Enough Audacity of Hope To Hang Themselves

My man Andrew C. McCarthy makes the helpful suggestion to President Obama that enforcing the criminal laws against America’s material supporters of our ally Israel’s destruction may be one way of proving he’s not fibbing about the “special bond” he’s now saying we have with the Jewish state:

Khalidi’s Audacity of Hope

Will Obama enforce the law or was his claimed commitment to Israel a feint?

Earlier this month, hosting Benjamin Netanyahu — the Israeli prime minister he had humiliated back in March — President Obama was at pains to prove he is not hostile to the Jewish state. In fact, he took umbrage at a reporter’s suggestion that his administration is not committed to what he called the “special bond,” America’s relationship with Israel.

Well, here’s his chance to prove that he was serious, that he wasn’t engaged in Alinskyite misdirection.

Obama’s close friend, the rabidly anti-Israel professor Rashid Khalidi, is back in the news. The former PLO spokesman has signed an appeal for funds to outfit a ship that would join yet another attempt to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. In the last such attempt several weeks back — a contingent of Islamists and radical leftists, perversely identifying themselves as the “peace flotilla” and armed for hand-to-hand combat — carried out a premeditated attack on the Israeli defense force that denied them passage.

Evacuated by Israel in 2005, the Gaza Strip is controlled by Hamas, the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is pledged, by charter, to the violent destruction of Israel. The jihadist organization has been formally designated as an international terrorist under U.S. law since the mid-nineties. Several people have been convicted and imprisoned for coming to its aid, because providing material support to terrorist organizations is a serious crime.

Hamas remains at war with Israel and has continued firing rockets at Israeli civilians. The blockade is thus a legitimate national-defense measure. Still, Israel does not bar humanitarian assistance, which is permitted entry into Gaza after inspection. The blockade prevents material aid to Hamas. It is necessary because Hamas will not renounce terrorism and is incorrigible in its refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist.

In this regard, Hamas merely echoes Khalidi, a consummate propagandist who frames Israel as an illegitimate, racist, apartheid state. Khalidi has long contended that Israel’s blockade of Gaza is illegal. He has a right to be wrong about that, of course. But the Columbia academic has no right to violate American law in the service of his political agenda.

With his insider’s understanding of Obama’s views, Khalidi is betting that he will be immune from any legal consequences for his actions. Indeed, if that weren’t clear enough already, Khalidi and other architects of the Gaza gambit plan to call their vessel The Audacity of Hope. That is the title of Barack Obama’s second autobiographical book — a title inspired by Obama’s former pastor of 20 years, the radical black-liberation theologian Jeremiah Wright (whose vitriol, like Khalidi’s, is copiously spewed at Israel).

Khalidi is not alone in his optimism. In addition to his wife, Mona (who is the president of the Arab American Action Network, which Khalidi cofounded), others who’ve signed the statement urging financial contributions to the Gaza voyage include Medea Benjamin (the founder of Code Pink), Angela Davis (the communist professor and former Black Panther Party member), Michael Ratner (head of the leftist Center for Constitutional Rights, which has coordinated representation for jihadists held at Guantanamo Bay and thus worked in league with many lawyers now serving in the Obama Justice Department), Abdeen Jabara (who, along with Lynne Stewart, represented the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, leader of the terror cell that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993), and many other luminaries representative of the leftist-Islamist connection about which I write in The Grand Jihad.

There is no question that these radicals are conspiring to furnish a ship for the purpose of challenging Israel’s blockade. The statement they have issued is clear: “In the aftermath of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla,” they write, there has been “increased world-wide scrutiny of Israel’s blockade of Gaza.” Gaza, they insist, “is still under siege,” reduced to an “open-air prison under a U.S.-backed Israeli blockade.” Because of this,

We are planning to launch a U.S. boat to Gaza, joining a flotilla of ships from Europe, Canada, India, South Africa and parts of the Middle East due to set sail in September/October of this year. . . . Citizens around the world have responded to the plight of the Palestinian people and are taking action to help break the blockade[.] . . . We in the United States must do our part.

It is an imperative of American law to prevent individual citizens from imperiling the rest of us, and from souring our foreign relations, by conducting their own foreign policy — particularly when it subverts actual U.S. policy or provokes friendly nations. Consequently, the brazen declaration by Khalidi & Co. ought to put several provisions of the federal penal code into play.

For example, Section 962 makes it a crime to furnish or fit out a vessel in the service of any foreign entity “to cruise, or commit hostilities” against a nation with which the U.S. is at peace. Israel is an American ally and the planned voyage is intended for the benefit of Hamas-controlled Gaza. Challenging a blockade — regardless of whether one thinks the blockade complies with the shifting sands of international law — is a hostile act. The boat needn’t embark in order for Khalidi to violate the law; it is a crime to conspire or attempt such a voyage. That is, the law is being violated now.

Read the rest of what McCarthy has to say about this here.

Everybody Talks About the Twitter, But Nobody Does Anything About It

It’s a sign of just how distorted the perceptions of many Americans are right now that a mainstream story about Sarah Palin’s opposition to the triumphalist 9/11 mosque planned for the World Trade Center site is more concerned with her malaprop, “refudiate.”

This is the headline from an online ABC News article by Joel Siegel:

Sarah Palin 'Refudiates' Ground Zero Mosque
Palin Calls on New Yorkers to 'Refudiate' Mosque Near 9/11 Site

In my view, if I’m the average American who has missed hearing about this story at all, the only sane response to this headline is to do a spit take and cry out, “WTF! What do you mean a Ground Zero mosque! What do they mean a “mosque near 9/11 site?”

Instead, I am supposed to be shocked, tickled, or for all I know, outraged, that Sarah Palin said “refudiate” in a damned tweet message.

Burqa’s Law

Comments from MELANIE PHILLIPS on The Corner at NRO:

The French banning of the burqa has provoked near-hysteria in Britain, where government ministers have rushed to say that banning it would be “un-British” and even that it is a “woman’s right” to wear it. But the issue here is not the rights or feelings of the woman beneath it. The point is the threat it represents to everyone else.

Wearing the burqa is not a religious right: Islam merely requires women to be modestly covered. The burqa is an act of religious war. It is a political symbol, designed to intimidate others by sending the most visible signal possible of the presence of those who want to replace secular rule with theocratic Islam.

It is also an act of hostility towards human society. We cannot see the face, expression, and identity of the individual concealed beneath it, whereas she can see everything about us. It thus creates a radical imbalance of power and destroys the basis of equality on which human beings deal with each other.

Countries that have banned the burqa understand that the threat it poses is not just to the women it enslaves but to themselves.

— Melanie Phillips is author of The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power.

Dearborn Supports Crackers!

Crackers of America, Dearborn welcomes you.

My name is T.R., and I am a cracker.

