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It is by now a well-established fact that the ‘Freedom Flotilla 2′ is not about delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza. Both the American and Irish delegations have already publicly admitted that they will not be transporting anything of practical use and some of the additional craft appear to be too small to carry anything of significance. Egypt and Israel have reached an understanding whereby boats can dock at El Arish and have cargo transported to Gaza after it has undergone security checks. The open Israeli offer of a similar arrangement via Ashdod port still stands.
There is therefore no need for a conflict between the flotilla’s passengers and the Israeli navy to arise. However, it almost inevitably will – and that is because the real aim of the flotilla has nothing to do with humanitarian aid and everything to do with creating a widely broadcast publicity stunt with the aim of establishing in global opinion one dominant impression: that Israel, its armed forces and its people are cruel, violent and oppressive.
The laying of foundations for the spreading of that impression has already begun. In Athens, Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin – a woman who had no problem being hosted by the Iranian regime and thinks that Cuba is a “paradise on earth” - is busy blogging away about the ‘non-violence‘ and media training the flotilla participants are undergoing there.
“We started the day with a media training where we broke into groups and practiced answering some of the hardest media questions.”
“Then we broke into smaller groups according to what we might want to do on the boat—be on the upper or lower deck, try to protect the computers or the engine room, etc. I helped to form a group that wanted to be on the upper deck, linking arms and singing. We were just getting into our different groups, deciding if we wanted to be sitting or standing (some said if the Israelis brought attack dogs it was better to stand), when all of a sudden soldiers started rushing in to attack us. We quickly discovered that they were part of our own group dressed like commandos, but they scared the bejesus out of us. Their faces were covered in black masks and they were wearing the boxing paraphernalia that made then look twice their size. They were swearing and pushing and pointing fake guns at us, telling us to shut the fuck up, pulling us apart and tying our hands behind our backs. It was all so quick and so violent and so scary that we all of a sudden realized just how dangerous this mission was. ”
“Then we went back to our training sessions, focusing on how we would respond to an Israeli attack on our boat. We talked about safety of the passengers (i.e. complying immediately with the military’s demands) vs. “buying time” to be able to get our story out. Last year, the Israelis confiscated all electronic equipment, so we discussed how we might transmit up to the last-minute, save the video chips, etc.
Later in the afternoon we had a long discussion about the weapons the Israelis might use and how we might protect ourselves. It was so incongruous to see this group of mainstream-looking Americans, many of them professionals such as lawyers, health care workers, teachers, etc. talking about how to best protect ourselves from tasers, tear gas, pepper spray, water cannons (with the foulest-smelling chemical-laden or sewage water called Skunk), attack dogs, snipers and more.”
Several things are happening here: one is the deliberate creation of an atmosphere of fear among the foot-soldier participants. Another is the establishment in their minds – and those of the general public reading their blogs and press releases – that they are already potential ‘victims’ of Israeli violence and cruelty. This in turn sets them up as ‘brave’ and ‘heroic’ and establishes a train of thought by which anything they may do in that capacity to ‘resist’ is automatically justified. All of the above, rather than contributing to a peaceful outcome to the mission, make violence more likely.
These tactics are not new. They were also employed by the Hamas, ISM and Muslim Brotherhood linked and funded organizers of the flotillas in last year’s episode. They are commonly used on land too at venues such as the weekly demonstrations at Bil’in and in neighborhoods of Jerusalem. The participants, and general public opinion the world over, are persuaded that whatever they do – including throwing stones and fire bombs or, as in the case of the ‘Mavi Marmara’ last year, beating Israelis with iron bars, shooting them or stabbing them with serrated knives – their actions are ‘non-violent’ and they themselves are ‘victims’.
Many members of the world media are also complicit in propagating the myth that anti-Israel activists are – by definition – ‘non-violent’. One year on, and despite all the ample clear evidence to the contrary, one still sees the events aboard the Turkish ship described in terms of ‘non-violent resistance’, just as the violent weekly riots at Bil’in are fabled as being carried out by ‘unarmed protesters’.
