One had hopes that after the knee-jerk reactions of the mainstream press against Israel and in favor of the "peace protesters" in the Gaza-bound flotilla, that the facts (especially those video tapes of the "humanitarians" wielding guns, knives and pipes!) would force some serious re-thinking.And it has.
Perhaps for only a few...but it's a relevant few including articles in such generally liberal publications as the National Catholic Reporter (Michael Sean Winters “Judging Israel”), The Daily Beast (Leslie H. Gelb's “Israel Was Right”) and the New Republic (Marty Peretz' "In The Great Flotilla Debate, The Facts Are On Israel's Side").
The Peretz piece was particularly interesting:
Look, I wish the Israeli raid on the so-called “Freedom Flotilla” had ended differently...But, frankly, when some 800 men and women, distributed over six boats after weeks and weeks of preparation, are headed towards Gaza on the wings of slogan and hysteria, you don’t take that many chances. Somebody has trouble in mind.
The first five vessels were steered quietly to the Israeli port city of Ashdod, which means that neither their passengers nor the Israeli commandos were especially provocative. The sixth ship, which had 600 activist Turkish voyeurs on board, is an entirely different story. Sponsored by an organization labeled the Humanitarian Relief Fund (I.H.H.), it is said to have ties to Al Qaeda. Which would be logical since Al Qaeda is an ally of Hamas. An intriguing tripartite liaison...
The propaganda for the flotilla has been in the works for months. Most of it was simply false. The poverty in Gaza is not qualitatively greater than that of your average Arab city. (Take Cairo. Or Amman, for that matter.) The markets are full of fruit and vegetables ... and flowers. Persistent pockets of deprivation exist in the historic refugee concentrations, which the Palestinian political class maintains as evidence of the ancient wrong. And, no, nobody is building big houses ... except again the elites, to the extent that they can smuggle materiel through the hundreds of tunnels which are perhaps less corrupt than the ordinary channels of commerce.
Who is behind this overhyped mission of mercy? And who is its beneficiary? It is none other than Hamas, the Gazan outpost of the global jihad, cousin of the Taliban, second cousin once-removed of Hezbollah. Wishing Hamas well, laboring for its success, is actually a crime against the Palestinians themselves...
The law is on Israel’s side. Ethics and history are on Israel’s side. Those who are on the side of Hamas are actually enemies of civilization.
