MJ Rosenberg's lies at HuffPo

When the Huffington Post publishes an article that seeks to expose  "pro-Israel lies," you would think that they wouldn't want the article to be filled with lies itself.

But that's just what happened with MJ Rosenberg's latest post.

Just for starters:

The first thing you need to know about the Gaza flotilla disaster is that the intention of the activists on board the ships was to break the Israeli blockade. Delivering the embargoed goods was incidental.

In other words, the activists were like the civil rights demonstrators who sat down at segregated lunch counters throughout the South and refused to leave until they were served. Their goal was not really to get breakfast. It was to end segregation.

That fact is so obvious that it is hard to believe that the "pro-Israel" lobby is using it as an indictment.

The analogy to civil rights breakfasts is absurd. While it is true that when the activists speak amongst themselves they are very clear that they are not aid organizations nor humanitarian organizations - but rather one that supports terror and "resistance" - they presented themselves to the media as an aid flotilla, with 10,000 tons of humanitarian supplies that Gazans are lacking. These were pretty much all lies, with the exception of the cement (which, incidentally, Israel sent more of to Gaza last week than the entire flotilla was bringing.)

They were using the aid to gain respectability, because accurately calling themselves a political or resistance movement would not play well. If anything, the media's obsession with calling them "humanitarians" and "peace activists" shows how much their lies took hold in the press, quite contrary to his assertion that the media is now way too pro-Israel.

As for the Israeli argument that its soldiers were attacked, that is ridiculous. Israeli commandos were ordered to board a civilian ship in international waters and the government that sent them claims that the resisting passengers attacked them without provocation. This is like a carjacker complaining to the police that the driver bashed him with a crowbar that was under the seat. Neither carjackers nor hijackers should expect their victims to acquiesce peacefully.

Except that, under international law, Israel is perfectly within its legal rights to warn ships that are breaking a blockade. Even in international waters. The civilians on the ship have the legal right to attack the soldiers - but by doing so they are no longer considered civilians, but rather combatants, and the soldiers are allowed to fight back. People like Rosenberg love to throw out statements like these to imply that Israel's actions were obviously illegal, but it is just another lie. (And on the other five ships, the activists actually did keep their status as civilians - and no one was killed. Is Rosenberg saying that they were wrong to do so and they should have fought? That would be interesting.)

Rosenberg also conveniently ignores the role of IHH and its terror ties. I guess he realizes that he has no leg to stand on there, so better to ignore the fact that an organization that is known to have smuggled arms to, and recruited members for, terror groups is one of his heroic blockade-busters.

Hamas has repeatedly offered Israel an indefinite cease-fire in exchange for lifting the blockade. And, on a half dozen occasions, Israel accepted the deal but did not live up to its side of it.

Here he gives a link to an aid organization (a real one), but the link does not prove anything close to his claim. How many people assume that a link, like a footnote, actually proves something without checking it out?

The fact is that Israel did live up to its obligations during the cease fire, and the aid that went to Gaza was in exact inverse proportion to the rocket fire coming from Gaza during that weak truce.

In fact, the 2009 war began after Israel ignored its commitments under the Gaza cease-fire agreement, continued the blockade, and then provoked the resumption of attacks on Sderot through a series of targeted assassinations of Palestinians.

See above. Plus there was no "series of targeted assassinations" - in early November Israel killed a number of terrorists while they were building a tunnel into Israel for the purposes of kidnapping Israelis. Was Israel obligated to wait until someone was kidnapped before acting?

Even after the cease fire lapsed, Israel held off from real retaliation - and it was Hamas, not Israel, that started the Gaza war, with its declaration of Operation Oil Stain and its concurrent rocket barrage three days before Cast Lead.

Rosenberg's attempts to paint a rosy and moderate picture of Hamas is absurd and laughable. Its anti-semitic charter - which wants to see Rosenberg as dead as any Zionist - is still in force.

For a guy who is pretending to expose lies, Rosenberg sure seems to spout a lot of them himself.