There is probably little coincidence in the fact that one of the ‘journavists’ sailing aboard the American flotilla boat is Joseph Dana who, until recently, acted as media coordinator for the ‘Popular Struggle Co-ordination Committee’ – the organizers of many or most of the regular riots and violent demonstrations in Israel and the disputed territories and promoters of the ‘third Intifada’. Dana is an old hand at disguising anti-Israel propaganda as ‘journalism’. His Twitter feed since he arrived in Athens shows how he too is engaging in preparing the scene for an unnecessary confrontation at sea. Note the visuals!
(Click on images to see original Tweet)
So, wouldn’t the logical step for a ‘scared’ Dana and his apparently equally afraid co-voyagers be to abandon this escapade, particularly in light of the warnings many of them have received from their own governments (including France, Canada, Australia and the United States) not to take part in deliberate provocation?
Of course not! Because for all their much publicized faux fears, the participants in this voyage are actually spoiling for a fight. There is, in fact, no point at all to their trip without that being its end result and we can be sure that Dana and his colleagues will have cameras at the ready to record any and every perceived abuse by Israeli soldiers in a situation which the flotilla organizers have deliberately engineered.
According to a recent report by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre we can expect to see the following types of actions initiated by the flotilla participants.
1) Barricading themselves in the various wheelhouses and engine rooms (considered strategic locations) to make it difficult for the IDF to take over the ship.
2) Resisting removal through “going limp.”
3) Bringing VIPs onto the upper deck to serve as human shields.
4) Throwing objects at Israeli Navy boats as they approach the ships, or at IDF soldiers.
5) Physical confrontation with IDF soldiers aboard the ships, using cold weapons (there were firearms aboard the Mavi Marmara, although the flotilla organizers deny it).
6) Spreading barbed wire and other obstacles on the decks to make it difficult for IDF soldiers to board the ships.
7) Verbal abuse directed at IDF soldiers and the State of Israel.
8) Causing difficulties for Israel after operatives have been detained (noncooperation, refusing deportation, using legal tools and the media).
It is clear that, as was the case with the previous flotilla, some of the tactics prepared in advance by the participants in this one are far from ‘non-violent’ or ‘passive’. It is also obvious that many of those intending to sail are yet again being willingly manipulated by political activists – some with connections to terrorist organizations – acting as ‘agents provocateurs’ with the aim of causing maximum publicity damage to Israel as part of their ongoing campaign against its legitimacy. The presence of equally politically motivated ‘journalists’ is designed to guarantee that the outcome will be both ugly and photographable.
Will the mainstream media once more lend its cooperation to the increasingly transparent publicity campaign against Israel by portraying belligerent political activists as ‘non-violent human rights campaigners’? Will a totally avoidable and deliberately provoked confrontation once more be hyped up as an example of Israeli cruelty and ‘disproportionate response’?
In all likelihood, yes – because the mainstream media appears to divide itself broadly into one of two categories: those who have yet to learn that they too are being manipulated and those who, like some of the middle-aged, grey-haired Westerners currently undergoing ‘non-violence’ training in Athens, are happy to be manipulated.
Of course if the flotilla were denied the oxygen of publicity supplied to it by the mainstream media it would lose its raison d’etre and most likely fade into obscurity. Confrontation and possible physical harm on both sides would then be avoided. That’s a responsibility the members of the real media need to think about – and quick – because in this case they are not just reporting on incidents of violence, they are – as all too often happens in this region – encouraging and participating in their creation.
Related articles
- ‘Freedom Flotilla 2 Publicity Stunt, Update 2 (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Freedom Flotilla 2′ Publicity Stunt Update (cifwatch.com)
- ‘Freedom Flotilla 2′ – Staying Pointless. (cifwatch.com)
An Iranian-Israeli named Meir Javedanfar penned a piece for CiF (Why Israel is wrong about Iran, June 25) which argued against an Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear weapon sites.
While Mr. Javedanfar’s argument certainly leaves much to debate, the most interesting theme in the comment thread pertained to the Iranian apologists it produced – those who see Israel as the root cause of turmoil in the Middle East and evidently don’t care much for criticisms of Iran’s atrocious human rights record, or the truth about their most successful export, terrorism.
