The Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin School of Political Dialog

Way back in the Dark Ages, when I was a very young college student, campus politics on the late 1960’s were full of earnest young men and women eager to discuss the political issues of the day. There was the plight of the migrant workers, minority students, majority students, the oppressed Vietnamese (of all persuasions), the Palestinians, union workers, and sometimes even the people who did not attend college.

It was de rigueur for there to be a [celebrity] speaker to discuss the pressing issues of the day, such as the draft or the laws criminalizing consumption of mood altering compounds. Tim Leary was a perennial favorite at my small college in central Pennsylvania. At the bigger schools, student activist groups could get the really big [celebrities] activists like Jerry Rubin or Abby Hoffman.

Such speakers were especially gifted in whipping up the crowd into the appropriate pitch to express student outrage of the repressive system, man, in the politically correct form of activist sentiment of the day—demonstrations.

Such expressions of social rage were highly scripted and well timed. Generally, the beginning of the demonstration followed the speeches by a predictable delay defined by the amount of time it took the celebrity activist speaker to leave town. [In Philadelphia or New York, for example, the personage could not only leave town but leave the state.]

Why was this so important? Because the [celebrity] political activist would then be able to say, truthfully, that their speech had nothing to do with the riot that followed the demonstration. They were not in town. “Hey, man,” they would demure, “We were not even in the state when the riot took place.”

So, it appears that those lessons, so well acquired at the larger and more prestigious college/university campuses across the land, has become the preferred foreign policy paradigm at the US Department of State. The Stanford University Professor was in town last weekend; insisted that the security barriers be taken down by the [pigs] IDF; announced that the Professor would be evaluating how well the [pigs] IDF followed the homework assignment; and then departed for the Great Faculty Room in nether realms of the foggy bottoms.

Debka.com reports:

Before the US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice ended her visit to Israel this week, defense minister Ehud Barak responded to her demand for “meaningful” Israeli steps to ease Palestinians’ lives, by promising to remove 50 West Bank “dirt roadblocks" and one checkpoint outside Jericho.

Israel military sources warned Thursday, April 3, after the removal of the first 10, that their elimination will provide Palestinian terrorists with unimpeded escape routes.

Rice thought this was a “good start” in her bid for progress before US President George W. Bush’s May visit to the region. She announced that the American general William Fraser would monitor the implementation of Israeli concessions.

Oooh. So how did the downtrodden, peace loving Palestinians react?

Internal security minister Avi Dichter was escorting a group of Canadian Jews on a tour of communities living under Palestinian missile fire outside Gaza Friday, April 4, when a Palestinian marksman opened cross-border fire on his party near Kibbutz Yad Mordecai. His senior aide was injured and taken to hospital.

Israeli troops returned the fire and entered the Gaza Strip to chase the shooters. The party was evacuated to a nearby army base. The shooting began as Dichter took the visitors up to the Mari’i Lookout (named for Col. Nevi Mari'i who was killed in action in Gaza) for a sight of northern Gaza, source of most of the missile attacks.

Just how did authorities in Hamastan react to the news of such criminal behavior?

Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for Hamas' military wing, has said that Minister Avi Dichter was the target of Friday morning's sniper fire directed at Kibbutz Nir Am in southern Israel. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3527614,00.html

How can you not love these guys, huh? They freely admit their mistakes and we can rest assured that the wayward sniper will be severely chastised — for missing.

Earlier in the week, on April Fool’s Day to be exact, a similar incident was reported in the area immediately adjacent to the historical site of the ancient Tabernacle, where road blocks were removed. As IMRA reports:

Erez Bar-On, 30, of the West Bank settlement of Ofra, became a hero Monday after shooting a terrorist to death as the latter attempted to stab him and a teenager at a hitchhikers' station near the settlement of Shilo.

"This is a foolish policy which directly acts against us," he said.

After reenacting the incident before police officers, Bar-On said that what was important to him at the moment was that the lessons would be learned.

According to him, the central and important message from the incident was that "the Palestinians cannot be allowed to roam freely. If the situation had been slightly different, and I wouldn't have kept cool, it could have ended with the death of two citizens, rather than the terrorist."

Two knives were found on the body of the 20-year-old Palestinian, a Birzeit University student.

Recounting the dramatic incident, Bar-On said, "I got off a car with another guy and stood at the hitchhikers' station at the direction of Jerusalem. A few second after we arrived, someone crossed the road towards us. We could tell that he was not Jewish.

"He tried to shake our hands, but something was suspicious. He asked us in broken English where he could catch a bus to the Birzeit University. I told him in English, 'No, and waved at him with my hand to move away. I was afraid, and so was the student who was with me.

"The terrorist said that he was from America, and kept his hand inside his shirt. Suddenly, he pulled out a knife and shouted, 'Allah Akbar' (God is great). I took two steps backwards and shot him." http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=38773

Isn't that special--the attempted murderer said he was American so he would be seen as more believable to his Jewish victims.

Now, of course there can be no causal connection between Doctor Rice’s political speech making last weekend. After all, she merely delivered her opinion, which she has every right to do in a democratic country, and then departed. Why she was not even in the country when these violent demonstrations occurred.