Exclusive JewishJournal.com video: Dueling demonstrations –Muslim students led by Amir Abdel Malik Ali, Imam of Masjid Al-Islam in Oakland and a pro-Israel crowd in front of the Israeli Consulate Friday noon. Rabbi Daniel Bouskila leads the singing of “Ya’aseh Shalom.”
Exclusive JewishJournal.com video: Press conference at Israeli Consulate, Friday afternoon, March 7. Speakers, in order: Consul General Yaakov Dayan, City Councilman Jack Weiss, Rev. Billy G. Ingram, Rabbi Daniel Bouskila.
UPDATE FRIDAY 1:40 p.m.:
The Simon Wiesenthal Center and Young Israel of Century City are holding a memorial rally on Sunday, March 9 at 4 p.m., in honor of the eight yeshiva students killed in a terror attack at Mercaz Harav in Jerusalem.
The rally is set for Young Israel of Century City at
9315 W. Pico Blvd.
Invited to the memorial rally are City Councilman Jack Weiss, Mayor Antonio Villairaigosa and Israel Consul General Jacob Dayan.
The gathering is “to demonstrate outrage at what happened in Israel, to show solidarity with Israelis, and to protest the international outcry [saying] that Israel has overreacted in its defense,” said Rabbi Elazar Muskin, Rabbi of YICC.
StandWithUs and others will demonstrate in support of Israel in front of the Israeli Consulate at noon on Friday in response to a protest scheduled at the same time by the UC Irvine Muslim Student Union.
The protests will come one day after a terrorist attack on Yeshivat Mercaz Harav in west Jerusalem, in which eight people were killed and dozens wounded.
Los Angeles Jewish organizers are calling upon the community for a strong opposition presence at the local protest.
“Please come and show your support for Israelâ(tm)s right to defend herself,” Allyson Rowen Taylor, an L.A. community organizer unaffiliated with any organization, wrote in an email blast sent out on Thursday. “Over seven yeshiva student murdered today in Jerusalem while the Arabs cheer,” she wrote about the students from Mercaz Harav, a religious Zionist yeshiva in Jerusalem killed Thursday.
“Itâ(tm)s clearly going to be an out-of-context demonstration,” Roz Rothstein, president of StandWithUs, said of the MSU protest. “They will undoubtedly fail to recognize the reason that Israel was led to have to go into Gaza — these rockets are being launched indiscriminately everywhere,” she said, referring to the hundreds of rockets that have hit Israel since the withdrawal. “Israel has a right to protect her citizens.”
In response to the Jerusalem shooting, Rabbi Elazar Muskin of Young Israel of Century City and the Religious Zionist of America in Los Angeles are encouraging Los Angeles area rabbis in their Shabbat sermons to say tehilim for the murdered students, and to read their names aloud. A spokesman for the Rabbinical Council of America said the group is considering a rabbinical mission to the Jerusalem yeshiva to console the families and students there.
