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Jewish World Review January 15, 2010 / 29 Tevet 5770 Ayres' wife heads to Middle East with group to collaborate with Hamas By Caroline B. Glick
Last month 1,300 pro-Palestinian activists from the US and Europe came to
the region in the name of peace and social justice to demonstrate their
solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. Led by the self-declared feminist,
antiwar group Code Pink, the demonstrators' plan was to enter Gaza from the
Egyptian border at Rafah and deliver "humanitarian aid" to the Hamas
terrorist organization.
But it was not to be. Led by Code Pink founder and California Democratic
fundraiser Jodie Evans, the demonstrators were not welcome by Egyptian
authorities. Many were surrounded by riot police and barbed wire as they
demonstrated outside the US and French embassies and the UN Development
Program's headquarters. Others were barred from leaving their hotels. Those
who managed to escape their hotels and the bullpens outside the foreign
embassies were barred from staging night protests in solidarity with Hamas
on the Nile. In the end, as the militant Israeli pro-Palestinian activist
Amira Hass chronicled in Ha'aretz last week, all but one hundred of them
were barred from travelling to Gaza.
The lucky few allowed into Gaza included neither Evans nor her friends,
former Weather Underground terror leaders Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayres.
But they bore no grudge against Egypt. The Egyptians were mere puppets of
the real culprit: Israel. As Evans said, "It's obvious that the only reason
for [Egypt's treatment of the demonstrators] is to make Israel happy. Israel
is behind the refusal [to allow the demonstrators into Gaza] - what other
excuse could there be?"
Dohrn, the woman has called for a "revolutionary war" to destroy the US,
felt that the Egyptian authorities' behavior was nothing but an unfortunate
diversion from their mission. As she wrote in a blog post from Cairo, "We
find ourselves unwillingly in Cairo, drawn into clashes with authorities and
one another on side issues, when what we most want is to keep our eyes on
the Palestinian people."
Unfortunately for the lucky 100 who were permitted to enter Hamastan, the
diversions didn't end at the Egyptians border. Hamas immediately placed them
under siege. The Palestinian champions had planned to enjoy home hospitality
from friends in Gaza. But once there they were prohibited from leaving the
Hamas-owned Commodore Hotel and from having any contact with local Gazans
without a Hamas escort.
Rather than being permitted to judge the situation in Gaza for themselves,
they were carted onto Hamas buses and taken on "devastation tours" of what
their Hamas tour guides claimed was damage caused by the IDF during
Operation Cast Lead.
And then these international protesters were forced to participate in a
Hamas-organized march to Erez Crossing. As Hass tells it, in "a slap to many
feminist organizers and participants," no Palestinian women were allowed to
participate in the march which, "turned into nothing more than a ritual, an
opportunity for Hamas cabinet ministers to get decent media coverage in the
company of Western demonstrators."
But they didn't really mind. Reacting to her effective imprisonment in the
Hamas-owned hotel, one of the demonstrators, and American woman named Poya
Pakzad cooed on her blog that the Commodore Hotel was "the nicest hotel I've
ever stayed at, in my life." Pakzad did complain however about what she
acknowledged was the "farce" devastation tour she was taken on. She claimed
that her Hamas guides were ignorant. In her studied view, they understated
the number of Palestinians rendered homeless by the IDF counter-terror
offensive last year by some 60 percent.
Hass's participation in the pro-Hamas propaganda trip is a bit surprising.
In November 2008 Hass was forced to flee from Gaza to Israel after Hamas
threatened to kill her. At the time, Hass appealed to the Israeli military
— which she has spent the better part of her career bashing - and asked to
be allowed to enter Israel from Gaza after sailing illegally to Gaza from
Cyprus on a ferry boat chartered by the pro-Hamas Free Gaza outfit.
Hass's behavior is actually more revealing than surprising. The truth is
that Hass, like her fellow demonstrators were willing to be used as media
props by Hamas precisely because it isn't the Palestinians' welfare that
concerns them. If they cared about the Palestinians they would be
demonstrating against Hamas, which prohibited local women from participating
in their march to the Israeli border, and which barred non-Hamas members
from speaking with them. It would offend their sensitivities that Hamas
goons beat women for not covering themselves from head to toe in Islamic
potato sacks. It would bother them that Hamas executes its political
opponents by among other things throwing them off the roofs of apartment
buildings.
The demonstrators did not come to Gaza to demonstrate their support for the
Palestinians but their hatred for Israel and for their own Western
governments which refuse to join Hamas in its war against Israel. As one of
the organizers told Hass as she sat corralled by Egyptian riot police
outside the UNDP offices in Cairo, "In our presence here, we are saying that
we are not casting the blame on Egypt. The responsibility for the shameless
and obscene Israeli siege on Gaza rests squarely with our own countries."
