Checkpoints Against Terror

All of a sudden, security checkpoints are in the news. The media liberals are rolling their eyes in anguish over the reaction of US troops in Iraq who fired on what they thought was a vehicle carrying terrorists near Baghdad International Airport, but instead was carrying the Italian journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, released from captivity by terrorists. She was wounded and the Italian agent in her car with her was killed.

All the self-righteous expressing their indignation over the event should try manning such a checkpoint in an area crawling with suicide bombers and other terrorists. The entire incident in Iraq took place because Allied military personnel at checkpoints are under daily terrorist assault, and so reasonable people there regard cars approaching them as threats.

The US is now a sharing victim of the jihad against Checkpoints that the Left has been utilizing to bludgeon Israel for years. Over the past few years, Israel has also been under attack because of its "checkpoints". These are security positions along roads that stop Palestinian traffic and search for terrorists and their weapons. In particular, the Caring Classes denounce Israel for stopping Palestinian ambulances. Never mind that Palestinian ambulances are routinely used to transport bombers, murderers and bombs.

Much of the demonization of Israel by the Left in recent days has come from the "solidarity internationals", the Western designer jean campus revolutionaries who come to Israel, link up with local communists, and try to interfere with anti-terror activities. Lately these have been calling themselves "Mahsom Watch" or Checkpoint Watch.

These have flooded the Western press with falsehoods about what happens at these Israeli checkpoints. And, like those whining about the US checkpoints in Iraq, the critics do not have a single word to say about the terrorism that makes such checkpoints necessary. The Mahsom Watch commies invented that now-famous story about Israeli troops forcing a Palestinian to play his fiddle at a checkpoint. Turns out they just checked it to see it was not a Tommy Gun. Meanwhile the Mahsom Watch people use violence and harass Israeli police and soldiers. Some have been arrested for assisting terrorism. There have been petitions in Israel to expel them. When one of them came to get a tooth fixed at a dentist I know, he bragged about what he was doing. The dentist, hardly a right-wing radical, fixed his tooth but then told the bloke that his behavior was helping terrorists trying to murder Jews, and so the bloke deserved to get a bullet in his head.

These are the same "solidarity" clowns who get all indignant when Israeli troops come under fire from terrorists hiding in crowds of civilians and are forced to return fire. The civilians killed are morally the victims of Palestinian terrorism, not of Israel self-defense. People who do not like it when Palestinian children get hurt in crossfires might suggest to the Palestinians that they stop murdering Jews.

These same people screamed their lungs out when a Palestinian teenage girl was killed approaching an Israeli security station a while back. The simple fact of the matter is that children are routinely used by the PLO and its affiliates as terrorists and bombers, and so reasonable people in Israel, like reasonable US troops in Iraq, must regard such minors as likely murderers and bombers. The girl in question was accompanied by a suspicious adult, sent through a closed military area, and tossed her schoolbag in a threatening manner at the troops. Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon on Friday concluded that the platoon commander acted properly when he opened fire and that no action should be taken against him. The girl was murdered de facto by the same PLO that creates a situation in which reasonable people have to regard children as terrorists. Just like the Iraqi terrorists are the REAL murderers of the Italian this week.

Meanwhile, Israel should ship the local "solidarity protesters" to Iraq to protect Iraqi terrorists. Let us see if the US Marines treat them as gently as Israeli troops do.