On Thursday, I posted part of Medea Benjamin's rant about her group's detention at Cairo Airport on its way to Gaza. I posted it together with the picture above rather than the picture below, because I focused on the group, rather than on the rock star. I should have known better.
By the way, the caption of that picture says that she is being 'welcomed home by loved ones.' Do you see any?
Little did I know I would be stopped at the Cairo airport, detained, held overnight in a cell, then in the morning brutally assaulted by Egyptian authorities. They threw me to the ground, stomped on my back, handcuffed me so tightly they dislocated my shoulder, and then deported me to Turkey.
But by Friday, Benjamin had miraculously 'recovered.' Here's a guest post by Kristinn Taylor on Jim Hoft's Gateway Pundit.
Three days after she claimed to have been brutally attacked, stomped
on, her arm ripped out of its socket and ligaments torn by Egyptian
authorities trying to deport her from the Cairo aiprport, Susan ‘Medea’
Benjamin appeared to be miraculously healed as shown on a video of an interview recorded Friday.
Benjamin, leader of the terrorist support group Code Pink, spoke to
Bill Hughes at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The camera
shot is tight from the shoulders up. Benjamin looks quite healthy. No
scabs, no bruises, no swelling, no torn scalp, no broken teeth. When the
camera pulls back to show her torso, her left arm which she claimed was
broken, dislocated and had ligaments torn, is seen free of any sling,
cast, or means of support. Benjamin is wearing two pullover shirts,
meaning she had to lift her arms to get dressed. She does however hold
her left arm folded against her abdomen.
Let's go to the videotape.
More here. That's an awfully fast 'recovery,' isn't it?
State Department dismisses Kerry letter on Code Pink's behalf as 'form letter'
The State Department is dismissing a three-year old letter written by then-Senator John FN Kerry on behalf of Code Pink members seeking access to Gaza as a 'form letter' after the letter came to prominence again this week.
A State Department official reportedly told The Blaze, “The
letter from then-Senator Kerry regarding the humanitarian mission in
Israel and the Palestinian territories was a form letter that was
auto-penned — standard constituent mail that congressional members send
out as a common practice,” the official said. “Senator Kerry never saw
it, nor did his senior staff see it. It was put together by his Boston
office, and would also not have involved senior staff members on the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”
“Moreover, the text of the letter has nothing to do with the flotilla
incident or even Gaza. It focuses purely on a humanitarian mission in
Israel and the Palestinian territories in support of the peace process,”
the official concluded.
In the letter, Kerry wrote that his staff met with the
Massachusetts delegation before they left, and his staff would be
briefed about the trip upon their return.
Code Pink co-founders
Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin used Kerry’s letter at the U.S. Embassy
in Cairo, Egypt to pressure the Egyptian government to allow 1300
leftists passage into Gaza from Egypt. The leftists gathered in Cairo
from around the world to mark the one-year anniversary of Israel’s
defense against Hamas’ rocket and mortar attacks.
Images of the
letters from Kerry and [Representative Andre] Carson [(D-Indiana) were
posted by the publisher of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah, on his
blog at Posterous.com. [Abunimah is a close friend and early supporter of Barak Hussein Obama. CiJ].
Abunimah
wrote that he, Benjamin and Kit Kettridge met for over an hour with
“three officials, including Gina Cabrera, head of US citizen services,
and Gregory D. LoGerfo, First Secretary in the Office of Economic and
Political Affairs. The third official, whose name I did not note,
identified himself as a ‘regional security’ official.”
Benjamin
and Kettridge also met with “the embassy’s Deputy Director Matthew
Tuellar, in command while Ambassador Scobey was on leave,” according to
Abunimah.
(Margaret Scobey is a career Foreign Service officer who was appointed ambassador to Egypt by President George W. Bush in 2008.)
The
Christian Science Monitor mentioned Kerry’s letter in a report from
Cairo, but failed to question why the chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee was supporting the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas Gaza
Freedom March.
