Israel's confrontation with the "peace" flotilla allows the rest of the world to channel its inner anti-Semite, as it always does when the Israelis defend themselves against Hamas and Hezbollah and their Syrian and Iranian (and now, Turkish) paymasters. It was a PR disaster for the IDF, no question, although this photo should lay to rest any questions about the pacific quality of the "peace activists" on board. However, to criticize the execution of the action by IDF commandos--to call it a blunder, in a word--isn't to say that intervention wasn't justified, not when those "peace activists" were openly saying that if they couldn't sail unimpeded directly into Gaza harbor and deliver their "humanitarian aid," they'd seek martyrdom: "Gaza or 72 virgins (or raisins)" seems to have been their credo. And let's not forget why the Israeli blockade's there in the first place: as part of a policy meant to isolate Hamas--which refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist or to release captured IDF soldier Gilad Schalit--and to end the barrage of rockets directed at the Negev.
Once again, "what's past is prologue," as the Bard says. The "peace activists" and their shills remind me of nothing so much as their forebears in the 1980s, the ones demonstrating so eloquently against the deployment of American cruise missiles while staying mute about the Soviet Union's already-installed SS20 nuclear warheads. And the hypocritical reaction in the chancelleries of the West to Israel's defensive actions, while Iran encircles Israel with its clients (Hezbollah in Lebanon; Syria; and
Hamas in Gaza) and inches ever closer to becoming a nuclear power, reeks of 1930s appeasement.
Here's a liberal Israeli take on the whole business, from D. Bloomfield in the Jerusalem Post. And a less liberal one from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
