Not a Fish (provincially speaking)

Ah, a reader!
Nelson Ascher e-mailed me and wrote:

"I live in Paris and the pro-Palestinian "manif" passed just
below my window. (By the way, I took hundreds of pictures of
it). It is pretty easy to recognize a well organized event,
and one has to concede that what the allies of the
Palestinians did here and in the rest of Europe during
Defensive Shield was quite well organized. That obviously
shows a kind of strength, but also an unexpected kind of
weakness: in other words, there was nothing spontaneous in
it. You can do it once, but each time you repeat it, if the
cause in question is not actually so "hot" and popular after
all, you run the risk of attracting less and less people.
Besides, here in France, most of those who were backing the
Palestinians had, immediately afterwards, to mobilize their
people against Le Pen. Even for the French a third wave of
mobilization would be pretty hard to organize if you take two
other factors in consideration: the world cup, and summer
vacations (with people far from schools, universities etc.).
Then, there is this curious phenomenon: the first time Israel
does something, there is a huge outcry; the second time, only
some protests that keep shrinking. You will see that with the
deportation of the bombers' families: it will begin as a huge
scandal and rapidly become a fact of life. (Unfortunately,
this works for the other side too: suicide bombings, for the
rest of the world, have become trivial). Now, about the Jenin
affair: I don't think the trouble really was the fact that
the European press, politicians etc. have been lied to. They
could, after all, blame the Palestinians or even Israel (as
they have of course been doing) for not allowing them in to
check the facts. Had they been a little more cautious, they
would have gotten away with it. The problem is that they
were, so to say, so trigger-happy to shoot/blame the Jews
that their bias became all too evident. And the much more
prudent behaviour of the American press helped underline the
hysteria of their reaction. The press (specially the British
the behavour of which was far worse than that of the French
newspapers) either believed its own lies or overplayed its
hand. The result of its lack of professionalism, both as a
decent press and as a truly Machiavellic propaganda machine,
was to give their game away. And thus, a kind of low profile
is in the order of the day, at least for the time being. In a
way, the "Jenin massacre" happened to be a gift to Israel's
counter-propaganda efforts, and I hope your government will
be clever enough to use it, answering Palestinian allegations
with "there you come with one more Jenin massacre again", or
using labels like Mr Saeb "3.000 dead" Erekat."