It’s clear from its context that when New Black Panther and Democratic poll watcher King Samir Shabazz talks about crackers, he’s using the most INCLUSIVE sense of that term to make sure all white people are included. He says, “I hate white people – all of them! Every last iota of a cracker, I hate 'em.”

I actually never heard the term “cracker” until I was well into adulthood, and I never knew it was a racial pejorative. And then I understood it to connote poor Southern whites, and used as a synonym for a redneck, white trash, a hillbilly, etc. Geneo-victimologically speaking (that’s my newly coined term for the scientific study of ancestry for the purpose of pinning down which other group of persecutors owes you the most in reparation payments) my background is working-class Irish-Catholic and French-Canadian. I think both groups have historically been most resentful, for different reasons, of British protestants. Personally, some of my favorite people have been British protestants. So far, no one has paid us any reparations.

But if you’re just judging me by the color of my skin, then I’ll proudly wear the name, “cracker.”

Once again, with absolutely no thanks to the mainstream TV and print media, it’s getting better known that King Samir Shabazz, who used a nightstick to prevent white people from voting against Obama, proudly and loudly declares that he hates all white people.

Why Americans Hate Fractions, or, Is It Halftime in America?

Bob Gorrell/Detroit News

President Barack Obama’s reluctance to identify Islamic terrorism as our enemy is emblematic of the widespread unwillingness of Americans to just do the math that X = Islam.

I blame it on the higher math functions (starting with 2+2 = ?) never being favorites with we Americans, anyway --maybe because they’re a foreign import: one of the multitude ”historic contributions”of the Muslim nations.

Or at least that’s what what they’re teaching my nephew at space camp this summer, along with campfire discussions on the relative effectiveness of wearing the suicide belt inside or outside your space suit.

Real Americans hate fractions; and as for algebra, equations don’t win football games, you pansies! (although those X’s and O’s are useful for illustrating who’s Us and who’s Them when coach does our play diagrams). Or is that the alphabet?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from a lifetime of reading op-ed pages and watching political leaders on the Sunday shows, it’s that there’s no challenge America has ever faced that can’t be restated as a sports metaphor -- the vast bulk of which are football-inspired. I attribute the failure of this very humble blog to gain a wider audience to my sordid failure, in four years, to even once illustrate a single point by mentioning moving the ball down the field, recovering from fumble, needing to get in the game, to huddle up, take one for the team, to throw a Hail Mary pass, or pointing out that we’re down to the fourth quarter and need to throw one into the end zone.

I say the footballl metaphor has always worked -- until now. Here’s the thing. I don’t think the situation we face now can even be reduced to the simplest X and O diagram, because even that requires knowing what team we’re playing.

Come to think of it, some of us don’t even know what team we’re on. I’m no expert, but when our quarterback has the ball, is he supposed to keep throwing it to the other team’s players?

It’s halftime in America, people.
So we have to give 110 percent.
We have to stay focused.
We have to go out and execute.
We have to step up to the next level.
We have to play with intensity.

And always remember that old story that, I think, Knute Rockne, used to tell about when his players tried to take the field, and:

The marching band refused to yield.
Do you recall what was revealed
The day the music died?

A Class-Free America Begins with a Class-Free White House

Henry Payne/The Detroit News

Somebody got murdered on New Year's Eve
Somebody said dignity was the first to leave
--Bob Dylan, Dignity

You may have heard about how President Barack Obama used his invitation to speak at a ribbon-cutting at LG Chem in Holland to try to embarrass fellow invitee, Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra. (“Obama touts stimulus, taking shots at Michigan's Rep. Peter Hoekstra”).

Obama welcomed Hoekstra during his opening remarks at the car battery plant here.* At the same moment, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs sent a note to reporters pointing out Hoekstra as a “great quote opportunity!” in the audience. Hoekstra has been a vocal critic of the stimulus package -- which provided funding for projects like the battery plant.

“There are some folks who want to go back, who think we should return to the policies that helped to lead to this recession,” Obama said later in his comments honoring an advanced car battery factory being built by the company LG Chem. “Some made the political calculation that it's better to obstruct than lend a hand. They said no to the tax cuts, they said no to small-business loans, they said no to clean-energy projects. It doesn't stop them from coming to ribbon-cuttings -- but that's okay.”

Hoekstra, interviewed afterward, called Obama's remarks “unpresidential.”

I’d say “unpresidential” captures it nicely.

Cluelessness as to the dignity of the office seems to be a hallmark of recent Democratic chief executives. Carter had to prepare the schedule for the White House tennis courts himself, gave presidential addresses wearing a cardigan, and, DU has it on good authority, conducted all his phone conversations with foreign heads of state while seated in a booster chair.

Clinton sold access to the White House, used the Oval Office for a motel room, and had Arafat in for visits so often Yasser kept his own “World’s Greatest Terrorist” coffee mug in the presidential dishrack. The late Barbara Olson wrote her book, The Final Days, about the abuses in the closing hours of the Clinton presidency, and the Clinton transition team in 2001 made history for vandalizing White House offices on their way out: the GAO reported intentional “damage, theft, vandalism, and pranks,” such as “removing keyboard keys, placing glue on desk drawers and leaving obscene voicemail messages.” (“Clinton Transition Left $15,000 Damage, GAO Says”).

Because of all the bitterness and strife of the Bush years, (and since, thanks to Obama’s never-sleeping White House Office of Predecessor Responsibility) but W. was elected in part on his promise that he would restore dignity to the presidency -- a promise he kept. (Don’t confuse the indignities heaped on him by his enemies -- and the loss of all dignity suffered by those who joined in -- as reflecting on Bush’s dignity. They never have, and never could).

And then Obama was elected, and here we go again. Susan Dale at Human Events provided one summary earlier this year of the new president’s lack of dignity: “ Dignity: You are Undignified and Shameless, Mr. President”, (and she didn’t even have room to mention the escapade with returning Churchill’s bust to the UK).

Then we have the President of the United States talking about whose “ass” he’s going to kick. Obama likes to kick ass. To date Obama’s impressive ass-kicking tally includes BP, the State of Arizona, Wall Street, the insurance industry, American taxpayers, Israel, and the gulf coast oil industry. The tally of American enemies’ asses he’s kicked so far is still at 0. (But his enemy ass-kissing score has so far beat all records!)

On the scale of unpresidential actions by our chief executive Obama sniping at Pete Hoekstra hardly even ranks. Not when Ahmedinejad and Saudi King Abdullah are laughing at us.
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*The battery plant is an Obama Money green initiative, receiving $300 million in stimulus funds or tax breaks. The batteries will power cars like the Chevrolet Volt, which will take you 340 miles on a single charge -- miraculously economical before you factor in the $5 per mile taxpayer subsidy.

Jihad in Orbit, Or: 'Can You Read Me, Submission Control?'

