Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
His op-ed in the WSJ (you need a subscription to read it online) is called "Israel's Gaza Flotilla Fiasco." It goes something like this: the flotilla trying to break the blockade was filled with terrorist sympathizers almost certainly trying to bring arms to Hamas; Israel was within its rights to board; the boarders felt their lives were in danger when they opened fire; it was all completely justified... but gosh, it looked so bad to the international community! What a fiasco! Surely, there had to be a better way. No disrespect to Boot, whose work I like, but to accept the mad logic of the anti-Israeli left is to go down the rabbit hole. Any action Israel takes to keep from being wiped off the map looks bad to people who think Israel should be wiped off the map. It's their insane reasoning and false history that need to be challenged constantly. Israel shouldn't accept the logic of their own destruction.
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May '10
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
All it would've taken was a few tug boats to ensure the flotilla never reached shore.
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
Yes, Andrew, it was annoying. Especially when he offered his own options:
The anti-Israel headlines would have been something line: "Israel blows up humanitarian aid ships." The whole thing is a "public relations disaster" because Israel was too concerned with trying to circumvent a "public relations disaster" and the terrorists knew this and let them fall right into the trap.
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
Max's column struck me as marvelous, Drew...right up until those annoying final three or four paragraphs.
What strikes me about the hysterical denunciations of the Israeli action, by the way, is how neatly--disturbingly neatly--they conform to the Steyn thesis. Who has proven most vitriolic in denouncing Israel? The prime minister of Turkey, a nation in which the birth rate in the Islamicized interior has for decades outpaced that of the secular urban centers of Ankara and Istanbul. Who takes second place? The President of France, who instantly called the Israeli action "disproportionate," and who leads a nation in which the Jewish population of less than half a million has a low birthrate but in which the Muslim population of ten million has a high birth rate. The demographic shifts in Turkey and Europe--these are rapidly becoming the most important "facts on the ground."
Edited on Jun 1, 2010 at 12:35pmMay '10
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
Is there anything that Israel does that warrants criticism?
May '10
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
Too bad the media is too concerned with the conduct of the IDF to lend attention to this news report regarding Hezbollah and the recent shipment of goods to Lebanon.
May '10
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
<blockquote>It's their insane reasoning and false history that need to be challenged constantly. Israel shouldn't accept the logic of their own destruction.</blockquote>
True.
But wouldn't it be great if for just one moment, Israel could "win" one of the PR battles? Just once? It's been such a long time since it has, June of '67? Entebbe in '76? I have forgotten what the last PR victory actually was!
I'd like to think that they could have entangled the props of that ship and towed it to Ashdod and then unloaded it. What's the worst that could have happened? The "humanitarian agents" would have dumped the bad stuff over the side? Then all that would have happend is that the materials would have gotten to Gaza...by truck as it should be.
OK, as I'm typing this, the Karine A comes to mind and squat happened from that. I keep forgetting Israel can't do anything good. Who am I kidding? The world hates the Jews and nothing's gonna change that.
A guy can dream, can't he? Didn't Herzl say "If you will it, it is no dream?"
*sigh*
May '10
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
OK, format problem on the quote.. Sorry.
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
Again, not to pick on Boot; he does fine work. But the simple truth is that Israel is a free, decent and democratic ally--an oasis of liberty and accomplishment in a sea of ignorance and oppression--fighting a defensive war against thugs set on its extinction. Under those circumstances, a torpedo would have been a proportionate--indeed restrained--response. I see no need to validate in any way the madhouse narrative in which the Jewish state of all states alone has to sue the international community for the right to live.
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
As great a fan as I am of being great friends of Israel, I'm not entirely sure Boot's complaint can be fully characterized as "gosh, it looked so bad to the international community! What a fiasco!" Surely at least a part of Boot's problem with Israel's response was that it looked so bad to Boot, the international community and its sense of optics notwithstanding. Entirely justified though that response may be, Boot seems to be saying, there was (probably) a better way.
