"Israel ran into its own fist"

[Political Waves]

Welcome to Uranus in Aries -- uncorked passions, conflict and militarism. [[sigh]]

Today we'll look at Israel's botched attempt to stop the Flotilla which peace activists have been planning for months now. It was designed to bring needed relief supplies to Palestinians via the sea, like the one awhile back in which Cynthia McKinney was arrested and held along with other peace advocates. I want to be careful here not to puddle this up with altruism, although that certainly plays for many who support these ventures, and anyone who examines this situation must certainly be aware of the suffering of the Palestinians over the last fewyears, severely punished for having the temerity to elect Hamas over American-backed Abbas. The Flotilla knew it was provoking a response and seeking [IMHO, much needed] public awareness of the plight of those in Gaza -- it's just one more example of humans choosing their ideology and then turning their face from those who are victimized without resource or assistance. And if anyone should 'get it,' it's Israel.

Israel boarded the ships in international waters, which makes me wonder if piracy laws might apply -- according to Ray McGovern, because the ship was Turkish, their law applies which could lead to charges of war crimes. Meanwhile, while several peace workers died in this scrap, the Israeli soldiers are complaining that they were attacked with sticks and knives and nearly 'lynched.' I'd say they should read accounts of Custer's Last Stand and try not to be surprised that the Sioux had arrows. Who opened fire first has come into question but if the Flotilla was using deck chairs to knock the Israelis around, you have to point to Israelis' clumsy PR and the sequester of any opinion other than their own for the answer.

I confess I've found a new hero in my ongoing 'voice of reason' quest in Haaretz blogger, Bradley Burston -- he has two outstanding pieces below, one on the situation, another on the new generation for which he has great hopes. That's another echo back to the American zeitgeist, that has its own generational changes waiting in the wings. Israel's bullying is reminiscent of our own -- which is no surprise, as many of us think of it as our 51st state. Zionism isn't as healthy as it used to be [excellent article here,] however, despite the Fundy push to keep the End Times crap ratcheted up. And Obama has brought a sea-change in relations with Israel, no longer rubber-stamping its activity -- this event is another challenge to the problems Petraeus made evident when he said that the situation in the Holy Land destabilizes everything.  By withholding our US vote, we stopped UN condemnation but not calls for an independent probe.  The Israeli people are, unsurprisingly, much like our own in terms of how they see this -- conflicted. As with us, it would be an error to demonize Israel's citizens as we censure its governance. Good to remember as the Flotilla resumes and the Israeli Navy promises even more aggressive force.

 

Here are the most thoughtful reads around, and links to more. For additional reading, the bloggers over at Planet Waves have posted some savvy links as well. The last piece is my attempt to remain 'fair and balanced' in terms of the conservative concerns but I can't help but feel it strikes the wrong chord in our tumultuous times. This is a twisty-turney mess that can only be fully understood by working through a historical maze -- we need the whole picture to properly assess this current situation. But clearly, Israel is the loser in this round, and if it loses Turkey as an ally, which is likely, while further estranging itself from the US. In response, Egypt has opened its border to allow in humanitarian aid. It may find its current selection of Far-Right leadership as slippery a slope as did we ... echoes everywhere, eh? You pay a dear price for being an international bully -- which is another thing Israel should have learned from its long and painful history. I guess that makes both of us 'slow learners.'

In other news, the "third-highest al-Qaida head" has been blown to bits by drones in Afghanistan ... along with his wife and kids. Hooray?

'Mans inhumanity to man' is the sum of all its political parts, here in 2010 -- if we can't take a leap there, the planet would be better off without us.

Jude

PS -- the uber-conservative Supreme's have mutilated Miranda by making it the responsibility of the citizen to invoke their own rights. Read it and weep.



