A community member dons a mask of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad outside the Ten Thousand Villages store in Highland Park during a Sept. 25 protest rally.
Photos by Debra Rubin
October 2, 2008
Some 200 members of the Jewish community demonstrated against a Highland Park store whose parent company was part of a group that hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that same night.
Rain doused the Sept. 25 protest outside Ten Thousand Villages, part of a 155-store retail chain run by the business arm of the Mennonite Central Committee.
Ahmadinejad has drawn the wrath of many for his Holocaust denials and his vow to destroy Israel and America.
“While they’re having dinner, we are here protesting," Jeffrey Schreiber of Highland Park told NJJN. “We want people to know that if they buy from this store they are buying Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dinner.”
Another protest took place concurrently outside the Grand Hyatt in New York by a coalition of some 30 Jewish, Christian, and human rights groups in opposition to the dinner being held there by Religions for Peace. In addition to the Mennonites, a Christian denomination that claims some 109,000 adherents, the dinner sponsors included the American Friends Service Committee, World Council of Churches, and the Quaker United Nations Office.
Rutgers Hillel executive director Andrew Getraer hands a protest letter to Danielle Violette-Birnberg of East Brunswick to be presented to the Ten Thousand Villages store.
It was Schreiber’s idea to stage the Highland Park rally, which was put together in a matter of days by an ad hoc committee, which circulated an announcement through e-mails.
He thanked the crowd for coming out “as Americans to exercise your right to protest, something that you could not do in Iran.”
Ten Thousand Villages has four outlets in New Jersey, including stores in Princeton and Red Bank. It bills itself as “a fair trade” store selling the wares of artisans from Third World countries in Asia, Africa, South America, and the Middle East. Last year Jewish activists called for a boycott of the Highland Park store, saying its website lists items from Arab craftsmen in the West Bank, but none from Israel.
‘Hatred, lies, and prejudice’
Kristen Jenkins, a spokesperson for the Ten Thousand Villages chain, told NJJN it has operated as a “stand-alone company with the Mennonite Central Committee” for 10 years.
Arli Klassen, executive director of the Central Mennonite Committee, confirmed to NJJN that purchasing decisions are made by Ten Thousand Villages.
Jeffrey Schreiber, who formed an ad hoc committee of Jewish community members to stage a rally outside the Ten Thousand Villages store, addresses the crowd of almost 200.
Each has its own board of directors, although Klassen acknowledged the committee appoints some members to Ten Thousand Villages’ board of directors. She said the Mennonite Committee is not supported by the chain.
“It is a program that runs separately,” said Klassen. “It’s kept at arm’s length.”
Klassen said the dinner in New York was held “to open up that little bit of space for dialogue” and featured a multi-religious panel, including Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb of the Jewish Renewal movement, who spoke about the Holocaust and Jewish traditions of peace.
“We have been pretty consistent for years that any solution to the violence needs to take into account the views of Israel’s Jewish people and Palestinians,” said Klassen.
The Mennonite Central Committee has for some years been criticized by Jewish groups for what they believe is its biased portrayal of the Middle East situation.
As the throng in Highland Park filled the sidewalk along Raritan Avenue, a podium was set up outside the store. Speakers denounced the Iranian president and his sponsorship of terrorism.
A community member wearing an Ahmadinejad mask stood in front to collect letters of protest, which rally organizers had hoped to bring inside. However, the store, whose operators had apparently heard about the rally, closed early.
Michael Gordon of Highland Park holds a protest sign at the rally in front of the Ten Thousand Villages store.
Alice Gordon, a member of the organizing committee, said she planned to deliver them the next day.
Andrew Getraer, executive director at Rutgers Hillel in New Brunswick, acknowledged mixed feelings about the store, which supports struggling artisans.
“After all, I have no idea if the local management of the store shares the parent body’s politics, and I’m quite sure the villagers and artisans in Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal, Guatemala, and many other nations have no idea what Ten Thousand Villages’ leaders are doing,” he told the crowd. “But months ago I joined this boycott and today encourage these letters because hatred and lies and prejudice must be opposed immediately and completely, in every context and in every way.”
Doniel Sherman, a 17-year-old student at the Torah Academy in Teaneck — who also spoke at a Sept. 21 rally in New York City protesting Ahmadinejad's appearance at the United Nations — said he was the grandson of Holocaust survivors.
“When I see my grandmother, I see the numbers on her arm,” said Doniel. “When I see my grandfather, I see the way he has blocked out the memories of events too painful and to gruesome to recall. When I talk to my grandparents, as much as they try to shield me from knowing about the suffering they experienced, every so often some of their pain slips into their voices.
