Celebrity Airheads and the Terrorists Who Love Them

“Hi, I’m Richard Gere and I’m speaking for the entire world. We’re with you during this election time,” said the radiant film star. “It’s really important: get out and vote,” Gere continued, his words simultaneously translated into Arabic. Then, switching to actually speaking in Arabic, he concluded, in a strong American accent, “Take part in the election.”

Gere was speaking in a commercial that was broadcast repeatedly on Palestinian television in January 2006, just prior to one of the first municipal Palestinian elections since the late Palestinian terror leader Yasir Arafat held what were widely regarded as sham local elections about thirty years prior.

This time, Gere was urging Palestinians to vote in local ballots essentially split between the Hamas terrorist organization, responsible for dozens of suicide bombings, and the Fatah organization, responsible for dozens more.

Gere’s co-stars in the commercial were Chief Palestinian Justice Taysir Tamimi and former Greek Orthodox Church spokesperson Atallah Hanna. Tamimi is a well-known terror supporter who regularly delivers fiery sermons on Palestinian television calling for the downfall of America and Israel. Hanna was fired from his church position after being accused of directly aiding terror organizations.

Gere’s appearance on Palestinian television was sponsored by One Voice, a far-left organization run by an Israeli businessman.

Palestinians indeed took Gere’s advice and voted en masse, electing Hamas legislators by a large margin. Hamas officials stated they would use their election victory to lead the Palestinians in their jihad against the West and against Israel.

Abu Abdullah, considered one of the most important members of Hamas’s so-called military wing, told me of Gere’s appearance, “We thank Richard Gere for his efforts in the historic election of the Palestinian Islamic resistance [Hamas].”

Since I don’t know Gere personally, I can’t determine whether he realized he was urging voter turnout in elections between terror groups in one of the most terror-saturated societies the world has ever known or whether he knew Hamas would utilize the legitimacy granted it by the international community’s support of elections, urged on by Gere himself, to demand foreign aid and worldwide diplomatic status for its terror organization.

When I was a kid growing up in a Modern Orthodox household in Philadelphia, I used to observe Hollywood and the music industry with quiet amusement, watching as lamebrain celebrities involved themselves in causes they probably couldn’t spell and made all sorts of pronouncements about issues they largely didn’t have the capacity to understand.

But it wasn’t until I moved to the Middle East in February 2005 and started talking to terrorists that I fully realized just how much damage some of our “antiwar” celebrities are causing.

A lot of terrorists have satellite televisions and advanced communication equipment and are quite adept at browsing the Internet. In today’s wired world, it’s very easy for anyone speaking any language to be updated almost immediately about all kinds of events.

This includes America’s terror enemies, who pay particularly close attention to news of U.S. domestic opinion regarding our government’s Mideast policies. They understand that in the U.S. the fight for public opinion is everything – change public opinion, get American citizens to lose their drive to fight, and the government and military ultimately must change as well. The terrorists time their attacks in part on the status of our national debate and on the American news cycle.

While the terrorists didn’t know much about most American movies, I wasn’t very surprised when they told me they had heard of Steven Spielberg’s 2005 drama “Munich,” which depicts the Israeli government’s secret retaliation for the 1972 Munich massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes by Black September gunmen.

The terrorists said that though they hadn’t seen the movie they were familiar with it since it deals with Palestinian “resistance” organizations and since the filmmakers, including writers Tony Kushner and Eric Roth, sought out and interviewed some Munich terrorists.

Until I came along, the terrorists assumed that since Spielberg and Kushner are Jewish, the movie was an Israeli propaganda piece, demonizing Black September and depicting the Israelis as victims.

They were quite glad to hear that “Munich” in fact focused almost entirely on the Israeli response to Black September’s operation – on Israel’s assassinations of Black September members – and not on the massacre itself. I told them Spielberg and company boasted that their movie was “balanced,” presenting both sides as moral equivalents.

