No Way To Treat A Lady

What a scary headline: "Protestors Mob Laura Bush in Jerusalem."
Turns out the mobbing was done by "dozens" of protestors for convicted spy Jonathan Pollard. "Some local reporters" also get thrown into the protesting mob mix for some strange reason:

Dozens of protesters stood nearby, shouting, "Free Pollard now." Jonathan Pollard, an American Jew who is serving life sentence in a U.S. prison for spying for Israel, was a civilian intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy.

The first lady was mobbed by protesters and local reporters, and Secret Service agents and Israeli police had to physically hold back the crowd as she approached the wall.

As security-conscious as the Israeli government is, for them to barely even clear a space for her to walk tells me something. They treated my girl in a shabby fashion.

After she left the Western Wall, she went to the Dome of the Rock. A site also described by Associated Press writer Nedra Pickler as "chaos." Her definition of "chaos" is up for grabs, though, as all she decribes is a lone heckler:

She then went to the Dome of the Rock, a mosque on a hilltop compound known to Muslims as Haram as-Sharif and to Jews as Temple Mount. As she left the mosque, one heckler yelled, "How dare you come in here?" and "Why do you hassle our Muslims?"

Our Muslims? Not a Muslim himself, then.

Inside the mosque, some women "clearly looked annoyed," and "waggled their fingers." Whatever that means. Doesn't sound too terribly volatile or chaotic.

For a report that heavily stressed anti-American sentiment in the Middle East because of that Newsweek Koran business, it didn't live up to its billing.

A contrast:

In Jericho, which is under Palestinian control, security was tight and no protesters were evident when Mrs. Bush visited the ruins and met at a hotel with leading Palestinian women.

So don't tell me this wasn't done to Laura on purpose. What I don't understand is why.

Posted by floridacracker at May 22, 2005 11:53 AM