When Princess Cruises canceled a scheduled port call at Ashdod, Israel on June 2nd due to safety fears in the wake of the Gaza Flotilla incident, the line thought it was doing what was in the best interests of its passengers.
Instead, a slanderous email campaign began working its way through the interwebs, claiming, falsely, that Princess had adopted a policy of boycotting Israel, and had cancelled all further calls to the region.
The rumor was picked up by an enormous number of cruise sites, blogs, and professional media. The false allegations ended up resulting in a campaign by some to boycott Princess in return - largely spurned on by the email itself, which urged Jewish Americans to "pass this along" to let others know that there were alternatives to the line.
On Saturday, Princess went into damage control and issued a press release stating that the allegations are completely false - a statement that was also confirmed by the sites Boycott Watch, The Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Journal, and the Haaretz Daily Newspaper.
What is most shocking, but perhaps not surprising, is that so many people were duped by this. It was an email that clearly wasn't a press release, wasn't backed up by any facts, and wasn't even issued by the line itself. Yet many blogs and cruise sites reported it as fact, without even bothering to confirm with the line if this was indeed the case. For a news media site or a blog to have reported that is completely irresponsible.
Princess plans to continue its scheduled calls at Israel. They pointed out in a press release that they have been calling in Israel for over twenty years now, and have no plans to stop doing so. However, as with ports anywhere in the world, Princess reserves the right to monitor any and all situations that might affect the routing and safety of the vessel, in addition to her passengers and crew.
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