Israelis Opened Fire Before Boarding Gaza Flotilla, say Released Activists
First eyewitness accounts of raid contradict version put out by Israeli officials
Dorian Jones in Istanbul and Helena Smith, The Guardian/UK
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/06/01-3

Hundreds detained at Ashdod port
Soldiers, officers bring passengers of Marmara ship under arrest at Ashdod port, first questioning each separately and then transferring them to Beersheba Prison, where they receive toiletries, meal, and beds
Ynet
06.01.10
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3897136,00.html

Tipping Point?
digby, Hallabaloo
5/31/10
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/flotilla-nightmare-tipping-point.html

A Special Place in Hell / The Second Gaza War: Israel lost at sea
We are no longer defending Israel. We are now defending the siege, which is itself becoming Israel's Vietnam.
Bradley Burston, Haaretz
31.05.10
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/a-special-place-in-hell-the-second-gaza-war-israel-lost-at-sea-1.293246

A war tells a people terrible truths about itself. That is why it is so difficult to listen.

We were determined to avoid an honest look at the first Gaza war. Now, in international waters and having opened fire on an international group of humanitarian aid workers and activists, we are fighting and losing the second. For Israel, in the end, this Second Gaza War could be far more costly and painful than the first.

In going to war in Gaza in late 2008, Israeli military and political leaders hoped to teach Hamas a lesson. They succeeded. Hamas learned that the best way to fight Israel is to let Israel do what it has begun to do naturally: bluster, blunder, stonewall, and fume.

Hamas, and no less, Iran and Hezbollah, learned early on that Israel's own embargo against Hamas-ruled Gaza was the most sophisticated and powerful weapon they could have deployed against the Jewish state.

Here in Israel, we have still yet to learn the lesson: We are no longer defending Israel. We are now defending the siege. The siege itself is becoming Israel's Vietnam.

Of course, we knew this could happen. On Sunday, when the army spokesman began speaking of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in terms of an attack on Israel, MK Nahman Shai, the IDF chief spokesman during the 1991 Gulf war, spoke publicly of his worst nightmare, an operation in which Israeli troops, raiding the flotilla, might open fire on peace activists, aid workers and Nobel laureates.

Likud MK Miri Regev, who also once headed the IDF Spokesman's Office, said early Monday that the most important thing now was to deal with the negative media reports quickly, so they would go away.

But they are not going to go away. One of the ships is named for Rachel Corrie, killed while trying to bar the way of an IDF bulldozer in Gaza seven years ago. Her name, and her story, have since become a lightning rod for pro-Palestinian activism.

Perhaps most ominously, in a stepwise, lemming-like march of folly in our relations with Ankara, a regional power of crucial importance and one which, if heeded, could have helped head off the First Gaza War, we have come dangerously close to effectively declaring a state of war with Turkey.

"This is going to be a very large incident, certainly with the Turks," said Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the cabinet minister with the most sensitive sense of Israel's ties with the Muslim world.

We explain, time and again, that we are not at war with the people of Gaza. We say it time and again because we ourselves need to believe it, and because, deep down, we do not.

There was a time, when it could be said that we knew ourselves only in wartime. No longer. Now we know nothing. Yet another problem with refraining from talks with Hamas and Iran: They know us so much better than we know ourselves.

They know, as the song about the Lebanon War suggested ("Lo Yachol La'atzor Et Zeh") that we, unable to see ourselves in any clarity, are no longer capable of stopping ourselves.

Hamas, as well as Iran, have come to know and benefit from the toxicity of Israeli domestic politics, which is all too ready to mortgage the future for the sake of a momentary apparent calm.

They know that in our desperation to protect our own image of ourselves, we will avoid modifying policies which have literally brought aid and comfort to our enemies, in particular Hamas, which the siege on Gaza has enriched through tunnel taxes and entrenched through anger toward Israel.

For many on the right, it must be said, there will be a quiet joy in all of what is about to hit the fan. "We told you so," the crowing will begin. "The world hates us, no matter what we do. So we may as well go on building [Read: 'Settling the West Bank and East Jerusalem'] and defending our borders [Read: 'Bolster Hamas and ultimately harm ourselves by refusing to lift the Gaza embargo']."

