A WITNESS:

Solidarity With Terror (Lee Kaplan, July 2, 2004, FrontPageMagazine.com)

This June I attended a "training session" of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), an organization of volunteers whose purpose is to obstruct Israeli defense forces attempting to protect the civilian population from terrorist acts. The ISM was set up by the Palestinians after Arafat broke off the Oslo peace talks and launched the second intifada.

A list of instructions was given on how to deal with possible arrests since we would be doing our best to break the law. If a Palestinian was arrested for something serious like throwing a Molotov cocktail, we were told to show "prison solidarity" with him. We were told that international demonstrators usually get released quickly by the police once they reach the police station. But if we refused to leave without our Palestinian companion, the police might release him also just to get rid of all of us.

At the conclusion of our session, Jamie used her training as a social worker to prepare us to deal with long term trauma once we returned to the Bay Area. I thought it was an interesting lesson for people going to the Middle East to engage in "nonviolent" activities for peace. "Be ready for lots of violence," she said.

Kaplan's article introduces us to the other trainees at his session; they are exactly the sort you'd expect to show up: Ian, who sported a t-shirt that proclaimed, "anti-hate, anti-capitalist, anti-Zionist;" Jeff, the Bay Area radical who wanted to "stir things up;" and so on - many had ties to Berkeley as a matter of geography or studies. They appeared well-intentioned (if such a term can be applied to this activity) and seemed to take the training as a special sort of summer camp, with an exciting adventure awaiting them in a faraway land.

The Left (represented by the senior members of the ISM) will take idealistic naifs such as these, chew them up, and spit them out. They are to be used, wasted, experimented upon, toyed with, and ultimately discarded.

What happens when things turn ugly with the 'non-violent' protests? Rachel Corrie (an ISM protege) found out. Eggs, meet Omelettes. Whittaker Chambers and David Horowitz received an ugly education as to the true nature of such movements. It's sickening.

Posted by at July 9, 2004 10:17 AM