Mujahedeen Khalq. Whose side are they on? Terrorists, freedom fighters or something else?

Mujahedeen Khalq, a listed terrorist organization, is on the Op-ed pages of today's New York Timses. Mujahedeen Khalq, or Warriors of God, has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds in a little known war with Iran. Elizabeth Rubin takes them, and their outspoken American supporters, to task.

[A]n unlikely chorus of the group’s backers — some of whom have received speaking fees, others of whom are inspired by their conviction that the Iranian government must fall at any cost — have gathered around Mujahedeen Khalq at conferences in capitals across the globe.

This group of luminaries includes two former chairmen of the joint chiefs of staff, Gens. Hugh H. Shelton and Peter Pace; Wesley K. Clark, the former NATO commander; Gen. James L. Jones, who was President Obama’s national security adviser; Louis J. Freeh, the former F.B.I. director; the former intelligence officials Dennis C. Blair and Michael V. Hayden; the former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson; the former attorney general Michael B. Mukasey, and Lee H. Hamilton, a former congressman who was co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission.

Ms. Rubin's position,

Mujahedeen Khalq is not only irrelevant to the cause of Iran’s democratic activists, but a totalitarian cult that will come back to haunt us.

Personally, I'm puzzled by MK, and wonder if its supporters are on the right track. I can only think back to the heady days of American belief that Fidel Castro was the right man for Cuba at the right time in history, only to have those beliefs smashed when Castro aligned himself with the Soviets and embarked on a course of state-sponsored terror.

So, it's time to sit back and see how this plays out because, brother, this is bigger than us all.

What do you think?


Stephen Flatow Iran Mujahedeen Khalq

Hamas and the arts

Reuters is reporting on the Hamas crackdown on film makers who do not toe the line.

"Cinema in Gaza is like writing on rocks with your fingers," says Palestinian writer-director Sweilem Al-Absi.

OK, I'm good with that analogy.

While Hamas has been investing heavily in Internet and television news, it is not too pleased with the work of Gazan film makers.

"Such was the case with "Masho Matook" ("Something Sweet"), a 2010 short film directed by Khalil al-Muzzayen, which depicts the interaction between Israeli troops and soccer-playing Palestinian children in once-occupied Gaza.

"Though the video vignette was submitted to the Cannes Film Festival, Hamas banned its screening locally, citing a four-second scene where Israeli soldiers appreciatively eye a comely Palestinian woman who breezes past them, her hair uncovered."

The Hamas answer is that the clip in question was "out of context."

If you add a free film industry to a free press as one of the signs of democracy, Hamas and its hold on the people of Gaza come up short.

Read the full article.

Flatow Gaza Hamas Reuters

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