Gaza Flotilla and Alice Walker

Author Howard Jacobson writes on CNN.com "Why Alice Walker shouldn't sail to Gaza"

It should not need arguing, this late in the ethical history of mankind, that good people can do great harm. One of the finest and funniest novels ever written -- Don Quixote -- charts the damage left in the wake of a man who would make the world a better place.

Human beings are seldom more dangerous than when they are sentimentally overcome by the goodness of their own intentions. That Alice Walker believes it is right to join the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza I do not have the slightest doubt. But beyond associating her decision with Gandhi, Martin Luther King and very nearly, when she talks about the preciousness of children, Jesus Christ, she fails to give a single convincing reason for it.

Jacobson then takes on each one of Walker's reasons for associating with killers and thugs. And he does it well.

Read the full column.

Alice Walker is on the wrong boat

Comes the news that Alice Walker, noted African-American author and civil rights crusader, will be on a boat intending to break Israel’s quarantine of Gaza. In case you don’t know it Ms. Walker, you’re not going to be riding the Love Boat with Gopher, Doc and Captain Steuben.

We all know that Gaza is under the domination and control of Hamas, a sworn and devoted enemy of the State of Israel and Jews everywhere. Thousands of missiles have been launched against Israeli citizens by Hamas and its allies. A few months ago, a school bus was a target of a missile attack in which a high school student was murdered. Gilad Schalit is still being held incommunicado somewhere in Gaza. Hamas has rejected an appeal from the International Red Cross to visit him.

Gaza does not contain a single Jewish resident (other than Gilad) since the Israeli government unilaterally removed all Jewish residents five years ago. This move, designed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to give new impetus to negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, was met with a Hamas takeover of Gaza following a brief civil war with supporters of the Palestinian Authority.

The quarantine of Gaza, a result of the Hamas takeover, is designed to keep more missiles and weapons from coming into the hands of Hamas. It’s perfectly legal for one country to protect itself against another country that is openly hostile to it. Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis?

So, Alice Walker is going to Gaza to bring letters to the children of Gaza. What a laudable effort if it wasn’t laughable. A heroine of the American civil rights movement aligning herself with murderers and thugs. No matter what she says now, she’s lost her credibility.

As Dan Gordon has written in the American Thinker, Alice Walker Is Sailing in the Wrong Direction,

“The truth, however, is that this flotilla, and the actions of Ms. Walker and her compatriots, is behavior that will not only make the children of Southern Israel afraid, it will help murder them. That is not hyperbole, nor is it a question of theoretical murder. It is real. It is actual, and if, Heaven forbid, they are successful in breaking the Israeli naval quarantine meant to deny advanced weapons to internationally recognized terrorists, those murders will be a byproduct of their horrifically misguided actions.”

Shame on you Alice Walker.

Conrad Black - Canada as a moral leader

Conrad Black, writing in The New York Sun about Canadian premier's thumbing his nose at American policy, for the good, I might add-

As befits a modest country unaccustomed to leading the world other than by homogenized measurements of the quality of life, Canada seems not to have noticed that Stephen Harper has kicked off his new term as head of a majority government with the assumption of the moral leadership of the world (in the usual unobtrusive Canadian way); and even more astoundingly, has done so by successfully contradicting the president of the United States.

By killing it [the Obama plan for Israel to return to 1967 borders] in the G-8 (U.S., Germany, Japan, the U.K., France, Italy, and Russia), Stephen Harper became the moral leader of the world’s statesmen, as the first head of an important country to debunk the 1967 fraud upon which the Arab-Israeli crisis, the longest-running and most definitive moral litmus test in the geo-political world (and least successful extended negotiation in history) is based.

What it boils down to is this- Stephen Harper has smarts and is willing to stand up for what he believes is right. Black's article goes through some Canadian history to give us the background to the importance of Harper's move.

Canada Emerges as a Moral Leader by Standing Up for Israel

Damascus on Trial - support for terror groups in spotlight

Makes you kind of wonder.


Back in 1996 I had a meeting at the State Department with the then head of its terrorism section. We were trying to get information on Islamic Jihad, the group that murdered Alisa and seven others in the April 1995 attack near Kfar Darom. The information we received confirmed what we had heard elsewhere -- Islamic Jihad was headquartered in Syria.

Since that time, Syria has continued to provide a haven and support Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Now, with the world focused on Syria's actions against its own citizens and calls for the fall of the Assad government, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have to be a little concerned.


Middle East Forum writes, Damascus on Trial, read it to get an idea of Syria's role as the home to terrorists.

Syrians attempt to "breach" borders; double standard on horizon?

From the New York Times,

Wave after wave of Syrian and Palestinian protesters from Syria approached the frontier with the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Israeli soldiers opened fire at activists who crossed a newly dug trench and tried to breach the border fence near the Golan town of Majdal Shams. The protests then spread out along the border.

The operative word in the above paragraph is "breach."

No other sovereign country would be forced to accept a massed invasion of its borders whether by so-called "protesters" or military forces.

The Jerusalem Post reports that armed gunman can be seen in the background. Are they there to fire on the protesters who turn back or on those going forward?

A crisis along the border between Syria and Israel works to the benefit of the Syrian dictatorship by directing attention away to its slaughter of its own citizens. In any event, no doubt that there will be criticism of Israel's response. Double standard in action, once again.

You can read the Times report here and JPost.com report here.