Almost comical moral inversion: Iran as “conservative” and “inward looking”. Israelis, in contrast to the introspective Iranians, are zealots. Israel is a state built on terror and expansionism. (260 Recommends)
The following, seriously making the claim that Iran holds the “moral high ground” in regional and international affairs, is too comical to have been written by a mere Guardian reader alone, as it seems more like a communique from the Iranian Ministry of Information. (88 Recommends)
The world can only hope and pray that Iran reigns in Israel. (25 Recommends)
While only the Guardian would publish a so-called Global Peace Index which places Israel below Iran in terms of peace and human rights, it takes a Guardian reader to actually give such a report credibility. (26 Recommends)
Alice Walker, center, on a Code Pink "mission' to Gaza
To contextualize Alice Walker’s explanation for participating in the “Freedom Flotilla II” (Alice Walker: Why I’m joining the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza, Guardian, June 25) you need to read her moral reasoning here:
“I feel that the Israel that many Jews dreamed of having – that one is gone. That’s demolished. I think it’s time for people to accept that. Because what you have now is something that is so frightening. Israel is as frightening to many of us as Germany used to be.”
To equate the democratic Jewish state with Nazi Germany is more than stupid, its unimaginably cruel – a simply grotesque moral inversion of the worst order.
If Walker was part of a left who was loyal to liberal principles, who swore allegiance not to the post-colonialism of fools, nor the anti-imperialism of idiots, but, rather, to a progressive politics which took seriously moral distinctions between flawed liberal democracies and reactionary Islamic fundamentalism, she would have long ago been denounced as a hypocrite of the first order, someone ill-suited to the cause to which she claimed allegiance.
Asking Israel to defend itself from charges that it is like the Nazis who exterminated 6 million Jews is as reasonable as asking America to defend itself from charges, from Iran, that it is the “Great Satan”. That is, nobody who’s morally or intellectually serious would deem such a hateful and grotesque invective as worth of a reply.
Walker explains that the boat she’s riding to Gaza, The Audacity of Hope, is “carrying letters to the people of Gaza. Letters expressing solidarity and love.”
She further, quite audaciously – and comically in the context of the violent, anti-Semitic, and fanatically illiberal Hamas regime she’s providing moral succor – conjures Ghandi and, covering her liberal Jewish flank, even has the gall to summon the moral example of “ the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the American south in our time of need”.
As a Jew, I don’t require Walker’s sanctimony; as a morally sober student of the civil rights movement, I’m simply aghast at the attempt to equate the quite moral struggles of African-Americans in the 50s and 60s with Hamas’ explicit genocidal designs on the Jewish state. Walker demeans the movement to which she claims authority. Ismail Haniyeh as Martin Luther King mocks the latter and grotesquely elevates the former.
Walker, schooled in the art of compassion, liberalism, and liberation evidently fails to note that the regime she’s providing succor is beyond illiberal, is more than merely regressive. Indeed, Hamas, the movement which runs Gaza, which imports arms from Iran, and which fires rockets at Israeli schoolchildren, resembles – indeed, wildly exceeds – the racist fervor of the ”‘good ol’ boys’ of Neshoba County”, the racists of Mississippi, Bull Conner, and Jim Crow.
Walker’s liberalism is a liberalism turned, morally, upside down.
She’s evidently blind to the explicit classical anti-Semitism of Hamas’ founding charter, which quotes directly from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ to “prove” that Jews are indeed trying to take over the world, unaware of their radical misogyny or their homophobia and religious supremacy.
Nick Cohen’s book, “What’s Left?”, dissects, with laser precision, the radical left’s moral blind spots, their tendency to overlook, in the name of multiculturalism!, the sins of “dark-skinned” despots, and obsess over the sins of the democratic West.
If there was a decent left, a left which elevated liberal principle over moral posturing, Alice Walker would be derided as the political traitor she is and excommunicated from the moral community she dares to claim allegiance.
Let it be known that the cognitive war against the right of the Jewish state to live is being waged in the name of liberalism and civil rights – reactionary anti-Zionism in the name of progressive politics.
“Audacious” doesn’t begin to describe it.
Related articles
- How Palestinians became the baby seals of the Western human rights lobby (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
- Bollan suggests moral equivalence between Israel’s war in Gaza and Nazi Holocaust against Jews (cifwatch.com)
Like this:
A while ago, Elder of Ziyon published an article well worth a re-read in which he explained why these commonly found maps are both inaccurate and deliberately misleading.
