The process is pretty well understood.

Attacks on Israel cause Israel to respond, which then provokes outrage on the part of Europeans who manfully enough, direct their anger at the local Jewish population. It took place during Israel’s war with Hezbollah during the summer of 2006, and apparently, it’s happening again in the Netherlands. According to the blog, Bad News from the Netherlands, a synagogue in the conservative town of Weesp canceled its services because of threats. Bad News from Netherlands reports:

The synagogue in Weesp cancelled its service last Saturday after the police informed members about threats received. The threats are believed to be related to the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla. The chairman of the Jewish community in the town which is Masorti (i.e. Conservative) Nicky Cohen said that the synagogue has standard security but in this case it possibly would not have been sufficient. (Comment: This is probably the first time since World War II that a synagogue service had to be entirely cancelled in Western Europe. In 2006 in the Swedish town of Malmö once a service could not take place in the synagogue but it was then moved elsewhere.)

Speaking of Malmö, Jews are fleeing that city because they are targets of unrelenting hostility fanned largely by anti-Israel sentiment. What does the mayor do? He blames the Jews.

Ethan Bronner’s New York Times/International Herald Tribune page-one article Friday begins:

Three years after Israel and Egypt imposed an embargo on this tormented Palestinian strip, shutting down its economy, a consensus has emerged that the attempt to weaken the governing party, Hamas, and drive it from power has failed.

It the days since an Israeli naval takeover of a flotilla trying to break the siege turned deadly, that consensus has taken an added urgency, with world powers, anti-Hamas Palestinians in Gaza and some senior Israeli officials advocating a shift.

Bronner does not mention, however, the position of one major player in this story — the Palestinian Authority — which opposes the lifting the naval blockade.
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On CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu insisted:

And, again, let me underline, this freedom flotilla was absolutely an NGO activity. As the Turkish government, we didn’t encourage them, but it was a civilian activity. We are a democratic society. We cannot stop any protester, even in the streets of Istanbul.

So, it is absolutely an NGO activity. It was a civilian and international activity. Therefore, we cannot say anything against them.

Yet, as the Jerusalem Post reports:

“[The] IHH acquired the Mavi Marmara ship from the AKP-run municipality of Istanbul. It is not conceivable that the IHH’s Gaza operation could have been carried out absent high-level government sanction,” wrote Svante Cornell, a Swedish security expert who specializes in Eurasia, in an article published on Monday.

A journalist on-board the Mavi Marmara, described as having good links with the heads of the Turkish government and Bulent Yildirim, head of the IHH, had stated, “The flotilla was organized with the support of the Turkish government and Prime Minister Erdogan gave the instructions for it to set sail. That was despite the fact that everyone knew it would never reach its destination,” according to the report.

For more on Turkish governmental links to the IHH, see here.

A partisan source and leading interview questions made for an unreliable June 3 segment on “The World,” a one-hour weekday radio news magazine co-produced by the British Broadcasting Corp. and WGBH Boston for Public Radio International. Anchor Marco Werman interviewed Lara Lee, a U.S.-based Brazilian filmmaker who was on board the “Mavi Marmara” as it attempted to run Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, precipitating a fight in which nine Turkish men were killed.

“We didn’t have weapons,” Lee claimed. “Our ships were fully inspected before departure.” This despite video footage of Israeli soldiers being attacked by passengers with iron bars and clubs and wire service photographs showing passengers holding knives and standing over wounded commandos.

“These Gazan people be completely, like, locked in where they cannot have access to food, medication and cement and all sorts of basic products and people are injured or have diseases and they can’t have medication in the hospitals,” Lee alleged. Werman didn’t ask Lee about the hundreds of tons of aid, including food and medicine, Israel allows into Gaza weekly or the thousands of Gazans it treats annually in Israeli hospitals.

Instead, like a prosecuting attorney leading a willing witness, he asked questions including, “Israel has said its commandos fired in self defense after they were clubbed, stabbed and fired upon by activists who had snatched the commandos’ pistols. At any time did you see any fighting between the activists and the commandos?” and “And did the Israelis confiscate your cameras?”