I read to the terrorists a quote from Spielberg regarding the depiction of Black September terrorists as “militants,” even though they murdered eleven Israelis in cold blood in an act of terror that stunned the world.

“I think the thing I’m very proud of,” said Spielberg in an interview with Time magazine, “is that [screenwriter] Tony Kushner and I and the actors did not demonize anyone in the film. We don’t demonize our targets. They’re individuals. They have families. Although what happened in Munich, I condemn.”

The terrorists responded to Spielberg’s statements, but they wanted me to clarify that they hadn’t seen the movie and based their conclusions on the depiction of “Munich” as I described it.

“We think Spielberg understands that the key is in the Israeli occupation and that no retaliation can stop the Palestinian resistance,” said Al Aksa chief Ala Senakreh. “I did not see the film and I do not need to in order to understand that the coming generation will fight the occupation.”

Hamas activist Ghassan Adassi commented, “The Israelis don’t understand what Spielberg understood, that we do not kill because we like too. We fight because we want to live and the Israeli retaliation and crimes only give us more reason to fight. It seems like Spielberg wanted to say that Israelis are breaking the international law and are pushing the Palestinians to more attacks.”

As a Mideast-based reporter for the popular news site WorldNetDaily.com and a weekly columnist for The Jewish Press, I routinely talk to terror leaders about various news events related to our neck of the woods. I garner their quotes, which usually include vicious anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda and all kinds of wacky conspiracies

I was amazed when several times I would obtain quotes from terrorists about the day’s news and then see posted on WorldNetDaily quotes on the same topic from television personality Rosie O’Donnell during her stint as a host of ABC’s “The View.” Incredibly, O’Donnell often made almost the exact same statements as the terrorists.

One of many examples was in March 2007, when transcripts were released in which captured alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to the mega-terror attacks and 31 other plots and attacks.

“I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z,” Mohammed said in a statement. He also took credit for personally beheading Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and for planning multiple other attacks since the early 1990’s.

Immediately after Mohammed’s confessions were released, I called the terror leaders, who unanimously insisted the confessions were false and were manipulated and forced from Mohammed by a desperate Bush administration.

Abu Jihad, a West Bank leader of the Islamic Jihad terror organization, said President Bush “is under a lot of pressure for victories, so I am sure as part of changing the American public opinion [Bush] needed to orchestrate this confession so he can say he is succeeding even though he is a failure.”

“I am sure the Americans tortured Mohammed and forced him to say these untrue things. Isn’t it strange it took three years since his arrest for the supposed confession? Intelligence agencies are known to make people say they are guilty even though they know it’s not the case,” Abu Jihad said.

Continued the Islamic Jihad terror leader: “With all the respect we have for al-Qaeda, the story of 9/11 remains open. There are many questions about the role of Israel and the Zionists in the affair. America just wants to lie to everybody so they can put people at ease by claiming they caught the culprit.”

Abu Jihad’s sentiments were parroted by several other terrorists I interviewed that day. Then I read a transcript of O’Donnell’s statements on the Mohammed affair from the day’s edition of “The View,” in which she suggested our government elicited a false confession from the alleged terror mastermind.

Pointing out that Mohammed was arrested in March 2003, O’Donnell asked, “Why hasn’t he admitted it until now?”

“They didn’t allow reporters there and he hasn’t had a lawyer,” O’Donnell added, insinuating that Mohammed’s confession was coerced.

“I think the man has been under custody in secret CIA torture prisons and Guantanamo Bay where torture is accepted and allowed – and he finally is the guy who admits to doing everything,” said O’Donnell. “They finally found the guy, it’s not that guy bin Laden, it’s this guy they’ve had since March 2003.”

Suggesting the U.S. was looking for a scapegoat, O’Donnell said of Mohammed, “for whatever he did or didn’t do, he is not the be all, end all of terrorism in America. And our government has not found the answer in this one man.”

When Iran seized fifteen British sailors accused of violating Iranian waters, the terrorists spewed crazed theories that the affair really was orchestrated by a war-hungry Bush administration, seeking an excuse to go to war with Iran.

