Israel bashing hits new peak
Israel bashing hits new peak | Mindelle Jacobs | Columnists | Comment | Calgary Sun.
It’s amazing how many people who don’t live next door to a terrorist state threatening their destruction jump on the propaganda bandwagon to delegitimize Israel.
These armchair critics can sleep quietly in their beds at night, safe in the knowledge they won’t have to dash into bomb shelters as rockets rain down on their heads from a few kilometres away.
Nor will they likely have to worry that a psychopath is going to blow himself up in a crowded downtown spot in an orgy of wanton blood lust.
Israel-bashing reached a new peak this week after nine activists were killed when Israeli navy commandos raided a Turkish ship trying to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.
The spectre of mighty Israel going up against a boatload of peaceniks, with resulting bloodshed, has unleashed world outrage and condemnation of Israel, left the Jewish state’s relationship with Turkey in tatters and made Israel even more of a pariah.
It doesn’t matter that, as videos clearly show, the Israeli marines were acting in self-defence after being attacked by a mob wielding clubs and other weapons.
Apparently, it would have been better, from a public relations perspective, if the Israeli commandos had offered no resistance and the mob was allowed to kill them.
PR disaster
Instead, the marines had the temerity to fight back. They are alive, nine activists are tragically dead and Israel has a PR disaster on its hands.
Militarily, Israel may have won this latest skirmish but it lost another propaganda war in what has become a lengthy battle for public opinion.
Questions abound as to whether Israel had the right to stop the Gaza-bound flotilla in international waters.
There was no indication, after all, that Israel was under imminent attack. On the other hand, the Jerusalem Post reported a search of the boat unearthed a cache of bullet-proof vests, night-vision goggles and gas masks.
Strange peaceniks, these people.
One also has to wonder why the flotilla organizers didn’t dock in Israel or Egypt to permit Israeli or Egyptian officials to check for weapons.
Humanitarian goods could have then been transported by land to Gaza. (In fact, Israel routinely transfers humanitarian supplies, including food and medicine, to Gaza.) So the reason for the flotilla was not to get humanitarian goods to Gaza but to break the blockade and force Israel to respond.
Israel’s lengthy marine embargo of Gaza — to prevent the shipment of weapons — may be a terrible tactic because it does more harm than good by further blackening Israel’s reputation.
Hamas happy
It’s a terrific strategy for Hamas supporters because the more people Israel kills — however reluctantly — the happier Hamas is.
Unfortunately, it puts Israel in the impossible situation of being the only country in the world not permitted to defend itself. If it retaliates against thousands of rockets, it’s condemned for unintended civilian casualties. But Hamas terrorists deliberately operate amid civilians, so innocents will die.
No matter how few people Israel kills, it’s always described as a “massacre” in the Arab world. When Muslims slaughter many more Muslims, as in the murder of about 90 Ahmadi Muslims in mosques in Pakistan last Friday, the Arab street is silent.
The Muslim world is awash in internecine terrorism and the world takes no notice. But when a Jew kills a Muslim, Israel-bashers are apoplectic.
These anti-Semites conveniently gloss over the fact that Hamas wants Israel destroyed. That’s like the IRA demanding England as well, or the Tibetans wanting to overrun China or the Kurds vowing to take over Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.
The mind boggles.
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