Medea Benjamin Booted Out of Egypt
By Matthew Vadum
Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin, a frequent teller of tall tales, claims she was detained and physically abused Monday by Egyptian authorities when she flew into Cairo’s airport –on her way to an anti-Israel rally in Gaza.
Benjamin, who has close ties to the Obama White House, was traveling to Egypt for a meeting with international delegates before a scheduled trip to Gaza for what Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now” described innocuously as a “women’s conference.”
Hours later after being deported to Turkey, Benjamin said she had been held at the Cairo airport without explanation and violently handcuffed by Egyptian officials. While in Egyptian custody she took to Twitter to ask for help. She said officials in Cairo dislocated her shoulder and broke her arm before putting her on an airplane bound for somewhere in Turkey.
“I was brutally assaulted by Egyptian police, who never said what I was being accused of,” Benjamin said in a statement, according to CBS News. “When the authorities came into the cell to deport me, two men threw me to the ground, stomped on my back, pulled my shoulder out of its socket and handcuffed me so that my injured arm was twisted around and my wrists began to bleed. I was then forced to sit between the two men who attacked me on the plane ride from Cairo to Istanbul, and I was (and still am) in terrible pain the whole time.”
There appears to be no independent confirmation that Benjamin suffered bodily injury in Egypt.
In the version of the story Benjamin related to Goodman, Benjamin said there were not two assailants but “five very scary-looking men” who came for her. “They dragged me out, tackled me to the ground, jumped on me, handcuffed my wrists so tight that they started bleeding, and then dislocated my shoulder, and then kept me like that, grabbing my arm. “
“Thank God there was an orthopedic surgeon on the plane who gave me another shot and put the arm back in its shoulder,” Benjamin said. “But they were so brutal, and, as I said, Amy, never saying why.”
It’s hard to know what exactly is true in Benjamin’s story and what is made up. Benjamin is an anti-American, neo-communist drama queen. Her whole adult life is a study in media manipulation.
A serial exaggerator, it is Benjamin’s mission in life to focus the eyeballs of humanity on herself in order to draw attention to the ugly, radical causes she supports. Malibu, California-based Code Pink, a nonprofit corporation whose formal name is Environmentalism Through Inspiration and Non Violent Action, was created as a so-called women’s “peace” group. Although the group engages in choreographed, often goofy street protests involving public toplessness, fake blood, and oversized effigies of political leaders, it is a serious extremist organization that aligns itself with America’s ruthless enemies abroad.
It is not surprising that when talking to Goodman, Benjamin left out the fact that her subversive activities in recent years rendered her persona non grata in Egypt. In addition to being a globetrotting troublemaker, Benjamin has led a helping hand to the Muslim Brotherhood. Her group played a role in violent demonstrations aimed at keeping Egypt’s previous Islamofascist president, Mohammed Morsi, who described Jews as the descendants of apes and pigs, firmly in power. Using twisted logic, Code Pink and other left-wing anti-American groups link arms with Islamists, anti-Semites, and brutal dictators in order to advance their never-ending war against the United States. Code Pink’s fuchsia-clad activists wrap themselves in pretended humanitarianism and compassion in order to sell the group’s otherwise unpalatable support for the most repressive regimes in the world.
Benjamin told Goodman that she was planning to go to Gaza as part of a 100-woman delegation on March 8, International Women’s Day, “to show our support for women who feel really abandoned.” The Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza has been closed during recent strife in Egypt ”and people are feeling very desperate in Gaza,” she said, cuing the violins.
The Benjamin drama unfolded as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington, D.C., to meet with President Obama and deliver a speech to the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) convention.
No doubt hoping to steal some of the media spotlight from Netanyahu, Benjamin said Code Pink is calling upon Israel to lift “the siege on Gaza,” halt Israeli settlements, and respect “basic human rights for Palestinians.” Code Pink has been “very vocal in our support for the Palestinians and our call for Israel and now Egypt to open up those borders and, especially for Gaza, allow goods to come in and out, so people can have more electricity and more of the goods that they need just to survive.”
Of course Israel, surrounded by totalitarian Arab states, is the only democratic society in the Middle East. It respects the rights of all those who live within its borders, even those of Arab Muslims opposed to its very existence. Gaza, however, is ruled by a terrorist organization devoted to Jewish genocide, forbids elections, engages in extra-judicial executions (and parades their corpses through the streets), and brainwashes children to become suicide bombers.
What Benjamin and her followers really object to is Israel’s efforts to protect its population from aggression. Whenever Israel uses force to respond to force Benjamin’s media-savvy pink people shriek hysterically, singling out Israel and condemning it for daring to defend itself.
Egyptian authorities had every right and ample reasons to detain a known subversive like Medea Benjamin.
It is especially distressing that Benjamin and her activist comrades have the ears of the Obama White House.
Another Code Pink co-founder, Jodie Evans, is well connected in Democratic Party circles. Evans, who managed California Gov. Jerry Brown’s 1992 presidential campaign, was a campaign contribution bundler for the 2008 Obama campaign and a donor to his 2012 reelection campaign.
Evans and Benjamin worked with Cuba’s Communist government on a propaganda campaign against the U.S. terrorist-holding facility in Guantanamo Bay. Years ago Benjamin lived in Castro’s Cuba with her first husband, a Castro-supporting Cuban who was the coach of that country’s national basketball team. Reflecting on her years in Cuba, Benjamin said she had felt “like I died and went to heaven.” The Cubans eventually tired of Benjamin, deporting her after she wrote an anti-government article in the government-run newspaper she worked for.
Evans has met with President Obama and visited the White House on several occasions. Code Pink itself has served as a messenger between terrorist groups, including Hamas and the Taliban, and Obama.
In 2008 Benjamin and Evans met with Iran’s then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York and months later with him in Iran. Benjamin called for the Obama administration to “begin direct talks” with the totalitarian theocracy “without preconditions.”
More recently, Benjamin was in the news when she challenged Obama during a speech on drone warfare and Guantanamo. The president seemed at ease during the repeated interruptions and said that Benjamin’s was a “voice worth paying attention to.”
Benjamin’s voice might indeed be worth listening to from time to time, if only she used it to tell the truth instead of spreading politically motivated lies and hateful propaganda.
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