Pro-Israel rally at the UN

If you go to this post, you’ll find a link to a slideshow that LGF’s Charles Johnson put together using photographs that someone took of the 35,000 person strong rally outside of the UN to support Israel. I just have a couple of comments.

First, I wanted to note the very first slide, which is a picture of the UN building itself. It’s a classic of post-War architecture, and I just got the funniest feeling when I saw it. I was part of the generation of school children in the 1960s that was inundated with pictures of the UN, and its wonders, especially UNICEF. I know now that the rot had already crept in, but this was still close enough to WWII, and the rot was still deeply enough buried, that people really did think that the UN was something special. When I see that photo therefore, I have this weird flashback feeling to my own childhood, to the pre-modern world of hope and naivite, and it really makes me quite sad.

The second thing I want to point out is how civilized the protest is. Now, it’s entirely possible that the person who took the photographs deliberately ignored the hoards burning Kofi in effigy or demanding that various people be beheaded or threatening to take over one country or another. Somehow, though, I doubt it. These are signs with protests, not threats. It’s rather striking when you compare the tone in these signs with these signs, for example, which are among the more restrained one sees lately.