“When I became the NASA administrator, [Obama] charged me with three things," NASA head Charles Bolden said in a recent interview with the Middle Eastern news network al-Jazeera. "One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering." (“NASA’s new mission: Building ties to the Muslim world”).

Fly Mo to the Moon
(to the melody of “Fly Me to the Moon,” with plenty of Rat Pack “wow”)

Fly Mo to the moon
Let’s help him pray among the stars
Let them know the muezzin's wail
On Jupiter and Mars

In other words -- kiss the hand
In other words -- sweet submission

Let’s all sing again
How Mo’s zeroes were the best
And now Mo’s close to zero in
His countdown on the West

In other words -- please give in
In other words -- man, we’re through!

Sharia Spoken Here

From the Dearborn Press & Guide:

Four Christian missionaries trying to convert Muslims were arrested Friday evening for alleged disorderly conduct at the festival.

Authorities said Nabeel Qureshi of Virginia and David Wood of New York, both with a Christian group called Acts 17 Apolegetics, were arrested with two others after they were said to be causing disruptive behavior.

“They did cause a stir,” Haddad said.

The four were later released on bail and described the arrest on the Acts 17 blog at www.answeringmuslims.com.

“It cannot be said that we were arrested for causing a disturbance, because we did not approach anyone, rather everyone with whom we spoke first approached us,” Wood said in the online blog. “It cannot be said that we were harassing anyone, because the moment anyone said ‘stop talking to me’, we would stop talking to them. And it cannot be said that we were spreading hate speech, because we said virtually nothing about Islam at all.”Haddad said that he’s not taking sides in any dispute, but added that police have to keep the peace at the festival. (“Arab Fest draws more than 200,000”).

Sharia is already in Dearborn. This just means it’s spread further.

One sign that there’s just too much going on for me to keep up is that we haven’t posted on the arrest of the 4 evangelists IN DEARBORN for talking to people about Jesus.

Fortunately, others are all over it, not least The Thomas More Law Center.

This is not a controversial story, in the sense that there’s any serious dispute about what happened. These four men were arrested to stop them from talking to Arabs about Jesus at the festival. As the footage of the arrests make clear, Dearborn police officers were not arresting disorderly, struggling troublemakers, but persons behaving peacefully. The arrests were made, apparently, in obedience to orders from higher up. And those orders, it is all but impossible to doubt, originated somehow with Muslims who wanted to exercise control over free speech at the festival.




As was reported in the Press & Guide, “authorities” said the four were arrested “after they were said to be causing disruptive behavior.” Said to be by whom? My understanding of police practice, subject to correction from anyone out there who knows different, is that police have to witness certain kinds of wrongdoing before they have sufficient probable cause to make an arrest. They don’t just arrest people on someone’s say-so. At least, they aren’t supposed to.

Chief Haddad said after the arrests that the four missionaries “did cause a stir.” So far no one has described any stir. What’s Haddad’s basis for that statement? It’s been more than a week and no one has offered any factual basis for it. As seen in this tedious video by an Arabic critic of David Wood posted at HotAir, instead of an offer of details or witnesses of disorderly conduct, he merely repeats several times that the police said the arrests were for disorderly conduct, so who are you going to believe, the police or your own lying eyes?

Meanwhile, I’ve defended the DPD and Chief Haddad when they, frankly, took way too long to complete their investigation of Imam Abdullah’s death, enabling CAIR to stoke its cynical use of that event as a political assassination.

If the Dearborn Police Department has such corrupt or incompetent leadership that Muslim leaders can dictate who does and doesn’t have free speech ANYWHERE in Dearborn, than things are worse here than even I thought.

A year ago I gave DPD Chief Haddad the benefit of the doubt, ascribing the DPD’s wooly-headed deference to Muslim demands to ban Christian evangelizing from East Warren as one-dimensional police thinking. Last year Haddad laid it off on “crowd control.”

This year, the arrests are being blamed on “disorderly conduct,” though no disorderly conduct is in evidence. I have been too nice.

'Welcome Useful Idiots!'

This past week Detroit was host to something that put me in mind of the giant “Idiots Welcome!” banner hung out to welcome the “Russian National Village Idiots Convention” to Minsk in Woody Allen’s “Love and Death.”

Ten thousand attendees of the 2010 U.S. Social Forum just spent five days in and around Cobo Hall, Wayne State University, and other parts of Detroit, all talking at once about “social change.” The event was variously described by lazy (or more likely, bored) reporters as a “peace” group, a “humaniatarian” organization, or “people connected to social, political and labor groups.”

Here’s some of what they say about themselves, (that is, if you believe this gobbledygook qualifies as having saying something):

The US Social Forum (USSF) is a movement building process. It is not a conference but it is a space to come up with the peoples’ solutions to the economic and ecological crisis. The USSF is the next most important step in our struggle to build a powerful multi-racial, multi-sectoral, inter-generational, diverse, inclusive, internationalist movement that transforms this country and changes history.

Having to read language like this is the mental equivalent for me of accidentally dialing someone’s fax line. Suffice it to say that one doesn’t have to dig too deep into the USSF, or into its papoose-lugging parent, the World Social Forum, to get the idea.

It’s significant to me whenever peaceful humanitarians like those at Cobo Hall on Wednesday cheer so enthusiastically (you see, this is a reason we call them “useful idiots,”) when professional activists like Elena Herrada equate being a border patrol officer with being a member of the Ku Klux Klan.



It’s also significant, much more so, when we see the enthusiasm with which Osama Siblani at the Arab American News, and Dawud Walid of the Muslim Brotherhood/CAIR trumpet the USSF, which they can exploit for their own purposes.

From The Arab American News on Friday:

Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, a professor of ethnic studies relating to Arab and Muslim issues at the San Francisco State University in California and former University of Michigan-Dearborn director of Arab American Studies, marched while wearing a keffiyeh in support of Palestine along with friends carrying Palestinian flags.

Abdulhadi talked about the importance of solidarity between activists fighting against injustice along several different lines.

"We're all under the same umbrella of justice and our struggles should not be separate," she said.

"Being a part of others' movements is a much better choice than trying to do it all on our own."

Julio Lopez, a member of the Southwest Workers Union who traveled to the forum from San Antonio, provided an example of activists working together.

Lopez grabbed a bullhorn during the march and began chanting "Viva, Viva, Palestina!" as members of his group and other nearby marchers joined in.

"All of us here are connected to the same struggle, it's the fight against corporate power that's been going on for a long time," he said. (“A new world, a better America”).

And so, out of abject ignorance, is an Hispanic union activist from Texas transformed into a cheerleader for the Muslim Brotherhood’s cause: so what if the cause turns out to be the destruction of Israel and the death of the Jews? It’s all a fight against corporate power, says Julio, right?

