The title of this article refers to pro-Palestinian groups that organized last May’s six-ship bid to breach Israel’s anti-armament maritime blockade of Gaza. The so-called humanitarian mission ended with nine passengers dead and dozens of other injured. Seven Israeli naval commandos were shot, stabbed, and beaten by peaceful terror-enablers on board the lead craft, the Mavi Marmara.

Now, slow learners who survived the first encounter say they plan to send more, and larger such convoys towards the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave on the upcoming first anniversary of the event.

The Hamas-affiliated Turkish IHH and the Free Gaza movement said they would send another two sea convoys in April and May, Israeli media reported on Monday.

Flotilla supporters say Israel’s blockade causes privation and starvation, is inhumane and violates international law.

However, Hamas often responds to Israel’s allowing in humanitarian aid via several monitored crossing points by issuing counter-offers promising Israel’s annihilation, and then bombing said crossing points, cutting off the aid along with their noses.

So, after the Islamist group’s violent coup wresting power from the Palestinian Authority in 2007, and deadly shrapnel showers visited on Israeli cities by close to 10,000 Kassam rockets for more than seven years, Israel cordoned off the Strip until further notice, meaning either Hamas’ leadership learns to dance the hora, or, failing that, that their jig is up. (more…)

In the week following the Israeli boarding of boats piloted by Turkish “peace activists” off the coast of Gaza, Caroline Glick and the good folks at the Hebrew-language Israeli news site Latma created a parody video skewering the violent actions perpetrated by those “peace activists” against members of the Israeli authorities attempting to enforce the Gaza blockade. The video went up on YouTube and garnered three million views within a matter of days.

Created as a parody of the 1980s activist song “We are the World,” the Latma song was named “We Con the World” and humorously depicted an array of Palestinian supporters singing about how they’d fooled the world into thinking that it was the Israelis that were the bad guys in the Gaza blockade incident.

The video was very clever and hit just the right notes of humor being not too mean-spirited yet easily hitting home with its message. The humor of the video was wholly in keeping with western humor and not over-the-top or unduly offensive at all. Naturally, YouTube pulled it anyway. (more…)

From the New York Times’s Sabrina Tavernise and Ethan Bronner, a worthy follow-up to the thoroughly execrable and now unavailable “10 Reported Killed” story with which the New York Times began its Gaza Flotilla coverage. That one was Isabel Kershner’s handiwork, and the very end of this gem notes that she contributed here as well. Heartwarming teamwork at the Paper of Record:

The attempted takeover turned into an armed assault, with angry Israeli commandos opening fire. Within an hour, the commandos had taken control of the ship, and nine Turks, including one who also had American citizenship, were dead. Dozens of interviews in Israel and Turkey suggest that Israel’s decision to stop the flotilla at all costs collided with the intention of a small group of Islamic activists from Turkey, turning a raid on a ship of protesters in international waters into a bloodbath — and a major international event.

It’s particularly charming how the IHH-backed jihadists are described as a “small group of Islamic activists,” the IHH being the Hamas supporting group of Turkey-acknowledged terrorists which literally sponsored the boat. Merely calling them “activists” is something that any liberal apologist could have done. But that the lynch mob was an unrepresentative “small group” among the larger “ship of protesters” is why the NYT is virtually parody-proof.

The only thing left is to explain how the jihadists “misunderstood Islam” when they broke out into genocidal Islamic war songs celebrating Mohammed’s mass murder and enslavement of Jews. Then, later in the article, there’s this:

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In the week since Israel tried to exercise its right to self-protection and ended up as the object of near-global scorn we have noticed a gigantic coverage void from the showbiz news outlets like MSNBC and Comedy Central.  Thankfully we have Latma TV – known to some as the satirical YouTube-like channel in Israel.

This brilliant parody piece, from Latma editor Caroline Glick is worth sharing with those who just don’t seem to be able to wrap their heads around the facts of this story. And if anyone has email addys for K. Olbermann and R. Maddow, please forward the link their way, it has already been sent to whitehouse.gov.

Let’s make this puppy go viral!

Lyrics after the jump: (more…)

Just a couple of days after the Mideast peace-threatening incident between Israeli commandos and the “peace flotilla” headed to Gaza, Charlie Rose nabbed a great “get” yesterday when he reeled-in VP Joe Biden for an exclusive one-on-one interview.  Yes, Charlie Rose, a guy who has more kudos than the candy aisle at Costco, sat down with our Vice President — and almost nobody noticed.

Biden, the usually reliable, one-man-gaffe-machine actually came out and validated Israel’s actions against the flotilla saying;

Israel has an absolute right to deal with its security interests.