Hamas, Iran and the Israeli and Diaspora hard right know, as one, that this is a test of enormous importance for Benjamin Netanyahu. Keen to have the world focus on Iran and the threat it poses to the people of Israel, Netanyahu must recognize that the world is now focused on Israel and the threat it poses to the people of Gaza. ++


Why Israelis are upset about Israeli raid on Gaza freedom flotilla
Israelis haven't expressed much sympathy for Gaza freedom flotilla activists attacked in an Israeli raid Monday. But they're upset that their government walked into what they say was a trap, and botched the mission.
Joshua Mitnick, Christian Science Monitor
June 1, 2010
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0601/Why-Israelis-are-upset-about-Israeli-raid-on-Gaza-freedom-flotilla

 
As Israel gets an international scolding for the deaths in a botched Israeli raid on the Gaza freedom flotilla that challenged Israel's three-year blockade on the coastal strip, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under a storm of criticism from Israelis themselves.

Though there was little sympathy for the nine activists killed and dozens injured in the clash on the Marmara passenger ship, Israelis are frustrated with their leaders for walking into what they say was a transparent "trap'' of confrontation with pro-Palestinian activists – and botching the mission.

"It’s the military failure combined with the international damage. Most people could live with that if it had been done successfully,'' says Tom Segev, a leading Israeli historian. "It's not that people are angry that people in Gaza are hungry. It was an operation that was ill-conceived and didn't go well enough. They hate when things go wrong.''

In the heat of the frustration, there were signs of a possible political crisis for Mr. Netanyahu. A front-page column in the centrist daily newspaper Maariv demanded the resignation of Defense Minister Ehud Barak. In addition, a parliament member from the dovish Meretz party called on the government to appoint an independent inquiry commission.

Meanwhile Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, arguably Netanyahu's strongest ally in the Arab world, lifted Egypt's blockade on the Gaza Strip and allowed aid to be delivered through the Rafah crossing.

'We fell into a trap'

Public outrage after Israel's botched war against Hezbollah forced the appointment of such a commission, and prompted popularity ratings for former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to plummet. Like then, some Israelis today believe that political leaders relinquished power and decisionmaking ability to the military, says Asaf Meydani, a political science lecturer at the College of Tel Aviv and Jaffa.

"It was stupid on our part. There was no way the mission could have been done properly. It's the government's fault, I don't blame the soldiers," says Maureen Bassan, a retired English teacher. "I don't believe the activists were humanitarian. They knew this was a way to get Israel to do a stupid thing, and I don't like the fact that we fell into the trap.''

Though Netanyahu and Barak visited wounded soldiers in Israeli hospitals to show a united front with army top brass who said the commandos acted properly, political leaders privately acknowledged that the storming of the boat went off script. "It was a messy operation,'' says a senior Israeli official.

Israelis said they were disturbed by black-and-white video footage, which the army says shows activists beating commandos with clubs and even casting one soldier over the side of a ship deck.

"It's not the nicest feeling in the world'' to watch the video, says Tomer, a software engineer. "Soldiers were coming down and [activists] were waiting to attack them. It was bizarre that they went one after the other into the situation.''

Beyond frustration with the lack of preparedness and the diplomatic defensive, there was speculation that the Jewish state had lost the moral high ground to Hamas in the Gaza standoff. One columnist drew a comparison to the Exodus refugee ship in 1947, whose mission to bring Holocaust survivors to the Holy Land was stopped by British forces in the Mediterranean. The incident helped spur international opinion to end the British Mandate in Palestinian and create a Jewish state.

