Kay - Whining for Gaza

Jonathan Kay
National Post
07 November '11



http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/11/07/whining-for-gaza-jonathan-kay-on-flotilla-activist-david-heap/

Spare a tear please, for the Gaza flotilla crowd, which has seen its once-fashionable cause fall into obscurity.

The first flotilla in 2010 made headlines when Israeli commandos confronted pro-Hamas martyrdom-seeking “activists” armed with knives and blunt instruments aboard the Turkish ship MV Mavi Marmara. Nine activists died when Israeli troops opened fire. The episode galvanized pro-Hamas support for a while, and inspired a wave of copycat Westerners. They knew that they could challenge the Israeli navy in relative safety, since, in the post-Mavi Marmara era, Israeli leaders would do everything in their power to avoid another lethal encounter.

But the second Gaza flotilla, in the summer of 2011, was an embarrassing flop: The flotilla leaders couldn’t even sail out of Greek waters without getting arrested. Last week brought more flotilla news: Two ships, including a Canadian-owned vessel, were intercepted and boarded en route to delivering supplies to Hamas-controlled territory. There were no injuries — though that hasn’t stopped the more media-hungry activists from playing the martyr card.

Foremost among these is David Heap, a University of Western Ontario faculty member who claims to have been “tasered” and “bruised” as Israeli soldiers hauled his unco-operative self from the high seas. From the title of the article he wrote for the left-wing site Rabble.ca — “I write from cell 9 in the Apartheid State of Israel” — you would think he was Martin Luther King with a Twitter account, penning manifestos from a Birmingham jail. But even by his own morally self-aggrandizing account, he is “basically ok” after his high-seas experience.

But “basically ok” doesn’t get you on the front pages. So now a Toronto Star writer has gassed out the story for another day by reporting that Heap’s friends and family are “outraged,” “scared” and “worried” by his “brutal” treatment.

No one else in Canada seems to care much, though: Even among protest junkies, flotilla theatrics now play a distant second to the ongoing Occupy phenomenon. In fact, as far as “brutality” goes, the troops who ushered Heap into Israel don’t have a stitch on cops in Oakland.

“Outraged,” “scared” and “worried” would be good words to describe our thoughts about captured activists who did something that was actually brave and useful — like bringing aid to protesters in, say, Syria, just a few hundred kilometers up the Mediterranean coast. Instead, Heap and his friends set their compass for a confrontation with the Israeli Defense Forces, the most humane and professional military in the Middle East. And their only real punishment for trying to bring material goods to a terrorist-controlled regime in Gaza is to spend a few days in climate-controlled, Internet-equipped Israeli jails complaining about their ordeal to journalist pals back home.

Mr. Heap’s whining campaign isn’t nearly as dangerous as the tactics used by other activists, but it certainly is far more annoying.

National Post
jkay@nationalpost.com

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