The decision of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals to support the City’s ban on a march past the United Nations Saturday means that the protest will take place in a slightly different format than that the protesters wanted. Many, even most, of the marchers will no doubt be well-meaning people who have looked at the Iraq liberation struggle and concluded that it is either not worth fighting for, or imprudent to fight. But there are those who are scheduled to take to the podium or who have endorsed the event who will strike many New Yorkers as less well-meaning.

One figure listed as a participant Saturday is Angela Davis, a “Professor of History of Consciousness” at the University of California-Santa Cruz. She may better be remembered as the woman who ran for vice president on the Communist Party USA ticket in 1980 and 1984. The C.P. USA, of course, was an apologist for the Soviet Communist regime right up until its dying days.

Listed as an endorser of the Saturday event, on the United for Peace and Justice Web site is the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. This is not a group friendly to Jews or to America. The executive director of the New York chapter of CAIR, Ghazi Y. Khankan, called Prime Minister Sharon a “butcher/terrorist” in a recent letter. In a letter to the American Jewish Committee, Mr. Khankan wrote that “we wish to let you know that among our objectives are to liberate the U.S. Government and Congress from your illegal bribes and disproportionate influence on America’s domestic and foreign policies.” According to Steve Pomerantz, a former Chief of the FBI’s Counterterrorism section, writing in the Spring 1998 number of the Journal of Counterterrorism and Security International: “CAIR originated from the Hamas front group, Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), and has evolved into a propaganda arm for Hamas and other militant fundamentalists.”

Other endorsers on a list given out by the organizers of the event include Al-Awda: Palestinian Right to Return and the Young Communist League. The names of other groups groups suggest they wish to end capitalism, institute socialism, or end the Israeli “occupation.” Harry Belafonte, who recently likened Secretary of State Powell to a “house slave,” will also be in attendance. For all those who are well meaning on Saturday, New Yorkers in the crowd will be mixing their dissent with elements that hate America, hate the Jews — and have an agenda that has little to do with peace.