(By the way, here is the much more relevant map, which Elder created and posted, illustrating how much land Israel has given away, since ’67, for the sake of peace:)
Commonly found they indeed are, but I for one did not realise just how broad their spread has been on the internet until I decided to try to find their origins. These maps, usually entitled “Palestinian loss of land 1946 – 2000″ get 2,800,000 search results on Google. They appear on neo-Nazi forums (to which I will not link), on the English language website of Hamas’ Izz a Din al Qassam brigades, on the sites of various ‘peace campaigners’ such as ‘Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel‘ and on some new-age hippy sites. They can be found on Greek, Swedish, Irish and Malaysian sites among others and are promoted by Canadian 9/11 ‘truthers’ and the Evangelical Lutherian Church in America. They are advertised for sale on the internet in post-card form by both ‘Friends of Sabeel North America’ and the Ann Arbour Quakers.
They also appear on this Palestinian website where they are accredited to the University of Bethlehem with a 2006 copyright date. So, is the University of Bethlehem their point of origin? That seems unlikely because on the ‘Friends of Sabeel UK’ website, where the maps are also used, they are accredited to one Tim Biles and said to be taken from his book “A Puppy Dies: And Other Stories from the Holy Land”. The book was published in 2003 and that was the earliest reference I was able to find to these maps.
So who is Tim Biles? Well, actually his full title is the Reverend Canon Timothy Biles and he’s a retired Anglican vicar from Dorset. He still does a bit of preaching, such as this recent sermon in which he manages to display some of his prejudices by inserting his own politically hued interpretations into the New Testament story of the Good Samaritan.
“The Samaritans of the story lived – then, and now – in a wild and rugged patch of mountainous land sandwiched between Galilee in the north and Jerusalem in the south. The Jews wanted that land so that they could make the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem for the Festivals without let or hindrance. The Samaritans barred the way.”
Of course nowhere in Luke chapter 10, verses 25 to 37 is any reference whatsoever made to Jews trying to gain control of Samaritan land, but Tim Biles exploits his position as a trusted member of the clergy in order to introduce to his listeners the idea that the Samaritans in the story are the equivalent of today’s Palestinians and that the self-interested Jews were intent on ‘land-grabbing’ even back then.
This very subtly imparted promotional message is indicative of something that goes on a lot in various churches these days; a type of subliminal advertising which establishes concepts in the minds of an audience convinced that their source is beyond reproach by virtue of the clerical robes worn by the promoter. The somewhat unspiritual intent behind it is actually the promotion of a specific narrative surrounding the political situation in the Middle East.
Tim Biles also acts as editor and consultant for an Anglican Church newsletter produced by the UK charity the Jerusalem and the Middle East Church Association. There, among the news items, he promotes various writers on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict such as the far- Left activist and founder of ‘Gush Shalom’ Uri Avneri and Rabbis Howard Cooper and Marc H Ellis – both known for their anti-Zionism. In this issue, a book by Sabeel’s supercessionist leader Naim Ateek is reviewed by the veteran anti-Israel campaigner and Anglican vicar Stephen Sizer. In this edition, former British diplomat and member of The Council for Arab British Understanding (CAABU) Sir Howard Walker promotes the notion that “Washington seems to be in perpetual thrall to the Zionist lobby” and there is a feature on Garth Hewitt and the Amos Trust which promotes both the Kairos Palestine Document (which provides pseudo-religious justification for boycotts of Israel) and the ‘Just Peace’ campaign which is co-ordinated by anti-Israel activist Ben White.
British readers may recall that in December 2009 The Amos Trust, together with CAABU, ‘Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods’, the ‘International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network’ and ‘War on Want’ organised an ‘alternative’ Christmas carol service at a church in Covent Garden, London, which featured re-written versions of traditional songs.
The chorus to “The Holly and the Ivy” for example, became:
O the rampaging of settlers
And the rolling of the tanks;
The grinding of the bulldozers
As olives fall in ranks.
“Once in Royal David’s city” was re-written as follows:
Once in royal David’s city
Stood a big apartheid wall;
People entering and leaving
Had to pass a checkpoint hall.
Bethlehem was strangulated,
And her children segregated.
Though this city is a symbol
To the world of peace and love,
Concrete walls have closed around her,
Settlements expand above.
