Tim McGirk is Time magazine’s Jerusalem-based scribbler, and he posts frequently on Time‘s Middle East blog. McGirk is one of those correspondents — I believe it is a requirement for employment at Time — who voluptuously explores every nuance of Palestinian victimhood, real or imagined, and for the most part finds in Israeli society only brutality and deceit. His post today is a fine example.
Tony Blair was hoping to visit Gaza as part of his pointless, narcissistic adventure as ad hoc Arab-Israeli peacemaker. Until, that is, the Israelis notified him that they were in possession of specific intelligence about a planned assassination. Blair canceled his visit. McGirk’s response?
So what was the “specific security threat” that kept Tony Blair out of Gaza today? … Let’s see…who didn’t want Blair going to Gaza? The Israelis can’t have been too enthused about his visit; any visitor is struck by the devastation and poverty of the besieged enclave. … It was the Israelis, Time was told, who warned Blair’s delegation to cancel the trip because of the vague and all-encompassing term “security threat”. … A Hamas spokesman said it knew of no security threat to the ex-prime minister and blamed “Israel and other parties” who didn’t want Blair to witness “the catastrophe of the siege on Gaza”.
I’ll bet that Blair won’t be knocking at the gates of Gaza any time soon, no matter if the threat is real or invented.
Don’t you see? The Israelis, hoping to cover up their crimes, invented a “security threat” — they lied, in other words — to prevent Blair from going to Gaza and drawing attention to the “catastrophe” for which Israel is responsible. McGirk’s evidence of this? Literally none.
