I hate to say "the other side," because the natural reaction is to place Wheels of Justice on one end and The David Project on the other and imagine that "the truth" some lies somewhere around mid-way between, otherwise known as the fallacy of the golden mean. Let's call it then the "response" session that took place last night at Andover High School, as The David Project took the podium after a day of speaking to students in the same classes that were visited last week by Wheels of Justice.

I'd guess that there were about as many people there as previously...say around 250...but no sign of Ron Francis and his divestment cadre, and far fewer students than before, only a handful in fact. One wonders what classes were encouraged to attend the Wheels session that weren't encouraged to attend this one.

The session ran smoothly with no interruptions. The town moderator from Winchester was brought in to run the event and there were police present in the hall, but in the end, none of these extras seemed to be needed. It was a predominantly friendly audience, with a few critics sprinkled throughout (like the gentleman I believe to have been a Unitarian Minister seated behind me who was shuffling papers like he was about to be audited and muttering under his breath all night).

The David Project's approach was to be heavy on sourcing for their assertions, demonstrated that Arab rejection of the Jewish State was responsible for the conflict and treated the evening session as an opportunity to tell parents what they had told the kids (references to "We told the students this...we demonstrated that..."). Lawrence Muscant gave the lion's share of the presentation, with an Israeli lawyer named Oded Hacohen who's wife is a Wexner Fellow at Harvard giving his portion of the talk from his perspective as a native Israeli and someone familiar with the legal system there.

I heard good things about the classroom sessions, as well, with one parent writing:

I enjoyed it, as a) I always enjoy a good speaker, and b) it was nice commiserating with familiar faces before and after the event (some Jewish, some non, some from the area, some who had driven some distance to be there). Reaction overall was highly positive, with one school committee member commenting to me that the contrast between the two groups couldn't have been clearer.

Here's the Eagle-Tribune story.

Edit: By the way, do the teachers get it yet? Guess who the just-announced chairperson of the bargaining committee for contract negotiation is? Ron Francis.