Eagle Eye’s View Of Flytilla Airport Welcome
Larry Derfner, the Jerusalem Post’s token leftist and former blogging partner of Richard Silverstein, whines about the “welcoming” given to him and the flytillards at Ben Gurion airport on Friday.
Larry Derfner surrounded at Ben Gurion airport (photo: Joseph Dana; photoshop: Aussie Dave)
Anybody who believes the platitude that the people want peace, it’s just the leaders who want war, should have been at Ben-Gurion Airport today. It’s a good thing those Free Palestine activists got arrested; otherwise, the little mob that formed spontaneously would have punched them up pretty good.
Only minutes after I got to the Arrivals hall, a few activists stood in front of the phalanx of reporters and cameramen, help up their little signs and started chanting “Israel Apartheid” and ”Free Palestine!” The cops tore the signs from their hands and started pushing them toward the exit. After the first couple of minutes of watching in shocked silence, people in the terminal started to boo. Men were cursing loudly – “sons of bitches,” “garbage,” and things in Arabic I didn’t understand.
A couple of dozen people, mainly men but also a few women, followed very close behind the tightly-bunched demonstrators, cops and reporters to the police van. “Throw them in the garbage,” shouted one woman. An old man tried to get at one of the activists, but the police stopped him.
I was there ostensibly as a journalist, and I was scribbling notes, but I felt cowardly not saying anything to these nationalist hooligans, so I started telling them in Hebrew, “What are these people doing?” The woman who wanted them thrown in the garbage said, “They’re hurting us!” I said, “They’re talking,” and the little mob turned on me, a couple of the men raised their fists. The woman told me, “Go back home, get out of here,” I said, “I live here.” The cops mistook me for a demonstrator, put me in the police van, but when I showed them my press card, they let me go.
Let me repeat – the police started off arresting the demonstrators, but very shortly their main task was to keep them from being assaulted. They had to hold back the herd = and that’s what these people were, a herd incited by the idea that these protesters, non-violent protesters trying to get to the West Bank, were a menace, an immediate threat to their security.
And I do not buy the idea that these people are helpless pawns being manipulated by the government, the media, the right-wing politicians. Most Israelis, even if they wouldn’t join a mob like the one at the airport, want to hear the belligerent rhetoric the opinion-makers are feeding them. They hate anybody who says anything bad about Israel, and take their words automatically as “blood libels.” The opinion-makers know this, and the ones who are popular and want to stay that way tell the people what they want to hear.
Who’s manipulating whom is a chicken-and-egg question.
Watching my enraged countrymen at Ben-Gurion, I imagined the daily headlines having been distilled into a kind of political methadrine and mainlined into their veins. Few Israelis would join them in physically going after people chanting slogans. But in their insistence that protesters like these be silenced because their words are acts of violence, acts of war, of terrorism, they represent the majority. They are an authentic expression of the national will. Theirs is the loudest voice in the land, it’s joined by the voice of Netanyahu, the government, the settlers and most of the media. All competing voices are drowned out.
Which is why these foreign activists on these flotillas, whatever I or anybody else thinks of the totality of their politics, are absolutely vital not only to the Palestinians, but to Israel. They’re bringing oxygen to a suffocating nation.
Methinks Derfner has been taking something in his veins. Either that, or it is his brain that has been deprived of some oxygen. For it seems he does not yet understand that most Israelis see right through these ”activists” and their real agenda. And for some strange reason, we do not appreciate people working towards the destruction of our country.
Go figure.
About the Author
An Aussie immigrant to Israel, Aussie Dave is founder of Israellycool, one of the world's most popular pro-Israel blogs (and the one you are currently reading) He is a happy family man, and a lover of steak, Australian sports and girlie drinksFiled Under: General
Derfner is right up with dicky boy in my books ,all decent Israelis were rightly enraged by the so called" peace activists ", they are agitators and .terrorist loving far left wing moonbats .Derfner you are a disgusting twerp , JP should send you packing.
BTW I would be ashamed to call myself Derfner countrymen( women)
Not in My Name !!!
What need to say much about Derfner? It’s enough that he keeps blogging on a blog called “Israel Reconsidered.” A nation-state reconsidered—its very existence up for grabs. Got that? And of all the states in the world, not one of the real troublemakers of the world, such as North Korea and Pakistan, but Israel, the State of the Jews!
What Jew would not rage, what Jewish heart would be so calloused as to shrug it off…
I trust all these flytillard morons will be receiving an indelible XXXL Zionist death stamp in their passports before they are sent on their way, buggering up that family wedding they were planning to attend in Algeria next week or their visit to their paymasters in Tehreran.
I really wish JP would take this guy's pen away.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-14093825
The Wales contingent activists included a rabid ProPal Green Party member advocate of BDS ,a far far left wing activist and others who are very acvtive in BDS
h/t to my dear mate, a Friends of Israel member from Wales
"An old man tried to get at one of the activists, but the police stopped him."
He then calls him a "nationalist hooligan".
Good chance he was a survivor.
Derfner is a lot worse than a leftist. I believe he called for boycotting Israel, in a column run a few days before Cast Lead. This come pretty close to the strict definition of treason in the U.S. constitution, both for him, and for publishers and editors of the Jerusalem Post who printed it. (A corporation cannot commit treason.)
There's a similar guy in Ha'aretz (including the International Herald tribune edition of Ma'aretz).
It is hard imagining even the New York Times, which makes a hobby of exposing American security information, printing a regular column like that about Israel, let alone about the U.S.
I'm all for token leftists. But must our newspapers have token traitors?
And how about that journalist who published what amounted to a call for the country (which he presumes, I suppose, resides entirely in north Tel Aviv) to eventually rise up and murder (yes, murder) all of the settlers. Bet the police never called HIM in for questioning,
I was hoping we would see you featured in a YouTube video at the airport giving one of these activists a piece of your mind.
I didn't even know they were here.
"There is no greater anti-Semite that the Jewish one, and none hates the Jewish people more than the Jewish traitor and apostate."
Dave, why do you call Derfner the JPost's token leftist? The joint has been jumping with them for ages.
Really? Who else?
Yea, we lefties are everywhere. There's one hiding under your bed right now, Shy Guy.
I wouldn't think you would advocate a boycott of your own country during wartime.
What on earth are you talking about? Can't you see the man sees leftists in his dreams? In my own special way, I'm just trying to help out.
ooga booga
The proper name for the Flotilla-Flytilla terrorists would be the Hitlerjugend. Please use that corretct term.
[...] Feuer legen, Steine werfen und was die friedliche und unauffällige Einreise angeht, hatte ein israelisches Astloch gesehen, dass sie – kaum durch die Kontrollen – Lügen-Transparente aufspannten und [...]
A good example of never again, my only question is why has it taken so long for this to happen. I can only hope to hear about anti Israel reporters having to run for their lives, it will give them some accountability for their misrepresentations and bias.
Delfo and his ilk need to be reminded of the consequences of their actions.
Very nice style and excellent written content , nothing else we require : D.