The effort to destroy the Jewish state has many fronts. One front is in Iran, where the maniacal regime that has repeatedly promised to "wipe Israel off the map" marches inexorably toward a nuclear bomb. Another is in Gaza, from which Hamas has lobbed 10,000 missiles into Israeli cities. Yet another front, the most insidious, is comprised of the propaganda arm of the Palestinian movement. And this front thrives for only one reason — the complicity of the world press and the so-called "international community."
It was the propaganda arm that staged the "Freedom Flotilla." But there have been many previous productions: The propaganda arm was responsible for the photo-shopped images of damage to Lebanon during the 2006 war, the staged "death" of 12-year-old Muhammad Al Durrah, the "massacre" at Jenin, and the "war crimes" in Gaza. In each and every case, the "news" of Israeli atrocities was broadcast far and wide by organizations like Reuters, AP, CNN, and AFP. The United Nations has offered its imprimatur to every libel. The truth seemed always to have a case of laryngitis.
Today, in the wake of the confrontation between Israeli soldiers and the provocateurs aboard the Gaza flotilla, the remarkably incurious world press is providing exactly the sort of headlines on which the organizers knew they could count. "Flotilla Attack Is Israel's Kent State" screamed the Huffington Post. Agence France Presse carried a banner quoting the Turkish foreign minister to the effect that "Israel has lost all legitimacy." Every news outlet I checked docilely described the flotilla as "humanitarian."
Don't members of the press ever resent being so used?
Fact: Israel imposed a blockade of Gaza to prevent weapons from reaching the radical Islamic regime there that continues to make war on Israeli civilians. Egypt, too, has blockaded the strip, hoping to choke off weapons to Hamas, which it views as a threat.
Fact: Humanitarian relief is delivered to Gaza from Israel on a daily basis. During the first three months of this year, 94,500 tons of supplies were transferred to Gaza from Israel, including 48,000 tons of food products; 40,000 tons of wheat; 2,760 tons of rice; 1,987 tons of clothes and footwear; and 553 tons of milk powder and baby food for the strip's 1.5 million inhabitants.
Representatives of international aid groups and the United Nations move freely to and from the Gaza Strip.
Fact: Upon learning of the intentions of the Gaza flotilla, the Israeli government asked the organizers to deliver their humanitarian aid first to an Israeli port where it would be inspected (for weapons) before being forwarded to Gaza. The organizers refused. "There are two possible happy endings" a Muslim activist on board explained, "either we will reach Gaza or we will achieve martyrdom."
Fact: The flotilla ignored multiple instructions from Israeli navy ships to change course and follow them to the Israeli port of Ashdod.
Fact: On board one of the ships, according to Al-Jazeera, the "humanitarian" Palestinians sang "Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return" — a reference to the 628 massacre of Jews in Arabia at the hands of Muhammad.
Fact: The flotilla's participants included the IHH, a "humanitarian relief fund" based in Turkey that has close ties to Hamas and to global jihadi groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chechnya and elsewhere, and which has also organized relief to anti-U.S. Islamic radicals in Fallujah, Iraq. A French intelligence report suggests that IHH has provided documents to terrorists, permitting them to pose as relief workers. Among the other cheerleaders — former British MP and Saddam Hussein pal George Galloway, all- purpose America and Israel hater Noam Chomsky, and John Ging, head of UNRWA, the U.N.'s agency for Palestinian support.
Fact: When the family of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was kidnapped during a cross border raid by Hamas in 2006, offered to support the flotilla if they would agree to ask Hamas to permit international agencies to visit their son, they were rebuffed.
Fact: When Israeli commandos rappelled down ropes to the deck of the Mavi Marmara, they were assaulted and beaten with metal poles and baseball bats by the Palestinians on board. (It's available on theisraelproject.org).
Some commentators sympathetic to Israel complain that the Israelis were late getting their explanation of events to the press. That's probably true, but almost irrelevant. There is a jerking of knees around the world whenever and wherever Israel is forced to defend herself. This eagerness to repeat the Palestinian version of events, to assume the very worst about Israel, and to ignore the history of blatant and outrageous lies by Israel's enemies — amounts to joining them.