Absolutely, will say Abdulhadi, and Walid, and Siblani, and the other puppeteers.

If that’s what you want to think we’re saying.

Also telling is the way a pro-Israel group, Stand With Us, (I believe the only one present) were signed up to hold a conference on the rights of homosexuals in the Middle East, but the USSF canceled it at the last minute. I think it’s safe to assume, that cancellation was made under pressure from Islamic organizers. A USSF spokesman said SWU were canceled “for violating the submission procedure and transparency requirements for all workshops, and for being in violation of the anti-racist principles central to the US Social Forum.”

Stand With Us provides their own statement as to what happened.

My own take is that if Stand With Us really violated the registration process, there would be no need for USSF to get into all that crap about anti-racist principles. In fact, lately that sort of code has been quite popular with Israel’s Islamic enemies, who justify their murderous lust to destroy Israel and annihilate every Jew by calling it opposition to Israel’s racism.

'Obama and the Rising Mob Against Israel'

James Lewis writes for American Thinker:

Obama and the Rising Mob Against Israel

The Middle East is now teetering on the brink of war because a vast international mob has been loosed, with the tacit approval of Barack Hussein Obama. That is the real meaning of the Gaza martyrdom stunt of May 31, 2010. That purposeful provocation is not past. The Gaza suicide operation is still being used all over the Middle East and Europe to whip up hatred and violence.

As Mark Steyn just reported from a dingy cafe in Morocco,

I can just about make out the plasma TV up in the corner on which Jimmy Carter, dubbed into Arabic, is denouncing Israel. Al Jazeera doesn't so much cover the Zionist Entity as feast on it, hour after hour, without end. So here, at the western frontier of the Muslim world ... the only news that matters is from a tiny strip of land barely wider at its narrowest point than a rural Canadian township way down the other end of the Mediterranean. ... (there is) saturation coverage of the "Massacre In The Med" (as the front page headline in Britain's Daily Mirror put it)."

Iran, Lebanon, and Islamist Turkey have just announced new flotillas to break the Gaza blockade. If they succeed, it will not stop with Gaza. The conquest of Jerusalem and rest of Israel is the target. That is why Ahmadinejad has trained all his life in the "Al-Quds" (Jerusalem) Brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the shock suicide brigade for reconquering Jerusalem. That is why the Hamas flag shows a green Islamic Jerusalem. It is why Kofi Annan at the U.N. proudly posed in front of a map of the Middle East with Israel erased. Mob psychology has now been loosed upon the world again -- in the European media, the U.N., and the Middle East, all of them against the common scapegoat of Israel.

Lynch mobs have a psychology. They need agitators to whip up popular rage against their victims -- like the "community organizers" in Chicago, who once upon a time used to proudly call themselves communist "agitators." But agitators need followers, who do the actual work of running riot, killing, raping, and burning their helpless scapegoats in their homes and businesses. Think ACORN and the Black Panthers.

Finally, mobs need enablers, the authority figures -- the cops, military, and politicos who give the signal that it's now okay to run riot and kill the helpless victims of the moment. Political authorities usually try to control incipient mobs, because their power depends on keeping order. But in Russia and the Dixiecrat South, politicians and cops commonly withdrew their protection at critical moments and signaled the mobs when it was okay to run riot against victim groups like the Jews or the blacks. It happens all over the world, and the race, ethnicity, religion, or wealth of the victims makes no difference. A group label is enough.

Barack Hussein Obama is now playing the biggest role in the mob psychology of the Middle East. Why? Because he is the authority figure who has given the signal that it's okay to attack Israel. That is why Islamist Turkey, Lebanon, and Iran just announced that they are sending new flotillas to challenge Israel's small coastal navy. Intentionally or not, Obama has given the green light for Israel-haters to attack. In fact, this appears to be his strategy to put pressure on Israel to appease the Arabs, Iranians, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Fatah, the unappeasable mobs that want only to kill Israel.

That is how Obama's Cairo speech was interpreted by the agitators and mobs of the Middle East. It is how his middle name was interpreted, and how his reported remark to the Egyptian Foreign Minister that "I am a Muslim" is perceived. If Obama really is a Muslim, then he must follow the Quran. Turkish PM Erdogan has openly said that "a Muslim cannot commit genocide" -- because the Quran explicitly demands genocide against infidels who do not surrender to Islam. That is why the Turkish suiciders on the cruise ship Mavi Marmara screamed "Khaibar! Khaibar!" while attacking Jewish commandos rappelling down one by one with paintball guns. Khaibar is the name of a Quranic genocide committed by Mohammed against the Jews. It's like Neo-Nazis screaming "Auschwitz! Auschwitz!"

For almost a century, the United States has been the cop on the world beat, as the British Empire declined and crumbled. The U.S. was the great, civilized power that supported freedom of trade; resistance against the Kaiser, Hitler, and Stalin; relative peace in the third world; and the protection of post-World War Two stability, ranging from Japan and South Korea to Israel and Berlin. Europe today would not exist were it not for American protection; it would be a Soviet colony. India and Pakistan might be in a hot war. China might be attacking Japan to retaliate against the horrors of World War Two, which are constantly repeated in the Chinese media. Ancient hatreds exist all over the world, ready to explode when the cop on the beat gets drunk or just resigns.

The United States has preserved the balance of power and kept it on the side of civilization against the mob. All the feeble regimes in the third world depend upon us to come to their aid against their own mobs and agitators. In fact, those regimes are just the mob agitators who won the last round.

We are the cop on the beat that keeps the world from bloody anarchy. When the president of the United States signals that it's okay to run riot against the scapegoat of the moment, all the tottering regimes know they have to give in to their domestic mob agitators. That's what Mark Steyn was watching on Al Jazeera TV in Algiers.

This is what William Butler Yeats saw during the rise of the Nazis, when he wrote his poem "The Second Coming":

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Mob psychology has now been loosed upon the world again. Only an assertive superpower can stop them, and that is the United States. If Obama fails to understand that, the Gulf, Israel, and perhaps the Indian subcontinent will explode.
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The Saboteurs of the Muslim Brotherhood

Andrew C. McCarthy had a post last week (“Bon Jovi Islam”) taking issue with Senator Joseph Lieberman’s Wall Street Journal opinion piece, “Who’s the Enemy in the War on Terror?” (subscription required). McCarthy believes Lieberman stops too far short of fully naming the enemy for what it is.

Among other things worth reading in his post, McCarthy summarizes neatly the nature of the jihadist enemy we’re facing here. These things have been covered on this blog through the years, and also by a lot of others. But some things need repeating, especially when so few people are still getting the picture. McCarthy is really good at it. I’m looking forward to reading his book, The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

Even with respect to terrorism, it is not accurate to say there is “enormous” disagreement between the mass of Muslims and the terrorists. The difference is narrow and nuanced. The argument is over whether terrorism in America, as opposed to outside America, is counterproductive.