The letter was written on letterhead from Kerry’s
Boston office. The name and phone number of staffer Christopher Wyman
was included as a point of contact.
Not only do the
Democrats not treat terrorists as combatants - they support them (what
else do you think Code Pink was doing by going to Gaza?).
The State Department is now dismissing Obama's pal Ali Abunimah:
The letter makes no mention of pro-Palestinian activism in general, nor the Gaza flotillas in particular. The Blaze reports
that initial claims that the letter had been authored by Kerry in an
expression of pro-Palestinian support originated with both Ali Abunimah,
co-founder of the Electronic Intifada website and a supporter of the
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, and
Jodie Pink, a US anti-war activist.
That would be Jodie Evans (not 'Jodie Pink'), shown here.
And the Code Pink members never planned to go anywhere but Gaza via Egypt. And given what we know about Code Pink, one ought to question why Senator Kerry (or President Obama) would have anything to do with them in the first place.
Last week's Reminder presented the story of women
going to the Middle East under the auspices of Codepink. Their stated
purpose was to "take a stand for the people of Gaza."
Although much was said about Israel and Gaza, what wasn't mentioned was the nature of Codepink.
A quick look at the Codepink Web site
and materials makes it clear that it is a one-sided organization that
does not recognize the right of America to defend itself against
al-Qaeda or the Taliban.
Nor does it recognize the right of Israel to fight a war of survival against the terrorist group Hamas, armed by Iran.
Hamas seeks to destroy the state of Israel and has a history of
launching missiles deeper and deeper into Israel. The distance between
Gaza and Tel Aviv is about the same as between Springfield and
Worcester. Would we in America give up the right of self-defense if a
hostile force controlled territory that close? How is it that the
Codepink Web site is silent on these rockets falling well within the
state of Israel?
I wonder why no one seems to have contacted Christopher Wyman about this....
Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Daily Caller - more below the video).
The left-wing delegation to Pakistan included Medea Benjamin, the
co-founder of Code Pink, and Robert Naiman, the policy director of a
left-wing group called Just Foreign Policy, whose board members include
Julian Bond, the former NAACP chairman, and Tom Hayden, the 1960s
radical and former California politician.
During the five-minute video, Naiman hands the ambassador a petition,
which he claims was signed by more than three thousand people, calling
for an end to U.S. military drone strikes in Pakistan.
Naiman also is seen giving Hoagland an anti-drone letter from
left-wing American activists, including Alice Walker, Noam Chomsky, Juan
Cole and Oliver Stone.
“We demand an immediate moratorium on the drone strikes,” the letter
reads, in part. “We demand that U.S. policy in Pakistan be brought into
compliance with U.S. and international law, that the U.S. government
come clean about civilian casualties, that civilian victims and their
families be compensated, and that ‘signature’ drone strikes and attacks
on civilian rescuers be permanently abandoned, in Pakistan and
everywhere else.”
Naiman, the policy director of the Just Foreign Policy organization, is a longtime anti-Israel activist who participated in an attempt to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza in 2011.
The first step the legal center took against the flotilla was to target private companies that may have been assisting it. “We thought, what do boats need in order to sail?” Darshan-Leitner told me. “And we realized that all boats must have insurance.” Shurat HaDin began by contacting the major maritime insurance agencies, and informing them they might be criminally liable for “aiding and abetting” a terrorist organization if they provided insurance.
The response was very positive: some of the companies even said they were aware of the legal consequences, and had already made the decision not to work with the flotilla.
Shortly after, Shurat HaDin was contacted by the Israeli Prime Minister’s office, which offered its assistance. “They said we had to do anything, anything possible to stop the flotilla,” said Darshan-Leitner. “They asked if there was anything they could do. We said, ‘you tell us, what else do ships need?’”
