That’s what our illustrious POTUS has urged the terrorist supporters aboard the MV Rachel Corrie (too bad the Israelis don’t have seagoing bulldozers) as she steamed onward toward the Gaza blockade.

The Obama administration on Friday urged pro-Palestinian activists attempting to break an Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip to avoid another confrontation in the region, but those on board the Irish ship said they had no intention of abandoning their plans.

Of course they have no intention of abandoning their plans: The “humanitarian” supplies in her cargo holds are merely a prop to provide an excuse for running the blockade. These are the kind of pseudo-humanitarians whose motivations are malevolent — they are acting only to abet continued terrorism by Hamas, who terrorize and oppress their own people in the Gaza Strip in addition to committing monstrosities against innocent Israelis.

The MV Rachel Corrie, laden with purported humanitarian supplies, is set to arrive off the coast of Gaza on Saturday morning, setting up another showdown with Israel, which has warned the activists against trying to break its blockade of the territory.

It’s a good thing for them that I’m not in command of the Israeli forces.

My warning would be: To hell with grappling around on your weather decks, you try to penetrate the blockade, we’ll sink you. No negotiations, no debate, no matter what the “international community” has to say about it. They know why you’re coming, so let them stop you.

Israel has warned the activists that it will stop the Rachel Corrie if it tries to break the blockade and has asked the activists to unload their shipment in the Israeli port city of Ashdod, promising to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza over land.

Unloading at Ashdod wouldn’t accomplish their mission of disruption. In fact:

Ms. Berlin said the Rachel Corrie had no intention of giving in to Israeli demands that it dock at Ashdod.

Greta Berlin link added by blog author.

In her photo, note the “We are all Palestinians” sweat shirt. Between that and her appearance, looking at her is akin to looking at a billboard that says Wingnut.

It’s all here.

Speaking of the Gaza flotilla kerfuffle, as I was reading today’s Best Of The Web Today, I followed one of the many links one finds therein on any given day, and found an article in the Moscow Times By Yulia Latynina that most definitely agrees with those of us in the world who are not dumb enough to be fooled by the phony righteousness or dense naivety of certain elements, not to mention any names like the U.N., the EU, the Arab world in general, liberal pissants everywhere, the profoundly gullible and the uninformed.

Israeli defense forces intercepted a flotilla with humanitarian aid headed for blockaded Gaza, killing at least nine people and causing an international scandal. The activists knew long in advance that their flotilla would be intercepted. In fact, that is how they planned it from the start.

Which agrees with our own assessment here at Hard Astarboard.

The goal of the activists was not to deliver aid to the people of Gaza but to rack up dead bodies. From the standpoint of the organizers, the ideal ending would have been if the Israeli navy had sunk the entire flotilla.

There is a very good reason why Israel is blockading Gaza. The territory is governed by Hamas, which has the professed goal of destroying Israel and is recognized by some Western governments as a terrorist organization. If activists had wanted to send a flotilla to Osama bin Laden carrying “humanitarian aid” of suspect content, would the authorities be obliged to let it pass unchecked?

Unfortunately, in Gaza we are dealing not only with militants but with a bloodthirsty strategy that long ago abandoned the goal of achieving the maximum possible number of enemy dead. Now Hamas strives to maximize the number of their own women and children killed as human shields in order to win support from the gullible element of world opinion.

The old method was simple: Palestinian militants lobbed missiles into Israeli territory.

The new tactic is for militants to place a rocket launcher on the roof of one of their own schools — or better yet, a kindergarten. If the missile finds its target, then, God willing, two Israelis will die. But if all goes well, the Israeli missile fired in retaliation will give the militants the bodies of 10 innocent children to display to reporters.

The organizers of the flotilla are cut from the same cloth. Would it ever enter your head to feel sorry for a man who bypassed airport security, forced his way onto an airplane and then cried “Executioners!” while shooting at the police sent to apprehend him?

But even that is not the most shocking aspect of the flotilla incident. There were 700 people aboard that flotilla. Of course, many were supporters of Hamas. But there were also Europeans. In a world where terrorists destroy the World Trade Center and bomb the London metro — and where Hamas is dead-set on destroying Israel — it is amazing how many idiots can be found who are ready to defend anyone who whines, “The world owes me.”

