Women’s March Lauds Terrorist / And So Did Marquette

Yes, these were the women with their badly knitted “pussy hats” who came out the day after the inauguration to protest Donald Trump. The organization is still in business, and tweeting. They recently tweeted this out:

Happy birthday to the revolutionary #AssataShakur! Today's #SignOfResistance, in Assata's honor, is by @Meloniousfunk. pic.twitter.com/V66au1dRnl

— Women's March (@womensmarch) July 16, 2017

Who is she? The FBI tells the story using Shakur’s real name (Chesimard):

On May 2, 1973, Chesimard, who was part of a revolutionary extremist organization known as the Black Liberation Army, and two accomplices were stopped for a motor vehicle violation on the New Jersey Turnpike by two troopers with the New Jersey State Police. At the time, Chesimard was wanted for her involvement in several felonies, including bank robbery. Chesimard and her accomplices opened fire on the troopers. One trooper was wounded and the other was shot and killed execution-style at point-blank range. Chesimard fled the scene, but was subsequently apprehended. One of her accomplices was killed in the shoot-out and the other was also apprehended and remains in jail.

Of course, Marquette honored Shakur with a mural in the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center.

And when we publicized the mural, and the Marquette administration ordered it painting over, over 60 faculty members signed a petition protesting the action, and supporting the mural.

Lauding terrorists and cop killers is becoming mainstream on the left, and among Marquette faculty (at least in a few departments).

Update

The “Women’s March” was not the only source of support for this terrorist on her birthday. Black Lives Matter in New York lauded her:

HAPPY 70TH BIRTHDAY, ASSATA! We are turning up in Brooklyn for you. We celebrate the revolutionary spirit you are. You inspired a movement. pic.twitter.com/MZRwawnmfH

— BlackLivesMatterNYC (@BLMNYC) July 16, 2017

So did CNN’s Mark Lamont Hill:

Happy 70th Birthday to Assata Shakur!!!! #HandsOffAssata #palenquequeen #bolekaja

— Marc Lamont Hill (@marclamonthill) July 17, 2017

Palestinians Celebrate Terrorist Attack

Hamas holds rally in Gaza to celebrate terrorist ramming that killed four Israelis https://t.co/mEB5Bfrj0w #ArabIsraeliConflict pic.twitter.com/YTEUMMwQZ8

— The Jerusalem Post (@Jerusalem_Post) January 9, 2017

You Haven’t Listened

It Ain’t that Hard to Figure Out, Lady

You Didn’t Hear That!

GLENN MCCOY © Belleville News-Democrat. Dist. By UNIVERSAL UCLICK. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Identifying the Enemy

Wrong Kind of Boots

That’s a Strategy

Terrorist Supporter to Speak on Marquette Campus

Tonight at Marquette: a speaker named Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, who has consorted with terrorists.

From the Facebook page of Marquette’s Center for Gender and Sexualities Studies:

Today, we are excited to have Dr. Simona Sharoni and Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi present on the incredible work they have been...
Posted by Marquette University Center for Gender and Sexualities Studies on Monday, April 11, 2016

So just who is Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi?

Her Facebook page shows her to be virulently anti-Israel.

She recently made a trip to the Middle East to meet with terrorists.

A California Public Records Act inquiry revealed that multiple professors from San Francisco State University met with terrorists on a trip funded by the university. Professors Rabab Abdulhadi and Joanne Barker, along with Abdulhadi’s husband, met with terrorists Leila Khaled and Sheikh Raed Salah during the “Labor Delegation to Palestine 2014” which began on January 5th, 2014 and concluded on February 14th, 2014.

Eight organizations- the AMCHA Initiative, Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel, Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, Simon Wiesenthal Center Campus Outreach, StandWithUs, and Zionist Organization of America- sent a letter to CSU Chancellor Timothy White, SFSU President Leslie Wong, CSU Vice Chancellor and Chief Audit Officer Larry Mendel and CSU Attorney Carrie Hemphill Reith concerning the matter.

