Death of another ethnic cliche'...

[fpb]

...the clever, far-sighted Jews. The attack on the flotilla was the stupidest thing I have seen in my lifetime. THE STUPIDEST. It beats Arthur Scargill playing bull to Margaret Thatcher's matador by a mile - and I never thought I would live to see anything more stupid than that. It makes every Italian politician, inlcuding Pecoraro Scanio, seem

Comments

[shezan]

Your link is haunting. Brrrrr.

[fpb]

Ditto with knobs on. And if anyone wanted another argument against abortion, there it is. As a fringe member of the disabled movement (my brother being a national leader), the last few sentences make me absolutely sick

[sevenorora]

Boy, am I glad I wasn't born in Israel. Let me rephrase that: I wouldn't be born...
Very disturbing.

[shezan]

Yours is the first comment on my flist I (unfortunately) agree with 100%. Stupid, stupid, stupid CUBED. And it's not as if the intentions of that sorry lot weren't clear from the outset.

[fpb]

No, indeed. Actually, international Jew-bashing is getting to the point where it is actually transparent and, with any decent kind of response, ought to backfire. So why on God's green Earth do the one thing, the only thing, that would play straight into the enemy's hands?

[pathology_doc]

But what could they do? Let themselves be walked over? Sometimes I think nobody is going to wake up until Holocaust MkII has happened, and then they will wring their hands for another sixty years and ask themselves how it could have happened. And the Jews in the diaspora will say "You sat here and demonised Israel over and over and over again whenever it took steps to defend itself and said nothing against the people attacking it, and now you ask yourself this?"

(Icon not directed at you, but I can't think of a better one. Regardless of who it applies to.)

[sevenorora]

I agree completely with you. The ship was indeed a provocation (I mean a humanitarian called the Free Gaza champagne) and they stepped with both feet in it. Very stupid indeed!

[notebuyer]

Leaving the seaborne morons alone creates a gateway to the blockade. Israel remains humanitarian, and doesn't sink the ships. Perhaps it should have.

[pathology_doc]

On the basis of "a 75mm shell across the bows to ask them to stop, fifty along the waterline to compel them"? Sounds fair, so long as everyone knows long before they start how the game is going to be played, but it's only possible for a small player like Israel when the superpower that backs you is willing to defend your harsh measures. The vibe I get from FPB is that Obama is not thus willing.

The only other option - crowding, nudging and bumping - isn't possible unless your ship is substantially bigger and faster than the one you're trying to stop. We're talking something the size of a large, modern frigate or destroyer here. Insofar as I am aware, Israel doesn't have such ships in its fleet.

(Icon not directed at you.)

[notebuyer]

A government of Israel that expected the international press to report what happened, instead of falling into the first fax from the Palestinian newsdesk, would be ignoring reality. Jenin comes to mind: if it doesn't matter what the Israelis do, given that the press will report according to their preconcieved story line, they have license to do as they will. They pick a humane response, which is costly to them, not because anyone in the press will notice it, but because it reflects their values. And get criticized for it. Check out this article.