And this is the scariest part: The flotilla was essentially designed to exploit the misplaced sympathies of gullible rights activists. The militants have mastered a new strategy, and the myopic do-gooders of the world are their willing pawns.

Hear, hear!!!!

Here is the entire piece.

**** Unfamiliar with the subject of the article, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, I looked him up to see why the author of the column above thought he was innocent.

From Wikipedia:

Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky is a Russian enterpreneur, businessman, philanthropist, and convicted felon. In 2004, Khodorkovsky was the wealthiest man in Russia, and was the 16th wealthiest man in the world, although much of his wealth evaporated because of the collapse in the value of his holding in the Russian petroleum company Yukos.

On October 25, 2003, Khodorkovsky was arrested at Novosibirsk airport by the Russian prosecutor general’s office on charges of fraud. Shortly thereafter, on October 31, the government under Vladimir Putin froze shares of Yukos because of tax charges. The Russian Government took further actions against Yukos, leading to a collapse in the share price. It purported to sell a major asset of Yukos in December 2004.

On May 31, 2005, Khodorkovsky was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to nine years in prison. The sentence was later reduced to 8 years. In 2003, prior to his arrest, Khodorkovsky funded several Russian parties, including Yabloko, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and even, allegedly, the pro-Kremlin United Russia.

In October 2005 he was moved into prison camp number 13 in the city of Krasnokamensk, Zabaykalsky Krai.

In March 2006, Forbes magazine surmised that Khodorkovsky’s personal fortune had declined to a fraction of its former level, stating that he “still has somewhere below $500 m.”

On March 31 2009, a new trial of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev began in Moscow for fresh charges on embezzlement and money laundering, and continues to the present day. The two men face up to 22 more years in prison.

The other side of the coin:

Khodorkovsky has received a high level of independent third party support from groups and individuals who believe the process, charges, and two trials against him are politically motivated. On Nov. 29, 2004, The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights published a report which concluded “he Assembly considers that the circumstances of the arrest and prosecution of leading Yukos executives suggest that the interest of the State’s action in these cases goes beyond the mere pursuit of criminal justice, to include such elements as to weaken an outspoken political opponent, to intimidate other wealthy individuals and to regain control of strategic economic assets.”

In June 2009 the Council of Europe published a report which criticized the Russian government’s handling of the Yukos case, entitled “Allegations of Politically Motivated Abuses of the Criminal Justice System in Council of Europe Member States”

“The Yukos affair epitomises this authoritarian abuse of the system. I wish to recall here the excellent work done by Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, rapporteur of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, in her two reports2 on this subject. I do not intend to comment on the ins and outs of this case which saw Yukos, a privately owned oil company, made bankrupt and broken up for the benefit of the stateowned company Rosneft. The assets were bought at auction by a rather obscure financial group, Baikalfinansgroup, for almost €7 billion. It is still not known who is behind this financial group. A number of experts believe that the state-owned company Gazprom had a hand in the matter. The former heads of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, were sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment for fraud and tax evasion. Vasiliy Aleksanyan, former vice-chairman of the company, who is suffering from Aids, was released on bail in January 2009 after being held in inhuman conditions condemned by the European Court of Human Rights.3 Lastly, Svetlana Bakhmina, deputy head of Yukos’s legal department, who was sentenced in 2005 to six and a half years’ imprisonment for tax fraud, saw her application for early release turned down in October 2008, even though she had served half of her sentence, had expressed “remorse” and was seven months pregnant. Thanks to the support of thousands of people around the world and the personal intervention of the United States President, George W. Bush, she was released in April 2009 after giving birth to a girl on 28 November 2008.”

Statements of support for Khodorkovsky and criticism of the state’s persecution have been passed by the Italian Parliament, the German Bundestag, and the U.S. House of Representatives, among many other official bodies.

Wow! They certainly play hardball in Russian politics, don’t they? If Khodorkovsky is an innocent man, as Yulia Latynina believes, well, there we are with a political structure whose major players honed their ruthlessness and Machiavellan skills under the former communist regime. You know, something like what Obama and the rest of the “progressives” seem to have in mind for us.

