Flotilla satire IS “official policy” of Israel

Just a quick update on the callous Flotilla satire video — funded by tax-exempt U.S. dollars — that I wrote about earlier:

Bruce Wilson, a blogger who has done some of the best work in recent years on the U.S. religious right (among other scoops, he broke the anti-Semitic sermons of Christian Zionist doyen John Hagee on the excellent Talk 2 Action site), has a detailed post up today on Daily Kos about the Flotilla satire.

Wilson discusses the blast e-mails from the Israeli government press office to reporters, including the full text of the press office’s follow up:

Due to a misunderstanding on our part, earlier today we inadvertently issued a video link that had been sent for our perusal.  It was not intended for general release.  The contents of the video in no way represent the official policy of either the Government Press Office or of the State of Israel.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Thank you for your patients and understanding.
Efraim Roseman

While Roseman declares that the distribution was “inadvertent,” Wilson points out that claim is rendered dubious by ties between Jerusalem Post editor and writer (and Center for Security Policy bigwig) Caroline Glick and Israeli P.M. Bibi Netanyahu. Glick formally advised Bibi on foreign policy in his first go round at the premiership in the late 1990s.

Furthermore, I can’t understand why the Israeli government seems to be walking away from the video — the “contents of the video” seem to me to very closely resemble “official policy of … the State of Israel.”

Wasn’t it, after all, the ambassador of this State who wrote, just three days ago, in the New York Times, that the activists aboard the aid ships were “religious extremists” were “paid and equipped to attack Israelis” and that “real intent of breaking the embargo is to allow rockets to be transported to Gaza from Hamas’s suppliers in Syria and Iran.” Isn’t this precisely the supposed “Con”-game that the video satirizes?

In his post on Daily Kos, Wilson also hits on the fact that “the video was rapidly picked up and promoted by a multitude of American right wing and right wing evangelical media outlets including Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network.”

Check out Wilson’s post for all the lurid details and background of connections between the Israeli hard-line right and their far right Evangelical stateside allies.

Ali Gharib

Ali Gharib is a New York-based journalist on U.S. foreign policy with a focus on the Middle East and Central Asia. His work has appeared at Inter Press Service, where he was the Deputy Washington Bureau Chief; the Buffalo Beast; Huffington Post; Mondoweiss; Right Web; and Alternet. He holds a Master's degree in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science. A proud Iranian-American and fluent Farsi speaker, Ali was born in California and raised in D.C.

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  1. Was the “Thank you for your patients and understanding.
    Efraim Roseman” your oversight or theirs?

    No one broke Hagee, he’s been broadcasting from San Antonio since I was in college in ’89. We’ve been fighting these evangelical millennialists for decades.

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