July 4, 2004

The underhandedness and malevolence of the hard Left

The title for this post comes from Wretchard's comments at the Belmont Club It seems that someone joined the International Solidarity Movement and spent a bit of time being trained The article is here: Behind the Curtain bq. Lee Kaplan at Frontpage relates his training experiences with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). That's the same organization that fielded Rachel Corrie to the Gaza strip. Kaplan pretended to be a volunteer for their "Freedom Summer" program which aimed to deploy American and Europeans to run interference for Palestinian combatants in Gaza and the West Bank. bq. At the Palestine Solidarity Conference held at Ohio State last year, Adam Shapiro told me that the ISM has Palestinian "handlers," or undercover supervisors at all demonstrations against Israel. These supervisors direct attacks against the separation fence that is being built to keep suicide bombers and armed terrorists from infiltrating into Israel and other targets. One of the handlers leading the current attacks on the security fence at the start of this summer’s campaign is a veteran of the Marxist terrorist group PLFP named Hisham Jam Joun. The ISM website, www.palsolidarity.org , openly proclaims that the organization is “Palestinian-led.” bq. I signed up for the ISM training session, after seeing their Internet announcement calling for volunteers for their new campaign, which they called "Freedom Summer 2004," after the nonviolent campaign of the civil rights movement in the American south in the 1960's. There were similar announcements on local websites run by the ISM all over the United States. bq. The phone number I dialed put me in touch with Paul LaRudee, a 68 year-old retired Berkeley professor who, along with his Lebanese wife, has been a leader of the ISM movement in the Bay Area. LaRudee assured me that they welcomed everybody, no matter how old or inexperienced. "Most of our volunteers are in their sixties," he said. I was advised if I wanted to train with the ISM I needed to attend an orientation lecture at The New College of San Francisco which was being given by an Arab-American named Jess Ghannam, a psychoanalyst and professor at the University of California Medical School. Wretchard's final comment is priceless and apt: bq. One of the grandest educations in life is to observe the hard Left operate in cold blood at close quarters. While it may not confirm your belief in the god of history it will infallibly cement your conviction in the existence of the Devil. Read Kaplan's whole article and then look out the window. Is it the wind or is it them out there? Posted by DaveH at July 4, 2004 1:16 AM