When I received a press release from Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel gleefully informing me that “New Yorkers will protest at Carnegie Hall with music, songs, chants and street theater against the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) and its complicity in Israel’s apartheid policies against the Palestinian people,” I actually laughed. After a day glued to news reports of missiles and mortars being lobbed at my friends’ homes and worrying about the soldiers – children of friends – serving in the area, it wasn’t hard to think of the planned protest as a bad joke.