"This is the Palestinian Exodus," wrote Ari Shavit, a centrist political commentator, in Haaretz. "In one threat of folly, the government of Israel succeeded in positioning [Hamas] as the victims and the Israeli Navy as an Navy of Evil." ++


A Special Place in Hell / My generation ruined Israel. Yours could save it
Mine is, after all, the generation that gave Israel the settlements.
Bradley Burston, Haaretz
24.05.10
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/a-special-place-in-hell-my-generation-ruined-israel-yours-could-save-it-1.291968

Perhaps you have to live in the psychic dungeon of 2010 Israel to emerge from Peter Beinart's watershed New York Review of Books essay "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment," with hope for the future.

Especially because it was my generation which put us here. My generation ruined Israel. And, in doing so, my generation is in the process of ruining Judaism.

Mine is, after all, the generation that gave Israel the settlements. Mine is the generation of occupation, from the grunts on the ground to the bureaucracy in the wings. Mine, from prevaricating Labor to real estate-crazed Likud, stole from the poor to give to the settlers, enshrined occupation and walled it off from view, all in order to serve what became the one true lord of Zionism and Orthodox Judaism combined: settlement.

Mine is the generation which gave us wars which were designed, and failed, to end all wars, separated by botched withdrawals aimed at ending all withdrawals. We were the ones who made sure that peace was given no chance, and later, came to give peace itself a bad name. Mine is the generation which is today desperate to sell peace as the fount of terrorism. Peace as the enemy.

Mine is, after all, the generation which killed Yitzhak Rabin. Mine is the generation unable to accept responsibility, the right unwilling to acknowledge that it created a climate of murderous hatred, the left unwilling to realize that when the chips were down, it abandoned Rabin and failed to do what was necessary to protect him.

My generation, skin verging on baggy and mind let off its leash, is now the generation unable to look at itself. For all our bluster and ideology and self-satisfaction and volume, we are cowards. Mine is the generation frightened by what we might find in a frank, naked, unfettered investigation of the war we made in Gaza. Instead, we blame Richard Goldstone for our use of phosphorus. We trash the New Israel Fund ("the New Ishmael Fund," West Bank Professor Ron Breiman called it on Army Radio on Monday, in an exemplar of the smugly sophisticated neo-racism in which we're all sinking), for the artillery and aerial barrages which accounted for the civilian death toll.

Mine is the generation which decreed that not talking honestly about settlement and its many-faceted shield, occupation, was apolitical and therefore correct.

In America, as well, the fear of admitting any wrongdoing on Israel's part, has made it impossible to see Israel at all. No wonder young American Jews are disengaged from Israel as it is presented to them. That country simply does not exist.

It's often a revelation, therefore, when young people come to Israel to find it a place both hugely more impressive and hugely more cocked up than their wildest dreams could ever have suggested.

Maybe that explains where hope has been hiding out, all these years. Perhaps you have to meet some of the young people who even now stumble onto this place from abroad, even from that North America Beinart so deftly renders, young people who even today are finding this place getting firmly and permanently under their skins, and who have set to work trying to salvage an Israel of social justice and human decency.
Or the young people born here who, despite everything, despite the prevailing ill winds and the centrifugal pressures for extremism, segregation, and applied hatred, live against the grain, practicing coexistence, concern for the shunned, optimism without just cause.

So, to the young people I have come across recently, who care about Israel, who care about human rights, and who are pained but also challenged to bear witness to the direction this country is bound:

God knows why you people love this place. God knows you do.

You are not like us. You are not dewy-eyed jingoists stuck in some 19th century need for rapacious nationalism. Neither are you sauté-for-brains flotsam for whom the Holy Land as a whole – and let's for once be honest, some parts of Hebron in particular – function as an immensely welcoming outpatient care facility.

You don't have the baggage that we had. And that is why you may do right where we went so profoundly wrong. You are not the freighted heirs to Holocaust, not the generation of the grand illusion, desperate to build a kibbutz or a settlement in a well-meaning but doomed effort to give some meaning to your parents' bottomless, wretched childhoods or their grandparents' unimaginable deaths.

The Americans among you have even less baggage. Your lack of automatic, programmed identification with a trumpeted and ultimately unreal Israel may be a distinct advantage. Nothing to live up to, is a whole lot better opening position, than much too much.

