FLOTILLA

June 14, 2010


The Gaza Flotilla Ambush: What Did the White House Know?

By James Lewis

"What did the President know, and when did he know it?" asked Howard Baker about President Nixon during the Watergate hearings. The carefully planned May 31 ambush of Israeli naval commandos by armed Turkish martyrdom fanatics, in collusion with Jodie Evans of the radical leftist group Code Pink and along with Obama friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, raises precisely the same question.

Most conspiracy theories are hogwash, but not all of them. Stalinism really was a conspiracy to infiltrate, sabotage, and ultimately conquer the West. It had some spectacular successes, like stealing nuclear secrets from the Manhattan Project, a feat for which physicist Klaus Fuchner was celebrated in Communist East Germany.

The Boomer Left's "march through the institutions" was really a secretive plan to take over U.S. universities and media in the 1970s and '80s. The Great March shifted the whole U.S. media and political culture to the left.

For decades, the network of leftists and Islamic fascists behind the Gaza ambush has been trying to create a media extravaganza to make Israel look bad before the world. Call it a conspiracy, or call it a network of like-minded radicals and Islamofascists. Whatever it was, their chance came on May 31 off the coast of Gaza.

As Robert Maginnis just wrote,

The contrived Turkish-led aid flotilla crisis was intended to force Israel to lift its arms blockade of Gaza. While the Israelis were victorious in forcing the flotilla to its demands, the political outcomes are still reverberating around the globe. For now the Islamist forces have been emboldened, Turkey has been added to the list of terrorism supporters and long-term Israeli security has been weakened.


Obama is now trying to use the flotilla crisis to force concessions from Israel.

My question is whether Obama's network of associates colluded before the fact to provoke a "suicide by cop" spectacular to put Israel at a political disadvantage.

The evidence for Hamas and Turkish connivance before the event is now widely recognized. Three days before the bloodshed, the Hamas TV channel in Gaza showed a Yemeni professor proclaiming that "as much as the heroes on the flotilla want to reach Gaza, the option of martyrdom is more desirable to them." That same day, Al Jazeera TV, seen throughout the Middle East, reported of the "Freedom Flotilla," "Before Its Departure for Gaza: Activists on Board Chant Intifada Songs and Praise Martyrdom."

Shortly before the May 31 ambush, Obama's "anti-terror Czar," John O. Brennan, made worldwide headlines by praising jihad (martyrdom warfare to convert infidels by force or terror), reciting a passage in Arabic signaling his sympathy and approval, and referring to Jeruslaem as "al Quds," its Arabic name. Jihad has a deliberate double meaning. To Western suckers, it means the inner struggle for Muslim virtue. To Iran and Saudi Arabia, Hamas, Hezb'allah, and now Turkey, it means killing the infidels unless they surrender to Islam.

The Turkish cruise boat, decorated with an enormous red Turkish flag, was owned by the IHH and backed by the Islamist government of Turkey, including Prime Minister Erdogan, who has described Israel as "a festering boil in the Middle East that spreads hate and enmity." Erdogan also claims that "It is not possible for a Muslim to commit genocide" -- while congratulating the Islamist perpetrators of genocide in the Sudan.

That was not the story spread by the Western media, and especially not oby Code Pink, the radical leftist group led by Jodie Evans, or by Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, trying to agitate for a march on the Gaza blockade in Egypt at the very same time. The radicals promised peace and love if only Israel lifted the blockade on terror materiel for Hamas.

Is there any chance that Bill Ayers and Jodie Evans and the other Americans did not know whom they were in bed with? If anybody wants to know what Islamic fascists say and do when they get a chance, just look at the daily stream of English translations from Arabic and Persian on the MEMRI website. A little sample from Imam Ahmad Ibrahimi, Coordinator of Algerian Delegation to "Freedom Flotilla": "Our Hatred of Them Is So Intense That We Wished We Could Have Been Bombs and Blown Ourselves Up among the Brothers of Apes and Pigs." Hamas TV and the Arab and Iranian propaganda channels drive that message home to their captive audiences day after day.

In the upshot, "peaceful protesters" from Code Pink provided false-flag cover to the Turkish cruise ship Mavi Marmara, filled with an estimated forty Turkish wannabe suicides and even owned by the Turkish version of Hamas. The Turks engaged in standard pre-martyrdom rituals before leaving, wearing white headbands, writing their last wills and testaments, chanting martyrdom slogans, and equipping themselves with curved knives, steel bars, night goggles, and perhaps guns.

The idea that Code Pink and the others did not see the Turkish suicides-to-be getting ready before the confrontation is absurd. They knew. In fact, according to Bill Ayers in the days before the crisis, Hamas was guaranteeing the safety of Code Pink in Gaza.

