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?


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