The Muslim Brotherhood, backed by billions of Saudi petrodollars, has spent half a century building an aggressive Islamist infrastructure here. It is led by the Muslim Students Associations (more than 600 chapters in the U.S. and Canada), the Islamic Society of North America, the North American Islamic Trust, the Muslim American Society, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and similar groups. It is making ample progress marching sharia through our institutions. Hence, the argument: Many Muslims — including many who’ve lionized Osama bin Laden in the past, or rationalized his atrocities as being, in the final analysis, America’s fault — now think violence in the United States is unnecessary. They see it as objectionable, because it has killed Muslims indiscriminately, and as unproductive, because it is apt to rouse Americans to roll back sharia’s gains. These Muslims agree that America deserves its comeuppance, but they believe there are more effective ways than terrorism to bring that about.

The primary threat this cabal poses in our homeland is not violence, as Lieberman posits. It is sabotage. Don’t take my word for it: The Muslim Brotherhood itself put the matter bluntly in a 1991 internal memorandum: The organization and its satellites are engaged in a “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within” by “sabotage.” Theirs is not only, or even principally, a “violent political ideology.” It is a political ideology aiming to supplant us, by hook or by crook. The question of violent or non-violent means is tactical, and it is secondary.

Moreover, outside the United States, there is broad Muslim support — not unanimous, but broad — for terrorism against Israel and against Americans operating in Muslim countries. Taking their cues from al-Azhar and other influential centers, millions of Muslims deny that those mass murders are “terrorism” at all; they call it “resistance.” That’s why they can look you in the eye and say they “condemn terrorism,” though you can never get them to condemn Hamas or Hezbollah by name. Those terrorist organizations now claim democratic legitimacy because Muslims — not just terrorists, but rank-and-file Muslims — flocked to the polls in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories to vote for them, just as millions of Muslims in Iraq have voted for the Islamist parties that canoodle with Iran and Hezbollah while slamming us and ostracizing Israel.

Obama: ‘Ich bin Moslem’?

Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs has reported on an article in the May 2010 issue of Israel Today that Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said during an interview on Egyptian TV that “The American President told me in confidence that he is a Muslim.” (“Report: Obama said 'I Am a Muslim'”).

According to journalist Avi Lipkin, Gheit appeared on Nile TV's "Round Table Show" in January, on which he said that "he had had a one-on-one meeting with Obama who swore to him that he was a Moslem, the son of a Moslem father and step-son of Moslem step-father, that his half-brothers in Kenya were Moslems, and that he was loyal to the Moslem agenda."

Obama allegedly said this in the context of reassuring Gheit that he would soon deal with Israel:

He asked that the Moslem world show patience. Obama promised that once he overcame some domestic American problems (Healthcare) [sic], that he would show the Moslem world what he would do with Israel.

Until now I haven’t hopped aboard the, “Obama’s-really-a-Muslim” bandwagon. I have a personal objection to the way many conservative Christians (of whom I believe I’m one) are so casual about accusing people of not being Christians, in spite of public declarations that they are. My scruple isn’t based on my conviction that Obama is an exemplary Christian, which he certainly isn’t, but on my own experience with fellow Christians (also less than exemplary) who assume their status as “saved” people entitles them to commit the grave sin of, at a glance, presuming upon Christ's office of declaring who's a sheep and who's a goat. I can’t like the way it’s been done to Obama, because I don’t like the way it’s been done to me.

Yet while I think that bad habit is best not indulged, it's not an absolute. I have rued the public Christian disobedience of persons whose faith I never questioned, such as Ted Kennedy or Jimmy Carter. And as low an opinion I have of Carter's presidential and post-presidential folly, no one ever suggested he secretly belonged to any other religion.

Nothing’s stopped me from observing the way Obama’s public behavior and policy decisions have been bereft of any evidence at all that he either identifies with the values of Christians, or holds them in anything but public contempt. At the same time, his very public admiration for the Koran and Islam is, to make a more proper use of Nancy Pelosi’s improper use of the word about her own Catholicism, “ardent”:




I’m simply not aware of a comparable glut of material reflecting Obama’s love for Christians and his stated Christian faith.

Now, this latest report, if it can be confirmed as true, is damning indeed, not because the U.S.A. can’t have a Muslim for president, but because it means Obama has lied to us about his true religious identity. And, as Pamela writes, “This is a devastating claim, and yet no media outlet is covering it.”

At the moment, it’s still only hearsay from an Egyptian diplomat who admits that he is betraying a confidence.

Still, as Pamela Geller points out,

Even if Gheit's claim isn't true, or was misreported, every country in the free world must be cognizant of the catastrophic sea change that has taken place in the leadership of the free world -- as witnessed by events over the past year. Barack Obama took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and yet whether he is a Muslim or not, he has undeniably gone around the world promoting Islam and Sharia (Islamic law).

Nor is she just speaking in generalities, but includes plenty of examples from Obama’s track record:

March 2009: Obama declares the "war on terror" is over, despite a dramatic increase in jihad war ops.

March 2009: he floats the idea that he will talk to violent, genocidal Hamas.

March 2009: he demands that more Muslim Americans work in the Obama administration and insists that they be recruited.

April 2009: Obama tells Europe to admit Islamic Turkey into the EU, much to the consternation of the Europeans.

April 2009: Obama demands that non-Muslims respect Islam (despite our differences) in a speech in Turkey.

April 2009: Obama says in a speech from Turkey, "We are not a Christian nation."
April 2009: Dalia Mogahed, the first hijab-clad senior adviser to Obama on Muslim affairs, says in an interview with terrorist- and jihad-supporting Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi's website, "Many have claimed that terrorists have 'hijacked Islam.' I disagree. I think Islam is safe and thriving in the lives of Muslims around the world. What the terrorists have been allowed to take over are Muslim grievances."

April 2009: Obama lays groundwork for a partnership with Hamas.

May 2009: Obama promises to offer his "personal commitment" to Muslims.

May 2009: Obama calls America "one of the largest Muslim countries on the planet."

June 2009: Obama invites the Muslim Brotherhood, a violent global jihadist group whose sole objective is a universal caliphate, to his speech to the ummah (Muslim community) in Cairo.

June 2009: Obama makes a stunning speech to the Muslim world from Al Azhar University in Cairo. It defies explanation.

July 2009: Obama reaches out to the violent jihadists of Hezb'allah.

July 2009: Obama creates a new office at the State Department, Outreach to the Worldwide Muslim community, reporting directly to Hillary Clinton.

July 2009: The State Department Welcomes Hamas mouthpiece Al-Quds TV to D.C. to filmpPropaganda.

Obama promises to close GITMO.