Leila Khaled is “a convicted hijacker and the most famous member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist organization responsible for 159 terrorist acts such as bombings, armed assault and assassinations, resulting in numerous injuries and deaths including those of more than 20 US citizens,” the groups noted.

Sheikh Raed Salah has been convicted of funding the terrorist organization Hamas and sat in prison from 2003 - 2005. In the letter to school administration the organizations also highlighted that, “In 2008, Salah was charged with incitement to violence and racism. In 2010, Salah was also arrested for his participation on the Mavi Marmara, part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Salah was recently incarcerated again on charges of incitement to violence.”

Was Abdulhadi just a scholar wanting to gather information? Again, her Facebook page shows her to be a supporter of violent radicals.

One post, for example, shows her to be a supporter of Oscar Lopez Rivera.

Posted by Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi on Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Who is this fellow? A Puerto Rican terrorist. Rivera has been:

personally involved in bombing and incendiary attacks across the country for at least five years prior to Méndez’s [sic] involvement and knowledge, has been a prime recruiter for members of the underground terrorist group, and has been a key trainer in bombing, sabotage and other techniques of guerilla warfare. He has set up a series of safehouses and bomb factories across the country, the searches of which have uncovered literally hundreds of pounds of dynamite and other forms of high explosive, blasting caps, timing devices, huge caches of weapons and stockpiles of ammunition, silencers, sawed-off shotguns, disguises, stolen and altered identity documents, and the proceeds of the armed robberies of locations such as a National Guard Armory, Chicago’s Carter-Mondale Re-Election headquarters, radio and communications companies, as well as a variety of stolen vehicles.

Her Facebook page celebrates a “unity pact” between terrorist organization Hamas and (terrorism condoning) PLO.

And it also lionizes another pair of Puerto Rican terrorists:

Posted by Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi on Monday, April 21, 2014

Should She Be At Marquette?

Should Marquette allow a speaker who supports terrorism?

We have said that there is nothing wrong, in principle, with a Klansman speaking at any university. Students might learn something — although it’s more likely to be something about political pathology than about public policy.

The same principle applies here.

But what would we think of an organization that continually wants to bring Klansmen to campus? We would suspect, rightly, that they were racist.

So what are we to think about the Center for Gender and Sexualities Studies, and the organizations that sponsored “Israeli Apartheid Week,” including the Office of International Studies, Campus Ministry, and the Office of Intercultural Engagement? We have to suspect that they are anti-Israel, and aren’t too scrupulous about wanting the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians solved by peaceful means.

Should you Go?

We are late getting this post up, but we would urge anybody so inclined to go to the talk. Particularly, Abdulhadi should be asked some civil but pointed questions:

• Do you support a two state solution to the Israel/Palestinian conflict?
• Are you willing to condemn Hamas rocket attacks on Israel?
• Are you willing to condemn attacks on Jews in Jerusalem?

Her responses will be revealing.

Update

An e-mail correspondent notes the following:

It’s odd that it is group pushing gender equality and rights for gays that is sponsoring this, since Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has any sort of de facto or legal guarantees for such rights. The Palestinian territories and Gaza are plagued with honor killings (to which the authorities turn a blind eye) and diminished citizenship for women, and are hardly havens for gay rights. Abdulhadi calls such legal protections Israeli “pinkwashing” — as though the rights are instituted to provide a cover for colonialist iniquity.

Good point. And the reality is that the Center for Gender and Sexualities is, like the other centers of leftist activism on campus, not about women or gays. It’s about leftist politics. Thus, including the anti-Israel Palestinian lobby in their coalition is more important than representing the interests of gays and women.

Crucifixion

Tango While Rome Burns

Lucky Day!

Works Great With Law Abiding Terrorists

Obama Takes Action

Terrorism: Being Honest About the Enemy

From liberal New York Times columnist (not a Fox News pundit) Thomas Friedman, thoughts on the inability of the Obama White House to honestly discuss the nature of the terrorist threat.

