Humor from the Beltway. And if you don't think this is funny, you need a physical.

Peace Demonstrators Arrested, Without Much Conviction (washingtonpost.com)

It's a measure of how volatile and complicated the Middle East crisis has become in the last few weeks. Protesters with a proposal for peace planned a demonstration, took out a full-page newspaper ad announcing civil disobedience at 11 a.m. sharp, alerted the police and invited the media.

Then, with all players in their places -- the ones with bullhorns and signs, the ones with notebooks and cameras, the ones with badges and guns -- the leaders started thinking maybe they should call the whole thing off.

"When we took out the ad two days ago, it was clear civil disobedience was appropriate," protest organizer Rabbi Michael Lerner told nearly 100 demonstrators, while dozens of police officers watched. "We now think it's less clear."

Conviction can evaporate just like that. Behind the calculated spontaneity of any street protest is endless introspection over tactics. And still, bad luck and human imperfection will bedevil the best-laid plans.

Lerner is the editor of San Francisco-based Tikkun magazine, the self-described liberal Jewish journal, and he was the confidant of Hillary Rodham Clinton back in her "politics of meaning" days in the White House. Standing beside Lerner was Harvard professor Cornel West, a friend and co-author of Lerner's.

Some in the crowd pressing around them held both the blue and white flag of Israel and the black, white, green and red flag of Palestine. Others waved signs that betrayed no lack of conviction: "Israel Out of the Occupied Territories!" They were Jews, Christians, Muslims, and for the moment, paralyzed.

"What would be the civil disobedience?" someone called out.

"Walking into the middle of the street and sitting down, and the police will arrest you," Lerner said, nodding to C Street NW.

Usually when peace demonstrators get arrested, it's to oppose U.S. military adventures abroad. Now, for perhaps the first time in the history of Washington protest, the symbolic act of submitting to white plastic handcuffs would be to encourage American military intervention. That's the Middle East for you. Complicated, complicated.

And further on....

There were two problems with getting arrested over this message yesterday, as Lerner saw it. First, the Bush administration had just begun to indicate growing willingness to intervene somehow. Would the message get muddled if they got arrested at the State Department just when the State Department might be starting down the right path?

Second problem: "Much of the national media is not present," Lerner said.

So what are the BBC and The Washington Post, chopped liver? Oh well.

Lerner invited comments.

Someone suggested getting arrested at the Israeli Embassy instead.

"Too far," Lerner said. "We'd have to take cabs."

"But it's not far from the Red Line Van Ness station," pointed out Barbara Leckie, an art teacher at Oakland Terrace Elementary School in Silver Spring, who'd taken personal leave to be here.

The punchline, of course, is when they get arrested....