Media Matters: 'Israel's Kent State'

Regarding the recent Gaza flotilla incident…predictably, Progressive Democrats are blaming Israel. In a most intriguing case of egomaniacal projection, they are calling it “Israel’s Kent State!”

The unflappable pro-Gaza writer, MJ Rosenberg, even goes so far as to blame the current lack of knee-jerk condemnation from America toward Israel on the ‘Zionist controlled Congress.’

Meanwhile in Washington, the word is that Obama will ease the pressure on settlements and the strangulation of Gaza to keep pro-Israel donors to the Democratic party writing checks for the November election.

I certainly don’t know what will happen. However, given that nothing has changed since Bibi’s last visit, any demonstration of love from the administration will be proof that US policy is dictated by campaign contributions.

The usual suspects are already rushing to offer the usual double talk to defend what Israel did. Here is typical claptrap from the Israel-is-always-100%-right American Jewish Committee. AIPAC and its media acolytes are also out there to tell us that the Israelis are the victims, and if you don’t think so, you are an anti-Semite. Or a self-hating Jew.

But the massacre happened in international waters and the attack was launched by military commandos against civilians trying to relieve other civilians suffering under an illegal blockade.

There is only one spot in this country where the lobby will be able to sell the story that the humanitarian flotilla was the aggressor and that Israel is the victim here. That is the United States Congress.

Despite Rosenberg’s preemptive straw-man charges that he is an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew, we will take him at his word that he is neither of those things. But in the case of the writing above, we might accuse him of having a small problem with bigotry.

Bigotry is sometimes like pornography: you know it when you see it. What Rosenberg has written above and in the past sure does walk and sure does quack like a bigoted duck. But let’s even go so far as to take Rosenberg at what would surely be his word on this issue, and assume that he is not penning bigotry. That only leaves one explanation for his, and his Progressive allies who reflexively blame Israel for every horrible incident in this decades-long Jihad against the Jewish state: ignorance.

Let’s review the details of the flotilla incident that have emerged thus far as an illustration of Progressive ignorance regarding Hamas-controlled Gaza and the existential threat they pose to Israel.

1) Gaza is controlled by Hamas.

2) Hamas is a Jihad terrorist organization.

3) Israel offered to guarantee the delivery of any truly humanitarian aid to the Jihad-terrorist-controlled Gaza Strip, if only they would submit to an inspection. The Islamists and their Progressive co-organizers refused.

4) Israel warned the Progressive Jihadis that they would be intercepted and explicitly warned that the Jihad flotilla would be boarded. The flotilla pressed on despite the warnings.

5) Some commandos landed on the flotilla with paintball guns!

6) The commandos were immediately attacked violently (something they should have expected from Jiahdis).

7) When the commandos feared for their lives, they opened fire with real weapons.

Yet, even with all of these details, it is still Israel’s fault, because according to Rosenberg and the Progressive establishment at Media Matters, the blockade of the terrorist Gaza Strip of Hamas is illegal, and as with all things Progressive, the ends justify the means.

Rosenberg and his friends on the Progressive Left have very few options to justify the kind of things they are writing in defense of Hamas-controlled Gaza. They either need to argue that Hamas is not a Jihad terrorist group, or that Gaza is not run by Hamas. That, or they need to argue that lifting the blockade of a Jihad terrorist state will lead to a safer Jewish state next door.

As to the argument that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, or that Gaza is not their base, the Progressive movement will have to take that up with the Clinton/Obama State Department:

Entering the Gaza Strip: The Department of State urges U.S. citizens to avoid all travel to the Gaza Strip, which is under the control of Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization. American citizens in Gaza are advised to depart immediately.

Short of any substance to their argument that the blockade is illegal, or what the alternative would look like, they are left open to accusations of antisemitism, self-loathing, bigotry, and/or ignorance.

Lastly, as to the initial analogy, the only thing this flotilla incident has in common with Kent State is the participation of the Progressive Left.