Only Fox News seemed to notice.

Saying the following to Charlie Rose, the Vice President displayed great clarity on the issue and deep knowledge of what actually happened, as opposed to what has been reported on MSNBC and CNN: (more…)

It must be insanely frustrating to do media outreach or public diplomacy for Israel.

It’s not only that media outlets seem to have an endless supply of anti-Israel storylines that they just mix and match regardless of context, from lurid descriptions of imagined atrocities to old standbys about Palestinian dispossession. It’s also that journalists and editors seem to pick their themes with something approaching reckless abandon, throwing against the wall one thinly sourced anti-Israel libel after another. If something sticks they congratulate themselves on brave journalism. If a smear is debunked they just shrug and move on.

The problem isn’t so much a resistance to specific facts, though the BBC has indeed been conspicuously ignoring Israeli evidence that contradicts their preferred take on reality. It’s just that being wrong is a functionally costless proposition if the error works against Israel, so journalists can publish an endless stream of sensational accusations with minimal concern for their veracity. All they need is a quote, which anti-Israel partisans are more than willing to provide, and that qualifies as fact-checking.

The reports surrounding Israel’s Monday raid on the Mavi Marmara ship stands as a veritable textbook on how that coverage plays out in real time. (more…)

Andrew Sullivan is not a huge fan of Israel; he is entitled to his opinion.  However, his latest column about the incident in the waters outside of Gaza makes up the facts. Honestly, in the case of most of the posts Sullivan writes about Israel, Andrew is living in his own reality, where truth and facts do not matter.

The Atlantic columnist begins his latest example of creative writing begins with the first paragraph.

Maintaining the siege and blockade of Gaza (because its citizens elected a government Israeli abhors), and strafing it with military might over a year ago, is not exactly what one expects of a civilized Western state. To then go on the offensive against a flotilla of aid ships, trying to bypass the blockade, and killing at least ten people aboard is bordering on insanity…

There are at least three bald-faced lies in that  paragraph. First, the blockade was established to stem terrorism from Gaza (perhaps Sullivan forgot the five thousand rockets sent from the strip into Israel from 2005-2009).

His comment “Strafing it with military might over a year ago is not what one expects of a civilized Western State.” is also wrong.  That is exactly one should expect from a western state.  If rockets landed in Andrew Sullivan’s backyard, I guarantee that he would expect Obama to start “strafing” the offending party. (more…)

The Old Media is already misreporting the bloody incident off the Gaza coast between a flotilla of Muslim “peace activists” and the Israeli Defense Force. They are, of course, making Israel out to be the bad guys and while it is regrettable that anyone had to get killed in this incident, the fault lies with the armed “peace activists,” not Israel.

That’s right, these are supposed to be peace activists, yet they had armed themselves with bats, metal bars, and slingshots with marbles as projectiles and later firearms that they had hidden on their craft. Why isn’t anyone in the Old Media asking why peace activists are arming themselves?

In fact, the first Israeli troops that boarded the flotilla were only using non-lethal weapons — paintball guns — but this did not stop the Muslims from assaulting the troops with the metal bars, bats and slingshots. The troops did have handguns, but it is reported that as they boarded they were yelling to each other “don’t shoot, don’t shoot.” It is clear that they intended to turn the boats around with as minimal force as possible in order to ensure world opinion that Israel wants to avoid bloodshed when she can.

The Muslims had other ideas as they swarmed the first troops giving vicious physical blows. One soldier was thrown from the top deck 30 feet to a lower deck causing severe injuries. (more…)

Today’s incident on the Gaza jihad flotilla was an act of war – but not by Israel. The tsunami of Jew-hating propaganda from the jihad-loving media has already begun. The international media, predictably, is spinning the story as if it were all Israel’s fault, saying that the IDF killed innocent civilian humanitarian workers on a flotilla headed to Gaza to bring aid to the starving people there.

In reality, none of that is true. This was an act of war against Israel. The people in Gaza aren’t starving, and the “humanitarian aid workers” on the flotilla were actually Islamic jihadists who attacked the IDF first. It was a planned attack — by Hamas and the hardline Muslim groups. Hamas supporters planned an armed assault, which included the murder of captured Israeli heroes. They almost succeeded.

Will you get the real story from the media? Not a chance. Before the Israeli self-defense raid even occurred, the BBC said that Israel was facing a lose-lose situation. And that is how it is playing out now. The Associated Press is reading like Al-Jazeera:

The violent takeover dealt yet another blow to Israel’s international image, already tarnished by war crimes accusations in Gaza and its 3-year-old blockade of the impoverished Palestinian territory.

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