We had our chance. We knew, deep down, that the right generation, coming of age at the right time with the right common purpose, could save a country. But it wasn't us.

It might well be you. I, for one, hope it is. Whatever you choose, be brave. If you choose to try to save this place, God be with you. Go ahead. Show us up. ++


Flotillas and the Wars of Public Opinion
George Friedman, Stratfor Global Intelligence
May 31, 2010
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100531_flotillas_and_wars_public_opinion

On Sunday, Israeli naval forces intercepted the ships of a Turkish nongovernmental organization (NGO) delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Israel had demanded that the vessels not go directly to Gaza but instead dock in Israeli ports, where the supplies would be offloaded and delivered to Gaza. The Turkish NGO refused, insisting on going directly to Gaza. Gunfire ensued when Israeli naval personnel boarded one of the vessels, and a significant number of the passengers and crew on the ship were killed or wounded.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon charged that the mission was simply an attempt to provoke the Israelis. That was certainly the case. The mission was designed to demonstrate that the Israelis were unreasonable and brutal. The hope was that Israel would be provoked to extreme action, further alienating Israel from the global community and possibly driving a wedge between Israel and the United States. The operation’s planners also hoped this would trigger a political crisis in Israel.

A logical Israeli response would have been avoiding falling into the provocation trap and suffering the political repercussions the Turkish NGO was trying to trigger. Instead, the Israelis decided to make a show of force. The Israelis appear to have reasoned that backing down would demonstrate weakness and encourage further flotillas to Gaza, unraveling the Israeli position vis-à-vis Hamas. In this thinking, a violent interception was a superior strategy to accommodation regardless of political consequences. Thus, the Israelis accepted the bait and were provoked.

The ‘Exodus’ Scenario

In the 1950s, an author named Leon Uris published a book called “Exodus.” Later made into a major motion picture, Exodus told the story of a Zionist provocation against the British. In the wake of World War II, the British — who controlled Palestine, as it was then known — maintained limits on Jewish immigration there. Would-be immigrants captured trying to run the blockade were detained in camps in Cyprus. In the book and movie, Zionists planned a propaganda exercise involving a breakout of Jews — mostly children — from the camp, who would then board a ship renamed the Exodus. When the Royal Navy intercepted the ship, the passengers would mount a hunger strike. The goal was to portray the British as brutes finishing the work of the Nazis. The image of children potentially dying of hunger would force the British to permit the ship to go to Palestine, to reconsider British policy on immigration, and ultimately to decide to abandon Palestine and turn the matter over to the United Nations.

There was in fact a ship called Exodus, but the affair did not play out precisely as portrayed by Uris, who used an amalgam of incidents to display the propaganda war waged by the Jews. Those carrying out this war had two goals. The first was to create sympathy in Britain and throughout the world for Jews who, just a couple of years after German concentration camps, were now being held in British camps. Second, they sought to portray their struggle as being against the British. The British were portrayed as continuing Nazi policies toward the Jews in order to maintain their empire. The Jews were portrayed as anti-imperialists, fighting the British much as the Americans had.

It was a brilliant strategy. By focusing on Jewish victimhood and on the British, the Zionists defined the battle as being against the British, with the Arabs playing the role of people trying to create the second phase of the Holocaust. The British were portrayed as pro-Arab for economic and imperial reasons, indifferent at best to the survivors of the Holocaust. Rather than restraining the Arabs, the British were arming them. The goal was not to vilify the Arabs but to villify the British, and to position the Jews with other nationalist groups whether in India or Egypt rising against the British.

The precise truth or falsehood of this portrayal didn’t particularly matter. For most of the world, the Palestine issue was poorly understood and not a matter of immediate concern. The Zionists intended to shape the perceptions of a global public with limited interest in or understanding of the issues, filling in the blanks with their own narrative. And they succeeded.

