PLO Refugee Boat (1988)

Thursday, February 28, 2008

1988 Dry Bones cartoon - Arafat's Ship of 'Refugees'.

The portrayal of Palestinians as refugees and victims so crucial to the drumming up of rage against the State of Israel reached a new high point with the attempt this month to orchestrate a break into Israel by Gazan civilians suffering a "Humanitarian Crisis". Or was it just a rerun of a similar attempt to stage an event that was tried 20 years ago in February of 1988?

A loyal reader sent me a link to Lenny Ben-David's blog which recalls that:

"Israel was faced with a similar threat exactly 20 years ago when the PLO started to outfit a ship, Sol Phryne, and renamed it the al Awda (the Return). Some 200 Palestinian refugees and international "dignitaries" were slated to board the ship and provocatively sail into Haifa…" -more

Just as the PLO had appropriated the term Palestinian (which used to refer only to Jews in the region), Arafat was now planning a bizarro version of Israel's 1947 "refugee ship", the Exodus. If you don't know the story of the Exodus ship click here. And to learn more about the sending of the Jews back to internment camps by the British, click here.

If you'd like, next week, I'll post more of the cartoons that I did as the phony humanitarian crisis "refugee ship" ploy developed and played itself out back then, twenty years ago this very month.

What do you think?

Labels: 1947, Aliya, Arafat, Britain, Gaza, Holocaust, Palestine, Palestinians, Refugees

3 Comments:

At 4:39 PM, Belisarius said...: The Pally PR people are good at their jobs! The good news is that now new media does not buy the hype like the old Media always has.

Thanks for the reminder of how the PLO machine worked backed then.
At 3:15 PM, aquarius said...: Unfortunately belisarius, the media has not changed, and they still lap it up! Interesting how "history" does not change either, as we see in the old and wonderful Dry Bones.

I started reading you during my first trip to Israel in 1973, and am so glad to have found you on the web. I still go to Israel on a regular basis, and now am still reading you! Kol hacavod!
At 7:32 PM, ilona@israel said...: Its a pity that arabs use their own innocent citizens in oder to provocte agression against Israel.