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Martha Burk and Terrorism
By Debbie Schlussel
[email protected]
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 ([email protected]).
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. Join her fan club or discussion group.
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