Opinion Editorials, June 2010

The Violent Radicalization of Israel

By Rev. Ted Pike

Israel's PR representative, the Anti-Defamation League, accuses the political right in western nations of moving toward increased "violent radicalization." Yet, that description applies best to the behavior of Israel toward the "Free Gaza" flotilla this past week.

As a result of mounting criticism of Israel's bombardment and quarantine of Gaza, Israeli leaders now portray Israel's strong critics as potentially violent terrorist sympathizers and insist that Israel's response be correspondingly severe.

Last December, Diaspora Foreign Minister Yuli Edelstein said “to be anti-Israel is to be anti-Semitic.” Foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman agreed that strong criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism: cooperation with terrorists who desire the destruction of the Jewish state. This week Lieberman portrayed the "Free Gaza" flotilla as "violent propaganda."

Demonization of critics is a beginning that leads Israel to extreme, unlawful, and—as we see in the slaying of nine peace activists—violent conclusions. If Israel's critics are potentially violent terrorists, then, according to Israel:

• No place on earth should be safe for such threats to Israel's existence. Not Argentina, London, Dubai, or international waters. Israel continues Jewry's millennia-old claim that they deserve special rights since Jews are "God's chosen people" and have suffered more than any other. These rights now include Israel's transcendence over the national boundaries and international laws that govern other nations. Israel is above the charge of piracy that would be leveled against any other nation that stormed and seized a ship in international waters in peacetime. Israel has the right to blame those who violently oppose its takeover, being above international law which says crews who resist pirates are blameless.

• Flotilla members who say they are concerned for the people of Gaza are really out to destroy Israel. Their ships probably contain weapons to aid Hamas. The cement and building materials they deliver are to build bunkers for Hamas. Such "peace activists" have no interest in the welfare of the Gazans, only their own anti-Semitic agenda. The flotilla contains only quasi-terrorists on the high seas. Israel is thus justified, as America's trusted ally in the war on terror, to board and seize their ships, using whatever possibly violent "counter-terrorism" measures are necessary.

ADL Brings Israel's Premises to the World

Ominously, the Anti-Defamation League, Israel's PR representative and official opponent of what it calls the global anti-Semitism "pandemic," is bringing to the western world the same dire suspicion (even paranoia) against critics of Israel. Increasingly, ADL and "ADL South," the Jewish Southern Poverty Law Center, portray critics of Zionism as using legitimate criticism only as a mask for the same virulent, Jew-destroying anti-Semitism that spawned the Holocaust. Yet ADL/SPLC are not content to vilify critics of the Jewish state. Their negative stereotyping extends to all in the Christian/conservative right who resist secular Judaism's pro-homosexual, pro-abortion, pro-hate law agenda. That includes tea partiers, militia groups, and the whole evangelical right, whom they now portray (in their MIAC Missouri police document) as potentially violent domestic terrorists. ADL echoes Israel's justification of its attack on the peace flotilla. It says the flotilla exists "to lure the Israeli military onto the ship where many were waiting to attack them. It is deeply disturbing that the leaders of the flotilla and their sponsors were willing to engage in an elaborate sham as a pretext for ambushing and violently attacking Israeli military personnel." (May 31 “ADL Calls Flotilla to Gaza a Deliberate Provocation against Israel”)

Reality may be provided by Knesset member Hanin Zoabi (Balad) who participated in the flotilla. "It was clear from the size of the force that boarded the ship that the purpose was not only to stop this sail, but to cause the largest possible number of fatalities in order to stop such initiatives in the future."

What is really disturbing is the predictable sympathy of evangelical media to the transparently manipulative ADL/Israeli point of view. Although leadership of the religious right in America is widely aware of ADL's boast that it was behind creation and passage of the potentially Christian-persecuting federal hate crimes bill, evangelical oracle WorldNetDaily rushes to agree with ADL/Israel in this dispute. Through WND's Jerusalem-based mouthpiece to Mossad, Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily denigrates the "violent Gaza flotilla." It quotes the government of Israel, saying the peace activists had "clearly prepared their weapons in advance" in order to attack Israeli commandos.

Thus, it is not just 679 peace activists who were unlawfully attacked or threatened by Israel as terrorist sympathizers. ADL/Israel views critical, uncooperative humanity, floating in a sea of increasingly turbulent doubt and disapproval of Israel, as its enemies. As such, it is you and I who must also submit and be quiet - or face similar violence.

According to the demonstrated behavior of Israel this week, the whole world is now subject to its jurisdiction.

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Rev. Ted Pike is director of the National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative watchdog organization.

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