On blaming Israel

Now here’s a really astonishing thing: for days we were bombarded with sound and video about the botched Israeli seizure of the Turkish ferry, Mavi Marmara. Only rarely was a word written in Israel’s defense, and those mostly by online bloggers—and they were written words, never as effective as the stuff dressed up and fed to us by Robin and George on Good Morning America. Yet what does the American public think about the fracas that left nine “activists” dead?

Rasmussen made this question the subject of its nightly telephone poll (which is conducted by voice recording, on the theory that people will be more honest with a machine than with a human interviewer)? Here are the results:

* 49 percent blame the activists for the bloodshed
* 19 percent blame Israel
* 32 percent aren’t sure

Fascinating. Blue skies! – Dan Ford