Once upon a time I was a supporter of, and a contributor to, Amnesty International.
That was long and far away, when Amnesty International busied itself fighting the worst of the worst — dictatorships of the Left and Right that crushed the human rights of their subjects and residents.
To me, the cases they supported were clear cut and iron clad.
A primary focus of AI was political prisoners, people imprisoned because of their ideas, their speech, and sometimes their nonviolent actions. I don’t support violence, because it is usually counter-productive.
Because I am Type A, and a reporter, I keep records.
That’s why I can tell you the last time I wrote a check to Amnesty International was on 6/12/01. It was after that check was cashed, AI declared — with arrogant ignorance — that cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal was a “political prisoner.”
A what?
Police Officer Daniel Faulkner was assassinated on a sidewalk about two blocks from where I lived almost precisely 43 years ago. The gunman, captured at the murder scene, was taxi driver, and former radio reporter Abu-Jamal. He was tried and convicted.
And then began a cottage industry of anti-cop Leftists, insisting that Abu-Jamal was innocent, that he was framed, that there were irregularities embedded in the trial.
On the last count, yes. Without getting into the weeds, there were irregularities in the trial, and there are irregularities in every trial.
I probably wrote about the case a dozen times, interviewed a lot of cops and other people working on the case, became friendly with Faulkner’s widow, Maureen.
The Abu-Jamal supporters were located mostly on college campuses out of town. The farther you got from Philly, the more celebrated he became. Also, the less the protestors knew about the facts of the case, the louder the protests. Naturally, some of the useful idiots in Hollywood took up the cause.
Two prominent stars were Ed Asner, star of “Lou Grant,” and Mike Farrell of “M*A*S*H.”
When I interviewed them, Asner admitted he know nothing about the case, he was just opposed to capital punishment. (Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death, but that got traded away in a plea arraignment.) To his credit, Farrell knew the facts, but didn’t accept many of them.
From time to time I would confront the protestors, whom I repeatedly described as Mumidiots. They did not like it. I did, because it was so accurate.
The Mumidiots came up with many alternative ideas of how Abu-Jamal managed to get shot in the stomach by Faulkner’s gun on that cold December night.
The most ridiculous was the claim that someone else shot Faulkner, and Abu-Jamal, the one-time Black Panther, was coming to the defense of the fallen cop.
The case attracted a large number of crackpots, in addition to the ones I just named.
In any event, political it was not.
Claiming Abu-Jamal was a political prisoner was just a flat-out lie, a political lie.
Then, in 2014, AI accused Israel of “war crimes” after Israel launched a military operation in Gaza after suffering numerous rocket attacks from within the Hamas controlled territory.
And now, AI is accusing Israel of “genocide.”
Now, I expect that kind of stupidity from college students, but not from an organization with lawyers on its staff.
“Genocide” has a very specific meaning, and involves an intent to exterminate a national, ethnic, or religious group.
In defending itself after the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust, Israel has killed some 43,000 Gazans in a year of war, which is truly regrettable, but, for perspective, far less than 100,000 Japanese killed in a single night of bombing by the U.S. in World War II.
There is no desire to exterminate Arab Muslims, who represent 20% of Israel’s citizens. The deaths are the result of a war started by Hamas.
Surely, AI knows this, and still threw gasoline on the fire of anti-Semitism by the intentional use of the term. It is beyond creepy.
It is disgraceful, and sick.
Once they called abortion a “human right,” I abandoned them. I refuse to use them in my asylum cases. They are an absolute joke. Their moral compass is irretrievably broken
It’s a shame that an organization such as this dips into such folly. Certainly, there are plenty of real people out there deserving of such protections. The two examples above are certainly not among them.
The Never Ending “story”
Once again an excellent and factual article, Stu.
Thank you.
The same sort of ‘thinking’ that says the assassination of the health insurance CEO in New York was ‘understandable’ and which now posits the assassin is some sort of do-gooder. The insanity continues to unravel the nation.
I was at the intersection of—if I remember correctly, 13th and Locust Street, a very short time after Danny Faulkner was murdered by the wannabe revolutionary Mumia Abu-Jamal. I was a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News working the overnight police beat–last out in cop language–when the shooting took place. Abu-Jamal was, and will remain ever so, a street thug
And I knew him personally, not as a friend, but as an associate. He had a press pass and was a frequent visitor at the Police Administration press room., Room 619, at the Police Administration building at 8th and Race Streets. He was always talking nonsense about revolutions, a new world order, and offing the pigs.
Yep, 13th & Locust. There is a plaque there in memory of P.O. Faulkner