New Media

Throw out your first answer, give your head a shake and read this insightful piece in The Propagandist from a refugee from Arab lands:

My thoughts turn to those savage days when my family fled Libya in 1967. We narrowly escaped death at the hands of a bus driver who, instead of taking us to the airport, tried to burn us alive inside the bus.

I am one of nearly one million Jews indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa who were forced to flee their ancestral homes in the last 60 years. I am now the voice of an Arab minority culture that has been ethnically cleansed…

An excellent series in The Propagandist on why most Israel lobby critics really ought to spend far more time doing some personal soul searching rather than ganging up on the marketing people for the Middle East’s only Western democracy.

When one boils it down to the bare essentials: the Lobby is interested in presenting Israel in a positive light, of course. It recognizes that the honest and effective means of doing this is not by presenting Palestinians as evil, but to show the honest views of all parties with a vested interest in the region.

The anti-Israel gang of activists (I’d call them pro-Palestinian, but what have they ever done for the Palestinians they claim to represent?) strive to show Israel, as a place of intolerance, racism and illegitimacy. And I’ll give this to them: their propaganda methods are effective…

Libby Davies can be seen on YouTube saying she thinks that chanting “long live the intifada” “sounds good” and saying (not once but twice) that Israel has been occupying Palestinian land since 1948, that “it’s the longest occupation in history,” and that it’s time for boycotts and disinvestment. – Bob Rae

People are fired up about this. Here’s video of a protest outside NDP MP Libby Davies’ office in the heart of Vancouver:

Probably the best thing to come out of this weird incident with NDP Deputy Leader Libby Davies is the end of an unofficial two-track policy on Israel. With the statement from Thomas Mulcair, the NDP’s other deputy leader, the idea of Israel as an apartheid state is definitively ejected from mainstream political discourse in this country.

Let’s take a quick look at Mulcair’s statement as recorded in the National Post:

“No member of our caucus, whatever other title they have, is allowed to invent their own policy,” said Mr. Mulcair. “We take decisions together, parties formulate policies together, and to say that you’re personally in favour of boycott, divestment and sanctions for the only democracy in the Middle East is, as far as I’m concerned, grossly unacceptable.”

If the NDP caucus truly believes this, then it’s a sea-change for public discussion of foreign policy vis a vis Israel and the Palestinians in this country. The ideology behind boycott and divestment campaigns against Israel are firmly relegated to the land of 9/11 Truthers, Creationists and the more nefarious minds behind the Rhino party.

For political pragmatists like myself, the BDS campaign has always been an extreme phenomenon that never carried any official support from any legitimate political party or their rank and file, or at least shouldn’t have. Yet there’s no question that NDP rank and file were far more likely to have sympathy with the “Israel Apartheid State” view than their Liberal or Conservative party counterparts (and nobody really cares what Bloc members think about this stuff, anyway).

Now, many NDP members, particularly those a little higher up in the food chain, are forced to confront the reality that the BDS ideas they’ve flirted with for years are simply not part of the NDP platform — and really never have been. If NDP supporters want to retain ties to BDS, it will have to do so in a fairly clandestine manner; in the same way that when some Conservatives decide to make a statement about pro-life abortion politics, they do so in a private venue amongst their close colleagues. The days of NDP MPs like Libby Davies coming out overtly in favor of a controversial BDS campaign are now over.

That is to say, those days are over if the NDP really do mean what they’re saying.

Libby Davies Puts Her Foot In It

The story about the “peace flotilla” to Gaza and the Mavi Marmara just keeps getting better and better. The activists apparently collected all of their thrift store pants and expired pills from their medicine cabinets and threw them into a pile. From the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

Of the seven flotilla ships, only four were freight ships. The Challenger 1 (small yacht), the Sfendonh (small passenger boat) and the Mavi Marmara (passenger ship) did not carry any humanitarian aid, except for the passengers’ personal belongings. Of the four freight ships – Gaza, Sofia, Defeny and Rachel Corrie – as of June 7, SIBAT had only offloaded equipment from the Defeny…

It should be noted that:

1. The equipment does not constitute humanitarian aid in the accepted sense (basic foodstuffs, new and functional equipment, fresh medicines).

2. The equipment awaiting entry into the Gaza Strip, both at the Kerem Shalom crossing and the Defense Ministry base, has been approved by COGAT.

3. The humanitarian aid on all the ships was scattered in the ships’ holds and thrown onto piles and not packed properly for transport. The equipment was not packaged and not properly placed on wooden bases.

4. Because of the improper packing, some of the equipment was crushed by the weight in transit.

5. The medicines and sensitive equipment (operating theater equipment, new clothing, etc.) are being kept in cool storage at the Defense Ministry base. Some of the medicines have already expired, and some will expire soon. The operating theater equipment, which should be kept sterile, was carelessly wrapped.

6. A large part of the equipment, particularly shoes and clothing, was used and worn

7. The construction material must be approved by COGAT and the political echelons before it can be transferred to the Gaza Strip.

It was all a hoax. And the world fell for it.

H/T to Covenant Zone

Now, a little bit of time to savor this news until the flood of comments comes accusing Israel of bald-faced lies and propaganda — like this video footage of Mavi Marmara passengers preparing weaponry: