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INTERPRETERS OF PEACE: PLO Flag Waving In Dupont Circle They were in Dupont Circle, Monday, midday. How could I miss the Palestinian Liberation Organization symbolic flag waving in front of a white igloo, nearby the double-tiered white marble fountain honoring Rear Admiral Samuel Francis duPont, authorized by Congress, in 1882. It was out of character yards away from the six-pointed Jewish "style" stars decorating three classical figures on the fountain's central column- the Sea, Stars and Wind. A new kind of Dupont heritage was being written. Enroute to the market, I crossed the round-a-bout. A pony-tailed man and a woman wrapped in an Arabic kafiya were setting glossy giveaways and printed sheets on tables. Thirty or forty representative black shrouded coffins lay on park grass across the sidewalk from them. The man wanted to share his mission with me as I toured displays including their map of Palestine. I asked he wait until I returned with my camera and credentials explaining I am press with an expertise in terrorism. And a time limit. Company was arriving from New York I hadn't yet shopped for. A hawkish looking man was photographing the shrouded coffins. Fred, a supporter with keen interest in Palestine, hoped to travel there one day. "You mean Israel," I said. "No," he yelled, "Palestine under Arab rule, an Islamic state." A Lebanese professor at York's college, reading about the symbolic protest on the Internet, thought Fred should join solidarity with "the cause." Not a student, Fred met the professor in York's library while using, for free, one of three computers there. Travelling from Pennsylvania for the day, staying across the Park at Jury's, DC's Irish hotel, Fred cannot afford his own PC. No job. Retired. His brother is in rehabilitative care. Fred brought an artist case filled with "Free Palestine" posters he made. Said he's an expert on the Middle East dating back to 1948. Dreams to go some day. "Where Jews and Christians and Muslims in the Middle East share a Holy City?" "No," he hissed, "The Palestinian state." "Transjordan," I clarified, "you mean, set up by British Mandate under Churchill?" "What are you talking about?" he snarled, walking away. Fred is unaware Palestine exists, current issue being over a second state demanded by immigrants (Trans)Jordan asked to leave. Fred didn't know Arafat's wife lives in a $16,000 a night Paris suite with Arabs living in conditions media favour presenting; that Arafat's marriage was secretive because Suha is Christian. PLO murder Christians. Fred didn't know Israeli Arabs live in modern homes, drive cars, receiving benefits Israel provides. That Arab surgeons work in Israeli clinics covering the Sabbath allowing Jewish doctors to observe the holiday. Or that the Intafadah causes Israeli Arabs to suffer along with all Israeli communities, fearful of dying at the wrath of bomb murderers. Fred lost his composure when I told him Palestinian Arabs can become Israeli Arabs if they sign an agreement not to murder Israeli citizens. Returning with my camera, I rhythmically photographed the event Pony-tail said was sponsored by twelve Palestine loving groups. The coffins. Literature filled table. Disproportionately sized giant balloon and tiny ball representing US funds distribution in the Middle East. Nora Browa in her kafiya. Al and Anna, Dupont homeless people talking politics with David Kirshenbaum, pony-tail. A woman in black shrieked Arabic at David. Unable to understand her, he said, "I'm not Muslim." David is Jewish. David said the day event, neither pro-Arab nor anti-Israel, protested all occupations. Asked why no Israeli flag covered coffins representing Israeli dead, he answered, "never arrived. Lost by Federal Express." Where there is a will.. Dupont Circle is blocks from the District's Jewish Community Center, Israel's Embassy, and Silver Springs, Maryland, DC's borscht belt. David "needed" me to know "the man with the camera," Fred, was not who "they" attract. I repeated myself several times before David acknowledged, "Fred is who you attract. He is here. He may not be what you want. You cannot deny his presence." "Shall we go look at Fred's posters?" I asked. Fred's folio contained a "Free Palestine" with PLO flags forming the "e's." His faithful rendering of Israel's security fence was from photos, he said. Fred didn't know the location of his pictured tower. I did. Chaya took me past the fence media portrays graffitied, rubbled. Qolqilya. Nicknamed by Israelis "Can Kill Ya'." Fred's picture left out the now blocked sewer pipe assassins crawled through on their final murderous rampage at the highway a drive from Chaya's home. Fred lifted his poster "higher, closer," to get everything within my visual frame. I told David people can see the face of a man to fear. An aging Caucasian man with an infirmed brother finding friendships with Middle Eastern professors guiding his education from a warped perspective in university libraries. David wanted to talk more. Talking with pro-PLO Jews is difficult for me these days. I cannot understand Jews supporting people intent on "cleansing" the "Saturdays, first; Sundays, second." What mojo does David think he has Jews working alongside Nazis in WWII didn't, finding out once their services were