RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s going to be illuminating to see what the New York Times comes up with for an editorial in respect of the so-called “aid flotilla” that sought to run the blockade of Gaza. This afternoon, on a Times’ blog called The Lede, Robert Mackey put up a post suggesting the events earlier in the day echoed the events of 1947. His post quoted one Israeli blogger as asking pointedly, “Will This Be the Palestinian Exodus?” It was a reference to the violence with which the British intercepted the Haganah packet, the Exodus, as it sought to run an earlier blockade. The Times blog yesterday quoted a dispatch issued by the Times in 1947, reporting that one crewman of the Exodus, a Christian activist, was accusing the British of having fired on Jews armed with nothing more than potatoes and canned goods.

What the Times blog failed to quote was the attitude of the Times itself, which back in 1947 issued an editorial sharply critical of the decision of the Zionists to bring the Jews on the Exodus to Israel in the first place. The Times wanted the Jews to suffer through their desperation while the United Nations tried to find a peaceful solution via some kind of 11 nation committee. It seems the General Assembly had called on “all governments and all peoples” to observe a truce and, as the Times put it, “to refrain meantime from ‘any action’ which ‘might create an atmosphere prejudicial to an early settlement of the question.’” Quoth the Times: “Despite this proper and reasonable request, there arrived on the coast of Palestine, two months later, a company of 4,500 unauthorized Jewish immigrants, aboard the ill-fated Exodus.”

CONTINUE READING AT THE SITE