I’ve never been a fan of global conferences to solve problems, but when I read that the Obama administration is organizing a Summit on Countering Violent Extremism for Feb. 18, in response to the Paris killings, I had a visceral reaction: Is there a box on my tax returns that I can check so my tax dollars won’t go to pay for this?

When you don’t call things by their real name, you always get in trouble. And this administration, so fearful of being accused of Islamophobia, is refusing to make any link to radical Islam from the recent explosions of violence against civilians (most of them Muslims) by Boko Haram in Nigeria, by the Taliban in Pakistan, by Al Qaeda in Paris and by jihadists in Yemen and Iraq. We’ve entered the theater of the absurd.

Last week the conservative columnist Rich Lowry wrote an essay in Politico Magazine that contained quotes from White House spokesman Josh Earnest that I could not believe. I was sure they were made up. But I checked the transcript: 100 percent correct. I can’t say it better than Lowry did:

“The administration has lapsed into unselfconscious ridiculousness. Asked why the administration won’t say [after the Paris attacks] we are at war with radical Islam, Earnest on Tuesday explained the administration’s first concern ‘is accuracy. We want to describe exactly what happened. These are individuals who carried out an act of terrorism, and they later tried to justify that act of terrorism by invoking the religion of Islam and their own deviant view of it.’

This makes it sound as if the Charlie Hebdo terrorists set out to commit a random act of violent extremism and only subsequently, when they realized that they needed some justification, did they reach for Islam.

The day before, Earnest had conceded that there are lists of recent ‘examples of individuals who have cited Islam as they’ve carried out acts of violence.’ Cited Islam? According to the Earnest theory ... purposeless violent extremists rummage through the scriptures of great faiths, looking for some verses to cite to support their mayhem and often happen to settle on the holy texts of Islam.”

President Obama knows better. I am all for restraint on the issue, and would never hold every Muslim accountable for the acts of a few. But it is not good for us or the Muslim world to pretend that this spreading jihadist violence isn’t coming out of their faith community. It is coming mostly, but not exclusively, from angry young men and preachers on the fringe of the Sunni Arab and Pakistani communities in the Middle East and Europe.

Friedman then goes on to make an important distinction among Muslim communities.

Something else is also at work, and it needs to be discussed. It is the struggle within Arab and Pakistani Sunni Islam over whether and how to embrace modernity, pluralism and women’s rights. That struggle drives, and is driven by, the dysfunctionality of so many Arab states and Pakistan. It has left these societies with too many young men who have never held a job or a girl’s hand, who then seek to overcome their humiliation at being left behind, and to find identity, by “purifying” their worlds of other Muslims who are not sufficiently pious and of Westerners whom they perceive to be putting Muslims down. But you don’t see this in the two giant Muslim communities in Indonesia or India.

Friedman, in other words, is not keen to blame all of Islam for terrorism, but neither is he unwilling to honestly voice the problem.

Marquette Theologian Mark Johnson on Terrorism

Professor Mark Johnson blogs infrequently, but when he does he’s worth reading.  Most recently, he’s posted his thoughts on ISIS terrorism.

Here is just a piece of his most recent post, which might well provoke you to read the entire thing. Speaking of the beheadings that ISIS has committed, Johnson observes:

The President has spoken of them as appalling and barbaric, while others say that those who took these four lives—there will be more—are brutal and savage.

But these descriptions both mislead and fail to get to the heart of the matter. . . . Brutal things are done by brutes—lions, bears, snakes, sharks—which are animals devoid of reason. Our human reason or intelligence is the cause and hallmark of our dignity. Brute animals, by contrast, operate in the physical world of nature, red in tooth and claw, where they must kill or be killed. So they attack and kill without thinking, acting instead on the instincts given them by nature, and nature’s God. This is why we don’t put animals on trial when they kill a human being.