To find out more about Mona Charen and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM
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Mona, you are honest and unbiased. Keep it up...it's rare in you profession.
Comment: #1
Posted by: nahum
Sat Jun 5, 2010 11:26 AM
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At least Obama did not play dress-up and land on a carrier. (Funny, I don't remember your columns critical of Bush for endless politicizing of the wars. Must of missed those.)
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"Obama doesn't talk about our abysmal lack of human intelligence in this long war. He called waterboarding and sleep deprivation for captured terrorists "torture" and banned those enhanced interrogation techniques." Yes, unlike the foolish little man from Texas and his puppet master VP, Obama listened to the experts in the field of interrogation who are very clear on the matter: TORTURE DOES NOT WORK. Obama is at least making some attempt to avoid committing war crimes, unlike the dim little Texan.
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Speaking of theater: It has been over seven months since the end of don't ask - don't tell in the military and, yet, there is no crisis of retention or recruitment in our armed services, contrary to the breathless warnings of Oliver north and his ilk. Mr. North, will you ever have the personal integrity and courage to admit that your predictions of disaster in this matter were political theater? Will you acknowledge that our men and women in uniform are made of stronger stuff than you told your readers? Don't you at least owe the troops an acknowledgement of their professionalism in this matter?
Comment: #2
Posted by: Mark
Thu May 3, 2012 10:22 PM
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At least Obama did not play dress-up and land on a carrier. (Funny, I don't remember your columns critical of Bush for endless politicizing of the wars. Must of missed those.)
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"Obama doesn't talk about our abysmal lack of human intelligence in this long war. He called waterboarding and sleep deprivation for captured terrorists "torture" and banned those enhanced interrogation techniques." Yes, unlike the foolish little man from Texas and his puppet master VP, Obama listened to the experts in the field of interrogation who are very clear on the matter: TORTURE DOES NOT WORK. Obama is at least making some attempt to avoid committing war crimes, unlike the dim little Texan.
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Speaking of theater: It has been over seven months since the end of don't ask - don't tell in the military and, yet, there is no crisis of retention or recruitment in our armed services, contrary to the breathless warnings of Oliver north and his ilk. Mr. North, will you ever have the personal integrity and courage to admit that your predictions of disaster in this matter were political theater? Will you acknowledge that our men and women in uniform are made of stronger stuff than you told your readers? Don't you at least owe the troops an acknowledgement of their professionalism in this matter?
Comment: #3
Posted by: Mark
Thu May 3, 2012 10:25 PM
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Re: Mark
"Speaking of theater: It has been over seven months since the end of don't ask - don't tell in the military and, yet, there is no crisis of retention or recruitment in our armed services, contrary to the breathless warnings of Oliver north and his ilk."
Thanks to Obama's planned gutting of the military, retention is going to be the least of our worries. The Army is finalizing plans to eliminate some 80,000 positions as we speak.
Comment: #4
Posted by: Jeff Gunn
Fri May 4, 2012 12:33 AM
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Sir;... I feel sorry for the democrats and republicans on this one... The republicans attacked a whole country to get at a single individual, and it was the democrats who had to finish the job... But for each of them there is no hope... They live with a: cut of the head and the beast will die mentality with Islam; but nothing could be further from the truth... From every drop of blood we shed a warrior for Islam will spring up...We think he was the problem... Bin Ladin was a symptom of the problem... We have gone to great lengths to engender hatred in these people instead of love... We should try as best we can to keep our distance... Every thing we do to hurt them hurts us... We cannot afford to fight these stupid wars in the fashion in which we have been fighting them... The class of generals we have today is useless...And the politicians are worse...Thanks ...Sweeney
Comment: #5
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Fri May 4, 2012 6:36 AM
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Jeff,
We spend more on our military than the next 15 or so nations COMBINED. How much is enough? If such expenditure is so vital, would you support a major and immediate increase in taxes to pay for this support of the military/security corporate complex? Paul Craig Roberts recently pointed out that empires have traditionally been extractive, extracting resources from the lands that they conquered - their colonies. Roberts then goes on to note that we have not extracted any natural resources from Iraq or Afghanistan. He postulates that these are also extractive colonizations, but that the extraction is from the pockets of the US tax payers (and their descendents) to the pockets of military/security related corporations. There is a not insignificant ring of truth to his theory.
