‘I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve’
– Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in the film Tora! Tora! Tora! Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor
By Bruce S. Ticker
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — Star Trek’s Captain James T. Kirk endured the wrath of Khan, Hamas is suffering the wrath of the Israel Defense Forces and pro-Palestinian blockaders are starting to confront the most ghastly of the wrathful – those being stressed-out, boiling motorists who get stuck on the Brooklyn Bridge or one of the most congested freeways in Los Angeles. Airline passengers are now a close second.
Activists may well have awoken two “sleeping giants” on Wednesday last week when they blockaded traffic on the Van Wyck Expressway to John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens and the main access road to LAX in southern California.
JFK and Los Angeles International Airport are two of the most congested airports in America on both the runways and the surrounding highways. These episodes topped a pattern of disrupting anything and everything to call attention to the plight of Gazans.
Pro-Arab New Yorkers followed that up on New Year’s Day with attempted blockades of both NYC’s airports, causing congestion on roads near JFK and La Guardia Airport.
“Absolutely disgusting behavior,” groused James Gilmour on social media, as quoted in The New York Post. “Arrest all of them. Scum of society.”
“Bring bulldozers…clear the road!!!!” wrote Rick Gavin on X. Another social media writer said, “Break out the water cannons. Enough of this crap.”
The ongoing clamor in America for the so-called Palestinian cause has far outdone the Theater of the Absurd in absurdity. And lunacy. If the Palestinians have credible concerns, and they do, their advocates in the states and elsewhere have failed to convince us. From the Mississippi to both seas, Palestinians cannot be free so long as their supposed friends stain the intent of the First Amendment.
Their tactics are crude, disruptive and often illegal, the chants are confusing and deceitful, and their goals are disgraceful and perilous for Jews.
The Post reports that last week’s JFK protest was launched at 11 a.m. as five cars suddenly stopped on the Van Wyck in front of an Israeli flag flying near Terminal 4 of JFK. Some demonstrators left their vehicles and unfurled banners saying “Right to return home” and “Divest from genocide.” Up to 40 people were shown linking hands to block traffic on the Van Wyck and on a service road.
The two protests produced 62 arrests, with at least 26 at JFK and the remainder at LAX, according to the Associated Press. Those 35 whom L.A. police arrested for rioting were evidently out of shape since, when officers arrived, the protesters sprinted in different directions. Those not swift enough were the ones taken into custody. One was arrested for battery on a police officer.
While activists waved Palestinian flags and chanted “Free, free Palestine,” flustered travelers in NYC last week were spotted leaving their taxis and continuing to JFK on foot, according to the Post. One man was seen asking Port Authority police officers why they could not remove the blockaders. Police arrested them later when more officers arrived.
If motorists and airline passengers – especially those who missed their flights – can ever organize, these protesters will be in deep trouble. Any one of us knows how it feels to be stuck in traffic or fear missing a flight. Here, road rage and flight rage combine. If they antagonize a passenger so much that he harms a flight attendant or another passenger, that means more victims.
Long before Oct. 7, they have been causing disruptive incidents on a smaller scale such as blocking the Brooklyn Bridge and a portion of the 110 highway in Los Angeles that is near the enormous interchange that is often depicted in films shot in L.A.. Authorities waited too long before they made arrests and paid sufficient attention to this conduct.
Recently, NYC Mayor Eric Adams said about equally obnoxious incidents: “I don’t believe that people should be able to just take over our streets and march in our streets. I don’t believe people should be able to take over our bridges. I just don’t believe you can run a city this complex where people can just do whatever they want.”
Nice speech, but they have already taken over our streets and bridges.
The holiday-week blockades are the latest – and among the worst – of the dark comedies and dramedies produced by the Arab version of the Theater of the Absurd. They are silly as well as scary. One can laugh and brood simultaneously when these activists accuse Israel of stealing Palestinian food recipes or compare Gaza to Vietnam.
How do we figure out the meaning of messages such as “right to return home” and “divest from genocide?” Does the slaughter of 1,200 Jews and others in southern Israel qualify as “genocide?”
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Bruce S. Ticker is a Philadelphia-based columnist.