The success was rooted in a political reality. Where knowledge is limited, and the desire to learn the complex reality doesn’t exist, public opinion can be shaped by whoever generates the most powerful symbols. And on a matter of only tangential interest, governments tend to follow their publics’ wishes, however they originate. There is little to be gained for governments in resisting public opinion and much to be gained by giving in. By shaping the battlefield of public perception, it is thus possible to get governments to change positions.

In this way, the Zionists’ ability to shape global public perceptions of what was happening in Palestine — to demonize the British and turn the question of Palestine into a Jewish-British issue — shaped the political decisions of a range of governments. It was not the truth or falsehood of the narrative that mattered. What mattered was the ability to identify the victim and victimizer such that global opinion caused both London and governments not directly involved in the issue to adopt political stances advantageous to the Zionists. It is in this context that we need to view the Turkish flotilla.

The Turkish Flotilla to Gaza

The Palestinians have long argued that they are the victims of Israel, an invention of British and American imperialism. Since 1967, they have focused not so much on the existence of the state of Israel (at least in messages geared toward the West) as on the oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Since the split between Hamas and Fatah and the Gaza War, the focus has been on the plight of the citizens of Gaza, who have been portrayed as the dispossessed victims of Israeli violence.

The bid to shape global perceptions by portraying the Palestinians as victims of Israel was the first prong of a longtime two-part campaign. The second part of this campaign involved armed resistance against the Israelis. The way this resistance was carried out, from airplane hijackings to stone-throwing children to suicide bombers, interfered with the first part of the campaign, however. The Israelis could point to suicide bombings or the use of children against soldiers as symbols of Palestinian inhumanity. This in turn was used to justify conditions in Gaza. While the Palestinians had made significant inroads in placing Israel on the defensive in global public opinion, they thus consistently gave the Israelis the opportunity to turn the tables. And this is where the flotilla comes in.

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. As with the Zionist portrayal of the situation in 1947, the Gaza situation is far more complicated than as portrayed by the Palestinians. The moral question is also far more ambiguous. But as in 1947, when the Zionist portrayal was not intended to be a scholarly analysis of the situation but a political weapon designed to define perceptions, the Turkish flotilla was not designed to carry out a moral inquest.

Instead, 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.

The Geopolitical Fallout for Israel

It is vital that the Israelis succeed in portraying the flotilla as an extremist plot. Whether extremist or not, the plot has generated an image of Israel quite damaging to Israeli political interests. Israel is increasingly isolated internationally, with heavy pressure on its relationship with Europe and the United States.

In all of these countries, politicians are extremely sensitive to public opinion. It is difficult to imagine circumstances under which public opinion will see Israel as the victim. The general response in the Western public is likely to be that the Israelis probably should have allowed the ships to go to Gaza and offload rather than to precipitate bloodshed. Israel’s enemies will fan these flames by arguing that the Israelis prefer bloodshed to reasonable accommodation. And as Western public opinion shifts against Israel, Western political leaders will track with this shift.

The incident also wrecks Israeli relations with Turkey, historically an Israeli ally in the Muslim world with longstanding military cooperation with Israel. The Turkish government undoubtedly has wanted to move away from this relationship, but it faced resistance within the Turkish military and among secularists. The new Israeli action makes a break with Israel easy, and indeed almost necessary for Ankara.

With roughly the population of Houston, Texas, Israel is just not large enough to withstand extended isolation, meaning this event has profound geopolitical implications.

Public opinion matters where issues are not of fundamental interest to a nation. Israel is not a fundamental interest to other nations. The ability to generate public antipathy to Israel can therefore reshape Israeli relations with countries critical to Israel. For example, a redefinition of U.S.-Israeli relations will have much less effect on the United States than on Israel. The Obama administration, already irritated by the Israelis, might now see a shift in U.S. public opinion that will open the way to a new U.S.-Israeli relationship disadvantageous to Israel.

The Israelis will argue that this is all unfair, as they were provoked. Like the British, they seem to think that the issue is whose logic is correct. But the issue actually is, whose logic will be heard? As with a tank battle or an airstrike, 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.