Surely, that’s something to think about…

This one, by Michele Malkin, needed to be shared.

In Chicago politics, there’s an old term for the publicly subsidized pay-offs and positions meted out to the corruptocrats’ friends and special interests: boodle.

In the age of Obama, Hope and Change is all about the boodle. So it was with the stimulus. And the massive national service expansion. And the health care bill. And the financial reform bill. And the blossoming job-trading scandals engulfing the White House.

There’s always been an ageless, interdependent relationship between Windy City politicos and “goo-goos” (the cynical Chicago term for good government reformers). Chicago-style “reform” has always entailed the redistribution of wealth and power under the guise of public service. And it has inevitably led to more corruption.

Yes, and there is now so much of it accumulated, that it inevitably found its way into the White House. Who’d'a believed that could happen?

In July 2009, when “Culture of Corruption” was first released, liberal critics scoffed:

How could you possibly write a 400-page book about Barack Obama’s rotten administration when he’s only been in office six months?!

When I proceeded to rattle off case after case of Chicago-style back-scratching, transparency-trampling and crooked special interest-dealing in the new White House, liberal critics such as “The View’s” Joy Behar interjected:

B-b-b-but what about Bush? Why don’t you write a book about Bush? Wha-’bout-Bush? Wha-’bout-Bush? Wha-’bout-Bush?

When I pointed out that I had reported extensively on cronyism in the Bush era (see Harriet Miers, FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security), and when I further pointed out that while the Bush-bashing market overflowed, there remained a massive vacuum of critical analysis of Obama, liberal critics sputtered:

So what? Doesn’t every administration have corruption?

When I patiently explained that no other administration in modern American history had set itself up as loftily as the Hope and Change reformers had done, or when I cited endless examples of Obama’s broken promises on everything from lobbyists to transparency to Washington business as usual, liberal critics changed the subject again…

…Read the whole column.

In this morning’s (the weekend edition) of Jewish World Review there’s an interesting column by Diana West that’s both well worth the read and “what we been sayin’ all dis time!” on the reason there appears to be such a strong symbiosis between the far left and fundamental Islamists (you know, the folks who bring us terrorism).

At some future date, when what Andrew C. McCarthy calls “the freedom culture” is again secure (we hope), the jihad-opposition will see itself divided into two camps in histories written about our current time: those who ineffectually supported efforts to stop “terrorism” and other supposedly generic outbreaks of violence in such lands as Iraq and Afghanistan; and those, far fewer in number (at least in that difficult decade following 9/11), who recognized terrorism as but one aspect of the civilizational assault emanating from expansionist Islam.

If the freedom culture wins, it will be because the latter group grew in influence. And if the latter group grows in influence, it will be due to such books as McCarthy’s excellent, ground-breaking new work, “The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.”

Islam and the Left? Since this notion will raise some eyebrows, I asked Andrew himself to elaborate on this and some other related questions.

Q: Why are Islam and the Left, as you demonstrate in “The Grand Jihad,” not such strange bedfellows?

A: “For all their disagreements on matters like women’s rights, gay rights and abortion, Islam and the Left are in harmony on big-picture matters: They are authoritarian, totalitarian in the sense of wanting to control all aspects of human existence, virulently anti-capitalist, and regard the individual as existing merely to serve the collective. Consequently, they have the same obstacle in common: our freedom culture - i.e., Western liberalism, U.S. constitutional republicanism, and their foundation, individual liberty. Historically, Islam and the Left ally when there is a common enemy. But I’d stress that what I am talking about here is an alliance, not a merger. I am not claiming, as someone ridiculously suggested to me the day the book came out, that Barack Obama wants to impose Sharia.”

He doesn’t need to, thank you. “Liberal” fascism would suit him just fine.

Read the entire column here.

It’s about time, you say? C’mon, do you really believe it mattered, in the scheme of things, that Obama met head-to-head with the governor who signed the “controversial” anti-illegal immigration bill?

They met for half an hour and, of course:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) said Thursday that President Obama assured her that he would send White House staff members to her state to talk with officials about efforts to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.

The governor said her meeting with Obama in the Oval Office was cordial, despite their disagreement over the widely criticized state law she signed in April, which gave police greater powers to enforce federal immigration laws.

