On June 1 after the video of the terrorists attacked the IDF was made public, the left spun away.
Also Barney Frank has called for a probe of Gaza raid.
MJ Rosenberg says activists just wanted to end the blocade just as the civil rights protesters who say at lunch counters in the sixtgies just wanted to end segregation.
The despicable NYT editorialized.
Israel and the Blockade
NYT Published: June 1, 2010
The supporters of the Gaza-bound aid flotilla had more than humanitarian intentions. The Gaza Freedom March made its motives clear in a statement before Monday’s deadly confrontation: “A violent response from Israel will breathe new life into the Palestine solidarity movement, drawing attention to the blockade.”
RelatedThere can be no excuse for the way that Israel completely mishandled the incident. A commando raid on the lead, Turkish-flagged ship left nine activists dead and has opened Israel to a torrent of criticism.
This is a grievous, self-inflicted wound. It has damaged Israel’s ties with Turkey, once its closest ally in the Muslim world; given the Hamas-led government in Gaza a huge propaganda boost; and complicated peace talks with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
It also has made it much tougher for the Obama administration to persuade the United Nations Security Council to put new sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program — which Israeli officials insist is their top priority.
The questions raised by the confrontation — and there are many — demand an immediate and objective international investigation.
Why did Israel, which has blocked some ships but allowed others to pass, decide to take a stand now? Did it make a real effort to find a compromise with Turkey, which sanctioned the flotilla? Israel has a right to stop weapons from going into Gaza, but there has been no suggestion that the ships were carrying a large cache.
Was boarding, especially in the dark, the only means of stopping the ships? What happened once Israeli forces got on board? The Israeli Defense Forces have distributed a video showing that the commandos were attacked. Why weren’t they better prepared to defend themselves without using lethal force?
There is a bigger question that Israel — and the United States — must be asking: Is the blockade working? Is it weakening Hamas? Or just punishing Gaza’s 1.4 million residents — and diverting attention away from abuses by Hamas, including its shelling of Israeli cities and its refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist?
At this point, it should be clear that the blockade is unjust and against Israel’s long-term security.
After Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israel — with Egypt’s help — imposed a blockade on many goods and most people going into and out of the territory. The goal was to quickly turn residents against their new government. Three years later, Hamas is still in charge — and the blockade has become an excuse for any and all of the government’s failures.The situation in Gaza is grim. Eight out of 10 people depend on international aid agencies to survive. Basic foodstuffs are available, but medical supplies and construction materials are severely lacking. The desperation could be seen on Tuesday when Egypt lifted the blockade and several thousand Gazans rushed the border but were later sent home after police officers said they did not know when the crossing would be opened.
On Tuesday, President Obama expressed his “deep regret” over the flotilla incident. He is doing Israel no favors with such a tepid response. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown time and again that he prefers bullying and confrontation over diplomacy. Washington needs to make clear to him just how dangerous and counterproductive that approach is.
Mr. Obama needs to state clearly that the Israeli attack was unacceptable and back an impartial international investigation. The United States should also join the other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — Britain, France, Russia and China — in urging Israel to permanently lift the blockade.
That would lessen the suffering of the people in Gaza. And it would give the United States more credibility as it presses both Israelis and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to negotiate a peace deal.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
“Death and the Left”
An anonymous poster asked if Israel has a death penalty in comments on my post The Criminal Mind and the Left.
Of course I answered the comment and you can see the answer on the post but, I believe the reader was thinking that there is some urgency in the article to promote the death penalty or something. Or, that I think every nation is obliged to have one.
That is not the point at all. There is a death penalty in the USA and it gets used sometimes .
The point of mentioning the anti-death penalty groups is that they are symbolic of how the left views the world and where their priorities lie. While their hearts break for killers and thugs, there is little to no sympathy or compassion for those who suffer from their crimes. And, while the world weeps for Hamas and the terror camp in Gaza, they never cared a wit when Israel was being bombed daily and its citizens murdered and maimed in horrific attacks.
Case in point is taken from an article by Sultan Knish which I am stealing from the dashboard here.
Caryl Chessman was a robber, rapist and murderer who dragged women out of cars and sexually assaulted them. He was convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to death. He was held on death row while every goodhearted liberal demanded his release.
Caryl Chessman was to liberals what the terrorists of Guantanamo Bay are today. Imagine Tookie Williams and multiply him a thousand times over and that was Caryl Chessman. Liberals contended he was the victim of a cruel and unfair justice system. They wrote books about him, they made two movies about him, they published the books he wrote and the essays condemning his imprisonment. Ronnie Hawkins wrote “The Ballad Of Caryl Chessman” and Phil Ochs wrote “The Iron Lady” in sympathy for him.
