World Regrets Deaths of Jihadists, Vilifies Israel

World Regrets Deaths of Jihadists, Vilifies Israel [Excerpts]

Much regret is being expressed about the deaths of the “activists” who were among those attacking Israeli naval commandos with knives, clubs, iron bars, chairs, and snatched handguns on the Mavi Marmara [May 31]. The ship was one in a six-ship flotilla of Muslim and radical-Leftist anti-Israeli activists that was approaching Gaza with the expressed aim of breaking Israel’s naval blockade of the Strip and bringing purportedly badly needed humanitarian supplies. The Mavi Marmara was also known by the Israeli authorities to be the largest and most hostile ship in the flotilla.

Yet, either out of poor intelligence or naiveté on the part of their superiors, the commandos descended onto the ship unprepared, bearing only paintball rifles [1]. It was only after several of them had already been severely injured and at least one of them thrown off the boat (see some of the brutality here [2]) that the commandos finally got permission to open fire with their handguns and saved their comrades and themselves.

One of the soldiers said the scene on the deck “looked like the Ramallah lynch” [3] of 2000, in which two off-duty Israeli soldiers strayed into the West Bank town of Ramallah and were horrifically lynched by an Arab mob [4]. In that case there were only two soldiers and they were unable to defend themselves; but it would hardly have been regrettable if more soldiers had been able to come to their aid in time and killed as many of their attackers as was necessary to save their lives.

That is not to say the rioters aboard the Mavi Marmara—although their snatching and use of the handguns was a clear attempt to kill some of the soldiers—had any hope of prevailing over the commando force. What, then, in relentlessly attacking an elite military force mostly with knives, clubs, and the like, did the devout, “Allah Akbar”-chanting “activists” hope to accomplish? Clearly, that some of them would be “martyred” and thereby create yet another anti-Israeli international incident—at which, of course, they succeeded.

They succeeded even though the flotilla their ship was part of was organized by the IHH—a Turkish radical-Islamist organization that, as documented [5] by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, closely cooperates with the Hamas rulers of Gaza and with global jihad networks in Chechnya, Bosnia, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan while having ties with Al-Qaeda.

They succeeded even though, four days ago on May 28, members of the flotilla were filmed [6] chanting “Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return” (a reference to a seventh-century massacre of Jews by Muslims) along with songs of the mass-murderous “Palestinian intifada,” and saying “We are now waiting for one of two good things—to reach Gaza or to achieve martyrdom”; and even though, three days ago on May 29, organizers of the flotilla explicitly told [7] Al Jazeera TV that they were aiming for a confrontation with Israel that would have maximal media coverage.

http://frontpagemag.com/2010/06/01/world-regrets-deaths-of-jihadists-vilifies-israel/