She said Obama declined to discuss whether the Justice Department plans to file a lawsuit to block the law before it takes effect next month.

The White House said in a statement that the meeting went well but that Obama reiterated his concerns about the law, including that a patchwork of state immigration regulations would complicate the federal government’s role in setting and enforcing immigration policy. The White House said Obama would like Brewer to work with him to help pass comprehensive changes to the immigration system that would provide a path to citizenship for those already in the country illegally.

Of course Obama didn’t say whether or not his Attorney General and chief legal henchman, Eric Holder, was going to file a lawsuit to block the Arizona law; Assuming that Holder’s even gotten around, finally, to reading the ten page document, he’s probably busting his (pick a noun) trying to find something to take to court. Seeing as it’s pretty much the same thing as the federal law that the federal government hasn’t been enforcing, he probably doesn’t yet know if there’s anything in it he can use.

As regards a “patchwork of state immigration regulations”, maybe there would be no need for that, either if, once again, the federal government had been doing its job in that arena.

Moving right along, comprehensive changes to the immigration system that would provide a path to citizenship for those already in the country illegally would do what, exactly?

I’ll tell you, and you can call me a racist if you’d like, though I assure you I am anything but. I am merely stating facts.

The “progressives” assure us fiscally concerned types that awarding U.S. citizenship to illegals would mean that they would start paying taxes, now that they’d have social security numbers and employers would report their wages to the IRS.

Right.

You’ve got millions of people earning low wages, people who — and this is fact, not a “racist” diatribe — tend to have a lot of children in their families. Four, maybe five children in a family whose total annual income is in the ballpark of $20-25,000.00, maybe as high as $30,000.00.

Folks, have you ever heard of earned income credit?

These newly minted American citizens will not be paying taxes, they’ll be receiving anywhere from $3,000.00 and change to $5,000.00 plus, depending upon whether they have 1, 2, 3 or more children.

Multiply those numbers by anywhere from 6,000,000 to 12,000,000.

I’ll tell you one thing, that Barack Hussein Obama has absolutely no compunction when it comes to plunging our nation ever deeper into “unprecedented” (one of his favorite terms when describing his dubious “accomplishments”) debt.

When Obama says he wants somebody to “work with him”, he means, “My way or the highway”, so…

I don’t really see as that meeting between Brewer and Obama really meant much.

Do you?

Hard Astarboard is a pro-Israel blog.

We view the Jewish State as a staunch ally and friend of the United States, and the only real free country/democracy in the Middle East. We view those entities such as European countries, third world cesspools and the U.N. who support Palestinian terrorism to be lower than dirt, and yes, we do not for a second believe that countries like France or orgs like the U.N., or Barack Obama and his pastor Rev. Wright, for that matter are and among others are, despite any protestations to the contrary, spineless scumbags who endorse anything, no matter how abominable, that Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the rest of those cowardly murderers of women and children do to the Israelis.

That said, what happened a few days ago aboard the Mavi Marmara, the circumstances surrounding the events and the subsequent “outrage” directed toward Israel have all been typical in that once again, Israel’s actions of self defense have been translated as acts of monstrous aggression against innocent “victims”.

Right.

A couple of videos of what actually transpired are here and here.

These so-called “peace” activists attempting to run the Gaza naval blockade under the transparent guise of ferrying in humanitarian supplies, actually came equipped with bats and other blunt instruments to use in assaulting Israeli military personnel when they boarded the ship, Mavi Maramara, to inspect her cargo, and assault them they did.

The Israelis acted in pure self defense and with great restraint and there people on both sides were tossed in the hurt locker, some terminally so, and as is forever the case the corrupt, left wing world smelly body known as the United Nations and the rest of the usual suspects made victims of the aggressors.

Protests were held throughout the Middle East and Europe on Monday in reaction to Israel’s commando raid on a Turkish ship ferrying supplies to Palestinians that left at least nine people dead.

Israel defended the raid and posted video on the Internet showing Israeli soldiers during the raid being attacked with metal pipes and knives by the Turkish ship’s crew.

The incident prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cancel a planned visit to Washington for a meeting with President Obama set for Tuesday.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council, prompted by Arab governments, convened a special session to discuss the incident, which took place in international waters near Gaza. The Palestinians and Arabs, backed by a number of council members including Turkey, also called for Israel to lift the blockade on Gaza, immediately release the ships and humanitarian activists, and allow them to deliver their goods.

Assistant Secretary-General Oscar Fernandez-Taranco said in his briefing to the U.N.’s most powerful body that the early-morning bloodshed would have been avoided “if repeated calls on Israel to end the counterproductive and unacceptable blockade of Gaza had been heeded.”

The White House issued a statement saying it regretted the loss of life. “The president also expressed the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances around this morning’s tragic events as soon as possible,” it said.

At the State Department, spokesman P.J. Crowley, said, “We are working to ascertain the facts, and expect that the Israeli government will conduct a full and credible investigation.”

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak telephoned Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and National Security Adviser James L. Jones to explain the raid. In a statement from Mr. Barak’s office, the minister said the raid was within maritime law. “The passengers on the Marmara beat our soldiers with every object they had and wounded some of them,” the statement quoted Mr. Barak as saying. “The soldiers defended themselves.”

Not, of course, that that makes any difference, and being of one mind with their fellow leftists in the U.S. Justice Department, such as Attorney General Eric Holder who condemned the recently passed Arizona anti-illegal immigration bill without first reading the ten page document, the U.N. Security Council was quick to condemn Israel without first investigating the chain of events involved in the flotilla incident.

From CNS News:

The rapid condemnation of Israel by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), made without a full knowledge of the facts, makes the international body look “ridiculous,” says a leading Middle East expert.

“It makes the United Nations look ridiculous when it comes to solving world problems,” Michael Rubin, a Middle East scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told CNSNews.com. “After all, the United Nations reacted much more swiftly and with much more fervor to this than they did with regard to the North Korean sinking of the South Korean boat, which could precipitate a war that could kill millions.”

The U.N. is ridiculous when it comes to anything it does, in a tragic sort of way.

The UNSC statement, issued May 31, “condemns” Israel’s actions in boarding a fleet carrying pro-Hamas activists, an operation in which activists aboard one of the vessels attacked Israeli sailors who had boarded the boat. Ten of the so-called activists were killed when the Israeli sailors returned fire in what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called self-defense.

However, the UNSC condemnation repeatedly admits that the Security Council has no “independent information” and no idea as to the actual chain of events.

According to the statement, U.N. Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, who briefed the Security Council on the incident, nonetheless “[made] clear the United Nations has no ‘independent information on what transpired.’”

Fernandez-Taranco also told the council that “it is not possible to state definitively the sequence or details of what happened.”

Nevertheless, the council condemned Israel, citing the loss of civilian life and saying, “The Council, in this context, condemns those acts which resulted in the loss of at least 10 civilians and many wounded, and expresses its condolences to their families.”

The UNSC condemnation does not offer condolences or express its regret for the six Israeli sailors who were injured after being attacked by activists with knives, stun grenades, and guns.

…does not offer condolences or express its regret for the six Israeli sailors who were injured after being attacked by activists with knives, stun grenades, and guns.

Why would they do that, when it is their unwritten policy to support anti-Israeli terrorism and anything that supports the terrorists?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu…

…hotly rejected calls to lift a blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza on Wednesday, insisting the ban prevents missile attacks on Israel and labeling worldwide criticism of his navy’s bloody raid on a pro-Palestinian flotilla as “hypocrisy.”

“This was not the ‘Love Boat,’” Netanyahu said in an address to the nation, referring to the vessel boarded by commandos, setting off clashes that led to the deaths of nine activists. “It was a hate boat.”

Shortly after his address, planes carrying hundreds of activists detained after the raid on the six-boat flotilla started leaving for Turkey and Greece. Turkey has been pressuring Israel to release the detainees, most of whom are Turkish. Also on the planes were the bodies of the nine dead.

While Israeli officials spent most of the day trying to contain the flood of diplomatic condemnation of the raid, Netanyahu was anything but conciliatory in his first nationally broadcast comments since Monday’s military action.

