Martha Burk and Terrorism

Political USA ^ | Debbie Schlussel

[Valin]

AUGUSTA, GA—Martha Burk is targeting corporate America in her guilt by association campaign against Augusta National. But all of America should be targeting her National Council of Women’s Organizations and its supporters of terrorism. The feminist protester of the men-only Augusta National Golf Club, site of today’s Masters Golf Tournament, announced yesterday that she will now attack corporations whose CEOs and top executives are among Augusta National’s approximately 300 members. Burk said she will examine the companies’ employment records and other data for reasons to boycott them. Calling it her “consumer education campaign,” Burk linked corporate CEO’s trips to Augusta National with the corporations’ layoffs of employees.

But, in this era of the War on Terrorism, the real “consumer education campaign” should scrutinize members of Burk’s organization. Some have made outrageous statements and even taken actions in support of terrorism and terrorists.

Burk’s National Council of Women’s Organizations, includes:

· Equality Now—Equality Now serves as the U.S. mouthpiece for an organization that sponsors the rebuilding of homes and buildings used to facilitate Palestinian terrorism.

Equality Now sent out press releases and organized press conferences for Bat Shalom, a feminist group which supports a boycotts of some Israeli products and sponsors and runs ads on its website for the rebuilding of Palestinian houses destroyed by the Israeli Army. According to Ha’Aretz, these houses are either homes of homicide bombers and other terrorists, or abandoned structures on the border of Gaza and Egypt, used to camouflage tunnels through which explosives and bombs are smuggled to Palestinian terrorists. The campaign to rebuild the homes lists Palestinian-American activist Rania Masri as a donor. Masri enthusiastically shared the stage on several occasions with indicted Islamic Jihad chief Sami Al-Arian.

In May, 2002, Equality Now sent a letter to President Bush, signed by Martha Burk, Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon, Alanis Morisette, and sundry other notorious feminists, accusing Bush of “betrayal” and endangerment of Afghani women for not expanding peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan. Call me misinformed, but wasn’t it Bush who liberated the women of Afghanistan? Burk’s website gives that credit to Burk and her NCWO.

· Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)—Another supporter of Bat Shalom, this deceptively titled Philadelphia-based organization features actresses Olympia Dukakis and Joanne Woodward, writer Alice Walker, Coretta Scott King, and radical Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (who voted against the House resolution supporting our troops in Iraq) on its list of “sponsors.”

WILPF’s website promotes a 2002 class-action lawsuit by Hamas attorney Stanley L. Cohen, on behalf of Palestinian-Americans, against President Bush, Colin Powell, Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and churches and synagogues, claiming conspiracies, “genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and racketeering” by them. It provides Cohen’s e-mail address, which indicates such lawsuits are profitable to Cohen (burnnloot@aol.com).

Cohen was the attorney for Hamas political director Moussa Abu Marzook and called clients Ismail Elbarasse and Abdelhaleem Ashqar, “heroes.” Incarcerated for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury about money laundering for Hamas (in which they were accused of taking part), both were identified as “Hamas leaders and activists” in a classified document made public in the U.S. government’s criminal indictment of the Holy Land Foundation, America’s largest Muslim charity, which was shut down and identified by Presidential Order as a terrorist entity and the primary funding source of Hamas. Cohen, the law partner of Lynne Stewart (lawyer for the blind cleric, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, convicted in the 1993 WTC bombing), features a photo of himself and Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin in his office.

WILPF’s website features an “S.O.S. Call,” which calls Palestinian terrorism, the “Palestinian’s legitimate struggle against Israel” and “Palestine’s legitimate resistance [which] has been labeled ‘terrorism.’” No mention of homicide bombings by Palestinians is made--only protestations of “the most horrendous abuse of the Palestinian people by Israel, so intricate in detail, so mind blowing in its ingenuity,” “Israeli atrocity[ies],” and “Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinian people.” “Every atrocity is meticulously planned.” “The methods used by the Nazis . . . studied by Israel . . . as a useful illustration to follow.”

The article calls for a return of Israel’s borders to the 1948 “green line,”which would mean the Palestinians controlling Jerusalem.

Given the largely successful War on Iraq, which has uncovered much evidence of Saddam’s illegal chemical weaponry, the following WILPF statement sounds ludicrous: “Iraq’s alleged defiance of U.N. Resolution has to be sorted. At the same time Israel has defied every U.N. Resolution.” WILPF then goes on to call for an end to U.S. aid to Israel.

Then there is WILPF’s statement that “America’s war against Iraq” is “the all encompassing effort of the the [sic] States to gain control over oil resources.” Denouncing President Bush and “his satellite echo, British Prime Minister Tony Blair,” WILPF makes the stale sound absurd: “Even though arms control inspectors have found no evidence of a ‘smoking gun’, weapons of mass destruction have to be there because America needs them to be there, they simply have to be there . . . . This is an orchestrated war.” WILPF calls Bush a “megalomaniac” with “unrefined oil glistening from his forehead” with “the belief that he can make America great through world domination.”

Incredibly, Martha Burk represents these sinister groups, while she calls for the boycott of innocent U.S. corporations merely because their CEOs belong to a small, private male golf club in Georgia. It’s just a tad hypocritical and out of whack.

In the late 1800s, there was another Martha Burk. That one, a gender bender who dressed in men’s clothing, went by the name “Calamity Jane” and battled outlaws. The modern day Martha Burk, battles against legal men’s clubs on behalf of groups supporting terrorism. And that’s just a calamity.

Debbie Schlussel is a political commentator and attorney. Copyright Political USA, Inc., 1999-2003.

[camle]

sounds like she wants to be the jesse jackson of women's politics.

[jammer]

Well, I may not be more than an average consumer, but those companies who succumb are dead to me. This crap works two ways.

[Paul Atreides]

She's just mad because she was born without a penis.