Obama is rebuked when plans are revealed for CIA prosecutions for 911 interrogations: Seven Ex-chiefs of CIA Oppose Case Review: ALL Sign letter to Stop CIA Persecutions.

In July 2009, Obama sanctions the brutal crackdown of those marching for freedom in Iran and sides with the mullahcracy. He stands silent about the Iranian regime's mass executions, mass rape, and murder.

July 2009: Obama plans to slash the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

September 2009: Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton on Obama at the U.N.: "This is the most radical anti-Israel speech I can recall any president making...I have to say I was very shaken by this speech."

October 2009: Obama offers millions in Muslim technology fund.

November 2009, Fort Hood Jihad Coverup: Obama Urges Congress To Put Off Fort Hood Probe, Warns Against Turning Tragedy Into "Political Theater"

November 2009: Obama offers the Taliban control of the Kandahar, Helmand, Oruzgan, Kunar, and Nuristan provinces, in return for a halt to the Taliban missile attacks on U.S. bases.

November 2009: Obama reaches out to bloodthirsty jihadis in the Philippines.
On Thanksgiving eve, Obama issues a special Hajj message to the world's Muslims.

December 2009: Obama's "Non-Religious" White House Christmas and No Christmas Gifts for his Kids.

February 2010: Obama names a Hafiz to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. "And as a hafiz of the Koran, [Hussain] is a respected member of the American Muslim community," Obama said in his message to the Doha meeting, using the Arabic world for someone who has memorized the Islamic holy book.

February 2010: Obama cuts U.S. space program, orders NASA to work with Muslim countries

February 2010: Covering up for jihadists in the White House.

Obama's counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, Involved in Obama Passport Breach

March 2010: Obama Obsession with Islam: Calls "entrepreneurship summit" with Muslims.

April 2010: Libyan President Gaddafi Praises Obama: "Barakeh Obama is friend"; "He is of Muslim descent, his policy should be supported..."

May 2010: Obama's Counterterrorism Adviser Calls Jihad "Legitimate Tenet of Islam."

May 2010: White House Pro-Terrorism John Brennan Speechifies in Arabic, Equates Terrorists with Shoplifters, Lawmakers Call for his Firing.

June 2010: Obama equivocates on the jihad warship convoy (affectionately named a "flotilla" by the media): Obama "Expressed a Deep Regret Over Loss of [Jihadist] Life"

June 2010: Obama administration to Support Anti-Israel Resolution at U.N.

Regardless of what may or may not be his personal faith, if nothing else, Obama’s treacherous anti-Israel foreign policy goes beyond showing sympathy for the Muslim world, and reaches, possibly, all the way to being his own participation in jihad.

'Anything for Peace'

Diana West shares our view that the response to the flotilla stunt is irrational:

How is Israel the Guilty Party?

We may not live in an Islamic world -- yet -- but we do live with an Islamic worldview. Witness the uniformly Islamicized consensus that met Israel's successful if costly defense of its Gaza blockade.

The blockade, by the way, is a defensive measure that Israel devised after Hamas terrorists were elected to govern Israel-ceded Gaza in 2005 and -- no surprise to any student of jihad -- decided to continue their charter-commanded war on Israel, raining down nearly 10,000 rockets onto Israeli civilians.

The rocketing, of course, was OK with the Islamicized consensus. What wasn't OK happened on the night of May 31 when Israeli commandos, lightly armed with paintball guns and emergency sidearms, unexpectedly battled aboard the Mavi Marmara against trained fighters with ties to the Turkish government, specifically to the ruling AKP party of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, to maintain Israel's lawful blockade.

These hostile forces were organized by the Turkish terror-linked organization known as IHH (which purchased the boat from an AKP entity). They were armed with knives, axes, clubs, Molotov cocktails and more, and they formed a militant cadre barely camouflaged by the "humanitarian cargo" (including night vision goggles, bulletproof vests and nearly a million euros) and other "peace activists," among whom were Muslim Brothers, Hamas partisans (at least one Hamas operative was later arrested), and members of the Turkish supremacist group BBP. At least five "passengers" publicly expressed their wish to become "shahids," or Islamic martyrs. Three got their wish in the fighting that ensued after the ship refused to yield to the Israeli Navy. Some of the Israeli blockade-defenders were wounded, a few seriously; nine jihadist blockade-runners were killed.

An Islamicized world wrath came down on Israel. And with such force as to obliterate what remnants of the Western system -- logic, morality, history - somehow still existed. Simultaneous to the instant apotheosis of blockade-running jihadis into ocean-going pacifists came an avalanche of rage so violent as to reverse the gravitational pull of global politics entirely. Or so it seems.

Thus, Islamicized international pressure weighs on Israel's Netanyahu to justify, to apologize -- and not Turkey's Erdogan, who supports the jihadist outlaws. Outrage boils over at the defense of a lawful blockade to protect civilians from terrorist attack, and not at the Hamas attackers, or at the Turks and others who aid them -- and, again, with the Turkish head of state's support. While Israelis have reason to re-examine the efficiency of their strategy to maintain the blockade, the only so-called "impartial" international investigation required is not, as demanded, into Israel's line of defense, but rather into Turkey's destabilizing culpability in the aggression.

Pure and simple, this was an act of jihadist provocation, even an act of war. If the Western system were still functional, it would be Turkey called to account in the international arena, not Israel; it would be Turkey pressured to unmask itself as a fomenter of global jihad -- not Israel for defending itself against it.

If.

But the Western system no longer functions; it takes its lead from "peace activists." And so --- and this is the tragedy of Western collapse - it is Turkey that the West appeases. There is no logic to this; there is fear. There's no morality here; only dhimmitude. History, meanwhile, is ignored. We hide from the gravity of resurgent jihad in the Ottoman land of the last caliphate, deaf to the declarations of cultural and religious war that Erdogan, for one, has always made, from the 1970s, when he engaged in anti-Semitic agitprop with a play he wrote, directed and acted in known as "Mas-kom-Ya," an acronym for Mason, komunist (communist), and Yahudi (Jew); to the 1990s, when he invoked jihad with the lines, "the mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers"; to today, as he exhorts Turks in Europe to cultural conquest, declaring, "Assimilation is a crime against humanity."

Sounds like the call of the marauder to me. But the United States, pondering "Who lost Turkey?" plugs its ears and scapegoats Israel, or, just as fantastic, blames Europe for a vestigial self-preservation instinct that prevents it from committing demographic suicide by admitting 78 million Muslims into the union.

Anything for "peace."

#

Summer Fashion Forecast -- OUT: Young Turks, IN: Old Turks

We’ve been hearing a lot about how a lie gets half way around the world before the truth can get its boots on. On Friday, Nasser Beydoun, the opportunistic former Dearborn activist and open supporter of Hezbollah, managed to get a bunch of lies at least halfway around the world, anyway, from Qatar, where he presently lives, by means of a Detroit News opinion piece. (“Arab world should capitalize on Israel's attack on aid ship”).

