Those Clumsy Elders of Zion

I must admit I don't understand why the Elders of Zion decided to block the broadcasting of the Disaster Emergency Committee's emergency appeal from Gaza. By refusing to allow the broadcast they've created a tremendous furor, with tens of thousands of complaints, lawsuits against the BBC, fulmination galore, not to mention far more publicity for the ad than it would otherwise ever have generated. Why, today even Mohamed el-Baradei, top mediocre UN nuclear sleuth, has declared he's boycotting the BBC, a policy he'll undoubtedly drop five minutes after the last interview about his decision is completed. I mean, even the Israelis never boycott the BBC for long.

And of course, the advertisement is all over the Internet, so anyone can go see it at their leisure anyway. (Hint: you can, too, by following the above link to el-Baradei's protest).

Curiously, though millions are watching the ad and tens of thousands are plotzing with fury, the donations themselves are so far only around one million Pounds (that link also leads you to the ad), which at 4.5 million viewers means something like 22 pence of donations per angry viewer. Not impressive, that.

But back to the inept Elders of Zion: I really don't know what they were thinking. Had they successfully barred the BBC from broadcasting disturbing pictures from Gaza, or even better, forced it to show only parades of Israeli-flag-waving demonstrators in downtown Gaza clamoring for the IDF to save them from Hamas, then we could pat them on their backs and commend them for a job well done, though even then, merely controlling the BBC probably wouldn't have been enough and they should have blocked everyone from al-Jezeera down. As it is, however, they allowed their BBC lackeys to broadcast pictures of destruction in Gaza for day after day after week after week, along with heaps of punditry about disproportionality, evil blockades, the impossibility of ever reaching political goals through the use of violence, the urgent need to engage Hamas in dialogue about global warming and what have you... and after all that, they blocked this one short film which has no new images in it? Huh? Is this what we elected them for in our last midnight meeting in the graveyard?