It strikes me as unfortunate if we determine that we can't have that conversation, as opposed to the international-optics conversation, without giving aid and comfort to Israel's enemies. Of course, one could argue that we have no business one way or the other Monday morning-quarterbacking Israel's national security decisions. But with allies this special, that kind of thing seems unavoidable. I'm not sure the implications of Boot's argument even turn on the degree of violence involved in the Israeli response. Your torpedo argument, Andrew, may dovetail with Boot's in an odd way.
May '10
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
Look, this is no different from the standard reaction to any action the US undertakes- "It will be a recruiting point for terrorists." There will always be US actions that are fodder for recruiting posters. Why? Because there will always be recruiting posters, and when you are the one creating them, you grab the most compelling material you can find. You might as well forget most of the PR war, because it is meaningless in the larger scheme of things- you won't win over your enemies, and neither of your friends will desert you.
This episode was planned from the beginning by The Usual Suspects. The goal was 1) kill the blockade, and if that didn't work, 2) score yet another PR coup to get the "international community" to desert Israel, as if any of them had ever supported Israel.
So we ended up with #2, which was better than #1. There was no way whatever to avoid the entire process designed to create it. When the press releases and outraged quotes are on the wire almost before the event, who is kidding whom?
Someone tell me what great friend of Israel or neutral party is now opposed to her?
May '10
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
The international optics question and the question of whether this particular operation was justified are both being discussed heatedly in the Israeli press, and rightly so -- that a nation has the right to exist and enemies who would destroy it doesn't imply any military action it takes is automatically prudent and justified.
It's my fervent hope that Israel remains a secure, wildly prosperous country so long as humans exist on this earth, and I wish nothing but failure on anyone who would act to undermine its right to survive. Being a friend of Israel, however, doesn't require that I reflexively side with them or defend there actions at the level of individual military maneuvers. Indeed, one quality of a good ally is speaking up when your friends are being self-destructive.
That isn't to say anything about this particular controversy -- I am suspending judgment pending more information -- except this important point: criticizing Israel is not the same as siding with those who would destroy it, a point its most staunch defenders will find comforting if our ally turns out to have acted imprudently in this particular situation.
May '10
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
Duane Oyen: ... This episode was planned from the beginning by The Usual Suspects. The goal was 1) kill the blockade, and if that didn't work, 2) score yet another PR coup to get the "international community" to desert Israel, as if any of them had ever supported Israel.
So we ended up with #2 ...
... for now. More ships are on their way.
I doubt Israel will handle the next ship as they did this one. Previous Israeli leadership might have let the blockade evaporate after some number of these incidents consecutively. While I expect the current leadership has the will to stomach further propoganda displays, the decision will be complicated by America's faltering committment to our alliance and Israel's impending strike against Iran.
I wouldn't be surprised if Israel alters the conditions of its blockade in the next year, if the war doesn't start first.
May '10
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
If no matter what Israel does they get hammered, why don't they do more? It seems to me the only real check on what they do is public opinion at home. Aaron, I think you have a point. This time around, doves and hawks in Israel are on the same page, more or less.
We live in interesting times.
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
Conor, while what you say is of course true--of course Israel can do wrong and be criticized for it as can we all--the words are too often used as a license for an inexcusable moral reversal. Again and again, Israel is loudly denounced for an "atrocity" - the massacre at Jenin, the bombing of Lebanese ambulances, the killing of Palestinian children - which is later softly, softly proved to have been nothing of the kind. Given that history, and the nature of the peoples involved, there is every reason to first assume Israel to have acted as it must and only think otherwise when true proof is given. So help me, it sometimes seems as if our intellectuals--too long restrained from anti-semitism by the memory of the Holocaust--now feel a naughty and rebellious thrill at joining the old mad dance again, dressed this time as solemn and judicious moralists. A plague on them.
