Last night Temple Mishkan Tefilah in Newton seemed more like "The Massachusetts State Democratic Convention, The Sequel" than a rally in support of Israel which was what its billing announced. Originally scheduled as a mid-winter AIPAC meeting, the evening was highlighted by appearances, among others, by Governor Deval Patrick and Bob Haynes, the President of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. The Master of Ceremonies was Steve Grossman, former President of AIPAC and former national chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

To a SRO crowd of approximately a thousand people, the speakers affirmed their commitment to the continued existence of the State of Israel and lamented the loss of civilian life, as Mr. Grossman put it, "both Palestinian and Israeli." The evening was obviously transformed into an evening of Israel support in the face of the too-many-to-count angry and, frankly, bloodthirsty demonstrations put on by International ANSWER, the Marxist front group that has bonded with Muslim extremists. ANSWER's street theatre, oddly enough, does not feature ecumenical deploring of violence "on both sides."

In front of everyone's seat at the venerable synagogue, originally founded in the South End in 1858, was a copy of the Conservative prayer book, Sim Shalom, which translated into English, means "make peace." In stark contrast to the worldwide, hateful, more often than not blatantly anti-Semitic, street throngs chanting praise to Adolf Hitler and a desire to see Israel "nuked," this evening was a replay of virtually every organizational Jewish Community meeting for the last -- believe it or not --15 years, when the so called Oslo "Peace" Process began with the famous handshake on the White House lawn.

Jews pray for peace while most Arabs, Muslims and their rapidly growing left wing supporters agitate for conquest and annihilation. Stepping out of character (the world has come to expect Jews to be endless supplicants, crying for mercy from their oppressors) and permitting themselves the forbidden emotion -- anger -- was not much in evidence last night. Only two speakers ventured into that dangerous realm, Bob Haynes, described almost embarrassingly repetitively as a "starker" (a tough guy) by Steve Grossman and to his credit, Barry Schrage, CJP's President. The long time labor boss minced no words in recounting his visit to Sderot and the outrage he felt at witnessing the "crude, homemade" (as the BBC relentlessly dubs the deadly rockets) explode a few hundred yards away while Barry Schrage reminded us that "We are all Sderot."

Mr. Haynes was cheered because he was expressing a sincere and normal human emotion -- anger. I was left with, as I'm sure many in the audience were as well, a void and a question: Where are the "starkers" among Jewish leaders?

Radical Islamists and their left wing supporters don't seem to have any problem recruiting legions of college students with no connection to the Middle East who will show up on a moment's notice to don their bloody, red keffiyahs and to shout murderous slogans.

I don't mean to denigrate the work of the Boston JCRC or CJP or the important congressional initiatives of Steve Grossman and AIPAC. Their efforts to isolate Iran and to pressure that genocidally ambitious regime to abandon its nuclear ambitions have been fruitful and admirable. But the war to defend The Jewish State has many battlefronts. One of them is on the street. The Jewish "establishment" is ill equipped to deal with the rampant and growing anti-Semitism that is evident in the current round of public demonstrations for Hamas, whose supporters recently chanted "We need bigger ovens," not in Damascus or Teheran, but in Fort Lauderdale.

Coming from a distinctly left wing heritage, most Jewish organizations have been left largely paralyzed by the anti-Israel venom spewing forth from putative left wing groups. We have been subjected to an eight year mantra of Islam's "hijacking" by fundamentalists (a debatable proposition given the many recent historo-critical works on the intrinsic themes of Jew hatred at the core of Islamic sacred texts). It's about time we recognize that a large part of the Left has willfully betrayed its core progressive principles and has allied itself with the world's most regressive movement, however "nuanced" its apologists claim it to be.

The very notion that Jewish leadership feels compelled to defend the proposition that Israel be permitted to exist should be an affront to every Jew on the planet and to every so-called Progressive while true fascist regimes like Syria, Iran and Gaza are never challenged with the same set of criteria.

Jewish leadership operates under the "big tent" platitude, which claims to embrace any and every putative "Jewish" group like Brit Tzedek v'Shalom whose tireless work on behalf of Palestinians has been punctuated by its "deploring" of the killing of Ahmed Yassin, Hamas' leader and chief enunciator of anti-Semitism and The Workmen's Circle whose support of the new Boston mosque, controlled by the Muslim American Society (a branch of the officially anti-Semitic Muslim Brotherhood) culminated in standing shoulder to shoulder with Mahdi Bray, the MAS leader who cheerleads for Hezbollah.

There is a hunger among ordinary Jews -- and millions of Christians -- who love Israel deeply and who don't feel compelled to even dignify the calumny of Israel's "right to exist" (which, of course, is the other side's coded language for "Our right to destroy The Jewish State") for expressing -- yes -- that forbidden emotion - anger...no that's not strong enough...fury at those who would put into action that language while betraying their own Progressive principles.

High level political work is indispensable for preserving Israel. Carefully scripted evenings will give the community encouragement and good feelings, but there is a grass roots movement out there that must be allowed to confront the hatemongers in the public square. Both approaches are valid and should be complimentary.

The old saw, "Two Jews, three opinions" may be a staple for Jewish speakers, but in the current lethal climate, I suggest we shelve the joke for the time being and concentrate on unity.

Solomon adds:

This photo gives an idea as to the size of the crowd:

(Photographer Mike Dao has a gallery of photos here.)

The crowd size I've heard is 1200+, with more turned away. I had to leave quite early (staying long enough for the singing of the Star Spangled Banner, HaTikvah, and the initial intro), but there was still a sizable line of people waiting to get through the extensive security almost an hour after the scheduled start time. It was packed.

Why oh why do we insist on holding these things inside of Synagogues? Israel has an enormous stock of non-Jewish support, but the community insists upon sending signals that support for Israel is a matter of charitable support for American Jews, rather than reinforcing the fact that support for Israel in this matter is an issue of vital secular/non-Jewish American interest in the war of the West in defense of itself against terrorist barbarism. Get out of the Synagogues -- not even necessarily on to the street -- just bring it to secular ground. Christians are being driven out of the Middle East...do you think someone might be interested?

There is an enormous Mosque in Boston now being run openly by the Muslim American Society -- the American branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a sister organization to Hamas. They've been involved with every major pro-Hamas street demonstration in Boston. Is it any wonder? They're not apologizing for Hamas. They're not distancing themselves from the people at these demonstrations calling for Israel to be dismantled. That's their agenda too!

It's insufficient to sit around talking to ourselves, mouthing the same old platitudes to make us feel good about each other and writing checks to people in suits. There needs to be far greater outreach, and far greater public engagement and visibility.

Not surprisingly, the Boston Globe's coverage of last night's event is a complete disgrace: Israeli, Palestinian supporters rally, try to make case in Newton. Typical idiotic, brain-dead, morally-dense equivalency, they report that "thousands of people gathered," and "balance" it by giving arguably more attention to 20 of the usual idiots storming the Israeli Consulate, "resulting in four arrests." The article doesn't even mention the presence of the the Governor (Say...the Governor was there, but weren't any Republicans of equal stature able to attend? I guess since it's not an election season the organizers' tax exempt status is safe...for now.) or the head of the AFL-CIO, but gives plenty of space to the grievances of a handful of radical miscreants.