Today I link to something that I did not enjoy reading, just to illustrate a point. It is a truly poor article by one Niles Gardiner in the Telegraph.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100041748/the-world-demonises-israel-once-again/
I point out merely in passing that the first few hundred overwhelmingly negative comments were deleted by the Telegraph. But the real reason I link is the significance of the strapline:
He appears frequently on American and British television and radio, including Fox News Channel, CNN, BBC, Sky News, and NPR.
I bet he does. He has no international diplomatic experience, no knowledge of international law and very little experience of the hotspots of the world. But he is fully armed with the set of opinions those news outlets want their readers to hear.
Absolutely anybody can write this rubbish. Just string these elements together:
Poor little Israel. Threatened from all sides. Nazi Germany. Islamic terrorism. Hamas. Anti-semitism. Brutal Jihadists. Self defence. The right to return. Only democracy in the Middle East. Self defence. Iranian President threat to wipe off map. 8,000 Hamas rockets. Alliance of liberals, commies and islamists. 9/11. Chopping off hands. Subjugation of women. Taliban. Clash of civilisations. Existential threat. Self defence.
I could churn this stuff out easily and be on Fox, Sky and BBC as often as I like. I could pick up a fat salary like Nick Cohen for a weekly column of this stuff, and pocket the Rupert Murdoch TV fees as an extra. I could sit in a think tank. I would certainly be a great deal more qualified, and a great deal more convincing, than Niles pisspoor Gardiner. I write a lot better too.
But then I am handicapped by morality.
Which reminds me. Having followed the media coverage of the Israeli action very carefully, have you noticed what seems a complete absence on TV of bona fide experts in maritime law?
Normally live news brings in “experts” at the drop of a hat to fill in the 24/7 broadcasting, but despite the fact that professors of international law specialising in the law of the sea are not exactly hard to find, no TV station has asked one about the legality of the Israeli action.
That is because the martime law community is unanimous that the Israeli action is illegal.
MP: you are an idiot with paranoid, delusional tendencies, not to mention a God complex.
Talking of music I liked this video I found on the excellent Gilad Atzmon’s site
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5Oqx3gRxNY
It is worth reading this piece from Atzmon on a particularly disgusting Hasbara video
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/a-glimpse-into-jewish-collective-morbidity-introduction-by-g.html
Abe Rene: Questions 1 and 4 appear to be answered in this article
http://www.smh.com.au/world/prayers-tear-gas-and-terror-20100603-x7ew.html
by an Australian reporter who was on one of the other ships, based on what he could see and on interviews. There are also some photographs by another Australian, possibly the only source to evade seizure by the Israeli military. In brief:
1) The Mavi Marmara is a large ship with multiple decks, and presumably difficult to board. Also, the activists fought back, at least initially.
4) A few guns were seized from the soldiers and thrown overboard (according to witnesses).
To answer question 3, we can look up the people who died, for example here
http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2010/06/putting-names-to-faces.html
There is no evidence anyone joined the flotilla secretly.
Gilad’s a good guy – he proves that there is proportion of Israelis, although it is tiny, who are not brainwashed by the relentless rubbish spewed out by the thuggish regime. Breaking the Silence is also excellent, although predictably the fascists have tried very hard to break them and silence them, ironically.
Mr Petek…
do you know the comedian who plays and wrote Borat… is Jewish !
a damn fine comedian he is too
June, Hamas are idiots with paranoid, delusional tendencies, not to mention a God complex.
Yes, I do know that Borat is played by Jewish comedian Sascha Baron Cohen.
By the way, I just heard Turkish forces are massing in northern Cyprus, with a view perhaps to providing an armed escort for a Gaza convoy.
That’s part of Turkey’s ongoing crime of aggression against Cyprus, which means that anyone who wants to can legally attack Turkey. If Prime Minister Erdogan sets sail, the Israelis could impound the ship and arrest him then.
I’ve also heard that a group of Israeli students are organising a humanitarian aid convoy to sail to Turkey with aid for the oppressed Armenian, Kurdish and Greek minorities.
“ScouseBilly, those people should have known better than to mess with Jews.”
Ha, ha! The other way round methinks.
Pantywaist IDF commandos should know better than to get into a bar room brawl with Turkish sailors!
Just remind us, won’t you, you idiot, where the enclave is that Turkey is holding 1.7 million people, half of them children and only allowing in 25% of essential foods and medicines, while denying them paper, pencils, livestock, paint and all the other deadly weapons they might threaten the Turks with. Your attempts at some sort of equivalence are truly pathetic since there is no equivalent to the medieaval, fascist regime that calls itself the Israeli government. No other country in the world is holding seige and imprisoning nearly 2 million people, while at the same time threatening them, strafing them and killing them. and you talk bollocks about Cyprus. The Armenians in Jerusalem hate the Israelis for the way they are treated, as do all the other religions by the Jewish suprematicism and racism. Trying to adop them for your nasty little wars of aggression on civilians is a demonstration of your desperation.
