July 11, 2011 •  BigPeace.com

Do you sup­port a cause drown­ing in innu­endo? Share facts online when lies are reported erro­neously? Take action via Twit­ter, Face­book or in per­son to evoke a brighter future? Many would argue activism to improve the lives of oth­ers is hard-wired into our human con­di­tion, built-in to our DNA. Hear­ing about hunger, depri­va­tion, or other human rights vio­la­tions is hard to stom­ach. But what if activism is used as a cover for sin­is­ter pur­poses? What if peo­ple hijack lan­guage reserved for human rights activists and apply it to efforts to erad­i­cate a nation-state?

Take the sit­u­a­tion in Gaza for exam­ple. When you first hear about groups band­ing together to pro­vide human­i­tar­ian aid to Gazans it appears altru­is­tic. What right-minded per­son would vie to see Gazans sup­pos­edly starve, deny their nec­es­sary means of sur­vival or ham­per their progress as a peo­ple? Yet, what if the cam­paign to aid Gazans was marred by an under­tow of deceit? What if the “Free­dom Flotilla 2”, which is actu­ally the 10^th effort to break Israel’s counter-terrorism block­ade, is the prod­uct of a group of orga­niz­ers whose sole goal is to fur­ther dele­git­imize Israel and ulti­mately elim­i­nate the Jew­ish State? What if these orga­niz­ers have a hid­den agenda to strengthen Hamas’s polit­i­cal objec­tives and make it dif­fi­cult for Israel (and Egypt) to deter arms smug­gling and ter­ror­ists from flood­ing the Gaza Strip?  In short, what if these orga­niz­ers were all con­nected to Hamas in a web of lies? Meet the key orga­ni­za­tions and peo­ple involved in Free­dom Flotilla 2:

Web­sites of the groups involved in Free­dom Flotilla 2 claim they have a human­i­tar­ian inter­est in aid­ing Gazans. Take the ECESG (Euro­pean Cam­paign to End the Siege on Gaza) for exam­ple. Once you type this acronym or its full name into your browser, you land on a site with a head­line that reads:

“Work­ing Towards the Dig­nity and Free­dom for the Pales­tini­ans in Gaza.”

Sounds human­i­tar­ian.

ECESG’s vision state­ment reads:

The ECESG works towards a future in which the invi­o­lable human rights of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple are real­ized within the frame­work of inter­na­tional law and human rights conventions.

Here’s the catch. The rhetoric sim­ply hijacks exist­ing human rights lan­guage. It makes no men­tion of the ter­ror­ist group Hamas who is a proxy of Iran, and has had a stran­gle­hold on the Gaza Strip and the Pales­tini­ans who live there since 2007. It does not men­tion the fact that Hamas threw Fatah mem­bers from rooftops dur­ing Hamas’ bloody seizure of Gaza the same year.

ECESG mis­sion state­ment reads:

The ECESG is an umbrella body of non-governmental orga­ni­za­tions across Europe that advo­cates the fun­da­men­tal right of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple in Gaza to live in peace and dig­nity with­out being sub­jected to any form of col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment such as the cut­ting of sup­plies of food, fuel and med­i­cine or their denial of free access to travel out­side Gaza Strip. The ECESG sup­ports the restora­tion of the inalien­able rights of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple in Gaza and lob­bies for pres­sure to be exerted on the Occu­py­ing Power to lift its siege and end the human tragedy there.

It urges the par­tic­i­pa­tion of politi­cians and non-politicians alike to honor their duty to stop the suf­fer­ing of one and a half mil­lion peo­ple trapped in Gaza under the most inhu­mane con­di­tions. Sup­ported by inter­na­tional and human­i­tar­ian law, the ECESG encour­ages all peo­ples of con­science and human rights advo­cates to inten­sify their efforts to high­light this life-threatening issue and end the catastrophe.

This one is a colos­sal lie. ECESG’s site mis­leads and mis­in­forms vis­i­tors as it makes no men­tion of the fact that Hamas has stolen thou­sands of tons of aid from Pales­tini­ans, and left them in the dark after turn­ing off their elec­tric­ity – just so that Hamas could release staged pic­tures of Pales­tini­ans sit­ting in can­dlelit rooms, in order to blame Israel. It makes no men­tion of the gross human rights vio­la­tions Hamas has con­ducted in the Gaza Strip. These heinous crimes include vio­lat­ing the Geneva Con­ven­tion at every turn. Hamas has refused Red Cross vis­its to kid­napped sol­dier Gilad Shalit dur­ing his five-plus years in cap­tiv­ity as well as the abil­ity for him to com­mu­ni­cate with his fam­ily via mail. In fact, Hamas has not shown any signs of life of Gilad in years, only an eager­ness to swap him (or, sadly, per­haps his body) for a 1000 ter­ror­ists in Israeli prisons.

