the windows streaming past us on I-95. The twenty-some Princeton students on the bus with me were just as ecstatic. We pointed frantically out the windows, held up our Israeli flag, our Princeton sweatshirts, trying to make contact with the thousands of people on their way to the rally. I realized that this entire time, these students, the people on the buses, had felt the way I had. I was not the only one who felt isolated in my support of Israel. I was not the only one who felt like no one around me cared or endlessly criticized every action that Israel took. I was not the only one to feel helpless and hopeless and afraid that I am sitting back and letting Israel vanish.

As we approached RFK stadium, my view of the situation changed instantly. We weren't moving — hundreds of buses, full of supporters of Israel, were clogging the roads. Never have I felt so much happiness, sitting in traffic! The quaint streets leading to the Capitol were crowded. People were carrying flags and signs, singing Hebrew songs. Even more were below us, shooting through the underground tunnels of the city to get to the site of the rally.

Looking around me, listening to the speakers, to the Israeli leaders who flew to Washington to speak, to the important American political players, to Christian leaders unequivocally trumpeting their support of Israel, I saw that all was not lost. A hundred thousand people, Jews and non-Jews, were willing to stand up for a just cause, without bending to the warping forces of unfounded moral equivalency.

I raise my hand up over the crowd and snap a picture of the crowd, of the light in the sky, of the trees. First hot day of spring. First day of hope.