I’ve always admired columnists such as Thomas Friedman who get out from behind the computer and, frankly, go get into mischief like a good journalist, whether it be close calls with drug smugglers prowling around the border (hey, I had a lot of fun!) or plunging directly into the lion’s den of far-left meetings and protests.
Protest crashing is a blast, as I wrote about recently for National Review Online, when you just be charming and let the leftists pour out their conspiracy theories. But there was an especially nauseating component to the Aug. 12 demonstration I attended in downtown L.A. (helmed by the ANSWER coalition and co-sponsored by many Muslim groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations). It wasn’t about just trashing Israel, Bush, Blair, etc. (which wasn’t in short supply) but about cheering on Hezbollah, a terrorist organization. Chants of “Long live Hezbollah,” signs reading “Hezbollah forever,” “Hezbollah, Hamas — People’s Resistance” and more. The Anti-Defamation League reports seeing and hearing much of the same in concurrent rallies in other cities.
There is no gray area here. There are no resistance heroes here. There is a Shiite terrorist group jockeying for the destruction of Israel, whose leader chants “Death to America!” and who is backed by a Hitler-aspiring regime in Iran. As I write today in my Los Angeles Daily News column:
… Since when did Hassan Nasrallah become a man of the people, a pied piper to lead the oppressed masses? Since when did Americans find his draconian theological warfare to be a symbol of liberation?
… Would people get miffed if marchers were screaming ‘Long live al-Qaida!’ through downtown? Or if Osama bin Laden became the sexy new poster boy for anti-war demonstrations? How vile will these protesters become simply to spite the current administration?
… How does Hezbollah win its support among the American far left? By focusing its virulent hatred on Israel and the U.S. By accusing the Bush administration of interference in the Middle East. By painting itself in a glorious revolutionary light so attractive to the fans of Che. …
These same groups are planning their next protests for Oct. 28. On a local radio station soon after the Aug. 12 protests, I was asked if I had any advice for wannabe protest crashers. As is often the case, I thought of my best answer afterward:
Ooze charm
Make friends with the cops
Carry a big Israeli flag!
(Oh, and wear running shoes.)
Hezbollah has been playing their P.R. game to a T, be it inviting civilian casualties or handing out chunks of cash to buy off the Lebanese they’ve harmed so badly in the south. Now they’ve bewitched the American far-left, which has been crossing the line from anti-Israeli sentiment to anti-Semitism and is dangerously furthering the notion that there are gray areas when it comes to terrorism.
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