The Third Barbary War
The third Barbary War against Mediterranean pirates was fought this week. It was fought by Israel against violent armed terrorists.

by Prof. Steven Plaut
June 1, 2010

It was Muslim pirates based in what is now Algeria that captured
commercial ships and held those aboard as hostages who put at risk
a U.S. trade in the Mediterranean in the late 18th and early 19th century.
Notice the Ottoman flag.
 

The United States fought two Barbary wars against the Barbary coast pirates. In the first Barbary war alone, the US suffered 35 dead and 64 wounded. The pirates suffered at least 800 dead and many more than that wounded. The American forces put the cities of the pirates under siege and blockade. When the pirates renewed their terrorist activity, (in part thanks to the US being at war with Great Britain), the second Barbary war was fought in 1815.

The Muslim pirates are sailing under the same flag as in the first and second Barbary Wars. Some things never change.
 

The Ottoman Flag / Flag of Turkey.
 

The third Barbary War against Mediterranean pirates was fought this week. It was fought by Israel against violent armed terrorists.

Like the Americans in the 1800s, Israel has put the terrorist pirate enclave of Gaza under siege. It is only letting in civilian consumer goods. But that has the supporters of the Hamas upset. They demand that Israel allow in weapons so that the Hamas can engage in more terrorism and piracy.

It was against that background that the "flotilla" of terrorists trying to challenge Israeli sovereign control of its sea lanes and waters was organized by Islamists and Western anti-Semitic leftists. Once again the modern Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of Islamofascism and Western leftism united to attack the Jews.

The 20 (or whatever the correct number is) of dead terrorists from the flotilla ships are being proclaimed "innocent civilians." They were neither innocent nor civilians. They were guilty terrorists. They opened fire on IDF soldiers, and attacked them with knives and pipes and other weapons.

After two decades of pusillanimous pandering to such people and coddling leftist "solidarity" anarchist terrorists, even when they violently attack IDF soldiers and Israeli police, Israel has at long last done the right thing. At long last it has taken a clear position: raise a hand against an Israeli soldier and die!

AMEN!! It is the position Israel should have been enforcing all along.

Israel must now revoke its offer to pay for the return flights of the terrorists to their home countries. Let them rot in Israeli prison. Let them eat water and stale pita. Israel must scuttle the pirate ships or sell them as scrap. Israel must respond to the Turkish role in the terror "flotilla" by now organizing its own peace flotilla of ships flying Greek flags and sending them to enter the port of Famagusta on Cyprus to protest the illegal Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus. Let us see how the Turks like the negative publicity.

The flag of Turkey (suggested update)
 

Prof. Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa and is author of "The Scout" (available from Gefen Publishing House). More of his writings can be seen on the New Plaut Blog, as well as in numerous electronic and print newspapers.

Views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of ZionTimes.