In a New York Times op-ed, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren wrote:

The Mavi Marmara on Monday was not motivated by peace. On the contrary, the religious extremists embedded among those on board were paid and equipped to attack Israelis -- both by their own hands as well as by aiding Hamas -- and to destroy any hope of peace. Millions have already seen the Al Jazeera broadcast showing these "activists" chanting "Khaibar! Khaibar!" -- a reference to a Muslim massacre of Jews in the Arabian peninsula in the seventh century. YouTube viewers saw Israeli troops, armed with crowd-dispersing paintball guns and side arms for emergency protection, being beaten and hurled over the railings of the ship by attackers wielding iron bars.


The Turkish chant "Khaibar! Khaibar!" is the equivalent of "Auschwitz! Auschwitz!" It is the name of a famous genocide of the Jews of Mohammed's time.

In the upshot, the Israelis fell into the Turkish-Code Pink trap and lucked out with only six badly wounded soldiers. The suiciders got what they were looking for: martyrdom for Allah and outraged anti-Israel headlines around the world.

What did the White House know, and when did it know it? That's what I am wondering. We have a mass of circumstantial evidence. But I wonder: Was there culpable collusion among the Obama White House, Jodie Evans, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and the Turkish Muslim Brotherhood -- or was it a matter of like-minded individuals acting independently?

White House National Security staffers have long been directly involved in undercover operations, from LBJ's Gulf of Tonkin deception to Ollie North's Iran Contra outreach to the mullahs.

Shortly afterward, the White House sent its advisor Dalia Mogahed to the U.K. to appear on a radical Islamist television show. Ms. Mogahed's message to the U.K. audience was that "Sharia Law is misunderstood." Shariah law "includes the controversial 'Hadd offences,' crimes with specific penalties set by the Koran and the sayings of the prophet Mohammed. These include death by stoning for adultery and homosexuality and the removal of a hand for theft."

The Obama White House was therefore signaling to Islamist radicals that it would be willing to indulge their actions against Israel and the West.

Jodie Evans and Code Pink also ensured the presence on the flotilla of many small leftist delegations from Europe and the U.S., who flew home immediately after the Turkish ambush to spread malicious disinformation. One of these "eyewitness accounts" has since been retracted, as the true story has emerged via YouTube and the blogosphere and even filtered through some of the mainstream media.

As for the wildly biased media, Reuters has confessed to yet another "fauxtography" scandal by cropping Turkish weapons out of the photos of the fight on the cruise ship.

After the Gaza ambush hit the headlines, another amazing coincidence occurred. Within a few days, the usual liberal chorus simultaneously called for Israel to lift the weapons blockade around Gaza. The chanting chorus included:

1. Barack Obama

2. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

3. Turkish P.M. Erdogan

4. The U.N. Security Council

5. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon

6. Britain, Spain, the EU, Egypt, and Iran

This is pure Alinsky, giving the impression of unanimous "non-negotiable" demands after an agitprop stunt grabs the headlines. It's what Obama has done by publicly scapegoating the car companies, Wall Street, the banks, Rush Limbaugh, doctors who supposedly perform operations on kids just for the money, the State of Arizona, British Petroleum, and anybody else who can be shocked and scared by the President of the United States. It is Obama's SOP. The attack on Israel looked like just another example of Obama's Chicago Way.

Let's back up for a moment and look at it strategically.

Obama is in a huge mess. His ratings are in the dumps. The Democrats in Congress are running away from him. The Gulf oil fiasco has even Louisiana Dems raging against him. The economy is entering a second dip.

So Obama desperately needs a foreign affairs victory. But he has alienated all of our allies, including the U.K., France, Germany, and Japan. He's even scared the Chinese, who will lose a ton of money if the US economy gets worse. He has promised a New World Order to the Muslims, but they haven't seen any results.

What do you do if you're Barack Obama and you've been surrounded for decades by Jodie Evans, John Brennan, and Rashid Khalidi? Not to mention Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, and Bill Ayers?

Your playbook says to create a provocation to give cover for a radical shift in U.S. policy against Israel. Whether the White House knew what was going to happen, or whether Obama just watched it benignly from a distance, we don't know. I believe there is a serious, rational question whether this was an NSC black op, just like LBJ's Gulf of Tonkin and JFK's assassination of the president of South Vietnam.

The Watergate burglaries were known to a lot of people, including Mark Felt at the FBI, who leaked it to the WaPo in the guise of Deep Throat. If the Gaza ambush was stirred up with White House knowledge or collaboration, there must be large numbers of people around the world who know all about it. Turkey's role has now been exposed. The role played by Hamas is clear. Code Pink's open collusion is a public fact.

Stand by for more revelations. I don't think they will get away with this.
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