Israel Matzav

Human sacrifices

Somewhere, I reckon, Hamas chieftains are congratulating each other on a job well done. The Gaza peace ship affair, which reached a climax this morning when Israeli sailors boarded a ship and killed “activists” in a shoot-out, will undoubtedly go down in the win column in the terrorist organization’s war against Israel. Videotape of commandos putting little old ladies in Birkenstock sandals into a head lock would have been good (and apparently originally one of the propaganda aims of this delivery of unneeded “food aid”) but headlines featuring the line “16 Activists Killed by Israeli Commandos” are immeasurably better.

Just last Saturday, in fact, Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh made this strategy very plain when he told reporters, “If the ships reach Gaza, it’s a victory for Gaza. If they are intercepted and terrorized by the Zionists, it will be a victory for Gaza, too, and they will move again in new ships to break the siege of Gaza.”

Over the last few years, Hamas, controller of the Gaza strip, has increasingly discovered the joys and cost efficiencies of media war. If you’re lucky, a rocket fired from the Strip kills one or two Israeli civilians. Meanwhile a well-timed Al Jazeera or BBC videotape of Israeli military “atrocities” goes around the world. Increasingly Hamas and its international supporters have attempted to engineer such atrocity tapes; civilian lives are considered a small price to pay.

According to the IDF, the attack on Israeli sailors who attempted to board the “peace ship” was carried out by men armed with pistols and knives, probably members of the hardcore Islamic Turkish group that organised the blockade run; but one wonders if more naive members of the contingent (the aforementioned little old ladies in Birkenstock types, the wild-eyed gap year girls) had been worked into a frenzy the night before and encouraged to throw themselves upon the naval boarding crew.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:30 PM