Comment: #6
Posted by: Mark
Fri May 4, 2012 9:15 AM
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Re: Mark
"We spend more on our military than the next 15 or so nations COMBINED. How much is enough? If such expenditure is so vital, would you support a major and immediate increase in taxes to pay for this support of the military/security corporate complex?"
No, because I understand that increasing tax rates won't increase tax revenues.
And statistics like how much we spend on our military compared to other nations are totally meaningless without context. When comparing our expenditures to those of other western nations, the fact that we do spend so much is what allows them to spend so little on their own defense. I don't think that we should be subsidizing the defense of these other countries, but it is a fact that we do.
As for the expenditures of our competitors, dollar comparisons are meaningless, because most of them have conscript armies who are paid almost nothing. They also have largely state-controlled defense industries, again with near-slave wages for their workers.
The only meaningful comparison between our expenditures and theirs is in terms of GDP percentages. We're currently spending about 4.7% on defense. China is right around 2%, and Russia is at 3.9%. Considering that we actually pay our soldiers, that's not such a huge difference.
Comment: #7
Posted by: Jeff Gunn
Fri May 4, 2012 10:36 PM
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Re: Jeff Gunn;... Really; meaningless... If you look at the difference you would find that a great deal expense is made of buying high tech, which we think costs less than boots on the ground, and for contractors who do not cost less than troop running their own supply chain, and shipping which we have practically none of... I knew there was going to be war in Iraq the moment it became known that the U.S. had leased shipping, as if it had a choice... None of these ships fly our flag because they do not want to follow reasonable labor standard or pay taxes... Never since the days of our civil war and commodore Vanderbuilt was such a great part of our shipping leased... How can you be an international threat without your own shipping??? Expensively, with profits going abroad, or into foreign accounts of U.S. owners... It is possible that foreign shipping is producing foreign produced goods for us to fight with, but this is uncertain.. What I am certain of is that profiteers add the highest cost: and that much of the money they charge never leaves America...The gain to the public will be slight from these wars but the public will bear the price in lives and money...
As far as your notion that taxes will not increase revenue... Well, the poor and middle class are taxed out, and because they are taxed out, and as much of our business has fled from America like so many rats, there is not a lot to tax...It is only profitable for a short time to export your production and import your product...Steve Jobs was right that those job are never coming back...If you can produce abroad for pennies what you can sell for hundreds here, why change??? Sooner or later you come up against the fact that if you have no job you cannot bear taxation, and must become a consumer of tax revenue that only the rich can afford to pay, and the rich do not want to pay because it would tax them out of profitability since in many instances they have driven down the prices of their own products to steal market share from domestic production...People guided by profit are not patriots... They want us to fight for them...Certainly, without our help they cannot defend their own wealth...But they do not want to pay for it, and who does; but they are the only ones left who can pay, and if they did pay they would soon find exporting jobs and importing profit is just a shell game for the whole society... We lose productive capacity, see wages fall competing with slaves, and they see their profits fall in the ruined economy they alone have ruined... .. Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #8
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Sat May 5, 2012 4:47 AM
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Re: James A, Sweeney
Nobody ever claimed that having our logistics run by contractors would save money. It was never intended to.
The reason we have contractors doing those jobs today is that they were largely eliminated within the military, in an effort to shift bodies into combat roles without raising the statutory personnel caps that Congress put in place. This all began during the Clinton administration. It was a pet project of Al Gore's when he was VP.
And as far as it being "my notion" that raising tax rates won't increase revenue, you don't have to take my word for it. It's been proven time and time again. New Jersey tried it not too long ago, and saw their tax revenues go down, not up, as people left the state. California has done the same thing. When we do it at the federal level, businesses go overseas.
It's not rocket science.
Comment: #9
Posted by: Jeff Gunn
Sun May 6, 2012 1:12 AM
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Mr. North,
It seems that, given the news this week, that the Obama administration is not doing too bad in the "HUMINT" department. I look forward to your next column explaining how Obama did this all wrong.
Comment: #10
Posted by: Mark
Wed May 9, 2012 11:31 PM
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