Gaza Irish in love with radical Islam

Knee jerk anti-Israeli stance ignores reality

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The MV Rachel Corrie

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In response to a radio transmission by the Israeli Navy warning the Gaza flotilla that they were approaching a naval blockade, passengers of the Mavi Marmara responded, "Shut up, go back to Auschwitz" and "We're helping Arabs go against the US, don't forget 9/11".

On board that same ship were German left wing parliamentarians (living proof that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it) along with writers for radical Islamist newspapers and officials from the Turkish BPP party, a political outfit with known anti-Semitic and militant tendencies.

What brings Irish “peace activists” in to such a disturbing alliance with anti-Semitic militants and supporters of Islamic terrorism?

A clue lies in the name of the “Irish” ship – the MV Rachael Corrie. Ms. Corrie was an American activist who went to Gaza as a “human shield” and died in Gaza after being crushed by an IDF bulldozer at age 23. She went to Gaza with the International Solidarity Movement, whose “peace activists”, including Irish ones, have been photographed posing with machine guns.

Whether her death was an accident or the intentional effort of a malignant Israeli bulldozer driver, depends on who you ask. All I know is that bulldozers don’t move that fast, and she was a long way from her home in Washington State. It is also perhaps notable that she was photographed burning an American flag in front of dozens of Palestinian children.

Mark Steyn clearly doesn’t observe Irish habit of not speaking ill of the dead: “Rachel Corrie, he says, was “a foolish young American killed while enjoying the frisson of vacationing in someone else's despair.”

I have no wish to question a dead young woman’s motives, nor to impugn her character. Certainly she had very sincere empathy for the Palestinians, whose plight is truly tragic. There’s nothing wrong with being young and idealistic, but if you choose to become involved in someone else’s conflict, you have a duty to be informed of all perspectives, and to disabuse yourself of any naïve notions before you set out.

Perhaps Rachel Corrie speaks best for herself:

“Okay, I’m Rachel. Sometimes I wear ripped blue jeans. Sometimes I wear polyester. Sometimes I take off all my clothes and swim naked at the beach. I don’t believe in fate but my astrological sign is Aries, the ram, and my sign on the Chinese zodiac is the sheep, and the name Rachel means sheep but I’ve got a fire in my belly.”

I am not sure whether she swam naked on the beaches of Gaza, which are now patrolled by Hamas’ morality police, ensuring no men go shirtless and all women wear headscarves. Perhaps it is mere naïveté, perhaps wilful blindness, but post-flotilla, it is an indisputable fact that some Irish Palestinian supporters are now effectively engaged in concerted propaganda operations with representatives of the most bloodthirsty and vicious ideologies of our era.  Whatever strange psychology lies behind this bizarre alliance, the rest of us must look at it in a clear-sighted way:

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