"Madness! Madness!" Thoughts on the Israeli Flotilla Attack

“The activists said they never attacked the soldiers. They thought Israel was welcoming them with commando-shaped piñatas.”

- Jon Stewart

Yesterday at my new 9-5 job (calling employers to verify loan information – I’ll tell you about it later), I overhead this exchange between two of my coworkers:

“What’s going on in Israel?”
“Some ships were bringing food to Gaza, and the Israeli army attacked them and killed like twenty people.”
“Wow, that’s nuts. You know, I really can’t go along with the whole Rambo killing-people thing.”
“Yeah. Especially when they were just trying to drop off food.”

I have a feeling that my coworkers’ characterization of the IDF’s attack on the “Freedom Flotilla” last Monday is fast on its way to being cemented in the public consciousness. Nevertheless, here is my vain attempt to shift the narrative.

(The following summary is based on Matti Friedman’s excellent article in the Associated Press today.)

The Gaza Strip, a 139 square mile sliver of land bordering Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, is home to 1.5 million Palestinians, and is controlled by the Islamist militant group Hamas, which has dedicated itself to total warfare against the Jewish state, with its destruction as its chief goal. Due to ongoing rocket attacks against Israel launched from the Gaza Strip, Israel and Egypt have blockaded the Strip, banning all exports and letting through only food and medicine.

On Sunday, a group of 700 activists on six ships nicknamed the “Freedom Flotilla,” organized by the Free Gaza Movement, set sail from Cyprus to bring 10,000 tons of supplies to Gaza.

Say what you will about the blockade, but any nation that let 10,000 tons of supplies be delivered to territory controlled by its archenemies uninspected would redefine “suicidal.” So, quite reasonably, in my mind, the Israeli government warned Free Gaza that the flotilla would not be allowed through the blockade, but offered to pass on humanitarian aid from the ships.

The ships set sail anyway. The Israeli navy sent its ships to intercept, and ordered them to halt. The flotilla moved on anyway. So the Israelis sent their commandos to take over the ships and turn them towards an Israeli port.

Not expecting any resistance – the ships were carrying peace activists, after all – the commandos were armed only with paintball guns and pistols, “in case of emergency.” To their shock, as the commandos jumped onto the deck of the largest ship, the Mavi Marmara, they were attacked by a mob armed with clubs, chairs and knives. One soldier was thrown over the side onto a lower deck and stabbed in the stomach when he landed. Other soldiers jumped into the Mediterranean to escape their attackers. A full twenty minutes after the operation began, the soldiers requested permission to use their firearms, and received it. Two of the “peace activists” were shot dead after they wrested pistols away from the commandos and shot two Israeli soldiers. All in all, nine activists were killed and seven soldiers were wounded.

The surprising part of this story is not that Israel chose to intercept massive cargo ships headed through their blockade into enemy territory. Nor is it surprising that the Israeli soldiers responded with live ammunition when they were attacked. The real question here is: Why did the activists turn to violence so quickly?

They did so for the same reason, I submit, that Israel is now being nearly-universally, unequivocally condemned for the violence that the activists started: In the eyes of Israel’s political opponents, the Jewish state can do no right.

As evidence, I point to an e-mail I received from a pro-Palestinian group called the BRussels Tribunal the day of the attack (Italics mine):

NEWSLETTER - SPECIAL EDITION
ISRAELI MURDEROUS ACTION

Dead: 19. [sic] Injured: 60.
This is Israel

...For what does Israel fight? Its existence, or the continuance of a regime of collective punishment calculated to destroy the Palestinians? Or are these the same thing?

...From founding until now we have witnessed an unending catalogue of Israeli atrocities. By these countless atrocities, Israel has forfeited any claim to legality — it is moreover a state that refuses to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or consider giving up its nuclear weapons.

...Here every man and woman has a moral duty: inaction is complicity and a betrayal of humanity. All legal rights are with those who attempt to end this situation by whatever means.
...