Beydoun is anxious that the Arab nations stop behaving like weaklings, and exploit the international ill-will towards Israel over the incident with the Gaza flotilla. (Or what the headline writer calls, “capitalize”). Brothers, this is our big chance, Beydoun urges, to start dismantling Israel once and for all.

As Diana West wrote a couple days ago, “We may not live in an Islamic world -- yet -- but we do live with an Islamic worldview. Witness the uniformly Islamicized consensus that met Israel's successful if costly defense of its Gaza blockade.”

For his part, Beydoun is helping spread the necessary lies that keep so much of that international malice against Israel alive.

His first whopper is describing the recent incident with the blockade-running Mavi Marmara as an example of “the cruelty and lack of humanity of Israel's occupation.”

This is a direct, bald-faced lie. Israel does not occupy Gaza. Israel withdrew every last soldier and drove every Israeli out of Gaza in 2005. The only Israeli soldier still in Gaza is Gilad Schalit, who was kidnapped by Hamas and taken into Gaza by force.

Next, Beydoun gives his readers his blunt conclusion without allowing us a look at his reasoning, or lack of reasoning. “Make no mistake that Israel ultimately bears the brunt of the blame for the Palestinian situation.”

This unsupported generalization is meant to shield the mountain of historical falsehoods its represents, and of course we don’t know which “Palestinian situation” he’s even talking about. In this context, I expect Beydoun means it’s Israel’s fault that Gaza is a religion-addled gangster warren that requires blockading in the first place. That any fault for this might be shared by Gaza’s genocidal theocratic government, Hamas, and the Gazans who chose, and still continue to choose, Hamas’s terrorist leadership, just doesn't fit into this discussion Beydoun wants to have about the plight of the Palestinians.

Beydoun follows that up with the charge that “Arab governments are culpable for their ineffectiveness and weakness in the face of Israeli aggression.”

“Israeli aggression” is a code phrase meant to include any act Israel has ever taken in her legitimate self-defense. Because Israel has no right to exist, her enemies figure, all signs of her vitality, especially her instinct of self-preservation, is automatically an act of aggression. In this case, Beydoun is calling it aggression that Israel blockaded Gaza to stop Hamas importing weapons they will then turn on Israel. It’s also aggression that Israel boarded the Turkish flotilla, after the blockade-runners defied several attempts by Israel to peacefully divert it to Ashdod.

Beydoun also lies by omission of essential facts. For one, he never once mentions Hamas, rockets, suicide attacks, the Hamas charter commanding genocide against Israel, nor any other fact that detracts from the narrative of Gazans as peace-loving, starving victims of Israel’s torments.

Beydoun also fails to mention that Egypt is also blockading Gaza. This might be because, if he did mention it, his own logic would require him to complain about “Egyptian aggression,” cruelty, and lack of humanity. Instead, he deceitfully says only that “Egypt is implicated for their support of the blockade,” falsely implying that Egypt is merely tolerating Israel’s blockade, instead of enforcing one of its own.

Beydoun’s single reference to the “peace process” is pure cynicism. “If Turkey takes the lead in protecting the Palestinians and imposing its will on the peace process,” he writes, “then we have a new paradigm that could reshape the entire Arab-Israeli conflict.”

A new paradigm where Turkey imposes its will on all sides?

Beydoun neither supports nor cares about peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Nor, as is obvious, does he even care about the Palestinians getting their own state. His column begins with a lament over how the Moors lost Spain, and ends with a hope for a restoration of the Ottoman caliphate, returning things to the way they were before the British Mandate following World War I, when, as Clifford D. May writes:

for centuries, the area called Palestine (including what is now Israel, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza) was ruled by the Ottoman Empire with its capital in what is now Turkey. Needless to say, the idea of an independent Palestinian state never occurred to the Ottoman pashas.

Beydoun trots out a belligerent image of the Mavi Marmara as Turkey’s Lusitania, the British ocean liner torpedoed by Germany in 1915, killing 1,198 victims, 128 of whom were Americans. His
comparison probably tells more than he means it too. “The sinking turned public opinion in many countries against Germany, and was instrumental in bringing the United States into World War I.” Never mind that Israel didn’t sink the Mavi Marmara, and that instead of being attacked by torpedoes, the Mavi Marmara was boarded by incredibly gutsy Israeli soldiers dangled one at a time onto a deckful of howling jihadists. All Beydoun cares about is turning world opinion against Israel so there can be a war. For some reason, editors at the Detroit News think this is an opinion it needs to make room for on its op-ed page.

The black-is-white, up-is-down insanity of all this is in columns like these, where crocodile tears for a phony “peace flotilla” call forth all-out war against Israel.

Caroline Glick Strikes Again

Pipes for Peace, or, All Hamas on Deck

You may remember the running Monty Python gag about full frontal nudity. The last few months have me in mind of something I have to call full frontal bullshit. Just tell the biggest lie you can think of to the useful idiots in the press and let those who know better wear themselves to a frazzle trying to prove that the world isn’t flat, as constantly reported on CNN, WDIV, and ABC.

That anyone would believe the blockade-running strategy of the Muslim Brotherhood is a humanitarian mission is bad enough. But that the whole world believes it is almost too much.

Now I hear that an Irish ship, the MV Rachel Corrie, has decided to join in the fun. At this point, the Israelis successfully boarded the ship and diverted it to Ashdod. Named for one of the American martyrs to useful idiocy, the late Rachel Corrie, who died within a couple weeks of very publicly burning a childish image of a U.S. flag while defending Gazan tunnels used to smuggle weapons for killing Israelis, the ship meekly allowed the IDF to board without a struggle.

Why not? At this point, more damage can be done to Israel by forcing them to detain an army of grinning simpletons like Nobel peace laureate Mairéad Maguire than by throwing IDF soldiers overboard, stabbing them, or beating them to death with iron pipes.

'We Con the World'

Caroline Glick helped put this together:

OUR LINK IS BACK!

Be sure to select "Full Screen" so it won't get cut off.

Dearborn Supports Israel

Maybe I don't speak for everyone in Dearborn. But those people gotten up to demonstrate at City Hall today don't speak for me.

I haven't felt much like blogging lately. But someone in Dearborn has to provide some outlet for the facts of what happened to the "humanitarian" flotilla that was trying to break the blockade on Gaza. The local news is not doing it.

Steve Emerson has written this:

Violence and Humanitarian Aid
IPT News
June 1, 2010

Condemnations of Israel's commando raid on the flotilla trying to break a blockade on Gaza are pouring in after 10 people were reported killed in the violence at sea early Monday.

