Outrageous $20,000 bail for unjust arrest of young ANSWER LA organizer at #Gaza demonstration: http://t.co/g0g49z1uGo
— ANSWER Los Angeles (@AnswerLA) August 5, 2014
Well, according the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, Ms. Thomas is on record of enthusiastically supporting Hamas and its goals of the extermination of Israel. She stands with Hamas terrorism against the Jewish state.
See, "Supporting Palestinians should not mean supporting Hamas":
Banner from @AnswerLA march for #Gaza in Los Angeles RIGHT NOW! Let Gaza live! #FreePalestine! pic.twitter.com/xSqwJv80NI
— Peta Lindsay (@petalindsay) August 2, 2014
Last Saturday, our reporter Ryan Torok covered a massive anti-Israel rally in front of the Federal Building in Westwood. The crowd swelled to an estimated 1,500 to 3,000 people, outgrew the plaza, then spontaneously spilled onto the street, shutting down Wilshire Boulevard as it made its way east toward the Israel Consulate. The protesters chanted “Free Palestine!” and waved posters reading “Zionists, Get Out of Gaza Now!” and “Israel Is Mass Murdering Children.”More.
That was the message they wanted to send to Zionists. So, naturally, Ryan asked them: What message do they want to send to Hamas?
This is what they told him:
“They have to fire more rockets, and they have to fire stronger. They have to be more aggressive,” Darka Raicevic, a Serbian woman, said.
Jami King, 41, who lives in San Diego and drove to Saturday’s rally with her boyfriend, Ammar Khan, said: “I don’t have a direct message for Hamas. ... I just want the [Israeli] siege to stop and for people to sit down and figure out a solution. It’s not for me to say what Hamas’ part in that is.”
Khan, 36, a Pakistani and engineer: “Hamas, their biggest problem is not having a vision for the future and not having a long-term view. ... what we [the United States and Israel] do in response doesn’t justify that. ... Who are we to lecture them? The U.S. has lost its moral high ground.”
Waylette Thomas, 22, a member of the pro-Palestinian group ANSWER and a student at Cerritos College, to Hamas: “We stand with you.”
It’s not for me to say what Hamas’ part in that is. ... Who are we to lecture them? ... We stand with you. ... Fire more rockets.
Of all the hypocrisies in the Gaza conflict, this has got to be the most galling: There is no pro-Palestinian outcry against Hamas. No messages on Facebook or slogans on protest posters addressing its leaders. No pro-Gazan street protests calling on Hamas to stop firing rockets and stop digging tunnels.
Hamas is proud of the fact that its military wing, the Qassam Brigades, uses suicide bombers, rockets and hidden tunnels to kill or threaten Israeli civilians, including women and children. If people at a “peace” rally can’t stand in moral judgment of child murderers — well, we can forget peace.
Here’s the issue: If you want to scream at Israel for inflicting civilian casualties, fine. And if you want to protest President Barack Obama for supporting Israel, OK. But if you really care about the fate of the Palestinians, if you would prefer innocent Palestinians live rather than die, you should also send a simple, two-word message to Hamas: “Stop shooting.”
Hamas needs to get the message from the worldwide pro-Palestinian movement: Resistance to Israeli control and occupation is legitimate. Violent resistance is not. Pick your reason: because violence against Israeli civilians is immoral, or because it will never, ever work. Either reason will do, but just stop.
If Hamas had stopped shooting rockets, and the Palestinians instead had used all the tools of mass nonviolent protests to draw attention to their plight, is there any question that thousands of innocent Palestinians would be alive today, living in homes untouched by bombs?
Why is the pro-Palestinian movement not marching for justice and against violence? Why does it conflate support for the doomed tactics of Hamas with support for Palestinians?
That well-meaning souls on the streets of Los Angeles misguidedly support Hamas’ violence is especially mystifying because so much of the Muslim world opposes it. When the conflict began, Palestinian Authority officials lambasted Hamas. They know violence and unrelenting terror won’t bring about a lasting solution. How do they know? Because they’ve already tried it.
In the early 1960s, Yasser Arafat, influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, proclaimed, “Liberating Palestine can only come through the barrel of a gun.” Arafat’s Fatah movement set off on a course of terror, which grabbed headlines, left thousands dead and pushed a just solution further and further away.
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