Gaza News And Latest Flotilla Backlash

Elder of Ziyon highlights that as Israel has increased the amount and variety of aid going in to Gaza, rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel have also increased.

In other news from Gaza, terrorists have, for the second time in two months, burnt down an UNRWA childrens' summer camp, both times handcuffing the camp's guards. Last time they also left behind a note threatening to kill John Ging, UNRWA's Gaza director, and other UN officials.

Ging's reaction was to praise Hamas for their response to the incident, and to seemingly blame Israel for extremism in Gaza, indicating that it is because of the blockade. Melanie Phillips points out that 

"It is Hamas that has to be isolated and defeated if a start is to be made in slowing down the rate of extremism". 

She observes that the view of the UN, Britain, US and EU is that 

"the way to stop more extremism being generated in Gaza is to provide more aid, encouragement and legitimacy to the extremists". 

What they're doing is "supporting the extremism which makes the lives of Gaza's Arabs such a misery" - and then placing the blame on Israel.

One thing Israel can, for once, be rightly blamed for, is Turkey's $400 million loss in the tourism industry due to the holiday cancellations of about 100,000 Israelis. (*thanks to Elder of Ziyon for the link). One Turkish tourism company which expected to bring 17,000 Israelis to Turkey this year, has so far only had 200 Israeli clients, having to pay $1.1 million to hotels for cancelled reservations, and incurring a total loss of almost $2.5 million due to all the cancellations.

Well, what did they expect when their Prime Minister openly supported a ship of extremists who attacked Israeli soldiers, and then accused Israel of war crimes when the soldiers defended themselves - completely ignoring the IDF's video evidence that refutes that.

In a new Just Journalism study, they highlight just how much Israel's footage was ignored by the UK media. They discovered that the Times, Telegraph, and Financial Times gave the footage the attention and detail it merited - and through that, countering the activists' claims that the IDF attacked first. Just Journalism conclude that the Guardian and Independent "severely under-reported" the footage, and when it was mentioned, it was dismissed as Israeli propaganda. But then the Guardian and Independent usually do leave out Israel's side of the story so this comes as no surprise.