Pro-swap crowd pounces on Aaron Lerner
By Cnaan Liphshiz Haaretz 4 July 2008
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/998866.html

On way to visit his Mom, IMRA founder stopped by PM's office to have his say

Soon after arriving on Sunday outside the Prime Minister's Office, Dr. Aaron
Lerner found himself surrounded on all sides by angry and loud protesters
determined to chase him away. The U.S.-born activist offended the crowd with
a sign criticizing the prisoner deal with Hezbollah, which the demonstrators
had gathered there to support.

"I was supposed to be in Jerusalem anyway for lunch with my mother, and I
knew this was the time to make my voice heard," Lerner, who lives with his
family in Ra'anana, told Anglo File in explaining his decision to crash the
demonstration in favor of the deal, which was ultimately approved by an
overwhelming majority. "I bought a white piece of cardboard and jotted what
I had to say on it."

At a certain point, a crowd of a dozen people closed in on Lerner with signs
in support of the deal, in an attempt to block his sign from view. "Some
people tried to tear my sign and take it away, and someone threw water at
me," recounts Lerner, who was the only objector there. Despite the rough
treatment, Lerner says he wasn't concerned. "I'm almost two meters tall, so
it wasn't terribly worrying to have some people looking up and yelling at
me. I didn't feel in danger," he says. After about 15 minutes of a
vociferous struggle for sign space in the summer heat, someone from the
crowd shouted to the demonstrators to leave Lerner alone. "He told them they
were only supplying me with a photo-op, which was true," Lerner recalls. He
says that before the incident, which was reported in Israel Radio and
mentioned in Haaretz, the media had ignored him. "I had been pretty much
ignored for a good 30 minutes, until they came at me.

I don't know what made them suddenly decide they were upset and that they
objected to my presence there." He added, "I left fairly early because I
still had to make it to my lunch appointment with my mother."

The demonstrators who urged the government to approve the deal did so as the
cabinet was deliberating on the matter. Many of the demonstrators were
friends of Israeli prisoners of war and family members of MIAs - including
the Goldwassers and Regevs, whose sons had been abducted by Hezbollah in
2006.

"I did not come there with the intention of hurting the families. It's the
last thing I wanted to do. I came as a concerned citizen to the area which
the police designated to the demonstrators, to protest what I see as a
dangerous precedent," he says. "I realize they were pretty frustrated, but I
was frustrated, too."