The New York Times runs a scary story about "Turkish funds" being used to test the Israeli blockade, and all the "militants" aboard the flotilla. Wouldn’t Times readers be helped if the Times noted (per Norman Finkelstein) that Amnesty International considers the blockade a flagrant violation of international law? That the Goldstone Report has also said the blockade violated international law against collective punishment? This is what animated these people.
And look at the Times lead below. It is interesting to consider that the Times has never done investigative pieces of how neoconservative ideas, which led to the disastrous Iraq war, were "supercharged" inside the hothouses of Washington thinktanks thanks to infusions of hedge-fund wealth from the likes of Michael Steinhardt, Roger Hertog, and Bruce Kovner, let alone toyman Haim Saban, whose only issue is Israel, and Sheldon Adelson, who was outraged by the peace process. Here’s the lead. Notice that Israel’s point-of-view is privileged:
ISTANBUL — Since 2007, a small group of hard-core activists has repeatedly tried to sail cargo-laden ships into Gaza in an effort to thwart Israel’s blockade. But when the Free Gaza Movement teamed up with a much wealthier Turkish organization to assemble a flotilla, it became more than a nuisance, supercharged by the group’s money, manpower and symbolic resonance into what Israel sees as a serious and growing threat.
Oh and one other thing, the Times story dwells on the personal life of Greta Berlin, a flotilla leader, and her marriages to a Palestinian and a Jew. I eat that stuff with a spoon, as readers of this site know; I am an inveterate gossip. But has the Times ever anatomized the lives of the neocons? Do we know what Paul Wolfowitz’s sister does in Israel, or did, and what effect that had on him? Has the Times ever asked Elliott Abrams what it means for Jews to stand apart from every society they are in except Israel’s?
