Free Gaza - From Its Arab Oppressors

[Published by The New Britain Herald June 10, 2010.]

Alan H. Stein, Ph.D.

The late Israeli prime minister Golda Meir reportedly observed that peace would come when Israel's Arab enemies started loving their children more than they hated Israel.

The carefully orchestrated confrontation of the so-called "Gaza flotilla" with the Israeli navy is evidence that day is nowhere on the horizon.

Israel is faced with fanatical enemies who are determined to get as many of their dupes as possible transported to Paradise at the hands of Israel. If they can murder some Jews in the process, so much the better.

They are tireless in that effort and, despite the best efforts of Israel, there inevitably will be times when they are at least partially successful.

The "Free Gaza" flotilla incident was one of those times.

Rather than exoriating Israel, we should be placing blame where it belongs, with the terror-tainted IHH, with the Turkish government that has switched its allegiance from the West to the revanchist regimes in Iran and Syria, with the groups that pretend to be interested in human rights and peace but are really just dedicated to delegitimizing the only country in the Middle East which has those values, and to the governments which foolishly reward Arab intransigence and rush to condemn Israel any time it has the temerity to try to protect its citizens.

It's become increasingly clear, from the cries "Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Muhammed will return" to the roughly fifty armed mercenaries on board the Mavi Marmara, clad in bulletproof vests and using night vision goggles, to the attack on the Israelis armed primarily with paintball rifles to the refusal of the flotilla organizers to accept Israel's offer to have their goods transported to Gaza after an inspection to make sure there were no supplies for the Hamas terror machine to the little publicized refusal of Hamas to even accept the goods, that "Free Gaza" spokeswoman Greta Berlin was telling the truth when she admitted in Cyprus: "We're not trying to be a humanitarian mission."

It's also clear the leaders of "Free Gaza" have little interest in the welfare of the Palestinian Arabs living in Gaza; otherwise, they would be directing their efforts at ending the ethnic cleansing of the Christian community and the repression of women in Gaza.

Rather, they are interested in embracing Hamas, an organization whose charter envisions "the time[promised by Allah which] will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them)."

This is a sobering reality of which many are unaware and others deliberately ignore, all at our peril. The fanatical mullahs in charge of Iran back Hamas in hopes of destroying Israel, their "Little Satan," in order to ease the way for the destruction of their "Great Satan," the United States of America.

We should look at the flotilla incident honestly and with the recognition that Israel is on the front line fighting our battle and effectively protecting us.

Alan Stein is a retired professor of mathematics at the University of Connecticut and the president of PRIMER-Connecticut, a media monitoring organization devoted to Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting. He may be contacted at alan.stein@primerct.org.