So also, savage things are done by savages—humans in pre-civilized cultures, we might say—who indeed are humans possessing reason, but who have not yet had the range of corrective experiences from history and religion that lift cultures to a point of fuller human living and interaction: no belief yet in individual human dignity and worth, and no system of the rule of man-made law with a right participate in their own governance, and to appeal to impartial judges.

Thus the striking thing about the behavior is ISIS is its anachronistic nature. People with access to 21st century social media, 21st century travel and 21st century weapons show a primitive worldview.

Anybody reading (say) the Book of Judges might well be appalled by the bloodshed it contains, but it recounts events over 3,000 years ago. What excuse does ISIS have?

Johnson’s conclusion is that the terrorists have simply chosen not to think. That’s a choice for which they can, and should, be held morally responsible.

Remembering 9/11: Our Enemies Meant What They Said

This classic column from Jeff Jacoby appeared on 9/13/2001.

NOW THAT IT HAS HAPPENED TO US, the White House is not calling for “restraint.” The State Department is not concerned about “escalating the cycle of violence.” There are no editorials imploring the parties to conduct a “peace process” and “sit down at the negotiating table.”

Now that it has happened to us, the TV anchors are calling them terrorists, not “militants” or “activists.” Washington is not being warned to avoid a “provocative” response, or cautioned against retaliation that is “excessive and disproportionate.”

Now that it has happened to us, our eyes have finally opened. Now at last we understand that there is a war underway — and we are in it. For years we have acted as if the front line were elsewhere, and as if our job was to watch from the sidelines and make sure our friends didn’t defend themselves too aggressively. Now, after the worst massacre in US history, only the willfully blind can fail to see that the front line is here. The war between freedom and slavery, between hope and hopelessness, between the decent and the indecent, will be won or lost in America. For it is America that stands for everything our enemies hate.

But let us be honest. Those enemies have not been shy about declaring their enmity. Time and again they have announced that they despise us; time and again they have called for our destruction.

They have announced it from the mosques of Gaza, as broadcast live by the Palestinian Authority: “Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them — and those who stand by them. They are all in one trench, against the Arabs and the Muslims.”

They have proclaimed it a religious duty, as in the fatwa of Osama bin Laden, publicized worldwide in February 1998: “To kill the Americans and their allies, civilians, and military is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.”

They have made it a national crusade, as when Hashemi Rafsanjani, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, exhorted Islamic militants in 1994 to “hijack planes,” “blow up factories in Western countries,” and “declare open war on American interests throughout the world.”

How often have we seen them burning American flags? How often have we been demonized as “the Great Satan?” How often have they attacked US citizens, US embassies, US assets? For at least a decade it has been apparent that the most intense hatred of the United States and its values could be found in the world of Islamist fundamentalism. But too many Americans — and too many of their leaders — preferred not to notice.

“The suicide bombers of today are the noble successors of ... the Lebanese suicide bombers, who taught the U.S. Marines a tough lesson in [Beirut]” exulted Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Yasser Arafat’s newspaper, on Tuesday. “These suicide bombers are the salt of the earth, the engines of history.... They are the most honorable among us.” Over and over and over, our enemies have talked this way. Did we think they didn’t mean it?

Upon releasing its annual report on global terrorism last year, the State Department observed that “the primary terrorist threats to the United States emanate from two regions, South Asia and the Middle East.” That is, from the regions where Islamist fanaticism is concentrated. But the US government, it would seem, couldn’t be bothered to listen to its own warning.

Or to the warnings of the enemy. In some ways, the worst thing about this week’s slaughter is not that it occurred, not even that such obvious terrorist targets as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — the Pentagon! — could be so easily attacked from the air. The worst thing is that we were so unprepared for it even after the attack on USS Cole last fall (17 murdered). Even after the bombing of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (224 murdered). Even after the blowing up of the Khobar Towers barracks in 1996 (19 murdered). Even after the car bomb at the US military center in Riyadh (5 murdered). Even after the first World Trade Center bombing (6 murdered).