And apartheid Israel stands
All around on stolen lands
Predictably, a message of support for the event was sent by the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem which helps bring us to the unpleasant conclusion that quite a few members of the Anglican Church are involved in the spread of the assault on Israel’s legitimacy.
Tim Biles may or may not have drawn up those fake maps himself, or he may have acquired them elsewhere. Whatever the case, according to Friends of Sabeel UK they apparently appear in his now out of print book. I have found no evidence of Biles having corrected FOSUK’s accreditation or of any objection on his part to being associated with what is blatant anti-Israel propaganda. Had he wished to do so, the task would not have been difficult; FOSUK’s officials include more than one prominent member of the Anglican Church. Neither is any evidence to be found of the Church disassociating itself from Biles as a result of the use of fake maps; in fact it continues to allow him to engage in partisan editing of newsletters and preach in its establishments. The Salisbury Diocese’s own Sarum College held a book launch for Biles’ latest literary work only last year.
Obviously, the Anglican Church of the United Kingdom, with Her Majesty the Queen at its head, is not immune to the influences of the kind of political extremists who have also led the British Methodists and Quakers down the slippery slope of singling out the Jewish state as a unique target for unprecedented hostility and campaigns of exclusion. It is sad to see yet another once respected religious institution harbouring at the very heart of its establishment extremists who make cynical use of lies and dishonest propaganda such as the above maps, among other things, in order to propagate and spread a very ancient form of hatred.
The Church, of all institutions, and in particular given its own past history of which we have had a sombre reminder in recent days, should know better.
Related articles
- ‘Friends of Sabeel UK’ : promoting BDS and harming interfaith relations. (cifwatch.com)
- The Great Methodist BDS Hijack (cifwatch.com)
- Traitors, dupes, and double standards: Another chapter in the Guardian’s campaign against Israel (cifwatch.com)
- Lessons from the York Pogrom of 1190 (cifwatch.com)
The latest email revealing the political lunacy of Jim Bollan concerns an exchange about Scotland’s decision, in 2009, to release (on “humanitarian grounds”) the Lockerbie bomber - the Libyan named Abdelbaset al-Megrahi who planted the bomb on board Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 which killed all 270 passengers – between Bollan and an anti-boycott activist.
CLICK TO ENLARGE
And, then:
CLICK TO ENLARGE
So, Jim Bollan, a fierce proponent of boycotting Israel goods, and who has referred to Hamas as “freedom fighters” and expressed empathy towards the terrorists who massacred a Jewish family in Itamar, is now on record as defending the terrorist responsible for planting the bomb on a civilian plane which resulted in the murder of 270 innocent civilians, and implying a US conspiracy.
Jim Bollan continues to represent an exquisite example of the malice, bigotry, and political irrationality which informs the BDS movement.
For those of us on the front lines in the relentless cognitive war against Israel, Bollan is simply the gift that keeps on giving.
Related articles
- In new email exchange, Jim Bollan claims to have read Hamas charter; finds nothing objectionable about anti-Semitic sections (cifwatch.com)
- Confirmed: West Dunbartonshire Councillor Jim Bollan Did Correspond With “Hamas Supporter” (cifwatch.com)
- The inimitable Mr. McColl (cifwatch.com)
- Bollan suggests moral equivalence between Israel’s war in Gaza and Nazi Holocaust against Jews (cifwatch.com)
- Jim Bollan (Scottish BDS Advocate) anti-Israel Emails of the Day (cifwatch.com)
- Why has the Guardian ignored the Scottish boycott story? (Take the CiF Watch poll!) (cifwatch.com)
This is cross posted at Simply Jews by SlingshotKiller
The term “asaJew” is a marker of identity politics. It says that I, the speaker, have some special authority to say what I’m going to say because of my identity. Usually identity politics is adopted by people who claim to speak for their collectivity. The “asaJew” says that non-Jews should pay special attention because they are raising an issue which is more easily seen from a Jewish point of view. So an “asa Jew” might say that Jews are able to sense or sniff antisemitism when a non-Jew might have been unaware. Jews might be sensitive to certain attitudes, figures of speech, images, to which a non-Jew might not be.