Internationally, there is little doubt that the incident will generate a firestorm. Certainly, Turkey will break cooperation with Israel. Opinion in Europe will likely harden. And public opinion in the United States — by far the most important in the equation — might shift to a “plague-on-both-your-houses” position.

While the international reaction is predictable, the interesting question is whether this evolution will cause a political crisis in Israel. Those in Israel who feel that international isolation is preferable to accommodation with the Palestinians are in control now. Many in the opposition see Israel’s isolation as a strategic threat. Economically and militarily, they argue, Israel cannot survive in isolation. The current regime will respond that there will be no isolation. The flotilla aimed to generate what the government has said would not happen.

The tougher Israel is, the more the flotilla’s narrative takes hold. As the Zionists knew in 1947 and the Palestinians are learning, controlling public opinion requires subtlety, a selective narrative and cynicism. As they also knew, losing the battle can be catastrophic. It cost Britain the Mandate and allowed Israel to survive. Israel’s enemies are now turning the tables. This maneuver was far more effective than suicide bombings or the Intifada in challenging Israel’s public perception and therefore its geopolitical position (though if the Palestinians return to some of their more distasteful tactics like suicide bombing, the Turkish strategy of portraying Israel as the instigator of violence will be undermined).

Israel is now in uncharted waters. It does not know how to respond. It is not clear that the Palestinians know how to take full advantage of the situation, either. But even so, this places the battle on a new field, far more fluid and uncontrollable than what went before. The next steps will involve calls for sanctions against Israel. The Israeli threats against Iran will be seen in a different context, and Israeli portrayal of Iran will hold less sway over the world.

And this will cause a political crisis in Israel. If this government survives, then Israel is locked into a course that gives it freedom of action but international isolation. If the government falls, then Israel enters a period of domestic uncertainty. In either case, the flotilla achieved its strategic mission. It got Israel to take violent action against it. In doing so, Israel ran into its own fist. ++

 
Facebook Meets the Flotilla
Rabbi Daniel Gordis, HuffPo
May 31, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-daniel-gordis/facebook-meets-the-flotil_b_595478.html

An old high school friend, who's taken great exception to a couple of my most recent Jerusalem Post columns, has been telling me of late on my Facebook page how out of touch with American Jewry I am. He let loose again today. Here's what he had to say:

Hey Danny....yet again a misguided Israeli political and military mission with regard to Gaza that American Jewry will be asked to stand by and support. All over the news Israel will be referred to as "the Jewish State" as worldwide condemnation will pour in. As a Jew I will be on the defensive despite the fact that I have no vote and no say in whatever the politicians in Israel decide. Again, you will no doubt ask for solidarity by Jewish folk worldwide and we will answer for Israeli decision-making. I love Israel as my religious base, but the policies do not reflect my peace loving values. I support Israel with bonds and donations and visits, but the thriving American Jewish experience is independent of it.

OK, there's a lot there, and most of it I won't respond to now. But this is one of those moments when I don't think we have the luxury of writing a column over days, printing it out and editing it, sleeping on it and editing it again. Too much is happening, and people are too hurt and too confused for something not to be said.

To be sure, there's much more that we don't know than we do. We'll learn a lot in the days and weeks to come. But we do know that this was a tragic day and an excruciatingly painful one in Israel. At the fruit market, and at the dry cleaners, I asked people working there how they were, and all I got was a sigh. And then, "Yom kasheh. A tough day. They're going to eat us alive."