Hamas has muti­lated cap­tured Israeli sol­diers rather pro­vid­ing humane treat­ment, and rou­tinely used civil­ians and chil­dren as human shields. Hamas also uses homes, schools and mosques to store and fire weapons on Israeli civil­ians, and arrests, jails and mur­ders Pales­tini­ans at whim.

So who is the ECESG?

Sim­ply put, ECESG is an anti-Israel, pro-Hamas umbrella orga­ni­za­tion that orga­nized the Free­dom Flotilla 2, sup­ported the Mavi Mar­mara flotilla, and is involved in other projects to fur­ther dele­git­imize and iso­late Israel.

The ECESG founder, Amin Abu Rashed (aka Amin Abu Ibrahim) is one of the key orga­niz­ers of Free­dom Flotilla 2. A daily Dutch news­pa­per, De Telegraaf, recently named Rashed as the “brain behind the flotil­la” and main backer. He is a Pales­tin­ian born in Lebanon who holds a Dutch pass­port and sub­scribes to the rad­i­cal ide­ol­ogy of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Rashed’s past affil­i­a­tions include the Dutch branch of the Al-Aqsa Foun­da­tion, and the Union of Good. Israel out­lawed Al-Aqsa in 1997, and declared it a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion in 1998. The US fol­lowed and des­ig­nated Al-Aqsa as a ter­ror­ist group in May of 2003, and then des­ig­nated the Union of Good in 2008.

Rashed’s resume gets even more pock­marked as he was impli­cated in the pros­e­cu­tion of the Holy Land Foun­da­tion, which the US Trea­sury cited as a Spe­cially Des­ig­nated National and the Euro­pean Union (EU) banned it for its finan­cial mate­r­ial sup­port to Hamas. For those keep­ing score, this adds up to Rashed hav­ing con­nec­tions to three orga­ni­za­tions that exist to sup­port Hamas’s ter­ror­ist agenda.

Greek author­i­ties have blocked all Gaza-bound ships in Free­dom Flotilla 2, and deserve spe­cial thanks. The U.S. ship called the “Audac­ity of Hope” was blocked along with the Tahrir. The Tahrir was full of activists but had no human­i­tar­ian aid onboard. It’s not sur­pris­ing to hear the “activists” on the “Audac­ity of Hope” rejected Greece’s offer to ferry their pur­port­edly human­i­tar­ian aid to the Gaza Strip. The “activists” responded to their recent deten­tion by hold­ing a hunger strike out­side the US Embassy in Athens demand­ing the US gov­ern­ment allow them to sail to Gaza.

The cre­ativ­ity of these “activists” is for the most part mind-boggling yet end­less. On July 4, 2011, 700 “activists” said they would land at Ben-Gurion air­port and declare their des­ti­na­tion: Pales­tine. As of this writ­ing, 120 “air flotil­la” activists landed in Ben Gurion , 38 were deported to Europe and 82 are await­ing depor­ta­tion. When will this Flotilla-o-rama end? Wouldn’t it be eas­ier to acknowl­edge Israel as a Jew­ish State, and apply this energy at the nego­ti­at­ing table?

Could the Pales­tini­ans — per­haps not just Hamas, but ele­ments of Fatah — have a big hand in mas­querad­ing ter­ror­ism as activism? Chief Pales­tin­ian Nego­tia­tor Saeb Erakat said vol­umes when he admit­ted on the same day the flotilla was not a human­i­tar­ian mis­sion by stat­ing that fun­nel­ing food, cement and other goods via other means, such as Greek ships, missed the point, which was to “imme­di­ately lift, not ease” Israel’s mar­itime block­ade of Gaza.

So if the “free Gaza” rhetoric along with the flotil­las isn’t a “human­i­tar­ian mis­sion,” what is it? Could this be the turn­ing point where gov­ern­ments around the world real­ize the dif­fer­ence between activists and ter­ror­ists? At the very least, the world should be able to dis­cern that such a vast dis­crep­ancy exists.

Jen­nifer Hanin is an Act For Israel founder & exec­u­tive edi­tor, and author of Becom­ing Jew­ish.