“Israel is facing an attack of international hypocrisy,” he said, asserting that the Jewish state is the victim of an Iran-backed campaign to arm the Hamas rulers of Gaza with missiles that could hit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Netanyahu said the aim of the flotilla was to break the blockade, not to bring aid to Gaza. If the blockade ended, he warned, hundreds of ships would bring in thousands of missiles from Iran, to be aimed at Israel and beyond.

The result, he said, would be an Iranian port on the Mediterranean. “The same countries that are criticizing us today should know that they would be targeted tomorrow,” Netanyahu said.

Which sums things up nicely, I would say.

Thank GOd Netaniahu won the last election. Had the bribe taking, far left Ehud Olmert or his equally treasonous minion, Tzippi Livni still been in charge over there, they’d probably (assuming, of course, that there would even have been a blockade for the international criminals to run) have smooched U.N. and Palestinian butt and ceded all of Jerusalem to the Arabs to “make amends”.

Here, Lawrence J. Haas weighs in with Surprise! Violence erupts, Israel condemned.

And from Wesley Pruden, a favorite columnist of Hard Astarboard’s, in its entirety:

When the going gets tough, the not-so-tough call in the cliches. The world’s “leaders” are shocked! — shocked! — when Israel defends itself. Actually, they’re about as “shocked” as Claude Raines, the police inspector in “Casablanca,” who was shocked to learn that gambling was going on in the casino at Rick’s Cafe.

Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations who rarely sees third-world evil, shocking or otherwise, says he was “shocked” by the Israeli navy’s stopping a convoy attempting to break through the blockade of Islamist terrorists in Gaza. The governments of Sweden, Greece and Jordan were so “shocked” they recalled their ambassadors to Israel to get the inside dope to fuel further “shock.” Tony Blair, who is some sort of “peacemaker”-at-large in the Middle East, was “shocked,” too. If he is, it’s only because he hasn’t been in the Middle East long enough to unpack his Gladstone. France was not just a little bit “shocked,” but “profoundly shocked.” There was so much “shock” in the air that the mourning became electric.

The convoy of six ships not only carried thousands of tons of supplies, but hundreds of “activists” and when the smoke cleared nine or so “activists” — the count varied through the day — had been rendered “inactivists,” and capable of no further mischief. The European Union demanded an official inquiry, so profound was its “shock.” The United Nations went into emergency session to recover from “shock.”

The usual suspects went riding off in several directions even before they could mount their horses, but an investigation, official or otherwise, is not really necessary. Verdict now, facts later. The Associated Press, which once took pride in its reporting but is awash now in activists and pundits, set out the early story line: “Dozens of activists and six Israeli soldiers were wounded in the bloody predawn confrontation in international waters. The violent takeover dealt yet another blow to Israel’s international image, already tarnished by war crimes accusations in Gaza and its 3-year-old blockade of the impoverished Palestinian territory.”

The account of the Israeli commandos tells a different story. The Mava Marmara, the lead ship in the flotilla, was told to change course and not land in Gaza. When it ignored the warning Israeli marines and commandos boarded the ship, some by rope ladders from helicopters. A fierce fight erupted on deck and only after taking severe casualties and fearing for their lives the commandos, armed only with pistols and paint ball rifles because they were expecting genuine peace activists and not trained street fighters, fired back, trying to aim first at the feet of the “peace activists.”

Israel is at war, fighting for its very existence, surrounded by hostile Islamic regimes, some more hostile than others. Not all the hostile regimes approve, or so they say, of the Islamist campaign of extinction of Israel by attrition (until Iran gets a working nuclear bomb). None of these hostile regimes, so in love with peace, will do anything to persuade or compel the Palestinians to give up the dream of destroying Israel in a second Holocaust. This is the reality in the Middle East and the cowering milklegs in Washington, London, Paris and the other capitals of the West know it. Who could be shocked when the Israelis do what they must do to survive?

The facts on ground and sea are, as usual, ignored in the bang and clang of rioting in the streets and the din of diplomatic argle-bargle, with the media peddling the usual story: The flotilla of “peace” ships was only intended to relieve the suffering of women, children and maybe even an occasional cute kitten or adorable puppy. But the “activist” account is bunk.

