The Good Ship Rachel Corrie

The Israeli seizure of the ship from Turkey, the Rachel Corrie, was almost certainly a deliberate lose/lose international incident trap set up for the international press to exploit and display their anti-Semitism.

The facts of the incident are currently obscured by the various agendas of those reporting on it. The one thing that certainly catches the attention, though, is the re-naming of the ship which ran the barricade: Rachel Corrie.

For those of us, me included, who are fuzzy on who Rachel Corrie was, there are some good reports available. Whether one gives total credibility to any of these reports, one thing emerges fairly clearly: Rachel Corrie either sacrificed herself or was sacrificed in order to create an international incident which would produce condemnations of Israel. The ship Rachel Corrie? Intended to do the same.

If Israel did not stop any of the ships, then the lanes from Muslim states into Palestine would be open to shipment of arms of all types. If Israel did stop these ships, then Israel is de facto inhumane and worthy of condemnation. For Israel, it is lose/lose in terms of the world's opinion shouters. The set up is ideal, from a propaganda viewpoint. And right on cue, the world's leftist apologists are, in fact, screaming anti-Semitic nonsense, available in bulk nearly everywhere.

The reason for this is not difficult to puzzle through. The Leftists of the world consider themselves smarter and more moral than the common herd. In short, they are intellectuals or at least within the intellectual penumbra as Thomas Sowell describes it. In order to stay within that heady elite atmosphere, one needs to specifically not subscribe to the common sense, because it is, you know, common. One needs to have radical opinions, not common sense observations. This is the reason that intellectuals and their wannabes deride the common sense ideas that self defense is legitimate (unless it is self defense of attackers). Or common sense ideas like the open government of Israel with representation of Arabs by Arabs alongside Israelis is more moral than a genocidal terrorist government like Hamas.

The Left and its intellectualism must support anti-Semitism because it is radical, it is newsworthy, it gets them attention and followers. Radical words, theories and programs are the coin of their realm. They are not respected or famous for any accomplishments; they have to solicit their fame through radicalism. And they represent their radicalism as a higher morality, one which they created and is validated by their own vision which is elite and not hampered by the sense of the common.

The elite, intellectual, leftist, radical, self-anointed moral priests have stories to sell. And they are well salted into to media which carry stories that are sold as news. Fortunately there are other options, other information paths.

Here are some paths concerning Rachel Corrie.