“The World’s” overall coverage of the Gaza flotilla managed to avoid interviewing a single Israeli. In addition to Lee, Werman chatted with Jeffery Goldberg (June 2), a correspondent for Atlantic Monthly magazine, BBC’s Jon Donnison (June 2) and Bethany Bell (June 3), and Magdi Abdelhadi, an Arab Affairs analyst at the BBC (June 4) regarding the flotilla. Journalists talking to other journalists about news generally is not news. And even with inclusion of Goldberg, “The World’s” Lara Lee-BBC line-up was anything but balanced. – Traci Siegel, research intern.

In a story about President Obama’s remarks at a press conference with Mahmoud Abbas, the Associated Press reported as follows:

“The situation in Gaza is unsustainable,” Obama said as he met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the Oval Office. He said the attention of the world is on the problem because of the “tragedy” of the Israeli raid that killed nine people trying to bring in supplies.

Problem is, Obama did not say anything about “nine people trying to bring in supplies” — perhaps because he knew that those nine, Turkish passengers on the Mavi Marmara, were not trying to bring in supplies.

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs explains that

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.

The AP, which has a code of ethics that states “when mistakes are made, they must be corrected — fully, quickly and ungrudgingly,” has been informed of the error. We’ll update this post when they fulfill their promise and run a correction.

Halva, that sticky, sesame paste and honey concoction known from India to the Balkans, is a “Palestinian sweet” according to a Washington Post news brief, “Diver toll reaches 6; Gaza blockade eased,” (June 9). The item, by Post Jerusalem bureau chief Janine Zacharia and primarily about Israel’s shooting of scuba-diving terrorist suspects, referred to “the Palestinian sweet halva” as an product recently allowed into the Gaza Strip. While halva certainly is eaten by Palestinian Arabs, it is also common in general Arab, Jewish, Indian, African, and European cultures.

Halva’s origin is somewhat murky. However, many agree that the term dates to seventh century Arabic. Al Halwa, meaning sweet confection, was used to describe a popular date paste. Once halva spread through the Near and Far East, semolina, which is made from wheat, became a main ingredient and sesame was introduced as well. This helped popularize the product internationally. Today halva has become a cultural-cuisine item for many Middle Eastern, African, Asian, and European countries and is eaten all over the world.

Though it is hard to pinpoint where the halva eaten today originated, it clearly existed hundreds of years before the 20th century emergence of Palestinian Arabs as a national group. The Post describing halva as a “Palestinian sweet,” is a small but revealing instance of the newspaper’s tendency to filter the Middle East, from candy to conflict, through the Palestinian perspective. — Traci Siegel, research intern

The public square may have seen the last of Helen Thomas after her “Get the hell out of Palestine” message to Israelis embarrassed her employer, the Hearst Corporation, and the White House Press Association — which had allotted her a privileged position. But their quick action in distancing themselves from her has triggered furious reaction from a raft of Jew-haters. FoxNews reported on June 9:

The New York rabbi who videotaped veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas telling Jews to “get the hell out of Palestine” says he has received numerous death threats and thousands of pieces of hate mail in the days since Thomas’ abrupt retirement.

Rabbi David Nesenoff said he is facing an “overload” of threatening e-mails calling for a renewed Holocaust and targeting his family — a barrage of hate he said he planned to report to the police on Wednesday.

As Irish author Conor Cruise O’Brien memorably observed, anti-Semitism is a “light sleeper.” Thomas seems to have goaded the monster to stir. FoxNews, for its part, laudably speaks out against the bigots.

In denying that any of the Free Gaza flotilla passengers have links to terror groups, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was all bravado on CNN:

If anybody wants, I think they should look at the list of passengers. And I am challenging — there’s a very good question here. If somebody argues that there is a terrorist in the ship, they can give names to Turkey and we can follow the case.

We already obliged with the names provided by MEMRI and the Israeli army. But here’s a new name: Amin Abou Rashed, the leader of Hamas in the Netherlands. See the Dutch report from the Telegraaph, and the previous link for an English translation.)

Hilarion Capucci may be a convicted gun-runner, but that doesn’t stop him from having his own page on Facebook.