It is difficult not to sympathize with “peace” activists: the end of the Cold War has relegated them to the ranks of the unemployed.
The nihilist regime they served for many years with such selfless devotion collapsed, leaving them bankrupt, both ideologically and politically.
The Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was the father of the first “peace movement”. It was launched in 1946, at a time when he had not yet developed an atomic arsenal and was thus vulnerable to a U.S. attack.
Pablo Picasso, a “fellow traveler” with the French Communist Party, designed the dove of peace as the emblem of the pacifist movement. The poet Paul Eluard, another fellow traveler, composed an ode - inspired by Stalin.
The “peace movement” was not opposed to all wars, but only to those that threatened the Soviet bloc. By then - the late 1940s and early 1950s - the world knew about Gulag and Stalin’s reign of terror, and of the anti- Semitic show trials - but these were ignored by the peaceniks of the day in their “quest for peace”.
Among Stalin’s admirers were also many naive Israelis, primarily in the Mapam Party, the forerunner of today's Meretz, as well as left-leaning intellectuals and journalists.
In the 1930s, Britain had also its own “peace camp”, exemplified by those who espoused appeasing Nazi Germany, branded Winston Churchill “a warmonger”, and toadied to Hitler and his gang.
Many peaceniks switched from Red to Green, but for others, destroying Israel seemed a perfect substitute for fighting Western anti-Communism.
Many peaceniks switched from Red to Green, but for others, destroying Israel seemed a perfect substitute for fighting Western anti-Communism.
The International Solidarity Movement already made global headlines when one of its activists, Rachel Corrie, a college radical from Olympia, Washington, was killed while attempting to block an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza.
The ISM uses as its motto “by any means necessary”. According to Lee Kaplan, who heads “Stop the ISM”, the group “was put together by the Arab communist and terror-linked PLFP group which is “allied with communist anarchists...and now with Hamas... to promote the destruction of the State of Israel. They are doing a great job”.
The mythology presented Rachel Corrie as “a peaceful protester”, “a young woman who had dedicated her life to the non-violent defense of others”. One Gaza flotilla ship was named after her.
But Rachel Corrie was not just an unarmed, idealistic Western girl. Corrie was in the Gaza Strip to serve as a human shield for the Arab terrorist campaign. Her death constituted a devastating blow to Israel’s policy against the terrorists.
In Gaza, Israel destroyed homes hiding tunnels used as conduits for weapons, or the homes of Palestinian suicide bombers responsible for slaughtering innumerable Jews. After Corrie’s death, this policy became more difficult to pursue and therefore, rarer.
During the Second Intifada, “peace” activists waged activities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. They hindered IDF operational activities, they served as human shields, they located themselves near roadblocks, they provided terrorist operatives with logistic and moral support.
Another symbol of the “peace” movement was the Israeli Juliano Mer-Khamis, who was killed by a terrorist last year. Mer had chosen Jenin to build his utopia. The director’s Jewish mother was a pacifist icon, Arna Mer, who during the Intifada went to Jenin to create the “Theater of the Stones”, an experimental group for Palestinian children where Mer-Khamis also worked.
Arna Mer won the “Alternative Nobel Prize” given annually by the Swedish Parliament to humanitarian activists. She preferred to be called “Palestinian”, not Jew or Israeli. She was arrested several times during riots protesting Israeli policy in the Territories. She said that “Zionism is a racist ideology”.
When Arna Mer-Khamis started her experimental theater, it was comprised of six Palestinian young boys. Five of them have since died as suicide bombers.
Like those British pro-German appeasers and the pro-Soviet dupes, the new bleeding-heart-pursuers-of-peace are fascists who simply hate Israel. It’s peace through antisemitism.