The prime minister’s office said the boats would require satellite communication service to access GPS, contact the port, and – most importantly – to facilitate media coverage. Shurat HaDin immediately sent a letter to the major satellite provider for the area, warning it of the legal consequences if it worked with the flotilla.
Next, Shurat HaDin lawyers discovered American flotilla activists were potentially in violation of the Neutrality Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from taking part in a hostile act against an allied country. “So we approached the Attorney General of the United States to fix it. And we also got Gov. Rick Perry to write a letter to Eric Holder,” said Darshan-Leitner.
It may seem a little weird that the governor of Texas would be one of the first people Darshan-Leitner approached to help with the plan. But she explained that Perry was enthusiastically on-board with the cause ever since he met her on a trip to Israel.
“I once spoke at a mission that Perry took part in, in Israel,” she said. “And he approached me and said, ‘I love what you do. It’s amazing what you do. If you ever need help combating Israel’s enemies, I’m here to assist.’”
So with Attorney General Holder on notice – and a Neutrality Act lawsuit filed in New York federal court – Shurat HaDin turned its attention toward Greece. The group discovered the country had a Neutrality Act similar to the one in the U.S., and it prohibited boats from leaving Greece to sail to illegal ports, including Gaza.
Shurat HaDin notified the Greek minister of civil protection about the flotilla, and he immediately blocked the ships from leaving Greece.
“The second thing he did was order the port authorities in Greece to raid the boats and to find what’s wrong with each and every boat – to be very, very particular,” said Darshan-Leitner, clearly amused. “And at that point, an additional six or seven boats were grounded. Because they found a lot of [problems] there.”
This was around the time Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin and her fellow flotilla activists finally caught on to the scheme. But by that point, there wasn’t much they could do.
Remember how Helen Thomas was going to speak at that anti-AIPAC conference next month? No more... (Hat Tip: Dan F).
Helen Thomas, who caused controversy when she called on Jews in Israel to “go back to Europe” last year, reportedly declined to take part in the Move Over AIPAC when it became clear that “several members of the coalition and our grassroots community” involved in the conference were opposed to her attendance.
Thomas was quoted by organizers as thanking Move Over AIPAC for inviting her, saying she hoped the conference’s purpose of countering Israel’s perceived influence in Washington will succeed.
“I am delighted that people are coming together for this gathering and I want to make sure that the focus stays on AIPAC and U.S. policy, not me,” she was quoted saying by the anti-Israel lobby group.
...
Move Over AIPAC has been endorsed by the likes of political scientists Stephen Walt and John Meirsheimer, who wrote a book criticizing the Israeli lobby in Washington, and Jewish Voice for Peace, a leftist Jewish organization involved in attempts to break the blockade on Gaza, according to its Website.
At the time of print several messages and phone calls to Walt, Meirsheimer and JVP went unanswered.
Medea Benjamin, a spokesperson for the event, elaborated on differences of opinion among participants regarding Thomas and her reputation.
“Some within the coalition think that the remarks were anti-Semitic and condemned what she said,” Benjamin said. “Others thought that it was a slip of the tongue and that her extended comments afterwards were a good explanation. Personally, I’ve been an admirer of her for years and her protest of the Iraq war.”
Asked if inviting a speaker who in the past made inflammatory comments about Jews proved the point of the gathering’s critics that it was pushing an anti-Semitic agenda under the guise of an anti-Israeli lobby event, Benjamin responded in the negative.
“The conference is really to talk about –and many of us are Jews- is to work for a policy where Israel and Palestine can live together in peace and get a process started,” Benjamin, who is Jewish, said. “My values are Jewish and I believe in Compassion for all and AIPAC does not represent my Jewish values. Helen Thomas is one of 30 people who have been invited and we are a community of people who cherish Jewish values.”
Bottom line: Helen Thomas is too toxic even for the Walt-Mearsheimer-Code Pink-Jewish Voice for Peace crowd. It's been less than a year. My how the mighty have fallen.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
