Where Were You Radicalized?

Mission District, San Francisco, 2004.

I’ll tell you exactly when it happened: It was the Iraq War, and there were protests all the time. The protests that attracted the passion, tho, were anti-Israel protests, featuring the most grotesque Jew-hatred I’d ever seen outside of history books.

The glorification of terrorists—straight-up, legit killers—on murals, the walls of coffee shops and bars, was ever-present. I was in NY for 9/11, and the moral equivalence was already getting repulsive in the months after the attacks. But San Francisco was *nuts*.

I made a point to go to the protests—damnit, if I didn’t show my face and stand there, proudly, as an American patriot and as a Jew, I couldn’t live with myself.

So I saw a lot of nasty shit. An old guy spit in my face from across a metal cordon, “We will kill you all again!”

A block away from my apartment in San Francisco—literally around the corner from where @politicalelle lived!—there was a huge bay window. For 3 years a massive Hezbollah flag was in the window.

Here are some throwback San Francisco pics. It was a pretty crazy time.
Here are some better ones. First pic was in my apartment, looking out onto Mission Street. Others are from street counter-protests.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1028101366911311877.html

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