■ We condemn the illegal, immoral and inhuman blockade on Gaza, and all who uphold it
■ We condemn Israel
■ We condemn Israel’s brutal attack on peace activists in international waters. We declare that 700 brave souls, from 50 nations, represent something real that Israeli propaganda cannot erase
...
■ We demand an international tribunal to judge all Israeli crimes, past and present. We call on the UN General Assembly to request of the International Court of Justice an advisory opinion on the legality of Israel within the United Nations System given its systematic and gross disrespect of international law and moral authority.

Because the global anti-Zionist movement, like the radical Islamist movement and the Palestinian national movement, has never accepted the legitimacy of the Jewish state, its struggle on behalf of the Palestinian people has taken on a zero-sum quality. Its various tactics – blockade-running, disinvestment, etc. – flow from an initial rejection of Israel’s right to exist, and therefore preclude reconciliation with Israel from the outset. In their eyes, no action Israel takes in self-defense can be legitimate, because Israel itself is illegitimate.

Hence – Israel sends commandos to take over ships carrying 10,000 tons of uninspected cargo headed towards enemy territory? They must be trying to kill us! Grab your knives! Man the ramparts! Israel kills nine people in a mob that was beating their soldiers to a pulp? Massacre! Haul them before the Security Council! No, the International Criminal Court! No, the Nuremberg Courts! Israel tries to defend its actions using videos confiscated from activists aboard the ship? Outrage! Have they no respect for freedom of the press?

Keep screaming, activists. This is what the Israeli people hear:



This attitude, to put it mildly, is not helpful – ESPECIALLY for the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza held hostage to Hamas’ eternal war against Israel.

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is very real. The Strip has one of the highest population densities on the planet - 1.5 million people are trapped in 139 square miles. In 2008, the year before the devastating Israel-Hamas war, 80% of Gazans were dependent on outside food aid, the unemployment rate was 40% , and public services had deteriorated so much that 50 million liters of sewage were pouring into the sea every day. Things have only gotten worse since then.

The blockade must be reformed. Travel rights must be restored. Exports must be allowed through. Real reconstruction must take place, with massive help from the outside world. The blockade must morph into an effective arms embargo.

Unfortunately, Israel is unlikely to do this on its own, for the same reason that Israel elected Benjamin Netanyahu, an anti-two-state solution rejectionist, as prime minister, that its top diplomat is a quasi-fascist who publicly expresses his contempt for foreign leaders, that it publicly humiliated Turkey’s ambassador to Jerusalem, that it banned Professor Noam Chomsky from speaking in Palestine, that it has declared its intention to bulldoze thousands of homes and deport thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank, that it has refused to stop building settlements in East Jerusalem even temporarily to restart the peace process.

That reason is: since the Gaza War of 2009, Israel has realized that nothing it can conceivably do will win it the respect of the world. So why should they bother?

How different would things have been if the activists had resisted peacefully! The world – and more importantly, the Israeli people - would have seen men, women and children being bound and carried off the ships one at a time. They would have seen the truly innocent cargo being inspected – wheelchairs, food, medicine, cement. They would have asked, “Why are these people willing to go through all this just to bring attention to Gaza? Why won’t our government let cement through to Gaza? What’s so dangerous about wheelchairs?” It might have been the catalyst Israel needed to start a real debate over how to relax the blockade, rebuild Gaza, and undercut Hamas’ popular support. As a professor interviewed in the documentary Handala says, “Nonviolence exposes the reality of the situation. There are no excuses anymore. There are no justifications anymore.”

Instead, I humbly and regretfully predict, the Israeli people will see the world’s irrational overreaction to their government’s completely rational behavior, correctly conclude that they cannot absolve themselves in the eyes of the world, and retreat further into their bunker.

Now is the time for the leaders of the U.S., Egypt, and Israel to pow-wow and figure out a way to relax the blockade while containing the terrorist threat. I only hope that the Freedom Flotilla has not sabotaged that pow-wow before it even begins.