They will, indeed, eat us alive. It's taken a full day for the Israeli government to say anything coherent at all, riots are breaking out in Israeli Arab towns, Israelis in Istanbul have been warned by the Foreign Ministry not to leave their hotel rooms, and the international community is raining down condemnation.
But I jump to conclusions very different than those of my high school friend, and I responded to him in language very close to this:

David - we couldn't disagree more strongly. Israel's actions were "misguided"? Let's take that first. Were there tragic outcomes? Obviously. But "misguided"? Gaza is under the malicious and cynical rule of a terror organization sworn on Israel's destruction, that is holding an Israeli soldier captive in contravention of all international treaties, and that oppresses its own population while even Palestinian witnesses there acknowledge that there is no food shortage. Given Hamas' military objectives, Israel would be crazy not to check what's going in. But Israel had already pledged to pass on any humanitarian goods after they were inspected, and told the boats the same thing. So, no, I don't think that the idea of stopping the boats was misguided.

What we know is that on five of the ships, the commandos (among them friends of our kids, by the way) boarded the boats, and there was no resistance and no fighting.

On one boat, however, the first soldiers to land on the boat were attacked with metal rods and knives. There's video of it. It's playing all over Israel and all over the internet. In some cases, soldiers' weapons were stolen and used against them. One was stabbed, apparently in the abdomen. Another was tossed from a desk and trampled when he landed. There were a handful of commandos there, and 600 "peace activists." On Israeli news tonight, the soldiers on helicopters taking them to the hospital were interviewed. They descended the ropes, they said, planning to talk the "activists" into going to Ashdod. Their weapons were not in their hands, but strapped to their backs. "We went into war," one in his 30's said bitterly tonight, "and all we had were toys." They were beaten, trampled, shot (yes, there were bullet injuries) but only after forty minutes of combat did they resort to live five. They were going to get lynched if they didn't fight back, they said.

Was I there? No. Do I know what really happened? No. But do I trust these kids and their officers? Yes, I do.

As for "peace activists," David, how much do you know about the IHH? It's a terror support group, supported by Turkey (among others) and it was ent to provoke. If they just wanted the goods to get to Gaza, they could have agreed to transfer them to an Israeli ship, or to unload them in Ashdod, as the Navy personnel asked them to. But they didn't want that. They just wanted to break the blockade. Why? For food? Even a few Palestinian journalists with some guts are reporting that there's no humanitarian food crisis in Gaza. No, it wasn't about food. They want the blockade broken so that after that, non-humanitarian items (read weapons) could brought in. Why should Israel allow that? So that they can be better armed the next time we have to send our kids into Gaza?

As for "being on the defensive," you "will be on the defensive" only because you totally don't get it. For if you did get it, you wouldn't feel that way. There's only one country anywhere on the planet about which there's a conversation about whether it has a right to exist. Do you ever think about why that is? What, the fate of the Palestinians is worse than that of aborigines in Australia? Or people in the Congo, or Rwanda? Why all the attention on Israel? Do you really not get it? You think that New Zealand just coincidentally decided this week to make kosher slaughtering illegal? You think it's really about humanitarian commitments? Come on.

No, David, you really don't have to defend Israel. No one's asking you to. We know that it's too late to expect many Americans like you to assume we're right before you assume we're wrong. As we look out at Jews across the world, we're just assessing who gets Jewish history, and who's so thoroughly intellectually assimilated that they're actually embarrassed that that Jews don't have to continue to be victims. I'm horrified by what happened on the ship, and I'll be shocked if after all is in, we find that Israel made no mistakes. (This was pretty clearly an intelligence failure, at the very minimum, sending those soldiers into something for which they had not at all been prepared or armed.) But if that had been my kid on the ship, and he'd gone in to prevent the blockade from being broken, but had no intention of fighting, and had then been attacked, I'd want him to defend himself. No matter what. I'd want him to come home whole, because that's part of the new Jewish reality that this country is supposed to make possible.

The loss of life is tragic. So are the injuries to soldiers, including serious head wounds. But most tragic of all is that the world is so willing to be blinded to what's really going on here.

At the end of this excruciating day in Israel, at least given what I know at this moment, I'm saddened but not apologetic. I'm not surprised by most of the world's reactions. But I haven't lost sight of who provoked this, and why they did that. But you're a very smart guy. Why have you? ++


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