“My grandparents lived through the Holocaust and Ahmadinejad denies it ever occurred.”
Murray Katz, a vice president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County, said it would continue to protest Iran’s policies and threats through rallies and every means possible.
Ilana Mensch, 16, of Edison came with several friends to the rally.
“We think Ahmadinejad is a very bad guy, and we are very pro-Israel,” she said. “He doesn’t want Israel to exist, and we hate him.”
Gary Mitchell, a local resident, came to distribute literature opposing the rally. Describing himself as a customer of Ten Thousand Villages, he said he thought it was “unfair and shameful” to target it.
While agreeing that Ahmadinejad was “extreme” and “grossly mistaken” on the history of Jewish persecution, he contended the Sept. 21 mass demonstration in New York had the chance of influencing the Iranian leader and “working to open the doors to more reasonable moderates.”
Mennonite committee defends dinner meeting
The executive director of the Mennonite Central Committee, one of a group of religious organizations who hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for dinner Sept. 25 in New York, defended the decision to interact with a leader who supports terrorism, vows to destroy Israel, and is a Holocaust denier.
In an exclusive phone interview with NJJN on Sept. 26, Arli Klassen said the Mennonites engaged Ahmadinejad in a dialogue to try and change his perspective.
“We did not honor him…,” said Klassen from the group’s Akron, Pa., headquarters. “We wanted to build bridges of understanding and interact with each other.”
She said the committee — an outreach arm of the Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches in the United States and Canada — was drawing on the spiritual roots of its ancestors and following the example of Jesus, who ate with people of ill repute.
The dinner held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel was sponsored by Religions for Peace, which also included the American Friends Service Committee, World Council of Churches, Quaker United Nations Office, and UN Liaison Office to engage Ahmadinejad on “the significance of religious contributions to peace.”
It sparked a protest outside the hotel by a coalition of some 30 Jewish, Christian, and human rights groups as well as a rally outside the 10,000 Villages store in Highland Park, whose parent company is the Mennonite committee.
Noting this was the third time the committee had hosted Ahmadinejad at a dinner, Jeff Schreiber, who had the idea for the Highland Park rally, said, “How many times are these people going to have dinner with an avowed warmonger, genocide proponent, and all-around despot?”
Klassen claimed there has been some moderation in Ahmadinejad’s position since their meetings began. He no longer talks about “wiping Israel off the face of the earth” but speaks of a one-state solution where Jews and Palestinians live side by side.
The committee doesn’t share many of Ahmadinejad’s opinions, Klassen stressed, including his Holocaust denial and his calls for the destruction of Israel.
“He distinguishes between Zionists and Jews, although he doesn’t do a very good job of it,” acknowledged Klassen, who said Ahmadinejad is aware of the Mennonites’ opposing positions.
“I specifically told President Ahmadinejad he had to change his rhetoric about Israel,” said Klassen. She said that leaders representing a number of faith groups — including Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, and Amish — participated in a panel discussion.
“We are advocating for a two-state solution,” said Klassen. “We do believe in Israel’s right to exist.”
However, she declined to answer whether the committee believes Israel should continue to exist as a Jewish state, adding, “Beyond that we take no position on what Israel should look like.”
Klassen said Jews are guaranteed a seat in the Iranian parliament and “are allowed to practice religion freely.”
However, the Iranian regime has long been criticized for its persecution of Jews and other religions.
“The Mennonite Central Committee has to take accountability for its decisions,” said Etzion Neuer, executive director of the NJ region of the Anti-Defamation League. “Frankly it’s sickening that an organization that bills itself as a representative for peace could sit down with President Ahmadinejad, a person who is a classic anti-Semite and hater.”
In a letter supplied to NJJN by the ADL, Felice Gaer, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a government monitoring group, requested the dinner be canceled, noting it comes “amid a rapidly accelerating deterioration of religious freedom and other human rights in Iran, including prolonged detention, torture, and executions often based on the religion of the accused.”
“Inviting this leader undermines the legitimacy and seriousness of the ‘dialogue,’” wrote Gaer to William Vendley, secretary-general of Religions for Peace. “We are concerned that your ‘dialogue’ will be merely another platform for President Ahmadinejad to espouse an ideology of intolerance.”
Klassen said she would welcome any overture by Jewish groups to discuss the committee’s position. “We met with President Ahmadinejad to build bridges of peace and understanding, and we would do the same with anyone else who would like to talk,” said Klassen. “We believe it is more important to talk than not to talk.”
--TOP--
Comment: comments@njjewishnews.com