May '10
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
Andrew, I join you in condemning anyone who feigns judiciousness to mask anti-Semitic attacks on Israel. And I agree: the loud denunciations are often wrongheaded -- that's one reason I've withheld judgment on the current controversy despite optics that made me fear Israel was in the wrong (that isn't normally my reaction). Since this isn't a subject I write about regularly, due diligence demands that I refrain from going with my gut until I've had time to think and investigate -- and I might well feel differently if I regularly followed matters related to Israel as closely as you do.
But I want to insist that with any American ally, the prudent, vital course among writers like you and I is to weigh every controversy on the merits, even if it sometimes means concluding, "I side vociferously with my ally, though I think they erred this one time." When friends laud you right or wrong, it becomes so much harder to do right, and easier to do wrong, especially if your enemies are uncivilized. We help Israel preserve its laudable virtues by objecting if they stray. Let us doubt charges that they've wronged w/o dismissing them, seeking proof and denouncing propaganda.
May '10
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
We should assume first that the Israelis knows something we do not and are acting to defend themselves. That should be the very first premise and all that follows must prove otherwise. What is a violent crime victim's friend? Time and distance and Israel has neither. The U.S. has thousands of miles separating us from our enemies and a massive country with sheer size of land and population to defend it. Israel is just one nuclear missile away from having their entire country and all its people wiped out. One...and they're gone. So, their level of vigilance must be infallible and our level of support must also.
Mona Charen wrote an article in NRO this morning that explains what happened. After reading it it's difficult to fault the Israelis' actions against the non-peaceful flotilla. But if you started with giving them the benefit of the doubt it won't surprise you.
http://article.nationalreview.com/435253/flotillas-and-falsehoods/mona-charen?page=1
May '10
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
I have only one question about the Israeli strategy, and that is why they never engage in any preventive psyops when they know that their enemies are working a new maneuver. They are not stupid, so one has to assume that they either tried, or determined that anything they did ahead of time would be counterproductive because the seafood was already hopelessly loaded with salmonella.
But I'd like to see them be proactive on the PR front just once, instead of always deferring and hoping that they are not pushed to act- because, you know, they will always be pushed to act. That is, of course, the goal of the "peaceful and humanitarian" activists.
Therefore- instead of waiting for the boats to approach and sending messages to the organizers to dock at an Israeli port, be inspected, and go on their way with all the food, long before- proclaim as loudly as possible that they will help move food on every media outlet available. When the flotilla keeps coming, send out the armada and invite all the potentially unbiased reporters available along with all cameras rolling. Preempt every MB (or equivalent) press release by drowning it out with truth.
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
My objection? We will never ever read a news lead remotely like this:
JERUSALEM – A Turkish-sponsored flotilla of six civilian ships carrying self-described peace activists clashed with an Israeli boarding party enforcing that country’s blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on Monday morning. Nine passengers on the lead ship, the Mavi Marmara, were shot dead and seven Israeli soldiers injured in the melee.
Video of the incident provided by an Israeli patrol boat shows passengers attacking boarders with metal clubs as they rappel onto the vessel from a helicopter. Israel says that the initial boarding party was armed with paintball guns for crowd control and subsequent boarders sent to quell the violence had to resort to lethal force in self-defense. Passengers interviewed aboard the Mavi Marmara claim that the Israelis opened fire without provocation.
The movement of goods into Gaza is restricted by Israel and Egypt along their respective borders and Israel enforces a naval blockade to prevent the Hamas government, which advocates the destruction of Israel and the overthrow of Egypt’s secular government, from importing weapons that could be used to launch attacks from the territory. Over 3,000 rockets were fired from Gaza into Israeli civilian areas in 2008 alone.
May '10
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
... not even from Fox News, George. Generally speaking, conservative media has done a much better job at commentary than news.
May '10
Re: Was Anyone Else Annoyed With Max Boot This Morning?
I still say that rich conservatives need to buy media outlets instead of yachts. George would be a great editor- he clearly knows how to write a wire copy story.