Like anyone thinks Israel's decision will matter?

by Dr. Richard L. Benkin
June 23, 2010

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/813/like-anyone-thinks-israels-decision-will-matter

I happened to be visiting family in South Jersey on Friday and opened the Philadelphia Inquirer to read: "Israel Eases Gaza Blockade." Most observers of Middle East dynamics have expected that move ever since Quartet representative and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and word of it started leaking; and most felt that it would be a bad one. If there was any doubt of that, however, the first two paragraphs of the Inquirer's article laid them to rest.

First paragraph:

An Israeli decision Thursday to ease its blockade of Gaza under intense international pressure could spell the beginning of the end of the chokehold that has hurt ordinary

Gazans far more that their Hamas rulers. (emphasis mine)

The article's unsupported assertion that Israel's actions hurt only "ordinary" Arabs and spare Hamas reflects much of our own media's complicity in promoting the anti-Israel narrative of the situation that ultimately seeks to legitimize the terror group and tie Israel's hands in its own self-defense. The article did not make a single mention of the ongoing Hamas missile attack on unarmed Israeli civilians—not even the usual perfunctory comment about it buried toward the final paragraph.

Second paragraph:

The order to allow in all foods and some desperately needed construction materials

brought calls for Israel to go much further and did little to quell the global outcry over its deadly May 31 raid on a flotilla of ships that tried to bust the embargo. (emphasis mine)

Let us first lay aside the Inquirer's patent bias in its choice of adjectives.

While I am not privy to the decision-making logic that drives moves like this, it was clear to even the most casual observer that this one would do nothing to help Israel and everything to help Hamas and their international panoply of allies. Even before the move was implemented, Israel's enemies were calling it insufficient and taking the action as a sign of Israeli weakness that they can exploit to force further concessions that empower the terror group in Gaza and its Iranian handlers. After negotiating the move Blair himself called it "a good start."

The action was taken in compliance with the dictates of Israel's "best friend," US president Barack Obama who recently called the blockade "unsustainable," and pressured the parties for this decision. Interestingly, neither the Philadelphia Inquirer nor the rest of the mainstream media seemed to notice that Israel was not the biggest losers. Rather, it was first their delusional peace process, which has even less chance of success with an empowered Hamas; and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas who is forced to watch passively as his talking head allies strengthen the very terror group that he has been trying to supplant with his own.

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