A comment from someone attending the Shministim talk at UC Berkeley:

I was stunned by the power and effectiveness of their talk and by the responses to the questions posed to Netta and Maya. These young women had such well thought-out answers and responses to questions, from the “pro-Israeli” folks to the anti-Zionist doctrinaire leftists. There were hundreds of people, mostly young folks at this UC Berkeley event. Almost everyone was quite well behaved; there was no name calling or shouting others down. It was amazing to listen to this incredible meeting and discussion; this seems so rare these days. I can’t help but be impressed by these young articulate women.  They were not just preaching to the choir, but really sharing the history of occupation, early Zionist thought and ideals, growing up with the Israeli propaganda machine, what happens when one resists going into the Army, the psychology of Israelis’ fear of extinction and anti-semitism, the analysis of who profits from the occupation, life under occupation for Palestinians, differences between Hamas and Fatah, etc. What a talk in such plain language!

A friend wrote me today,

“How wonderful tonight’s event was – it was truly a hope-producing experience. You all deserve so much credit for putting on such a wonderful program.  Those young women were really an incredible inspiration to me – so calm, so clear, so non-defensive and so well informed – hard to even imagine that they are so young – also just a relief to attend an event at which all the participants are not old – not that I object to old people – just discouraging that they are the only ones “out there.”

I think this event was one of the few events I have been were significant numbers of people were thinking differently at the end of the night.

Great going to JVP, Code Pink, SPJP for sponsoring the event. I would suggest a more active strategy of bringing more resistors to speak as a JVP event. It was so valuable.

Jerry Geffner