The organizers of the last few anti-Israel publicity stunts seem to have taken the words of Saul Alinsky to heart. "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."
Its not about the event or the tactic as much as the publicity. Its about the fight to keep the Palestinian cause in everyone's faces, blithely ignoring the uproar in the rest of the region. Pay no attention to the 9,000 people killed in Syria during the 13-month uprising.
Tangible results are meaningless- the goal is publicity at any cost. It’s a battle for "Trending" on Twitter. It’s a battle for web domination.
This weekends' "Welcome to Palestine" is no different. The campaign consists of anti- Israel activists from the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand who plan to go fly into Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv . It’s a potentially volatile situation, and security forces are gearing to stop the activists at the airport should they cause a public disturbance – something authorities believe is more than likely. After all, its all about the noise level.
From Mazin Qumsiyeh.
"Tens of thousands of media stories appeared just in the last 48 hours(ranging from social media to mainstream media). All major Israeli media
covered the campaign. Some media outlets doing several stories (almost on a
daily basis)...Our websites in different countries including support websites recorded significant increase in hits with a logarithmic growth after our
phenomenally successful press conference last Tuesday "From our friends at
CIFWatch who have created a Fact sheet on the "Welcome to Palestine campaign"- also called the
Air flotilla 2 "In 2011 the Palestine Justice Network launched a campaign entitled the ‘One State Initiative’ which rejects the internationally accepted route of negotiations leading to a two-state solution in order to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. Thus, ‘Air Flotilla 2′ represents another campaign designed to lead ultimately to an externally imposed ‘one state solution’ which would entail the dismantling of Israel as a Jewish state and an end to Jewish self-determination.
Provocation and bad public relations for Israel are also part of the underlying motive of the project, as expressed by organizer Jaques Neno when he told potential participants at a meeting in Paris last January that should they end up being arrested, “you have won because when Israel puts you in prison it shows how it becomes more and more fascist”.Social media sites are already predicting this campaign will be the next "flop-tilla". Even though, we can be sure than Mazin and friends will crow loud enough to wake the dead about the success of their operation. Its all about the noise, after all.
