How Did IfNotNow Protestors Make It Into AIPAC Conference?

IfNotNow activists drop banners at AIPAC’s annual policy conference, March 26, 2017 Image by IfNotNow
The plan to enter AIPAC’s policy conference was hatched months in advance. A dozen IfNotNow activists registered to participate in the conference, with a clear intent of staging a distraction that would draw attention to their protest against the pro-Israel lobby.
Of the dozen, only four got approved. The rest did not pas AIPAC’s screening, presumably based on social media posts, and were turned down without any explanation. IfNotNow raised funds to cover the nearly $600 tickets the remaining four purchased in order to attend the conference.
“We had a message to send – to ask the people there, ‘Whose side are you on?’” said Becca Bloch, one of the protestors who dropped banners from the convention center’s third floor reading “Reject AIPAC and the occupation” while reciting aphorisms from Rabbi Hillel.

IfNotNow members taking a selfie before dropping banners at AIPAC conference. From left: Gabe Kravitz
Daniel Michelson-Horowitz, Becca Kahn Bloch, Noah Westreich
Before launching their protest, members of the group roamed the halls, took a selfie in the conference cafeteria and stepped into breakout sessions.
Bloch, a 26-years old Stanford graduate student, said that while the protest plan panned out well, the reaction it received from AIPAC delegates was disappointing. “To hear thousands of Jews boo us, people I grew up with, people I know from synagogue, was scary and disheartening,” she told the Forward.
Once noticed, security guards and police officers rushed to the protesters and removed them from the building, to loud heckling from AIPAC delegates.
“People had their phones in one hand and the middle finger up in the other hand” described Noah Westreich, another protestor, the reaction he was met with when being escorted by police outside the conference center. “That’s the type of divide we wanted to expose,” said Westreich, 24, who works at a DC Reform synagogue and will start rabbinical school this summer. “In that sense, we were very effective.”
Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected]
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Opinion In Trump’s war against campus antisemitism, hate the tactics but don’t ignore the problem
-
Yiddish כ׳בענק נאָך די וועלטלעכע ייִדן וואָס האָבן אָפּגעריכט אַ טראַדיציאָנעלן סדר Longing for those secular Jews who led a traditional seder
מײַן פֿעטער יונה האָט נישט געהיט שבת און כּשרות אָבער בײַם אָפּריכטן דעם סדר האָט ער געקלונגען ווי אַ פֿרומער ייִד
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.