By happily collaborating with Hamas in its propaganda extravaganza, these
demonstrators demonstrated that the rights of Palestinians are not their
concern. Their concern is waging war against their own societies and against
Israel. They are more than happy to have their pictures taken with the likes
of Hamas terror master Ismail Haniyeh. And while they will never acknowledge
that his organization's terror war against Israel is illegal and immoral, or
care that Hamas's founding charter explicitly calls for the genocide of
Jewry, they will demonstrate from today 'til doomsday against their
governments' recognition of Israel.
In this, the Free Gaza movement members are but a chip off the old
psychopathic block of nearly a century of far-left Western activists whose
hatred for their own countries motivated them to hide the crimes of mass
murderers from Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong to Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh
to Daniel Ortega and Saddam Hussein. As Jamie Glazov chronicles in his
recently published book, United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny
and Terror, their attraction to mass murderers - from Stalin to Osama bin
Laden, and their concomitant hatred of their own societies "is a secular
religion."
These fanatics are usually dismissed as fringe elements. But the truth is
that during the late-20th century, the distance between these true believers
and the centers of state power has not been very great. Glazov notes, "The
tragedy…is that the Left has shaped much of the cultural and political
consciousness of our time. The Left's agenda mattered immensely during the
Vietnam War: even former North Vietnamese officials have admitted that the
antiwar movement in American can take credit for communism's victory in
South Vietnam and, therefore, for the tragic bloodbath that followed."
Likewise, today these radical movements' extremism today has not
marginalized them politically. Since it was formed in 2002, Code Pink has
openly sided with US enemies against the US and its allies. Evans and its
other leaders have met with Hamas leaders in Gaza and Syria. They have
visited with Hizbullah in Lebanon. They have met with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in
New York and Teheran. They have supplied Iranian-backed insurgents in Iraq,
and before the US-led invasion in 2003, they organized a
solidarity-with-Saddam Hussein mission to Baghdad. And this month, fresh
from Egypt and Gaza, Code Pink launched an advertising campaign on the
Muslim Brotherhood's English website.
At home in the US, as documented by websites like Big Government and Atlas
Shrugs, Code Pink's members have launched psychological warfare operations
against US soldiers outside of military bases with the aim of persuading
them to desert. They have taunted and frightened children of US servicemen.
They have harassed Bush administration officials, their family members and
Republican Party leaders.
In Israel, counterparts to Code Pink like Uri Avineri's Gush Shalom acted as
human shields to protect Yassir Arafat and his fellow terrorists from IDF
forces during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002. Anarchists Against the
Fence stage violent riots against IDF forces every week. Four Mothers
successfully compelled the Barak government to surrender south Lebanon to
Hizbullah.
Traditionally, the far left's ability to shape national policy in Israel and
the US alike has owed largely to the sympathetic coverage they have garnered
from fellow-travelling media outlets. In the US the anti-war movement
probably would have failed in its mission of transferring South Vietnam to
Communist control if the New York Times and CBS News hadn't supported
their efforts. So too, the Barak government would likely not have withdrawn
the IDF from south Lebanon if Four Mothers hadn't been ardently supported by
state-owned Israel Radio.
While both the Israeli and American media continue to promote the agendas of
far left groups, by among other things, not reporting their open ties to
terrorist organizations, today some of these groups have direct access to
the halls of power.
Code Pink for instance is welcome at the Obama White House. Its leader Evans
was an official fundraiser for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Evans
visited the White House after travelling to Gaza last June. While there she
met with Hamas leaders who gave her a letter for Obama. Evans met Obama
himself at a donor dinner in San Francisco last October where while standing
in front of cameras, she gave Obama documents she received in Afghanistan
where she met with Taliban officials.
Then too, among the board members of the Free Gaza movement is former US
senator James Abourezk. Abourezk is reputedly close to Obama and according
to knowledgeable sources has been a key figure in shaping Obama's policy
towards Israel.
Then too, like Evans, Dohrn and her husband Ayres are also friendly with the
President of the United States. Dohrn and Ayres have been Obama's political
patrons since he launched his first campaign for the Illinois state Senate
in 1996. In White House visitors' logs, Ayres is listed as having twice
visited the building since Obama's inauguration.
Israeli authorities tend to treat groups like Code Pink and its Israeli
allies as nothing more than nuisances. Since unlike Egypt and these self
proclaimed human rights champions themselves, Israel actually does care
about human rights, it would never occur to anyone to treat these
demonstrators as Egypt did. At the same time, the Egyptian authorities'
actions were clearly informed their understanding that with their ties to
Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizbullah, Syria and Iran, Code Pink and its
friends are active collaborators with the jihad war machine.
With their open ties to our jihadist enemies on the one hand, and their
direct line to the White House on the other, Israel ignores them at our
peril.
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JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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