From FOX News:
Six Iraq war protesters disrupted an Easter Mass on Sunday, shouting and squirting fake blood on themselves and parishioners in a packed auditorium.
Three men and three women startled the crowd during Cardinal Francis George’s homily, yelling “Even the Pope calls for peace” as they were removed from the Mass by security guards and ushers.
One Mass attendee, Mike Wainscott of Chicago, yelled at the anti-war protesters.
“Are you happy with yourselves?” he said. “There were kids in there. You scared little kids with your selfish act. Are you happy now?”
The group, which calls itself Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War, said in a statement after the arrests that they targeted the Holy Name Cathedral on Easter to reach a large audience, including Chicago’s most prominent Catholic citizens and the press, which usually covers the services.
Kevin Clark of International Solidarity Movement told the Chicago Tribune that he attended the Mass to serve as a witness for the protesters.
So here we have a peaceful Easter Sunday Mass at a large Catholic church. In the middle of the most important day in the Christian year a bunch of anti-war protesters start making noise and squirting fake blood on themselves and others in the congregation.
What ever happened so carrying signs and marching at the state capitol? Why attack an innocent church service and the completely innocent people trying to worship?
First let’s look at their primary apologists, the International Solidarity Movement (no, I won’t link to them):
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) was founded in 2001 by Ghassan Andoni, a Palestinian activist; Neta Golan, an Israeli activist; Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American; and George N. Rishmawi, a Palestinian activist. Adam Shapiro, an American, joined the movement shortly after its founding and is also often considered one of the founders.
According to a 2003 profile of ISM co-founder Adam Shapiro in the Jordan Star, Shapiro “justifies the Palestinian armed resistance against Israel as long as it is targeting Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
ISM was accused of being linked to the suicide bombers that attacked the Mike’s Place bar in Tel Aviv on April 30, 2003, killing three people.
So the International Solidarity Movement is a loose coalition of people determined to assist the “Palestinian cause”, up to and including violence, up to and including using suicide bombers. They also advocate armed conflict against Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers - and remember that Jewish settlers are civilians and innocent families. Now they’re starting to sound more like an average left-wing, pro-terrorist group … how “Progressive” of them.
And an absolutely great item for discussion by Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:
Why is a sponsor of the Palestinian cause sponsoring or at least offering apologetics for an attack on a Catholic Mass? One might expect the news media to ask that question, and to ask whether this is just an anti-war attack or whether it is an anti-Catholic, anti-Christian hate crime.
If that’s not clear enough, let me ask readers what kind of coverage this would have provoked had it been conducted against the worshipers at a mosque. If a group of anti-terrorist protesters had broken into Friday prayers at a Chicago mosque to spray stage blood all over Muslims in protest of al-Qaeda and the Taliban — a little stronger connection than that between the Catholic Church and the war in Iraq — the newspapers would have trumpeted it as a hate crime against American Muslims, followed by weeks of human-interest, anecdotal accounts of how terrible America is to its Muslim citizens.
Cardinal Francis George, Chicago, Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War, Holy Name Cathedral, International Solidarity Movement, left-wing, pro-terrorist, Progressive