Adequate supplies of food, medicine and other necessary goods are regularly delivered to Palestinians in Gaza — and by the Israelis. The government in Jerusalem invited reporters to the Kerem Shalom crossing to see, and photograph, the convoys of trucks delivering these goods to Gaza. The Israelis even offered to transfer the goods from the flotilla as soon as the ships could be unloaded and inspected. The sponsor of the flotilla, the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation, is regarded by Israel as a radical Islamist organization, part of a global fund-raising operation of Hamas. If the Israelis allow such flotillas to deliver supplies to Gaza, other ships will follow, not with rice and beans but with explosives, rifles and long-range Iranian Fajr-5 missiles.

But the attack of the “peace” ships was intended for a larger and more important purpose — to undermine Israeli determination to continue the struggle against the radical Muslims who are determined to kill Jews. The Israelis are determined there won’t be a second Holocaust. This shouldn’t shock anyone who’s been paying attention.

******UPDATE******

This article, of the aftermath and some background on Hamas and Gaza by Steven Emerson is a must read.

Talk about a screw-up!

It just seems like a bad time for any firm with the word “British” in its title. We know all too well the various setbacks experienced by the oil giant once known as British Petroleum; now British Airways has drawn much unwelcome attention to itself with a photo touting its new mobile-boarding pass system as it appears to expedite the air travel of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted man.

The photo appeared in the LHR News, the company’s internal staff magazine covering London’s Heathrow Airport. The image accompanied an article spelling out the benefits of the mobile-boarding setup, which permits users of mobile digital devices to print out their boarding passes on the fly. The boarding pass reads “Bin Laden/Osama” and appears in the graphic panel of a user’s iPhone. (AT&T reception in remote Pakistani caves is apparently better than anyone might have guessed.)

What’s more, the image features a frequent-flier number for passenger bin Laden — so much for all those airport terrorist watch lists — and has him flying first class on Oct. 26, 2010. As the travel site Gadling.com mused, “sadly, knowing the brilliant minds behind the anti-terror organizations, the terror level will be raised to ‘red hot’ on October 26, 2010, while airport police all over the world try to figure out which airport the most wanted terrorist in the world will be flying to.”

Whoever made that error, even if he or she did it as a joke, will be answering some rather pointed questions real soon, if they haven’t already, heh heh.

So how did this happen? The short answer is that no one knows — or at least, no one’s telling if they do. A British Airways spokeswoman told ABC News reporter Scott Mayerowitz that “a mistake has been made in this internal publication and we are working to find out how this occurred.” And in response to a follow-up call from Yahoo! News, another spokeswoman for the airline remained firmly on message, saying, “We’re still working to find out how this occurred at this time.”

I’ll bet they are.

One of the things we hear a lot from the left, everywhere from Code Pink to the environmentalists, is references of the most ominous description in reference to “Big Oil”.

Evil, Profits at Any Price, Corrupt and Corrupting, enemy-of-the-planet, (Big) Oil.

Naturally, these opponents of that nasty menace to all that is “nice” and all that is “right” in the world are “progressives”, so there’s no way there could be any kind of hypocrisy afoot within their ranks, no way!

Then how could this be?

British Petroleum’s (BP) reputation has been marred by the April oil rig explosion and subsequent oil spill which is still gushing more than 40 days later. But according to The Washington Post, the reputation of some left-wing environmental groups has also been polluted by the incident.

“[T]he Nature Conservancy lists BP as one of its business partners. The Conservancy also has given BP a seat on its International Leadership Council and has accepted nearly $10 million in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated corporations over the years,” Joe Stephens wrote for the Post May 24.

It’s not just Nature Conservancy either, the Post found $2 million in donations to Conservation International and relationships between BP and other lefty activist groups Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Sierra Club and Audubon.

So once again, over there on the left, we learn that lucre can, and quite easily at that, replace “convictions”. Who’d have suspected?

“The crude emanating from BP’s well threatens to befoul a number of alliances between energy conglomerates and environmental nonprofits. At least one group, Conservation International, acknowledges that it is reassessing its ties to the oil company, with an eye toward protecting its reputation,” the Post said.

Conservation International is “reassessing its ties,” is it?, “with an eye toward protecting its reputation.”

