Every piece of new evidence that has come to light since the Mavi Marmara incident last week has pointed in the same direction: Israeli soldiers were attacked by a lynch mob and fired their weapons in defence of their lives. Yet one question has remained unanswered: was this a spontaneous outpouring of anger by hot headed activists or was it planned in advance?

The “spontaneous outpouring” theory has recently emerged as a last line of defence for those, like most of Europe’s leaders, who leaped in the air to denounce Israel the moment the incident hit the headlines. If this was just a bunch of over-excited hotheads that still means that Israel should have shown more restraint.

But it now emerges that the whole thing was in fact premeditated.

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Roy Greenslade is a professor of journalism at City University in London. In the 1990s, he edited the Daily Mirror, a top selling Leftist tabloid. Now he is one of Britain’s most respected media commentators. He writes for the Guardian. He is an establishment man.

In yesterday’s edition of that paper he turned his attention to Helen Thomas, the veteran White House reporter who recently advocated the annihilation of the State of Israel via the transfer of its Jewish inhabitants “home” to Germany and Poland: vicious, bigoted, anti-Semitic and, in the current international climate, not far short of incitement to genocide.

America was appalled. Europe too — not by what she said, of course, but by the “disproportionate” response, as Greenslade put it, that her remarks have elicited. I will come to the details in a moment (in all their shocking glory), but the nub of the matter is this: in a west European political culture gripped by a kind of anti-Israeli group hysteria, Helen Thomas’s views seem unremarkable. The notion that the Jews are imposters who took advantage of Holocaust guilt to get a state they never had a legitimate claim to is commonplace. It informs the prevailing narrative. Thomas might have been a little crass, but as to her substantive point, what’s to get excited about?

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So, the Muslim country whose rulers perpetrated the first genocide of the 20th century (against the Christian Armenians) is now reverting to old form in its ideological leanings and its hegemonic ambitions. As with all forms of political Islam, the variety espoused by Turkey’s current leadership has inevitably matured into a self-consciously anti-Western and anti-Israeli (anti-Semitic — see quotes below) movement.

In a brilliant deconstruction of where Turkey is now headed, Joshua Teitelbaum — a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and, inter alia, principal research associate in the Lauder School at the IDC — paints a depressing picture in today’s Guardian.

Noting that support for Turkey is at an all time high in the Arab world after it championed the terror flotilla to Gaza last week, Teitelbaum says:

“Israel’s relations with Ankara – military, economic, and tourist (Israelis once flocked to Turkey) – have been sacrificed on the altar of Turkey’s retrograde aspiration to lead the Islamic world and establish itself along with Iran as an alternative to American power. Turkey is once again turning eastwards.”

He also outlines the hysterical tones in which Israel is now being talked about by the Turkish leadership in the wake of the flotilla incident:

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An excellent piece by William Shawcrowssin the Jerusalem Post today. This, a standback piece looking at the hypocrisy and moral inversion of Israel’s critics in the West, is one to send around to everyone you know.

Anyone who appreciates this piece will (I hope) also find my recent book, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel interesting.

While I’m at it, there’s also an interesting piecein the Times today about Muslim conversion in British prisons. Certainly a sign of the times in more respects than one…

Amid all the hysteria (brilliantly deconstructed here by Melanie Phillips today) over the Gaza flotilla incident this week, a new and dangerous development has just occurred. According to Reuters, Iran is considering offering armed escorts from its navy to any ships trying to break the blockade:

“Iran’s Revolutionary Guards naval forces are fully prepared to escort the peace and freedom convoys to Gaza with all their powers and capabilities,” Ali Shirazi, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative inside the Revolutionary Guards, was quoted as saying.

And, he went on:

“If the Supreme Leader issues an order for this then the Revolutionary Guard naval forces will do their best to secure the ships,” Shirazi said. “It is Iran’s duty to defend the innocent people of Gaza.”

This should (but won’t) be a sobering reminder of the extreme dangers inherent in western governments, foreign ministries, politicians and media outlets stoking the fires of anti-Israeli bigotry.

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