Approximately 300 UW-Madison students and community members gathered Wednesday on Library Mall to rally for peace to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with part of the crowd voicing pro-Palestinian opinions and another part expressing pro-Israeli views.
Speakers representing pro-Palestinian opinions talked about their experiences concerning the conflict, with one, Nasser Abufarha, calling the Israeli army the \most brutal, murderous army supported by the most lethal American weapons.""
The rally, entitled Just Peace for Madison, was affiliated with several organizations including the Palestine Right of Return Coalition and Jews for Equal Justice. The demonstration follows rallies on campuses across the United States, one of which, on the UC-Berkeley campus, ended in 79 arrests.
Participants waved Palestinian, Israeli and American flags and carried signs, with messages ranging from ""Boycott Israel"" to ""I am pro-peace, pro-human rights, and pro-Israel"" to ""You can call [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon a murderer, I'll call [Palestinean Authority Leader Yasser] Arafat a terrorist, or we can stop name calling.""
Eleven Madison police officers were in attendance but beyond a visible surface tension, there was no violence.
""Any time that there's international politics that are volatile, [Capt. Luis] Yudice makes decisions on where I go and what I do,"" said Sgt. Dave McCaw, a law enforcement official who was present.
Approximately 75 of the 300 protesters voiced pro-Israeli sentiments.
Sarah Kaiksow, a UW-Madison senior and an organizer of the rally, said she was happy pro-Israeli students had come to hear what others had to say at the rally.
""I think a solution has to involve both sides,"" Kaiksow said.
Kaiksow was passing a petition around the crowd which asked the university to divest its interests in American businesses in Israel until the country complies with international compliance laws to which it has agreed.
Students and community members at UC-Berkeley were asking for a similar action when they were arrested. They locked arms inside a school building that houses Middle Eastern studies and said they would not leave until demands for negotiations were met.
Seventy-nine people, including approximately 60 students, were arrested for trespassing and released.
Small groups of participants at the UW-Madison rally stayed for more than an hour to argue about the conflict after others had left to march to the Capitol.
Even though the students were shouting at times, all parties left the discussions without any violence taking place.
Both sides at the rally distributed fliers to the audience, with opposing information on each.
One item on a flier read ""Israel says: Let's remember the Holocaust. We say: And let's stop repeating it!""
Another flier, printed by the Madison Israel Public Affairs Committee, justified Israeli roadblocks in the country, saying the army is forced to put up such barricades because of suicide bombers.
Throughout the rally, audience members yelled counter comments to what speakers were saying. For instance, when emcee and UW-Madison alumna Bina Ahmad asked the audience if it remembered South Africa and apartheid, students asked if she remembered Sept. 11.
UW-Madison junior Harley Rosental said the pro-Palestinian activists were ""misinformed.""
""They're just angry,"" Rosental said.
This is the second rally on the UW-Madison campus sponsored by groups aiming to bring attention to the situation of the Palestinian people.
The majority of the rallies across the country were peaceful, like that at UW-Madison, with tensions peaking at shouts of opposing viewpoints.
""I'm shocked [these rallies] haven't become violent,"" Rosental said.
