Phillips: The floating theatre of the jihad (part two)

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
31 May '11

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6990380/the-floating-theatre-of-the-jihad-part-two.thtml

Two things are due to happen in Gaza in June.

The first is that a second shopping mall is due to open. According to Khaled abu Toameh, this will house a huge supermarket, clothes and gift shops, a large restaurant, a modern coffee shop, a cinema and entertainment sites for children. This complements the first mall that opened last year, as well as the gourmet restaurants that are already turning Gaza into a magnet for the discerning Arab foodie.

The second thing that is planned to happen is the arrival of another huge flotilla carrying ‘humanitarian supplies’ to relieve the, er, starvation and destitution in Gaza. Last time, the ‘humanitarian’ medical supplies on board the flotilla were revealed to be well past their use-by date. This time round, maybe the organisers want instead to establish a rival shopping experience – bringing in on their boats products under the 'TerrorTrade' designer label, perhaps, or 'Jihadi Chic'? -- to compete with the two mega-malls.

Absurd? Of course. But the point of this exercise is not to relieve want. It is merely to stage a propaganda stunt that makes Israel look bad in the eyes of a credulous and malevolent world.

Last time, the Turkish terrorist IHH which was in charge of the lead flotilla boat the Mavi Marmara tried to lynch an Israeli boarding party searching it for smuggled weapons and which opened fire in self-defence – promptly causing the post-rational west to blame Israel for ‘aggression’.



Galvanised by that triumph the IHH, which is playing a central role in organising next month’s flotilla, is planning to manipulate the obliging idiots of the west into an even greater paroxysm of hate against Israel by provoking it with a much bigger flotilla, for which entertainment it is reportedly already preparing the ground with a pre-emptive propaganda barrage.

But that’s not the half of it. Yesterday, Israeli TV ran an item which claimed the IHH was planning demonstrations at both European airports and Israel’s Ben Gurion airport by hundreds of European and American dupes and bigots en route to stage their ‘humanitarian’ mission to end starvation in Gaza (anyone told them yet that Egypt has opened the Rafah crossing point which until now has been closed?)

We can all imagine what might happen. Airports are places where security is necessarily tight and procedures accordingly rigid. Flotillistas who appear to be ordinary travellers may suddenly start creating a scene, purely in order to provoke the airport authorities into heavy-handed action which they will then exploit to scream ‘racism’, ‘war crimes’ and so forth. We can expect to see children deployed as human shields on the front-lines of the security scanners, as well as on the flotilla boats themselves. With a bit of luck, they will be hoping, some jittery police officer will shoot one of the flotillistas or better still, their children. By an amazing coincidence, their willing dupes in the western media will happen to be on hand to film it all.

The flotilistas will present themselves as a peaceful, humanitarian mission being thwarted by the fascist Zionists and their lackeys. And their media toadies will duly deliver the script they are being fed. But it will all be a staged, cynical stunt to exploit and manipulate western credulity, ignorance and malice. Not only is it an elaborate plan to play the west for suckers, but it also threatens to put ordinary airline passengers at risk as security is thrown into chaos and airport officials diverted to deal with these disturbances.

What are western leaders doing to avert this? Wake up Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland. You are supplying the repertory company for this floating theatre of the jihad. What are the Israelis doing to outsmart this latest example of psychological warfare? Where is their own centralised psy-ops unit to take it on? Wake up, Mr Lieberman. Wake up, Mr Edelstein. Wake up, Mr Netanyahu. This is the war of the mind. Get onto the right battlefield, fast.

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