Egypt announced Tuesday that it would open its border with Gaza, which Reuters describes as "a major boost for Hamas and a blow to efforts by Israel and its Western allies to cripple the Islamists." Turkey is threatening to send more ships, escorted by its own navy, while there are fears Hizballah will use the incident to justify a new wave of rocket attacks toward Israel.

Was it, as some suggest, the plan of flotilla organizers all along?

It's worth remembering why the aid was being transported by sea in the first place. A convoy led by then-British MP George Galloway ended in violence at the Egyptian-Gaza border in early January after authorities delayed their entry into Gaza.

An Egyptian police officer was shot and killed by Hamas gunmen. Egypt deported Galloway, made it clear he was unwelcome there again, and told the convoy it could no longer enter through its crossing. Galloway's partner in that convoy was the Turkish-based International Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), which helped lead the flotilla.

IHH was a key player in the Free Gaza Movement flotilla. Israeli officials say IHH is tied to Hamas, and even to al Qaeda, and it was banned in Israel in 2008 for being "part of Hamas's fundraising network." Court papers in the U.S. prosecution of Abdurahman Alamoudi also tie it to terrorist activity, citing French intelligence expert Jean Louis-Bruguiere's assessment that IHH played "[a]n important role" in the Millennium bomb plot.

IHH also is part of the Union of Good, a collection of charities run by Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi. The union was designated by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2008 as a terrorist entity due to its fund-raising activities on behalf of Hamas and Hamas-controlled organizations in the West Bank and Gaza.

During the past year, the Investigative Project on Terrorism has chronicled the Hamas-ties of relief convoy participants, led by Galloway. In March 2009, he defiantly handed a bag of cash directly to a Hamas minister and announced that:

"By Allah, we carried a lot of cash here. You thought we were all fat. We are not fat. This is money that we have around our waists ... We are giving you now 100 vehicles and all of the contents. And we make no apology for what I am about to say: We are giving them to the elected government of Palestine; to the Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh."

After the January convoy, a Palestinian media outlet reported that Hamas political and militant leaders were fighting for control of $1 million delivered in the Viva Palestina/IHH convoy. And last week, before the confrontation on the Mediterranean, Palestinian political scientist Talal Okal told the Christian Science Monitor that Hamas controls anything that comes in from the relief efforts. Hamas activists were even seen driving ambulances the convoy left behind:

"They want to show that they dominate everything, and that everything in Gaza passes under their eyes. So, if these boats arrive, Hamas will receive it [the aid] and distribute it how they want, to their supporters and according to their policies."

With that in mind, Israel's concern that the flotilla might carry goods Hamas could use in weapons and explosives isn't so far-fetched.

In Monday's violence, the videos speak for themselves. Israeli commandos were beaten as they landed on the ship's deck by men wielding pipes, knives and other weapons. One commando said he thought the crowd was trying to lynch him. Israeli officials say the initial plan was to use paintball guns to gain control of the ship and that the navy team had handguns for use only if their lives were threatened.

Flotilla members grabbed at least one gun from a soldier, contributing to the decision to fire back, Israeli military officials said.

The Israelis, it seems, weren't prepared for what met them. But any notion that the ship carried peaceful activists is ludicrous. They wanted a confrontation.

According to London's Times, a flotilla passenger told a reporter during a stop in Cyprus:

"We are now waiting for one of two good things — either to reach Gaza or achieve martyrdom."

She was not alone.

Al-Aqsa television, the Hamas station in Gaza, interviewed Professor Abd Al-Fatah Nu'man last week. According to a translation from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Nu'man said:

"Yesterday, the commander of the fleet said: 'We will not allow the Zionists to come near us, and we will wage resistance against them.' With what will they wage resistance? With their fingernails. These are people who wish to be martyred for the sake of Allah. As much as they want to reach Gaza, the other option is more desirable to them."

As it turns out, they had much more than their fingernails. Clubs, knives and slingshots are among the weapons found on the ship and seen on the video in attacks on the commandos.

It's clear, though, that the commandos were not the ones looking to hurt people. The Times report indicates passengers on five other ships in the flotilla were trained in non-violent resistance.

Israeli forces took control of those ships without reports of any injuries. They were taken to the Israeli port at Ashdod where officials pledged genuine humanitarian supplies will go to Gaza's civilians.

That's what officials said would happen when they urged the flotilla to give up peacefully:

"Delivery of the supplies, in accordance with the authority's regulations will be through the formal land crossings and under your observation, after which, you can return to your home ports aboard the vessels on which you arrived."

Contrast that with the message flotilla participants conveyed from the beginning. Passengers chanted "Khaibar, Khaibar ya Yahud Jaysh Muhammed Safayood" (Khaibar, Khaibar, oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!")

That's a taunt invoking a massacre of Jews.

Der Spiegel writer Christoph Schult thought the Israelis over-reacted, but recognized the passengers were spoiling for a fight:

"But as the Israeli army stormed the largest ship, the Mavi Marmara, the activists they encountered were in no way exclusively docile peaceniks. Some of the 'peace activists' received the Israelis with crow bars and sling shots. Some of the self-professed "human rights activists" reportedly even tore the weapons from soldiers and began to shoot.

That's not what a peaceful protest looks like."

Even Israelis and their supporters are openly wondering whether the country fell into a trap – designed to provoke Israel into action that cost it more in international pressure than in upholding its blockade of Hamas in Gaza.

Lost in all of this is the reason there is a blockade on Gaza at all. When Israel ended the occupation of Gaza by unilaterally withdrawing – even removing its own citizens by force – Hamas responded with increased terror attacks and launching thousands of crude rockets at Israeli civilians. It also kidnapped an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, and has refused to hand him back after four years.

Newsweek's Joe Klein, a frequent critic of Israeli policy, noted the underlying causes in a column about the flotilla attack:

"And the blockade is not total--food and humanitarian supplies are allowed through by the Israelis, which renders the humanitarian aspects of the flotilla redundant. The real purpose of the flotilla is to dramatize the inhuman conditions in Gaza. But those conditions are as attributable to Hamas's behavior, especially its refusal to release Shalit and to negotiate, as they are to Israel's intransigence. If I were an Israeli--even an Israel opponent of the Netanyahu coalition--I would be utterly opposed to making concessions to an organization as historically intransigent and violent as Hamas, unless there were signs that Hamas was willing to behave more reasonably."

For all those who say they want life to improve for Palestinians in Gaza, they can do things to end the blockade and enhance the quality of life. But it begins with Hamas leadership and their belief, perhaps a correct one, that they are winning the propaganda war by preserving the status quo. Until that changes, conditions will not improve for Palestinians in Gaza.

What flotilla organizers call the legitimate government in Gaza is a murderous band of religious fanatics who seek no compromise, no peace that recognizes the state of Israel and calls for its destruction. Monday's violence will only entrench their hard line.