E. A. Poe, Henri Rousseau
Sholom Aleichem and Caryl Chessman
Alan Freed and Buster Keaton too
And each one there
Has one thing shared
They have sweated beneath the same sun
Looked up in wonder at the same moon
And wept when it was all done
For bein’ done too soon
For bein’ done too soon
For bein’ done
Neil Diamond – Done Too Soon
There were no ballads or songs written about Caryl Chessman’s victims. One of those victims remained in a schizophrenic state for as long as Chessman remained on death row. But there was no pity for her or for any of them.
No singer worried how much they ached or sweated or how they lived their lives. The liberals ranging from Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Aldous Huxley, Norman Mailer (who himself nearly murdered his wife), Robert Frost (who had also obtained clemency for Nazi propagandist poet, Ezra Pound) to those letter writers sending in a 1000 letters a day cared very much about them.
What all those great men and the everyday liberal had in common was that they gave nearly as much of a damn for Caryl Chessman’s victims, as today’s liberals bleeding their little hearts all over Abu Ghaib and Gitmo, have for the victims of September 11th and the victims of Islamic terrorism all over the world.
They liked and like to believe that they’re enormously sensitive people full of love for mankind, yet that love seemed to best express itself toward murderers and rapists. After Caryl Chessman would come Eldridge Cleaver who would boast of his rapes and of practicing on “little black girls in the ghetto” before using the white women who were the racial enemy. There would be Che Guevara whose murderous visage still adorns millions of red t-shirts.
There would be Adolf Eichmann, who despite carrying out the genocide of millions, was the subject of pleas from all over the world for forgiveness. There was Yasir Arafat whose terrorist thugs carved a brutal trail of terror and death across Israel, Jordan and Lebanon. There would be Tookie Williams and there would be Hicks and the terrorists at Gitmo. The cycle of sympathizing with the criminal and transforming him into a victim, of sanctifying his bloodiest deeds in the name of his victimization by the system and the United States, dated long before Islamic terrorism even reared its ugly head. It was an ugly foulness that was always in our culture and always nesting in the rotting heart of that brand of liberalism which is attracted to the dirty bloody hand and repulsed by the waving flag.
In the death row waiting for their turn
No time to change, not a chance to learn
Waiting for someone to call
Say it’s over after all
They won’t have to face the justice of the chair
The Iron Lady – Phil Ochs
Aren’t you sad now? Can you feel empathy for what he’s going through? Poor dear Caryl Chessman. Note the overflowing well of pity for a man who had none for anyone else but himself. Caryl Chessman spent years waxing outraged about his treatment and his abuse by the criminal justice system, even as he concocted more and more outrageous lies in his own defense. And his defenders lapped up every one of them.
Chessman’s methods and techniques would inspire hero worship in the Hillside Stranglers who would go on to kidnap, torture and murder a number of women. Even after they were arrested, they nearly got off for it, but for the insistence of the trial judge on refusing the prosecution’s motion to withdraw the case and prosecuted it instead.
Chessman is mainly forgotten today, perhaps out of embarrassment. He was sent to the gas chamber from where he never returned. Liberals have found new murderers to idolize. Monsters who make Caryl Chessman or the Hillside Stranglers look like amateurs.
Why remember Caryl Chessman at all? Because he is an example. He is the sham that exposes the fraudulent feminism of liberals who tirelessly defended rapists like him or Eldridge Cleaver. Hunter S. Thompson, that great inspiration to gonzo journalism, who all but celebrated the gang rapists of the Hell’s Angels.
It exposes the love that liberals hold for criminals, but never for their victims. Their willingness to identify with and weep over the sufferings of a condemned criminal, without caring a whit for those people whose lives were ruined in his aftermath.
And that is the point.To one degree or another, the left identifies with evil people. They cannot and will not identify with Israel because it is completely alien to them, completely outside their heart and minds. It is nothing to them. They can however, understand terrorists and those who want Jews dead. This they fully understand and fully support.
They were silent as the grave when bombers where tearing Israeli Jews apart in buses, ice cream parlors, shooting little babies in the head with deliberate sniper fire.
While Israelis died in those horrible attacks, while others are maimed to this day, some living with 4 inch nails embedded in their bodies causing daily suffering, these liberals on the left are silent.
But, when Israel has to do what it has to do to defend itself , and knowing the quotes of these enemies that they wish to kill every last living Jew, they remain quiet. They find nothing wrong with that while they continue to plead for the lives of killers.
If the title of the song “Done too Soon” doesn’t alert you to the sick thinking of some on the left, nothing will.
Since when would an international investigation of Israel be remotely objective? The videos tell us all we need to know.
That’s the entire point of searching the ships, to find out if they are carrying weapons, you morons at the NYT.
Turkey wasn’t going to compromise with Israel since it was seeking a confrontation. And Israel did try to compromise by having the ships dock at Ashdod.
The NYT is as slimy as ever. As for barney frank, he should be in jail alongside Madoff, for his role in the Fannie and Freddie debacle.