GAZA IS NOT STARVING: and those on the Left who promote such nonsense should feel ashamed of themselves – especially when there is real starvation in the world; the kind of starvation characterized by skeletal children with swollen heads; their eyes bulging from their sockets, and in tears: children who have a very thin grasp on life and rely upon the charity of others to maintain that grasp. These children do not have the time or energy to believe in any kind of cause; they live only with the hope of their own survival.
Which makes the piece of exhibitionism that is due to begin today all the more repellent. I speak of course of the Flotilla. Like the Notting Hill carnival, the Flotilla is becoming a yearly event in the Left-wing activists calendar. It is meant to embarrass Israel, and cause her the maximum egregiousness within the international community.
Last year six vessels set sail to bring much needed (sic) supplies of humanitarian aid to the Gaza strip. Five of the vessels were diverted peacefully to an Israeli port where their cargo was searched for weapons before being allowed entry into Gaza.
However, one, the Mavi Mamara, a Turkish vessel, was boarded by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), whereupon they were attacked by Muslim extremists who came prepared for confrontation. The incident caused the state of Israel considerable international damage, until the IDF was exonerated by the UNs as well as Israel’s enquiries into the events.
This year there has been talk not of a flotilla but of an armada descending on Israel. Fortunately Turkey has managed to prevent last year’s trouble maker, the Mavi Mamara, from leaving port; and much of the international community have criticised those activists that are determined upon their escapade.
Israel has promised that her tactics will depend upon the reception given by the activists to any boarding by the IDF.
MARTYRDOM IS NO longer the monopoly of the Catholic faith. Rome has competition; not from other Christians or Muslims; but rather from those who, in many cases would describe themselves as atheists. Of course this year’s Flotilla carries among its passengers an assortment of oddments, including Islamists, liberal Jews, Christians and atheists; all of whom I presume are of a Left-wing liberal persuasion.
It is their case that they are delivering much needed supplies to a desperate people holed up in Gaza, and ruthlessly overseen and left in dire material circumstances by a hostile Israeli government. They court martyrdom by challenging Israeli authority; and have no doubt brought their digital phones and cameras along to record their sacrifice, should the IDF use any kind of force against them.
Those setting sail are either terrorists, or genuinely naive by nature: or merely Hamas’ useful idiots, as I believe many of those in the Flotilla who are from the West are. It would not be the first time that such people from the Left have been used as a means to an end for a dystopian cause. Many of the Left in this country, including hundreds of intellectuals of the calibre of George Bernard Shaw and H G Wells were once also delivered up as the useful idiots of such a cause – the cause being socialism and communism, which earned for themselves the ignominious title of Stalin’s fellow travellers.
Today those from the West who are embarking upon this misguided adventure, should at least heed the lesson of history, if they cannot accept its truth.
THE GAZA STRIP IS in no more in need of material sustenance than are the princes of Saudi Arabia. The Gaza Flotilla represents a political cause rather than a humanitarian need, and should not be allowed to penetrate Israeli waters, the protection of which is underscored by international law. In other words it is the Flotilla that will fall fowl of international law if it tries to outwit the Israeli Navy. Israel allows free passage into the Gaza Strip of all material goods without restriction – providing that such goods do not have a dual purpose i.e. they cannot be used for any military attack against the state of Israel.
Whatever cargoes the Flotilla is carrying; all they have to do is submit it to Israeli inspection, and Israel will allow through anything that cannot be used to help further the destruction of the Israeli state. Which, let us remember, Hamas has described as its main task.
International law is with the state of Israel. But even if circumstances were different, and that Israel’s very existence broke international law, in accordance with the United Nations (as seems all to likely in the future), then Israel would be within her right to stand out against such an ‘international law’.
THE 2011 FLOTILLA is becoming an embarrassment for the Left. It has little support, not only in the West, but also in Turkey; that ringmaster of last year’s attempt.
Gaza has a standard of living higher than South Africa and the African continent generally, as well as many parts of Asia. It boasts a shopping Mall with another due to open as well as luxury flats. Of course to the Left this means very little. But it suggests a degree of affluence that transcends any frugality propagated by those commuters in the Flotilla.
All Israel seeks is its neighbours recognition of its right to exist as an independent state. If Israel could rely upon such a recognition, then harmony would indeed prevail in the Middle East. But as always; since 1948, Israel’s enemies have refused it any kind of accommodation that met the requirements of peace and harmony. Instead Israel’s neighbours kept the Palestinians in poverty within their own territory without ever improving their welfare - preferring to blame Israel for their plight from 1948 until today.
The Palestinians have lost as many of their kind to the guns of their Arab brethren, whether in Lebanon or Jordon, than they have lost to the Israelis. The Palestinians have been the pawns in the Arab world’s antagonism toward Israel.
The Palestinian Arabs could have been integrated into the Arab world long ago; but became Egypt, Syria and Jordan’s means of opposing the state of Israel by keeping them impoverished.
The Arab world has, historically, done more of a disservice to fellow Arab Palestinians than the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 ever did. But of course this means very little to the modern Palestinian, just as it means very little to those Western passengers that are seeking to confront Israel.
Gaza is not impoverished. It does not require the kind of aid of the sort that Oxfam and Christian Aid delivers to Africa. Gaza is not the Horn of Africa; and those embarked upon trying to prove the contrary, are indeed Hamas’ useful idiots
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