Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Scrabble with Rachel / The Gaza Flotilla

Rachel and I had our first Scrabble game since her return. I won by a few points. No bingoes.

Rachel played out her last four tiles to end the game, only to discover that there was a tile left in the bag. She wasn't going to win, anyway, so we just ended.

The Gaza Flotilla

I would write something about the Gaza flotilla, but what's the point? No one knows anything, except a few edited snippets of grainy videos and what the propagandists claim happened, and nobody wants to shut up about it long enough to hear.

Look at the thousands upon thousands of comments on Youtube videos, news articles, and blog posts. Every comment is some idiocy claiming to know exactly what the truth is ("it was international waters", "it was illegal", "it was unjustified", "it was terrorists", "it was a lynch", "it was a massacre", "it was humanitarian supplies", "it was a provocation") and all of them getting their information from one or another side of the propaganda machine, supplemented by their own personal bias.

International law is complicated. Terrorism is complicated. Combating terrorism is complicated. No one knows for sure who hit whom first, what was in the boats, or whether the actions or reactions were justified. Every staged conflict in this region has a history of deliberate media manipulation, photo and video distortion, and outright lies.

The only things we know for certain is that: some of, if not most of, the so-called humanitarian supplies could have been delivered without a floating flotilla, so this was about the blockade, not about the supplies; and that deadly, or potentially deadly, violence appears to have been committed by both parties.

And my saying so isn't going to make a damn bit of difference to anyone, because the anti-Israel machine is already running, and the narrative has already taken over. Soon it will be as much a part of myth as the shooting of Mohammed al-Dura (staged), the massacre in Jenin (didn't happen), or the starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza (they aren't).

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