“And if you’re a dhimmi ”
thats only is possible if one is paying a jizya tax .
are you .. is anyone?
“Saw an Israeli representative on Yvonne Ridley’s show the other day saying that UN Resolutions were mere “recommendations”. Go figure!”
he was of the zionist federation of uk
Yes, the latest hasbara ‘argument’ is that there is no international law, no UN, no treaties. Ha ha, desperation or what. Of course the implication which the Israeli idiots are keen to get over – then there is no justice, or human rights, and no holding to account of anybody. How convenient that would be for them. And they would be very happy to live with that, as it it is the principle they apply to all outside the magic circle of a nationalist grouping.
June, don’t you recognise chutzpah when you see it?
In answer to your question, there are 2.2 million Armenians in Turkey, 1 million of whom live in six vilayets . . . whoops . . . sorry, my mistake!
Looks like they slaughtered them all.
Look the dead were only Turks, killing them is not much different from killing Arabs!
Are you going to attack Israel foor killing Arabs next you antisemites?
If Israel isn’t allowed to kill Arabs why don’t you attack the UK and America for killing them?
You people are acting like the dead were white.
Well said anonymous one!
Impassioned demolition of another typical Israeli disinfo tactic:argument by false analogy.They try that one all the time.
Petek you’ve been run out of town by a stranger on a white horse.And the horse was cleverer than you!
On your bike you Ziofascist loon!
Yes, Israel are the only people allowed to slaughter people.
It has something to do with being chosen!
Arsalan I think that’s you impersonating Michael. Please desist. He’s daft enough already.
Freebron
Don’t you know. We are the master race, chosen by God to rule over all you lesser people!
So we can be as fascist as we like!
Craig that is slander of the libelous form. I was in bed at the time!
You will be hearing from Qullam’s solicitor.
Not really because of me sueing.
You are probablying going to say something again that will piss off those bastards sooner or later, and then you will hear from them.
Yes – they have the same solicitors as YouGov, so I hear from them quite often!
“But then I am handicapped by morality.”
Your pomposity is topped only by your Jew-hatred.
Well, Yoni, luckily you aren’t handicapped by morality. Or intelligence.
Good article by Ilan Pappe in today’s Sunday Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/ilan-papp-the-deadly-closing-of-the-israeli-mind-1992471.html
And another, in the same ‘paper, by Robert Fisk:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-truth-behind-the-israeli-propaganda-1991803.html
“To me it is very simple. The ships were in International waters.”
Stupid and irrelevant. There is a state of war between Israel and the ‘democratically eleceted gov. of Gaza.
“They were boarded the same way as pirates board ships. They murdered innocent civilians”
Stupid and wrong on all counts:
1. Pirates are individuals, not states.
2. They didn’t ‘murder’ anyone: they defended themselves against murder.
3. They weren’t ‘innocent civilians’ but heavily-armed, self-declared Jihadists.
“This then makes them murderous pirates”
Utterly stupid.
You breathe like a donkey.
Does this make you a donkey?
Come to think of it, though …
“If N/Korea, or Iran would have done this”
Try to educate yourself on the syntax of conditional clauses.
“America would have nuked them already.”
As dumb as it gets.
Are you aware that there is an international agreement to stop arms reaching Gaza?
“Case Closed.”
Sure is. You are a Jew-hating idiot.
Fisk? ROFLMAOWMP. Why not quote from Goebbels and cut out the middleman?
Whoever wrote yesterday that the Uber-Zionists really had run out of arguments was spot-on. It’s really pathetic. Is that the best they can do? The Big Lie doesn’t work any more, and they know it. But as Professor Ilan Pappe points out, they don’t care.
Great blog. Now it attracts Holocaust deniers, the worst scum of the antisemitic scum we have seen all week. Makes sense, though.
Pappe has been exposed as a fraud by Morris. But of course, the antisemites like him all the better for it.
I think, Yoni, you are the idiot. Perhaps you would like to refer us to this international agreement. There is certainly not one to prohibit jam, paper, paint, children’s toys, wheelchairs and whatever else Netanyahu and his fellow gangsters are terrified of. Nor does Israel have any right to lay siege to Gaza, or control its territorial waters. It is an occupying force and is responsible for the welfare of all the people under occupation, a responsibility it spectacularly fails at. But of course Israel doesn’t believe in international laws or agreements.