Jewish anti-Zionists give their identity politics a strange twist. Instead of claiming to represent the opinion of most of their fellow Jews, they mobilize their identity “asaJew” in order to give their oppositional view more legitimacy. They are saying to non-Jews that this or that might seem to them as though it was Antisemitic, but I, the Jew, am happy to reassure you that it isn’t.
But if the thing which the anti-Zionist asa Jew is trying to inoculate against is a thing which most Jews do find troublesome, then they employ another little twist. They claim that their Jewish identity is authentic in some way that most Jews’ identities are inauthentic. So the anti-Zionist “asaJew” may be in a tiny minority but she is claiming that she, nevertheless, is the real Jew. The ethical Jew. The critical Jew. The anti-nationalist Jew. The courageous Jew. The far-sighted Jew. And the other Jews, the herd, are actually not such real Jews; their Jewishness has been subverted by Zionism and Islamophobia and a secular unconcern with Jewish ethics.
There are two possible critiques of the “asaJew” rhetoric. One is the critique of identity politics in general, which says that you should just say what you think to be true, you should present evidence and argument, and hope that people listening will be persuaded by that – those who do this prefer to leave the claims to particular identity-based authority behind.
The other possibility is that somebody might accept that Jews in general, or Jewish communal bodies, for example, might speak with some added legitimacy. This might come from either their particular standpoint or from their claims to represent the collective. So you might think that these ways of speaking “asaJew” are more legitimate than that of the anti-Zionist Jew.
The anti-zionist Jew says “asaJew” in order to turn opinion against the majority of her fellow Jews. She wants to say that because she doesn’t find something to be antisemitic, for example, and she is a Jew, and she speaks as a Jew, then they should accept that it isn’t antisemitic. Because if a Jew says something isn’t antisemitic then it can’t be. Right?
Related articles
You don’t have to agree with Melanie Phillips on every issue to acknowledge that she is a truly indispensable and courageous voice in contrast to the moral cesspool of anti-Zionist commentary so ubiquitous in the UK, and I ask that you continue supporting her by visiting her new site, here:
http://www.melaniephillips.com/
I’d also highly recommend reading her book, The World Turned Upside Down, which you can purchase at Amazon UK, here, or at Amazon US, here.
As Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks said:
“With ferocious courage, Melanie Phillips challenges a series of myths and irrationalities that have achieved canonical status in the contemporary world. If civilization depends on the ability to give dissenting voices a hearing, then The World Turned Upside Down may well be one of the most important tests of Western civilization in our time.”
Here’s wishing Phillips well at her new site where she will, undoubtedly, continue truly speaking truth to power.
This is cross posted by Simon Plosker, the Managing Editor of Honest Reporting. The essay originally appeared in Ynet
Israeli soldiers being beaten with metal rods by "activists" on Mavi Marmara in 2010
“We are in a battle, and more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media.” So said Al-Qaeda’s new leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in November 2005. But what happens when the media attempts to define the physical battlefield by becoming active participants in the story?
We should all be extremely concerned by the announcement that among those sailing on the imminent flotilla to Gaza are journalists representing mainstream media, including the New York Times and camera crews from CNN and CBS.
This is a clear example of the symbiotic relationship between the media and anti-Israel agitators such as those behind the flotilla. After all, it wasn’t the violent actions of the passengers on board the Mavi Marmara that caused Israel so much damage – it was the diplomatic and public relations fallout from an incident that occupied the international press for days after the event.
The “martyrdom” of nine Turkish passengers constituted a PR success for the IHH organization and its cohorts. Clearly then the only reason the mainstream media would jump on board the next flotilla would be the prospect of capturing a repeat performance. Likewise, the flotilla’s organizers are counting on the media to publish a story whose narrative has already been written – namely that of some plucky “peace activists” attempting to break a brutish and illegal naval blockade of the poor Palestinians in their open-air prison.
Imagine that the Israeli Navy boards the flotilla’s ships one by one, forcing the vessels to dock without incident for inspection in an Israeli port. This would be the ultimate failure on the part of the organizers to create a major incident as well as for the media on board who hope to be on the scene reporting on the biggest news story of the day.
‘Useful idiots’
Having established that both the flotilla participants and the accompanying media need each other, can we honestly count on the New York Times, CNN and CBS as well as other “embedded” journalists to report on the situation with objectivity even if the story doesn’t turn out to be as dramatic as they would hope?
