OPINION:
On his May 15 show, comedian Bill Maher marked Israel’s Independence Day with an apt summary of the mainstream media’s calculus in determining what’s worth reporting: “No Jews, no news.”
I might make it “No Jews being accused of bad things, no news,” but that’s not as punchy. At any rate, Mr. Maher’s words were prescient.
Just days after he said them, the usual press offenders came to report — with something approaching glee — Israel’s alleged “abuse” of Gaza flotilla activists.
On May 18 and 19, the Israeli navy’s Shayetet 13 commando unit intercepted the Turkish Global Sumud Flotilla, which had been on its way to interfere with Israel’s naval blockade to Gaza in the name of “Free Palestine” (with zero humanitarian aid, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry.)
As the commandoes approached the flotilla, one was heard reassuring the activists: “You are safe and protected. We have done this 100 times already.”
Not exactly the words of a murderous, genocidal regime. Those adjectives better describe the aims of IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, the al Qaeda-linked organizer of the flotilla.
IHH has “a history of funneling cash to Hamas and trafficking arms and recruits to violent jihadi networks in Europe and the Middle East,” according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Sinan Ciddi and William Doran.
One of the flotilla participants was New Jersey resident Amrou Ibrahim, a founding member of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network NY/NJ chapter, according to the Jerusalem Post. Samidoun was sanctioned in 2024 by both the U.S. and Canada as part of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist group.
Another flotilla participant, Rosa Martinez, said last weekend that this trip was not “some sort of humanitarian aid mission,” but rather an operation “directly confronting the Israeli occupation forces at sea.”
The naval blockade of Gaza is a military and existential necessity for Israel, which, for the past 25 years, has consistently intercepted Iranian-supplied weapons hidden among civilian cargo on Gaza-bound vessels.
Inspected humanitarian aid is permitted, as are trucked-in food and supplies.
In fact, some 4,200 aid trucks enter Gaza every week — far more than the population requires. And as our editorial board wrote last month in these pages, Hamas is taxing said aid to make hundreds of millions in illicit cash for the rebuilding of its terror chest.
So the idea that these supposedly beneficent flotillas are anything other than carefully timed, coordinated public relations stunts intended to make Israel look bad holds no water.
Yet last week, the international media was up in arms about a video posted by the office of Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Mr. Ben-Gvir visited an Ashdod facility holding the flotilla detainees, and in the video, he walks through, waving an Israeli flag and saying, “Am Yisrael chai” (“The people of Israel live”).
The video also shows Israeli security forces leading the activists off boats, as well as detainees kneeling, apparently bound, following their interception, and a woman yelling, “Free, free Palestine!” before being pushed down by security.
The footage drew immediate condemnation — most stridently from within the Knesset. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Mr. Ben-Gvir’s actions were “not in line with Israel’s values and norms” and Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar called the video a “disgraceful display.”
For its part, the media decried Mr. Ben-Gvir’s “taunting.” But the only way that saying “The people of Israel live” can be construed as taunting is if you concede that the people hearing it will be disappointed at the news.
That — not the “taunting” — is the real problem here. Anyone with a modicum of common sense would see the video as what it is: recordings of a sovereign nation defending itself against those who would cause it harm.
You can just imagine what Europe (which gets in a particular kind of tizzy when Jews fight back) had to say about it.
As for the claims of injury and abuse at the hands of the Israeli government, Israel’s Foreign Ministry posted three side-by-side photos of one such “victim” on X. In the first, a woman stands, smiling, in Israel. In the second, the same woman is lying down, wearing what appears to be a neck brace (and a keffiyeh). In the third, back home in Germany, she’s smiling, flashing the peace sign and wearing that obligatory keffiyeh.
Something smells.
If the media is suddenly so interested in uncovering sexual abuse, why has it been largely silent about Hamas’ mass rapes and torture of Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023? The latest flotilla set sail from Turkey on May 14, just two days after the Civil Commission on Oct. 7 Crimes Against Women and Children released its report detailing these heinous crimes, each of which is nightmare-inducing to read about.
Coincidence? Possibly, but I doubt it. The international press glommed onto the flotilla events — and the commission’s report was all but buried.
It just shows how incisive Mr. Maher’s observation was.
• Anath Hartmann is deputy commentary editor for The Washington Times.
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