THE GAZA FLOTILLA AND THE DEATH OF LOGIC

By Schmoel Yitzhak

If a war correspondent from The Daily Planet on Mars happened to have somehow materialized to cover the Gaza flotilla story, surely his (or her) first thought would be something along the lines of (translated from the Martian), "This defies credulity!"

The Martian, with no ties either to the Israeli or Arab side, would judge the facts on and off the ground. 

For starters, the objective reporter would question the "humanitarian" nature of aspects of the flotilla crusade.

"Hmm," the reporter would say, "tons and tons of supplies are shipped into Gaza by the Israelis. Yet, Hamas, which rules Gaza by force, explicitly wants to wipe Israel off the map. And yet it is the Israelis who daily ship  humanitarian goods to their enemies. I don't get it."

If that logic would confuse the visitor; how about this: the Israelis voluntarily moved every Jew out of Gaza in the hope -- expectation! -- that the Palestinians living there would once and for all live in peace with their Israeli neighbors.

Peace? Yeah, sure. The unending barrage of rockets virtually turned the city of Sderot into a ghost town. Ashdod and Ashkelon became targets. The very last item on Hamas agenda was peace.

"Well," the Martian would surmise, "the Israelis give Arabs something for nothing and in return Hamas attempts to rocket Jews to death. That doesn't make sense."

If Sir Logic had fallen into a comatose state in the Middle East, it finally perished with media coverage of the flotilla crusade. 

Mind you, I'm not talking about such chronically anti-Israel mouthpieces such as CNN or the Los Angeles Times. 

One would have expected a fair report from the New York Daily News owned by Mortimer B. Zuckerman.

After all Zuckerman once headed a group of American philanthropists who funded millions for Gaza citizens to peacefully take over the hothouses and other successful agricultural businesses left intact by the Israelis. The thanks Zuckerman and friends got for their good works was the immediate destruction of all the productive facilities given to the Arabs. Instead, rocket launchers replaced the hothouses.,

So, how did The Daily News react to what was Israeli's distinctly peaceful attempt to shepherd the flotilla to port?

A pair of distorted headlines in The News: BOTCHED RAID RILES WORLD. ISRAEL FACES BACKLASH AFTER SHOOTOUT. 

For one thing, the raid was not a raid. It was an attempt to have the so-called humanitarian goods delivered to the Israeli port where they then would be delivered to Gaza. Not that Israel had to do that but it merely was ready to follow-up on the alleged Good Samaritan attempt. 

Secondly, it was not "botched" in any way, shape or form. 

The flotilla was notified up, down and sideways that, by international law, it could not proceed to Gaza which -- as Hamas will readily admit by words and deeds -- has been at war with Israel since it was able to put its rocket-launchers in place. 

If there was to be a "backlash," it should have been directed at the (sic) humanitarians who had loaded up with arms of assorted types and then turned them on Israeli commandos who had been training for all eventualities but preferred a peaceful settlement of the affair.

When fired upon by the flotilla phonies, the Israelis had no choice to fire back -- or be killed. When attacked by knife-wielding terrorists, the soldiers reacted as any sensible serviceman would; kill the bums.

That the News should suggest that Benjamin Netanyahu's government faced a "backlash" is roughly equivalent to a professor informing his class that he firmly believes that we are in the month of June.

Of course, Israel would face a backlash. When isn't it the target of unfair criticism? 

Is it breaking news that the United Nations for decades has served as a quasi-legitimate platform for anti-Israeli hate. You can start with the vicious, distorted, Goldstone Report and slip into an endless tar pit of UN lies.

Then, we have those pretending to be fair, starting with the American president.

So far down in the polls -- did you ever hear of the BP oil spill? -- that he's hardly visible, Obama needed something to distract himself from the Louisiana ooze. So, here comes the flotilla, the Israeli response and the chief executive's response to that; namely he wants a "transparent" investigation into the flotilla episode.

Nice. Very nice.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans still are awaiting a transparent -- you won't get it from BO or BP -- probe into the black sea that has enveloped the Gulf of Mexico.

Okay, let's get right back to Obama's transparency challenge, and point out that the causes and effects of the flotilla farce have been so clearly defined that one could refer to them as a blend of 20-20 hindsight-foresight.

Any one with half-a-brain when it comes to to public relations knew -- and knows full well -- that the boats-for-Gaza plan was designed NOT as a humanitarian move but rather an attempt to humiliate Israel before the world.

In plain Brooklynese, it was a stunt; no more, no less.

Quite accustomed to stunts -- how else do you think he got the presidency? -- Obama could see through the Arab ploy as well as anyone. That stupid, he's not.

The president wants transparency; nice.

Where was his outcry against Iran when twice it reduced grass roots uprisings to the political garbage dump in the most violent, Nazi-like means? 

Why didn't Obama stand up for the Iranian dissidents? He had several golden opportunities. Instead, no outcry; no transparency. We got plenty of nothing.

Talk about world hypocrisy when it comes to Israel, consider the words of Spanish journalist Pilar Rahola.

Unabashedly a member of the far left, and a politician, even Rahola is willing to stand up for Israel. 

"I have the historical responsibility to fight against Jewish hatred," she explains, "and currently against hatred for their historic homeland, Israel. To fight against anti-semitism is not the duty of the Jews, it is the duty of the non-Jews."

To those holier-than-thou nations who would condemn Netanyahu and his government over the flotilla affair, one would do well to listen-up to Rahola's pertinent questions. To wit:

* Why don't we see demonstrations against Islamic dictatorships in London, Paris, Barcelona? Or demonstrations against the Burmese dictatorship?

* Why aren't there demonstrations against the use of children as human bombs?

* Why is there never any outrage against the acts of terrorism committed against Israel?

* Why don't they defend Israel's right to exist?

The answer is as simple as it was on October 1, 1937 when Neville Chamberlain naively told the world -- after meeting with Hitler at Munich -- "Peace for our time...peace with honor."

That Chamberlain had just sold out Czechoslovakia while Hitler was planning the extermination of European Jewry did not seem to matter to the complacent world leaders.

Now we have another madman in Iran auditioning for the 21st Century Hitler role while the hypocritical world stands by willing only to scream about a legitimate challenge by the Israeli Navy to an illegal flotilla.

it matters not to the New York Times editorialists, the CNN propagandists nor Obama's advisors that Arabs have been hellbent on slaughtering Jews long before the State of Israel was born.

And when the Jewish Legion was fighting side by side with the Allies in World War II, the Arab's Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was in Berlin prodding the fuhrer to speed up his Final Solution.

Even a Martian reporter just arriving on the mad Middle East scene would affirm what Senorita Rahola knows full well, that Israel has become the target of unprecedented distortions of the truth.

"The truth about Israel is not told," she concludes. "I have a triple moral duty with Israel, because if Israel is destroyed, liberty, modernity and culture will be destroyed, too."

Her logic is impeccable!