Or will the mere presence of the media act as an invitation for confrontation and potential violence as so-called “activists” play for the cameras? And what of the journalists themselves? While over the years, some reporters have been inadvertently killed or injured by the IDF, we cannot expect soldiers entering a potential warzone, as the Mavi Marmara became, to run the added gauntlet of avoiding media personnel who have purposely positioned themselves in the crossfire. It not only risks the lives of the journalists but also those of Israel’s soldiers.
The Israeli government closed off access to the Gaza Strip for journalists during Operation Cast Lead, ostensibly for their own protection and to spare IDF troops from yet another factor outside of their control on the battlefield. There was a valid argument that this worked against Israel’s interests. The media, camped on a hilltop overlooking Gaza, was antagonized and vengeful while the images from Gaza itself were dominated by al-Jazeera and other less than objective sources.
This time, Israel would do well to remind those journalists on board the flotilla that they will be active participants in an illegal attempt to break what is a legal naval blockade under international law.
We can only hope that the mainstream media will not be influenced by the ideologues and “useful idiots” that make up the disparate groups on board, whose dominant zeitgeist is a hatred of Israel rather than a love of universal human rights. We will have to rely on the professionalism of the journalists to capture the reality of what occurs free from the prejudice that colors so much of the reporting on Israel.
Based on previous experience, however, we shouldn’t have high expectations. This ship has sailed. Will Israel be left clinging on to flotation devices, drowning in a sea of negative publicity or will this be a fishing expedition in calm waters?
The flotilla is sailing. It’s time to baton down the hatches once again.
Related articles
- ‘Freedom Flotilla 2′ – Staying Pointless. (cifwatch.com)
This letter was written by a British Muslim named Kasim Hafeez
Dear Margo MacDonald,
I’m writing to you in regards to your appearance on the BBC BiG Question, where you propagated a very dangerous and vicious myth that Israel is an‘artificial state’.
One must really question with what knowledge or lack of you have managed to come to this most bizarre conclusion. The State of Israel of was created by the United Nations acceptance of the Palestine partition plan United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181. Unfortunately the Arab states refused to accept the Jewish state and indeed had incited numerous riots and pogroms against the Jewish population in the region prior to 1948, thus the war of 1948 took place where the fledgling state of Israel had to defend its people from the might of several Arab nations.
Now I don’t understand how Israel is an “artificial state”, and I’d like to know what other states you would class as equally illegitimate now that you feel it is appropriate on national television to declare an independent sovereign nation, whose independence was ratified by the United Nations, as artificial.
My parents and grandparents are from Pakistan, a state that only came to being in 1947 after a similar partition plan to split the state between its Muslim and Hindu inhabitants. I know for a fact that Muslims had not had a continuous presence in the area that became Pakistan for 2000 years unlike the Jews of Israel, and I know that no area of Pakistan is considered as a holy land or integral to the Muslim faith like the land Israel is to the Jewish people.
Millions of people crossed the frontiers of Pakistan and India’s frontiers as they ended up on the ‘wrong’ side yet I don’t see either side making case’s for the right to return. Also in this vein when Bangladesh (former East Pakistan) declared independence from Pakistan in 1971, “West Pakistanis” that were stranded in Bangladesh when the Pakistan army withdrew have had no international clamor to alleviate their suffering.
Indeed, The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is not addressing the plight of the Biharis despite the fact that a 2006 report estimated that between 240,000 and 300,000 Biharis live in 66 crowded camps in Dhaka and 13 other regions across Bangladesh and have no voting or citizenship rights. Yet no special UN body is set up to assist them, in fact the UN Refugee body will not assist them and self-righteous politicians and activists don’t seem so eager to condemn the Bangladeshi government, who has refused to grant these peoples any rights. Yet you condemn Israel, a state that is a democracy and has done much to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people, brought about largely by their own corrupt leaders, and offered those who wished to remain in the State of Israel after independence full citizenship. Let’s not forget that it was the Arab states that refused every partition plan. The double standard is sickening.
As someone who was brought up with strong anti-Semitic and anti- Israel views, I would urge you to (as I did) actually research the facts and try and learn the truth about Israel which wildly contradicts the steady stream of hate filled rhetoric about the Jewish state you’re constantly exposed to. The views you expressed on the Big Question only encourage the most radical Islamist voices in my own Muslim community and do nothing to support peace in the region.
