June 1, 2010
Israeli armed commandos attack on the Mavi Marmara that was part of the Gaza Freedom flotilla. This attack, which resulted in the death of 9 Palestine solidarity activists, was a military action against civilian craft in international waters. Irrespective of what the US does beyond its standard spin when Israel crosses the line, Australia should call for the end of Israel's blockade of Gaza and not just its easing. So should the UN Security Council.
Steve Bell
Israel's narrative of self-defensive is undercut by there being no evidence so far that the convoy's six vessels constituted a threat to Israel's security. The evidence indicates that the ships were carrying construction materials, electric wheelchairs, cancer medicine, milk powder and water purifiers for Gaza's people. Israel's Gaza blockade, which was imposed in June 2007, has stopped the Palestinians in Gaza from receiving such aid.
Israel says the blockade is designed to prevent weapons from being smuggled into the enclave so as to prevent Hamas from rearming. It is a part of a strategy to undermine and destroy Hamas, and to punish the Palestinian people for electing and supporting Hamas. Its publicity machine claims that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, that the occupation of Gaza has ended, and that the flotilla is a violent attack on Israeli sovereignty.
This spin will not prevent Israel's increasing isolation in the international community. George Friedman in Flotillas and the Wars of Public Opinion at Stratfor says:
The Turkish flotilla aimed to replicate the Exodus story or, more precisely, to define the global image of Israel in the same way the Zionists defined the image that they wanted to project...the flotilla was designed to achieve two ends. The first is to divide Israel and Western governments by shifting public opinion against Israel. The second is to create a political crisis inside Israel between those who feel that Israel’s increasing isolation over the Gaza issue is dangerous versus those who think any weakening of resolve is dangerous.
This sort of warfare has nothing to do with fairness. It has to do with controlling public perception and using that public perception to shape foreign policy around the world. In this case, the issue will be whether the deaths were necessary. The Israeli argument of provocation will have limited traction. Israel is just not large enough to withstand extended isolation.
Stephen Walt asks a good question:
How are we supposed to think about a country that has nuclear weapons, a superb army, an increasingly prosperous economy, and great technological sophistication, yet keeps more than a million people under siege in Gaza, denies political rights to millions more on the West Bank, is committed to expanding settlements there, and whose leaders feel little compunction about using deadly force not merely against well-armed enemies, but also against innocent civilians and international peace activists, while at the same time portraying itself as a blameless victim? Something has gone terribly wrong with the Zionist dream.
Israel has become a regional hegemon and an occupying power--a theologically-motivated regional superpower with a nuclear arsenal.
The Netanyahu Likud Coalition Government has turned away from, and rejected, liberal democratic values (one person, one vote, human rights, equal citizenship) is deeply opposed to a Palestinian state; explicitly advocates a Jewish state; wants to revoke the citizenship of Israeli Arabs, strips Israeli Arabs of legal protection; and says that Israeli Arabs don’t deserve full citizenship and West Bank Palestinians don’t deserve human rights.
In spite of this the Australian Jewish lobby (eg., the AIJAC) persists in saying that Israel is a state in which all its leaders--including Avigdor Lieberman ---- cherish democracy and yearn for peace. It is an image increasingly at odds with political reality.
Israel's attack on an aid flotilla is an outcome of the failed policy in trying to isolate the Hamas government which controls the Gaza strip and thus turn the population against it. Whether the siege of Gaza is lifted or sustained is up to Washington. If, when Netanyahu finally meets Obama, the US president was to say the embargo must end, Israel would have no choice. The siege of Gaza can only continue with US support and thus far, Obama refuses to withdraw that support.
Update
The United Nations Security Council has instructed Israel to lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip, calling the siege “not sustainable.” Egypt has re-opened the Rafah crossing indefinitely. Steve Clemmons at The Washington Note says that it the event was more than things getting out of hand.
From a distance, what seems to be happening is that Israel is ratcheting up its test of what it can do in the confines of the US-Israel relationship. It is testing to see whether there exist any limits or conditionality on Israeli behavior at all. Israel believes that the Obama team is weak -- and is pushing aggressively to compel the US to tolerate anything the State of Israel does as a signal to the rest of the Middle East that is itself clamoring for any sign that the Obama administration is willing to put some muscle and substantive action behind the President's Cairo speech and other comments to the governments and people in the Arab world.
The pressure for change in the Middle East is building as Turkey, an emerging regional power, takes a more pro-active role in the region whilst settler violence and fanaticism continues to grow within Israel, pushing Israeli politics in an illiberal direction.
|
The 19 deaths as a result of Monday's botched raid on a Turkish ship carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza in defiance of an Israeli blockade looks to have the hallmarks of a massive public-relations disaster for Israel.
Israeli spokesmen are circling the wagons as they try to defend the siege of Gaza. The Deputy Foreign Minister, Daniel Ayalon, said that the flotilla of ships on its way to Gaza:
Israel is fast losing friends and allies in the world, and the actions by the Netanyahu government in Jerusalem is only accelerating this shift.