Tuesday, June 1, 2010

My Response to Sarah Palin's Facebook Post on U.S. Media Coverage of the Seizure of the Gaza Flotilla

Wasilla Alaska's foremost quitter and cult compound developer, Sarah Palin, has issued a very predictable, ghost-written, facebook response to the illegal seizure on early Sunday, of a flotilla of vessels attempting to bring humanitarian supplies to the 1.6 million people being illegally besieged in the Gaza Strip. In it, she criticizes the U.S. media for "reporting one side of the story," something we've also been doing a lot of at firedoglake. Sarah's take is different from ours, though. Allow me to walk us through hers:

Israeli Flotilla: Don’t Take Mainstream Media Coverage at Face Value
Today at 11:49am




The media, as usual, seems to be reporting only one side of the Israeli Flotilla incident. Don’t trust the mainstream media to give you both sides of a story fairly… you must seek out fair reporting to ensure you have all the information.




Palin seems to somehow feel that U.S. media has been relying on some source, here and there, other than the Israeli government sources.



As far too many in the media, and in various governments, rush to condemn Israel, we must put the recent events off Israel’s coast into the right perspective. This “relief” convoy was not about humanitarian aid, as the liberal mainstream media keeps reporting.




The media is reporting it variously, but as '"relief" convoys' go, this one is getting U.S. headlines (as aggregated at memeorandum on 12:32 p.m. Monday, AKDT) like:

Official: US Will Stand with Israel (16 supportive articles in U.S. media)

The Terror Finance Flotilla (33 U.S. articles, 7 Israeli)

Israeli Officials and American Conservatives Claim "There is No Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza" (five supportive articles)

Flotillas and Falsehoods - The Effort to Destroy the Jewish State Has Many Fronts (nine articles)

Next Time We'll Use MORE Force (six articles)



The whole operation was designed to provoke Israel, not to provide supplies to Palestinians held hostage by Hamas terrorists in Gaza.




It was to both provide supplies to Gazans and provoke Israel. It was also specifically organized to bring world attention to the illegality of the blockades.



Anyone who sees the video of Israeli commandos being attacked as they land on that ship knows the people aboard were vicious thugs, not “peace activists.”




Many have seen the IDF-supplied videos of people aggressively defending themselves from a hostile attack. What the IDF videos do not show is what has been readily available on Youtube since Sunday. That is videos and other evidence that the IDF videos begin well after the Israelis opened fire with cannons and automatic weapons on the vessels and their passengers.



The media insults our intelligence with their outright mischaracterization of who these enemies are.




The U.S. media has been, if anything, very Israel-centric throughout coverage. Once the prisoners are released, we will know more.



Israel delivers thousands of tons of humanitarian supplies every week to Gaza. These ships could have offloaded their cargoes at a nearby Israeli port if they really wanted to help the people of Gaza.



Where much of would have sat for a year, getting moldy and rat-eaten. Some would never be delivered, for one arbitrary reason or another.




Instead, they chose to incite confrontation and violence.




The vessels could have been immobilized at first light Monday morning, with no casualties. Night time operations such as the one undertaken are very likely to end up in a fiasco. This was the IDF's choice. The vessels were actually recorded as moving slowly away from the coast at the time of the hijackings.




Israel has a right to prevent arms shipments to Gaza that will be used to target innocent Israelis, so they were legitimately checking the cargo on the flotilla.




The cargoes had been inspected, many of them sealed.



Turkey has chosen to condemn Israel but we should be asking some serious questions about Turkey’s role in this whole affair. Why is a fellow member of NATO sponsoring such a dangerous publicity stunt?




Perhaps the Turks are tired of being next to one illegal invasion or incursion or massive fucking oil spill that shits all over their beaches after another. For sixty years. If anything, the Turks have been extremely patient. Not to mention the planeloads of body bags and injured the Turks will have to be welcoming back sometime.



As one expert points out: “Three ships of that six-ship pro-terror convoy flew Turkish flags and were crowded with Turkish citizens.




How outrageous. Turkish vessels flying Turkish flags in the Eastern Mediterranean. Palin's geographic sense is so fully informed, eh? This is just the latest example.



The Ankara government – led by Islamists these days – sponsored the ‘aid’ operation in a move to position itself as the new champion of the Palestinians.




Although less secular than previous governments in Ankara, nobody who describes the current government as "Islamist" should be let anywhere close to influencing governmental policy.



And Turkish decision-makers knew Israel would have to react – and were waiting to exploit the inevitable clash. The provocation was as cynical as it was carefully orchestrated.”