Lo and behold, later that day I read a transcript from “The View” in which O’Donnell implied the Iranian seizure was a hoax to provide President Bush with an excuse to go to war with Tehran.

“Yes, but it’s very interesting too that, you know, these guys, they went into the water by mistake right at a time when British and American, you know, they’re two, they’re pretty much our biggest ally and we’re considering whether or not we should go into war with Iran,” said O’Donnell.

The terrorists had never heard of O’Donnell, but I detailed her views for them very accurately. They immediately noticed how frequently her statements and theories jibed almost word for word with their own stated views.

I read to the terror leaders multiple Rosie gems, like the time she argued that jailed terrorists are people too and asserted that the U.S. “robs them of their humanity.”

“They’ve been treating them like animalsthey have hoods over their heads, they torture them on a daily basis,” she said.

On one episode of “The View,” O’Donnell said Americans shouldn’t fear so-called terrorists, calling them mothers and fathers.

“Faith or fear, that’s your choice,” she said. “You can walk through life believing in the goodness of the world, or walk through life afraid of anyone who thinks different than you and trying to convert them to your way of thinking.”

“Don’t fear the terrorists. They’re mothers and fathers,” said O’Donnell.

The terrorists were absolutely ecstatic. At first they thought I was making up the Rosie quotes. Even after hearing unpatriotic statements from other celebrities, they still couldn’t believe an American would say the kinds of things Rosie uttered. It took me some time to convince the terrorists that Rosie O’Donnell really does exist.

The one Rosie statement that won all the terrorists over beyond the others was when I told them she’d raised questions on her blog about the 9/11 attacks, implying the buildings were brought down in part to destroy documents incriminating oil giant Enron and other major corporations.

After pointing out conspiracy “factoids” regarding the World Trade Center’s Building No. 7, which collapsed after the two larger “twin towers” fell, O’Donnell wrote that building 7 “contained offices of the FBI, Department of Defense, IRS (which contained prodigious amounts of corporate tax fraud, including Enron’s), U.S. Secret Service, Securities & Exchange Commission (with more stock fraud records), and Citibank’s Salomon Smith Barney, the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management and many other financial institutions.”

The terrorists were in love with Rosie.

“I agree with everything this O’Donnell said,” said Adassi.

“Regarding September 11, there is no way the American intelligence and administration was not aware of what was going to happen that day. How come the Jews and Israelis disappeared from the buildings? Was it by miracle? They knew that an attack would take place. This meant that Zionist elements and the leading elements of the administration who are aligned with economic companies and interests, like Bush and Cheney’s companies of oil, were very interested that the attack would succeed in order to start their campaign for the oil of Iran and Afghanistan.”

Of course, Jews did not “disappear” from the buildings.

Brigades chieftain Senakreh commented, “Many people have been saying this since the first moment it happened. [But] when it comes from persons like O’Donnell it takes a more serious significance. I guess she knows what she is saying.”

The terrorists went on to invite O’Donnell to come live among them in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where they said they would ensure she is treated “like a queen.”

“We welcome Rosie O’Donnell to live among us and to get to know the truth from being here, like many American peace activists are doing. It would be a great honor for us if she comes and live with us,” said Senakreh.

“I think that she is a mother and she knows what she is saying. We are not in love with killing, we like peace, we are human beings, it is the occupation that obliges us to do what we do,” Senakreh added.

Adassi agreed and also extended an invitation to Rosie. “She will be most welcomed if she decides to visit us or live here and to get to know what your allies, the Israelis, are doing against our people. We thank her for telling and presenting the truth.”

At that point I broke the terrorists’ hearts by informing them their beloved Rosie is an outspoken lesbian who proudly lives with her female partner.

The terrorists then said O’Donnell could only move to Gaza if she ceased her “Satanic ways” and agreed to abide by the rules of Islam regarding sexual relations.

“Let her still come,” said Adassi. “We will teach her the right ways. She is already on the right path.”