It’s clear that under the Obama Administration, we have regressed to a pre-9/11 viewpoint. Part of the reason for this has been the success of Bush Administration anti-terrorism efforts, which have given the American people a sense of security.

But a big part has been the fact that Obama is a liberal, and liberals have (at least since the late 60s) never wanted to confront America’s enemies. Sometimes this has been because liberals were simply on the other side (Vietnam) and sometimes because liberals, even if they couldn’t justify the acts of America’s enemies, believed at least that those actions were “understandable” and a response to evil things America has done.

America, for liberals like Obama, is pretty much always at fault.

Perhaps we will get away with the pre-9/11 attitudes, especially given that most of the anti-terrorism infrastructure remains in place. But then, maybe we won’t.

Cheney on the War on Terror -- Uncut and Uncensored

You’ve seen the sound bites, and you’ve seen endless analysis. But an excellent use of the better part of an hour is to see Dick Cheney’s speech uncut.

Compare this to President Teleprompter. It would be easy to say it’s style versus substance. But untimately, the sober recitation of facts and solid logic is a compelling style.

A More Humane Alternative

Finally: Admitting the Truth About Bill Ayers

Now that Obama is safely elected, the media can start telling the truth about Bill Ayers. Indeed, in this case the truth comes from the hard-left Nation.

Because, you see, while The Nation is hard left, Ayers had some severe critics on the left.

It couldn’t have been easy for Bill Ayers to keep quiet while the McCain campaign tarred him as the Obama’s best friend, the terrorist. Unfortunately, the silence was too good to last. On Saturday’s New York Times op-ed page, he announced that “it’s finally time to tell my true story.” Like his memoir, Fugitive Days , “The Real Bill Ayers” is a sentimentalized, self-justifying whitewash of his role in the weirdo violent fringe of the 1960s-70s antiwar left.

“I never killed or injured anyone,” Ayers writes. “In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village.” Right. Those people belonged to Weatherman, as did Ayers himself and Bernardine Dohrn, now his wife. Weatherman, Weather Underground, completely different! And never mind either that that “accidental explosion” was caused by the making of a nail bomb intended for a dance at Fort Dix.

Ayers writes that Weather Underground bombings were “symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam War.” That no one was killed or injured was a monumental stroke of luck-- an unrelated bombing at the University of Wisconsin unintentionally killed a researcher and seriously injured four people. But if the point was to symbolize outrage, why not just spraypaint graffiti on government buildings or pour blood on military documents?

“Peaceful protests had failed to stop the war,” Ayers writes. “So we issued a screaming response. But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.” I’m not so sure that terrorism necessarily involves intentional attacks on people, but okay, let’s say Ayers wasn’t a terrorist. How about thuggish? Vainglorious? Egomaniacal? Staggeringly irresponsible? And illogical, don’t forget illogical: as Hilzoy points out, the idea that because “peaceful protest” hadn’t ended the war, bombs would is missing a couple of links. It’s like a doctor saying, Well, chemo didn’t cure your brain tumor, so I’ll have to amputate your leg.

I realize this is ancient history. As a friend who doesn’t see why I am raking this all up argues, it’s not as if today’s left is bristling with macho streetfighters. It’s hard to imagine anyone now applauding the Manson murders, as Dohrn notoriously did in l969, or dedicating a manifesto to, among others, Sirhan Sirhan. But just because it’s ancient history doesn’t mean you get to rewrite it to make yourself look good, just another idealistic young person upset about the war and racism.

None of this is relevant to the issue of how close to Ayers Barack Obama was (we think the connection with Jeremiah Wright is much more damning).

But let’s have intellectual clarity. Ayers was scum, and remains scum. Nobody should be supporting him (as Marquette Professor of Biomedical Engineering Jack Winters does).

The fact that he is a rather mainstream figure in schools of education says a lot (none of it flattering) about schools of education.