Again, that's only assuming that the Israelis had to act so stupidly. Palin's rejection of the Israeli government being able to react to this "threat" rationally smacks perhaps of her innermost view that they are incapable of acting prudently.



We can only hope the Obama Administration does not join the anti-Israel chorus in the aftermath of this staged confrontation.




At this point, Palin might have asked her ghost writer to check google to see what the President had actually said so far, which was far more supportive of the IDF criminal acts than has been the response of most other NATO government heads.




Please, Mr. President, we need to let Israelis know we stand with them in their fight against terrorists and those who arm and support them. America and her ally, Israel, stand by waiting for your response.


- Sarah Palin


He just did that. What, in your mind, should he say?


image - Darkblack

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wonder who her ghostwriter actually is?? Surely, anything coherent and cogent is not written by Sarah; we know how incorrectly she speaks and writes so it's patently clear when someone else (who does have an education) composes for her.

Isn't this a form of plagiarism? Someone writes it and she inscribes her name to it - I think I'd call it nothing BUT plagiarism.

It's time for the media to begin calling her on some of this. She's become a national punch line at this point.

All one has to do is listen to her speak and you KNOW immediately that well-constructed, grammatically accurate sentence structure is definitely NOT her forte and is incontrovertibly NOT emanating from Sarah Palin's cerebrum.

Frankly, this disqualifies this woman from ever being considered for public office ever again.

Anonymous said...

"Many have seen the IDF-supplied videos of people aggressively defending themselves from a hostile attack."

OMG, this site is beyond parody !!! "Aggressively defending themselves" - don't you ever feel a shred of embarrassment at the tripe you come out with?

Anonymous said...

"Although less secular than previous governments in Ankara, nobody who describes the current government as "Islamist" should be let anywhere close to influencing governmental policy."

You obviously don't know much about Turkish politics. Add this to the list of information you obviously get from the angry children of Daily Kos.

Anonymous said...

"For sixty years. If anything, the Turks have been extremely patient."

Do some f'ing research can't you. Try telling that to the thousands of Kurdish workers slaughtered by the Turks, tell it as well to the hundreds of families of Greek Cypriots
who vanished after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus !!

WakeUpAmerica said...

Yeah, I can post again!! Thanks, Gryphen!

WakeUpAmerica said...

So Sarah once again hurls chunks. Yaaawwwwnn. Any real news?

Anonymous said...

Anon@4:07-10 Eye for eye makes the whole world blind...tool *ilb*

WakeUpAmerica said...

Ooops! Sorry, I forgot I had switched from Gryphen's blog to yours. Long day. What can I say!! Good article on your part, though.

Anonymous said...

cult compound developer (that stupidly fails to secure neighboring properties)

AKPetMom said...

Great rebuttal Phil!

Her "Presidential practicin'" (via ghostwriter no less) is not going so well.

Bein' Presidential is a lot harder than pageant waving or doing whatever she claims to have done with basketballs.

Anonymous said...

"Bein' Presidential is a lot harder than pageant waving or doing whatever she claims to have done with basketballs."

Yeah, she needs to play golf everyday to be like our boy wonder.

Anonymous said...

"Ooops! Sorry, I forgot I had switched from Gryphen's blog to yours. Long day."

"Long day"? More like short attention span...which make this "blog" the perfect place for you.

mocha said...

Her ghost writer on this one was certainly Bill Kristol or one of his AIPAC or Weekly Standard minnions. Before her FB was published, Weekly Standard online was crowing they had it exclusively. Sure they had it. They wrote it. Apparently she recognizes she knows nothing about foreign policy and waited for instructions from her deciders. She seems to be given free rein on anything domestic. Her drunken tweets are becoming an embarrassment. The deciders probably will soon cut her off from twitter and FB. Hopefully not before she comes completely undone.

Anonymous said...

Good rebuttal, but it is amazing that you found the need to actually "rebut" Ms. Palin's screeching. Doing so elevates it so a level of imnportance it surely does not deserve.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Phil for covering the other side of the story. The government of the U.S.A. was instrumental in taking the land, homes, and livelihood of the Palestinians in 1948, and has, by its lack of denouncement and continued funding with our tax dollars, condoned terrorist attacks initiated by the Israelis, continued Israeli attempts at expansion, and inhumane treatment of non-Israeli human beings in the region ever since. If the Israelis are truly God's chosen people, they have a very strange way of showing it.

We should be denouncing such behavior from both sides of the conflict there, instead of vilifying the participants on one side while turning a blind eye and sometimes even praising those on the other side for doing the same and worse.

That Palin knows nothing of the history, geography, or politics of the region is not the least bit surprising. I doubt she could tell you anything about the USS Liberty, either.