PICTURES! -Some very expensive yachts sailed from Herziliya Yacht Club in a feint of indignation that an international social justice effort was showing favoritism toward Palestinians. No Gaza yacht club could be reached for a response. Commodore Guy Bechor, an outspoken Zionist, led the ostentatious flotilla in protest of the humanitarian aid convoy attempting to break the siege of Gaza, which he belittled as “rusty tin cans.”
The banners for their private regatta? TURKEY=IRAN? and FREE GILAD, an interesting conceit. 1.5 million Gazans are being blockaded to coerce the release of one Israeli POW. That’s a ratio similar to the disproportionate casualties of the 2008 Gaza “War.”
While soldier Gilad Shalit is considered a hostage of Hamas, he was an IDF soldier captured by the resistance. Israel holds 8,000 Palestinians in detention, not counting all the residents of Gaza.
The Gaza Massacre, like the ongoing siege itself, is recognized as an illegal act of collective punishment. A fact apparently lost on the Yerziliya skippers. Likewise the disconnect they display in presuming to insult the Turkish leader by associating him with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Though the yacht flotilla raised fears of creating an embarrassing confrontation with the humanitarian fleet, in reality it was a single day affair. The Israeli counter protesters were informed that the entire coast of Gaza has been cordoned by the Israeli navy. The pretext it will use to try to arrest the Freedom Flotilla blockade runners.
Bechor’s website G-planet celebrates all the press they received, I don’t see the harm in giving them more. These pictures speak a thousand words, almost as many days as Gaza has been under illegal siege.
See more pictures at Bechor’s Facebook album. The irony of the singular concern for Gilad Shalit might have caused Bechor to think twice about the message. All photos of yachts featuring the banners about Shalit have been curiously scrubbed, but they remain on some Turkish news sites.
Bechor list dozens of Turkish media outlets which covered his anti-relief regatta, demonstrating a strategy of aiming to undercut Turkish public support for what it predominantly its humanitarian effort. While several of the outlets might be Hasbara properties echoing Israel PR, most of the articles about the Israeli counter-protest make as much fun of it as we.
For the record, here is the port at Gaza, absent of yachts. The relief convoy will even have to improvise docks for unloading their supplies.
Yes, those Simply Dreadful Peasant Working Boats… Can’t possibly compare to our immaculately maintained and bought through Weapons Manufacturer Subsidies…
From the book of Isaiah and from Jesus Himself,
Condensed into one, “see thou be not like the Pharisees, hypocrites, who love to make broad the philactery, and greetings in the marketplaces, they have one to blow a trumpet before them when they do their alms, to be seen of men, and say “Give Place, for I am Holier than thou”… they devour the houses of Widows and for a pretense make long prayers… Instead, do thine alms in secret, letting not thy left hand know what the right hand doeth”
The “prosperity gospel” has deep and ancient roots. Like our Friend who insists that poor people brought their own poverty on themselves by not being righteous. If they were Better People they would be rich, or so the relentless elitist diatribe goes.
And pops up in the most amazing places.
I wonder how the “lady” sunbathing in the bikini would please the eyes or consciences of the Orthodox or the Hassidim.
Or the Fundamentalist Baptists and Pentecost churches…