Sisters of perpetual hate 57

In our post Pacifists for jihad (January 13, 2010), we considered what might motivate the Code Pink women, suggesting ignorance, stupidity, and malice. On further thought, we would put hate at the top of the list.

Recently some Code Pink members tried to enter Gaza through Egypt. An Israeli woman journalist, Amira Hass, wrote a sympathetic account of the adventure which did not go quite according to plan.

(A note of passing interest: Hass is the German word for hate.)

Here’s Caroline 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 fund-raiser Jodie Evans, the demonstrators were not welcomed 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 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 Haaretz last week, all but 100 of them were barred from travelling to Gaza. …

[Bernadine] Dohrn, the woman who 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…

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. …

But they didn’t really mind. Reacting to her effective imprisonment in the Hamas-owned hotel, one of the demonstrators, an 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 counterterror offensive last year by some 60 percent…

Hass’s participation in the pro-Hamas propaganda trip is a bit surprising. In November 2008, she 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 chartered by the pro-Hamas Free Gaza outfit.

Hass’s behavior is actually more revealing than surprising. The truth is that Hass and 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 rather their hatred for Israel and for their own Western governments that refuse to join Hamas in its war against Israel. As one of the organizers told Hass as she sat corralled by Egyptian riot police … “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

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…

These fanatics are usually dismissed as fringe elements. But the truth is that … the distance between these true believers and the centers of state power has not been very great…

Code Pink … is welcome at the Obama White House. Its leader Evans was an official fund-raiser 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 him 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… Dohrn and her husband [William] 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…

*We were in error quoting that Poya Pakzad is an American woman. Poya Pakzad is a Danish man. He has drawn our attention to the mistake in a comment. Our apologies to him.  1/19/2010