A vicious circle

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
A Warped Mirror/JPost
06 June '10

The flood of commentary produced after Israel's raid on one of the Turkish-sponsored ships that had set out to defy the blockade of Hamas's fiefdom in Gaza bordered on the grotesque, both in terms of the sheer quantity and in terms of the blatant disregard for facts. So there was definitely a reason why Israel's prime minister felt the need to point out:

This was not a love boat. This was a hate boat. These weren't pacifists. These weren't peace activists. These were violent supporters of terrorism."

The intensity of the hate was illustrated by some of the responses that the Israeli Navy got from the "activists": warnings that the boats would not be allowed to breach the naval blockade were answered with statements like "Shut up, go back to Auschwitz" and "We're helping Arabs go against the US, don't forget 9/11."

It was just a coincidence that on the day the IDF released the audio clip recording the sentiments of some of the passengers on the Gaza-bound boats, another unrelated video clip began to attract attention. This clip recorded the sentiments of veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas towards Israel's Jews: when asked for a comment about Israel, Thomas stated that Israeli Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and go back to Poland, Germany and "everywhere else" - and I sure would love to ask Ms. Thomas if she added the "everywhere else" to include the hundreds of thousands of Jews who had to flee their ancient communities in the Middle East.

While Thomas has since expressed regret about these statements, there is plainly no reason to think that her outburst didn't reflect her deeply-held views.

The depressing truth illustrated by the coincidental release of the audio clips from the Gaza boats and the short video with Helen Thomas is that, when it comes to Israel, somebody like Thomas who is widely regarded as a "legendary journalist and bestselling author" could easily find common ground with the terrorist sympathizers on board the Gaza-bound ships: both regard the Jewish state as some illegitimate entity - and the implication is that the world would be better off if Israel didn't exist.

No doubt many people would argue that there is no reason to exaggerate: so what, Ms. Thomas doesn't really approve of the existence of the Jewish state, and some anonymous terrorist sympathizer felt free to vent his antisemitic resentments when the Israeli navy got in the way of his "political activism". No big deal, not representative of anything.

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