I Seek Truth, Others Seek Terror

The events in the Mediterranean this week regarding the "Freedom Flotilla" has stirred immense media attention and for good reason. On Monday morning (June 1, 2010), I awoke to the headline story depicting the IDF raid of a humanitarian aid ship. Living in Israel, it is hard to escape developing stories in the media; therefore, I anticipated the arrival of these ships who sought to break the naval blockade Israel has installed on Gaza after Operation Cast Lead with the alleged intention of providing humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza who do not otherwise receive it. After reading numerous international sources, I knew that this was another PR battle Israel was going to lose regardless of the facts.

As I regularly do, I sought to challenge the stories by providing the Israeli perspective on my Facebook page. I posted articles explaining how some of the "peace activists" are actually members of an organization presenting itself as a humanitarian aid organization whose ideologies adhere to radical Islamic principles and whose ideologies are aligned with those of the Muslim Brotherhood, namely the IHH. Other members aboard the ship were individuals such as Sheikh Salah, the leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel who in 2003 was arrested on charges of funding the terrorist organization and now political party, HAMAS in Gaza. Additionally, after reviewing the footage of what was supposed to be a simple inspection of aid, making sure no weapons were going to passed into the Strip, the Israeli commandos were ambushed by the "peace activists". Yet, the simple statement of my personal observations are not going to convince people one way or another, but I still attempt to challenge what I see as very biased international news reports.

Most people don't know, and don't care to research that Israel transfers humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip nearly everyday, which falsifies the argument that the people in Gaza are starving to death because of the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza ports. Not to mention, Israel has no objections to international humanitarian aid to Gaza as long it is strictly humanitarian. These ships were asked to sail North to the town of Ashdod where the goods would be transported by land to the Strip. If this mission was about delivering humanitarian aid in a peaceful manner then clearly this event never would have happened. The last illustration of the biased media coverage were the numerous reports stating that 20 people had been killed, among these 20 even Sheikh Salah was identified; later all of these reports were reduced from the exaggerated number to nine people, none of them being the Sheikh.

Having briefly explained my reasoning for the continuous posting of articles on my Facebook, I am merely trying to advocate the other flip of the coin. The unpopular Israeli side. A day later, just before heading to bed, I routinely checked my email one last time finding several Facebook comments and messages. I checked my Facebook to find a very surprising and utterly frightening, personal message from an unknown person threatening me in a very disturbing and vulgar warning message, which I will refrain from quoting due to the crude and disgusting language. Initially, I was more than terrified and shocked to find that someone from this region, not Israel, had found me on Facebook and would threaten me for the content of the articles that I post on my own wall! He and I do not have any mutual friends which makes this situation all the more chilling.

I reported this person to the Facebook administrators and have invested seriously in all of the appropriate security settings to safeguard myself from future distasteful comments. Which if I may add; I post articles on my page and invite people to express their opinions, this is what information sharing is all about, if I didn't want dialogue, I would make it so that people cannot write on my wall or comment on the articles posted, but this would defeat the very reason that I post them!!

Thanks to the Google,Twitter and other social networking sites, I am pleased to find out that the administrators of Facebook take threats like this very seriously and have deactivated his account! He of course is extremely unhappy and seeks to spread his loathing hatred and opinions on other forums and by creating new Facebook pages. Among the most alarming aspects of this individual is that he appears to be a very well-educated, wealthy and prominent business person in this region, with moderate religious practices and a significant ability to attract followers of his various pages. Some people really don't appreciate what many Americans take for granted; our right to freedom of speech, religion and press. Some want to suppress these values and threaten those of us who want to uphold them.

I have pondered going into seclusion from Facebook and Twitter because of the fear that I initially felt from his actions, but then I realize that that would mean his tactic of instilling fear in those who share their own, differing opinions for personal reasons would actually work. But I will not let this kind of action effect my personal liberties!! Since this was quite a terrifying incident, I do recommend that all users of the various social networking sites, invest in the security settings provided because you never know who is reading your profile.