Thank you
Kasim Hafeez
British citizen, Muslim, Proud Zionist and possible descendent of people from an ‘artificial state’ by your reckoning
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Though we’ve already posted on the Guardian’s severe financial crisis, Tom Wilson, who blogs at Tom Friedmann, posted his own piece on the issue and, when it comes to promoting the Guardian’s misfortunes, I simply don’t think its possible to overdo it.
It’s not uncommon to find opinion pieces in The Guardian praising Engels or prattling on about Marx yet the market forces that many at this publication decry seem to be about to do away with their jobs. Next month The Guardian is anticipated to announce significant job losses after experiencing yet another annual loss, this time of £35 Million. Clearly the public just dosen’t want to read the newspaper’s ultra-liberal and anti-western rhetoric day in day out quite as badly as its editors had anticipated. Indeed from those who have observed rain sodden teenagers handing out free copies of The Guardian outside of Kings Cross it would seem they can’t even give it away now. This all comes as a reminder that despite the huge amount of reverence that the Guardian seems to receive in certain circles it really only represents the view point of a tiny out of touch minority. All the more worrying then is that so many former employees of the BBC have commented on the extent to which BBC bosses allow their position to be informed by The Guardian which we are told has long been the paper of choice down at the Beeb.
Time and time again the Guardian has sort out and served up the most radical writers to give most counterintuitive and fringe line available. On just about every issue you can take the mainstream opinion, spin it a hundred degrees to the Left and you will end up at the Guardian’s position on the subject. On any given day you can tune into the Guardian’s Comment is Free page webpage and get a taste of what life would be like if we all lived on planet Chomsky. From trashing the Royal Wedding and insulting Britain’s war dead to branding international human rights activists Imperialists and peddling the worst anti-Semitic slurs against Israel and its supporters. The Guardian has made its bed in an anarchist squat and now in an LSD fuelled haze it can lie in it (it recently published an article in defence of the darling of the Hallucinogen addicts; Timothy Leary).
In an attempt to white wash this abysmal turn of events Guardian spokespeople have claimed that the paper will be moving some of its focus to online reporting targeting the American market, no doubt in an attempt to bring the system down from within. And so it would seem that all that leaves for us to do is to wish our American friends good luck and sit back and watch The Guardian slowly collapse in on itself like a small failing Communist country.
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What the Guardian won’t report: Notorious anti-Semite, Gilad Atzmon, a featured speaker at flotilla fundraiser
June 27, 2011 in Comments which are off-topic, ad hominem, racist, vulgar or include threats of violence will be deleted | Tags: Alice Walker, Antisemitism, Flotilla, Gilad Atzmon, Nazism, Protocols of the Elders of Zion | by Adam Levick | 12 comments
H/T Engage
How anyone in the media can cover the latest Flotilla as a movement which represents progressive politics, in even the broadest sense of that word, is truly one of the mysteries of modern journalism.
As I pointed out previously, one of the literary celebrities on board the U.S. vessel is Alice Walker – who is on record comparing Israel with Nazi Germany. You’d think that a movement affiliated with someone leveling such an ugly and hateful charge would diminish the progressive luster of the movement, but the Guardian, as with much of the mainstream media, has demonstrated a tremendous capacity at ignoring facts which contradict a preconceived narrative of immutable Palestinian victimhood and Israeli villainy.
More recently, the U.S. Boat to Gaza, which is about to set sail in order to break Israel’s blockade of lethal weapons flowing into Hamas-controlled Gaza, is proudly advertising a benefit featuring Gilad Atzmon.
How anti-Semitic is this acclaimed jazz saxophonist?
Here are a couple quotes which would seem rather, let’s say, unprogressive:
And, check out these gems:
This is more than mere bigotry against Jews. Its’ rhetorical evil that is simply indistinguishable from Nazi and other classic expressions of historical Jew-hatred.
Yet, despite such odious associations, the flotilla movement will continue to be covered by the Guardian as a force of liberalism, and characterize its critics as Zionist apologists – further proof of the profound and stunning moral inversion which continually informs coverage of the Middle East by the “world’s leading liberal voice.”
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