expended, they were, too. Removing my "journalist's" cap, allowing myself to be Chezi's sister, I said, "This is about good versus bad, David. People who murder people who respect life. Traditional Islam teaches, "You shalt kill. Stone non-believers." "You might like to believe you can pick or choose your Imam's. It is the Imam you didn't pick, you need to fear." Nora, a retired DC teacher, offered, it is against the law to teach religion in District schools. Teachers can teach about oppression. And peace. And when it is necessary to explain religions involved in political conflict, she said, you can discuss religions. Even fundamental Islam. Then, I left. Two days later, nursing root canal surgery, I sat at Starbucks, 20th and M, reading "the not-anti-Israel" handouts David and Nora gave me. "Israeli Discrimination at-a-glance," "Laws That Legalize Discrimination In Israel," "Land laws that confine Palestinians to Ghettos," "The Palestinian Dispossession," amongst headlines. The surgeon may have numbed my jaw. The pain I felt upon recognizing hate literature would not subside. I read about SUSTAIN, Stop US Tax Funded Aid To Israel Now, a DC post office boxed 501(c )(3), "committed to supporting the Palestinian movement for justice, human rights and self-determination" by asking readers to "Fight Terrorism, Stop House Demolitions;" linked to "palsolidarity," "The International Solidarity Movement," Washington based WRMEA's magazine advertising "kindhearts" and countless other pro-palestinian charities and the 2002 primer on the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict" from "amjerusalem." American Muslims for Jerusalem, host of the day in Dupont Circle, a 1999 non-profit according to their website, appeared unlocatable on www.guidestar.org. Billing itself as the only American Muslim organization based in DC with "an exclusive focus on Jerusalem and the Palestinian struggle for freedom, AMJ, their brochure boasting quotes from Qu'ran and the Declaration of Independence, "ensure(s) that American Muslim concerns regarding Jerusalem are understood and respected in the formation of US policy." Lobbying, I understood, is something nonprofits are forbidden to engage in. US Park Ranger Leonard Leo said permits for park use are issued without distributed literature being reviewed. Rangers' concern is preserving their flora and fauna. If a disagreement erupts, jurisdiction is shifted to Park Police, or, when needed to local PD, Feds and Secret Service responders. I put the literature away. In this year of mourning for my brother, I have seen, all over DC, nonprofits benefiting from tax shelters as means to provide personal incomes, identities. All for a cause, of course. The "next step," to quell the hatemongering ripping America apart, obvious to me, appears abstract to legislators. Governmental ordered "equal page- equal time" in distributed literature, obligating opposite sides to sit and find a common middle road of dialogues, allowing readers to formulate educated opinions, differentiating between spin and fact. Growing up, I remember Quebecois demanding rights after De Gaulle, championing solidarity with France, erupted Canada with "Vive Le Quebec libre," "Long live Quebec." The Parlimentarian solution equal French and English printing on distributed matter devastated some corporate lives. Businesses who closed down, could not afford to print new stock. Canadians can now select the front or back of a magazine to begin reading at. Adventuresome "canadiens" can practice their English or French. Choice is there. And opportunity, easily done. That is the point. I told Andrew Killgore, publisher of Washington Report on Middle East Affairs for every Arab woman crying on rubble, there is an Israeli mother crying at a graveside. For every dead Arab child pictured alive, there is an Israeli child pictured alive and then in death, recalling the New York Times front page photo of the three year old hanging from an exploded Israeli bus window during the RNC. Noting a lobby succeeded providing interpreters for deaf at events to "hear," maybe a lobby can succeed providing interpreters for peace so passerbys at permitted events in America's parks, can "hear," too. That night in my flat, a first. Israeli music expressed shared passion in my heart. BIO: Carrie Devorah is an award winning investigative photojournalist cross credentialed as a Crime Information Analyst, profiler, security and mediator. Devorah says "mediation is mis-characterized as problem resolution. In its grandest success, it is about facilitating involved parties to "hear", understand what the other is saying. Often, success is limited to when opponents voluntarily enter a room, willing to 'give peace a chance.'" Devorah was invited by Arafat's PIO to apply this philosophy in the West Bank in 1998. Family near-tragedy precluded her from doing so. Devorah, writing on issues related to Faith, Homeland Security and International Terrorism, promotes the Middle Road approach to facilitating understanding in the Middle East. She covered international horseracing and boxing before moving to America. January 29th 2004, Devorah's youngest brother was one of 11 commuters murdered in a Jerusalem bus bombing Yasser Arafat ordered to be hit as it neared the office of Israeli Prime Minister Sharon.