Okey dokey, so what we may infer from this is that even though these leftist organizations rail against oil giants 24/7, some bribery doesn’t come amiss now and then, and let’s not play like “progressives” and call it anything else, as though gentle phraseology takes the harshness out of a harsh deed.

“Hey, you adorable little environmentalists, we at Big Oil really approve of your cause, in fact we love your cause so much that we’re bribing your corrupt liberal asses contributing ten million smackeroos to your cause — to you — and as a gift, bestowing upon you these hundreds of acres of prime virgin land that we will never drill on”.”

“That’s just great, sugarplum, y’all sweeties, you, and between you and me, we’re gonna misplace all the material we were gonna use to campaign against your company, that is, we were ’til we realized what a generous buncha’ cutiepies y’all really are.” (fluttering eyebrows).

So much for “progressives’” convictions.

This was front page news at The Post on May 24, but received only silence from other mainstream media outlets including the three broadcast networks. Even after the oil spill, when the networks interviewed experts from two of the groups that had partnered with BP, reporters failed to make the connection. In the past, the research of conservative organizations has been undermined by reporters for such corporate contributions.

So much for “honesty in the media”.

The Story’s Here.

If you can’t seem to make any progress in practice, though, do it in court.

Opening a new front in the battle to contain the worst oil spill in the nation’s history, the Obama administration on Tuesday began a criminal investigation into the causes and consequences of the environmental disaster plaguing the Gulf Coast.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. revealed the criminal and civil probes into the BP oil-rig disaster just hours after President Obama vowed that government investigators would conduct a “full and vigorous accounting” of the still-uncapped spill. The president also ordered the oil giant to compensate those whose livelihoods have been harmed.

“We have an obligation to investigate what went wrong and to determine what reforms are needed so that we never have to experience a crisis like this again,” Mr. Obama told reporters in the Rose Garden after a meeting with the two co-chairmen of a new government panel that will oversee the probe.

While on a tour of the area in New Orleans, Mr. Holder promised a “meticulous, comprehensive and aggressive” government probe to ensure that “the American people do not foot the bill for this disaster and that our laws are enforced to the full extent.”

“That is our responsibility, and we will do nothing less,” said Mr. Holder, revealing that a team of Justice Department lawyers from Washington had met with attorneys general and U.S. attorneys in the states and districts whose coastlines and residents have been affected by the spill. “We will not rest until justice is done.”

They will not rest until justice is done.

What a load of crud! There’s plenty of time to go after BP, they’re not going anywhere, right? So instead of trying to deflect the public’s attention from the mess in the gulf and at the same time take the public’s attention off the fact that the Obama Administration’s not doing anything of a substantial nature about it, they do a diversionary tactic.

This reminds me of the cruise missiles Bill Clinton had launched during his sexcapades hearings, in order to take the peoples’ mind of the Lewinsky situation.

It is a perfect example of why we shouldn’t allow “progressives” to run the country: Their attributes lie in campaigning and slinging rhetoric, but do not extend into running the nation once they’ve won.

Once in office, they become clueless, so they feel compelled to resort to useless symbolism as a means of mollification of the people.

Remember?

I just read an interesting column by John Stossel, where he weighs in on the issue.

“Backwards and hateful ideas … oust John Stossel,” said Colorofchange.org.

In a newspaper, the organization went on:

“It’s time that FOX drop Stossel … we’ll go directly after the network with a public campaign unlike anything we’ve pursued to date.”.

Media Matters joined: “By airing Stossel’s repugnant comments, Fox legitimizes his indefensible position.”

What “indefensible” position did I take?

I said this: “Private businesses ought to get to discriminate. I won’t ever go to a place that’s racist, and I will tell everybody else not to, and I’ll speak against them. But it should be their right to be racist.”

Read that carefully: I condemned racism. I said I’d speak out against and boycott a racist’s business. But to some people, I committed heresy. I failed to accept the entire catechism. I didn’t say that we need government to fight racism and prohibit racist policies in private establishments.

That’s always the way of the Racecard Left, ain’t it? You’re in for a penny, in for a pound. Their way or the highway and anyone who’s for the latter is a racist.

Here’s the entire column.