Let’s get our priorities right: the first thing to say and think about the awful events this morning aboard the “Freedom Flotilla” ship bound for Gaza is to mourn the loss of life and the violence suffered by all sides.

Now, let’s get our facts right as hotheads around the world rush to judgement. How did this happen, and who is responsible? We can divide this into what we know for certain, what, on the balance of probabilities is likely to have happened, and what we simply do not know at this stage.

So, What do we know for certain?

1) Again, this is tragedy of terrible proportions for the families of the deceased.

2) The “Freedom Flotilla” and its organisers were looking for confrontation. Israel had made it clear that it would not allow the ships to dock in Gaza. This made confrontation of some description a certainty.

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As the nine-ship “Freedom Flotilla” approaches Gaza with thousands of tonnes of aid for the Hamas ruled territory, the extremist views of some of its participants have been revealed by an Israeli newspaper. Ynet (the English language version of Yediot Aharonot) carries an interview today with Greek university professor Vangelis Pissias, a prominent activist aboard one of the ships.

Pissias is quoted by the newspaper as saying the following: “We’re helping the Palestinians, just like the Greeks helped during World War II against the Nazis.” Turning to the question of Palestinian terrorism, he added: “These people are doing what reality causes them to do.”

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When the two leading voices in Britain’s liberal-left newspaper media, the Guardian and the Independent, strike out on the same subject at the same time, you are usually being given a signal that something is afoot. The BBC, in thrall to the thinking and worldview of both papers, will soon follow suit and before you know it a new item has been placed at the top of the mainstream political agenda.

With an editorial on the subject today in the Guardian and an op-ed today by leading commentator Donald Macintyre in the Independent, that item is Israel’s nuclear programme. The quest to disarm Israel has been given a new lease of life by a new book from Sasha Polakow-Suransky entitled “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship With Apartheid South Africa”.

The Guardian claimed an exclusive in revealing key details from the book, principally Israel’s alleged willingness to give South Africa nuclear weapons, in a report yesterday which has been comprehensively demolished in a piece on Cif Watch (which readers can see by clicking here) and in a piece by Jonathan Hoffman in the Jewish Chronicle (which readers can see by clicking here).

So what’s this all about? Well talk about killing two birds with one stone: you get to lash out at Israeli “hypocrisy” for having nuclear weapons of its own while simultaneously calling for Iran not to be allowed to acquire them, and you get another opportunity to besmirch the Jewish state’s reputation via a linkage with apartheid South Africa. They died and went to heaven! Except it’s all bunkum. Here’s why:

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Prepare for another media bonanza over Gaza. This time it’s the turn of the Freedom Flotilla — a nine ship strong convoy heading to Gaza with hundreds of passengers (there are 600 on just one ship from Turkey which left Istanbul yesterday) and more than 10,000 tonnes of supplies. It is due to arrive on Thursday but is almost certain to be turned away by the Israeli navy.

So get ready for a veritable firework display of grievance mongering, as “victims” from dozens of countries howl about their “oppression” at the hands of the dastardly Israelis. And by “get ready” I mean prepare to point out that giving succour to Gaza means giving succour to its rulers, Hamas — a terror group which openly parades its Protocols of Zion style anti-Semitism and is devoted to the destruction of Israel. Morally speaking, the attempt to break into Gaza is the equivalent of attempting to bust the sanctions imposed on Apartheid South Africa. Now there’s an apartheid analogy about the Middle East that Israel’s opponents will not be using this week.

And in addition to reminding the world of just how deplorable the actions of these people really are, it would also be worthwhile to follow the example of Abraham Cooper (writing in Ynet today) who has enumerated some inconvenient truths about Israel and Gaza thus:

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A very nice piece today from David Horovitz, editor of the Jerusalem Post, on rock legend Elvis Costello’s decision to boycott Israel.

Horovitz writes the article in the form of an open letter, and pretty much hits every right note on this the latest indictment of Europe’s long and inexorable slide into barbarism over Israel and the Jews. Costello’s decision to cancel a series of concerts in Israel was announced on his website thus:

“It is a matter of instinct and conscience. It has been necessary to dial out the falsehoods of propaganda, the double game and hysterical language of politics, the vanity and self-righteousness of public communiqués from cranks in order to eventually sift through my own conflicted thoughts.” [Meaning?]

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