Press TV – June 15, 2010
Leader of Rome’s Jewish community, Riccardo Pacifici
The leader of the Jewish community in Rome has arranged a recreational trip to Italy for two Israeli forces involved a deadly attack on a Gaza aid convoy.
Riccardo Pacifici, chief of Rome’s Jewish community, invited the Israeli navy troops to Italy during his visit to Israel, where he praised and lionized them as “heroes,” IRNA reported on Monday.
Israeli commandos killed at least 20 human rights activists and injured 50 others during a May 31 onslaught on a six-ship fleet carrying 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid and 700 international activists from 42 countries to the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israel also arrested hundreds of the civilians on board the ships of the Freedom Flotilla, which was attempting to break the years-long siege of Gaza.
The campaigners were captured and forcefully taken into Israel from the international waters where they were attacked, but were soon released under international pressure on Tel Aviv not to deepen the crisis.
The attack sparked outrage across the globe and led to a chorus of calls for lifting the siege on the impoverished Gaza Strip.
By Paul Woodward on June 14, 2010
In the hours leading up to the Mavi Marmara massacre, Israel extended like a cloud whose shadow spread deep into the Mediterranean. The Turkish ship’s captain took evasive action but it’s hard to escape the reach of a nation whose borders are so elastic.
Anyone who reads the Israeli press will sooner or later notice one of the curious features about Israel’s geographic identity. Politicians talk about threats from the north and the south in such a way that Israel sounds like a legendary kingdom on whose periphery are regions of darkness. It doesn’t have borders as such but instead margins of indeterminate depth where it is dangerous to venture.
This might explain in part the mythopoetic imagination through which Israelis see themselves heroically standing up against the forces of evil. It also suggests why it is that a very modern state has a medieval view of the world.
Benjamin Netanyahu warned his cabinet this weekend: “Dark forces from the Middle Ages are raging against us. I have received calls from concerned officials in the Balkans and Eastern Europe who are very worried about these developments.”
The mission of the Mavi Marmara, Netanyahu seems to hint, signaled the beginning of an attempt to re-establish an Ottoman Caliphate that once again threatens to take control of the Holy Land. Nevertheless, at such a historic juncture, it’s perhaps surprising that the commander of Israel’s military forces was apparently asleep.
Was this an expression of the unshakable confidence IDF’s commander in chief has in his soldiers, or (more likely) the blasé attitude with which Israel operates in the international arena?
Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi was not present in the IDF’s Tel Aviv command center during the first part of the maritime takeover of the Gaza-bound Turkish ship Mavi Marmara on May 31, Haaretz learned Sunday.
Instead, the most senior officer supervising the raid was Major General Tal Russo, IDF Chief of Operations, with Ashkenazi arriving only after the takeover had taken a turn for the worse.
The absence of both Ashkenazi and his second in command, Major General Benny Ganz, will be one of the issues to be reviewed by the specialist panel named by the IDF chief to probe the raid, headed by retired major general Giora Eiland.
No wonder Israel has been dragging its feet in responding to calls for an international investigation. But now, thanks to the Obama administration, it looks like Israel may once again avoid being held accountable for its actions.
Israel last night flouted pressure for an independent international inquiry into the lethal assault two weeks ago on a flotilla of ships attempting to break the blockade on Gaza, announcing an internal investigation with two foreign observers.
The White House gave its approval for the Israeli formula, which will be confirmed by the Israeli cabinet today.
The inquiry into the raid, in which nine Turkish activists aboard the Mavi Marmara were killed, will be headed by a former Israeli supreme court judge, Yaakov Tirkel. The foreign observers are the former Northern Ireland first minister David Trimble and a Canadian judge, Ken Watkin. They will have no voting rights.
The inquiry falls short of a UN proposal for an international investigation, but was agreed after consultation with the US. The White House said last night that the Israeli inquiry meets the standard of “prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation”.
The US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, told Fox News on Sunday:
“We think that an international component would strengthen the investigation and certainly buttress its credibility in the eyes of the international community, and we’ve had discussions with Israel as to how and whether they might go about doing that,” Rice said.
But she added it’s “obviously ultimately the Israelis’ choice” whether to participate in such a group evaluation.
“Our view is that Israel, as a democracy, as a country with a tradition of strong military justice, can conduct an investigation of this sort however it chooses to constitute it,” she said, adding, “We are not pressuring Israel to participate in anything that it chooses not to participate in.”
In effect, what the United States is saying is that unlike any other country on the planet, Israel has the right construct its own definition of the term “international.” Israel when operating outside even its own self-determined boundaries of sovereignty, when conducting an assault on a ship operating under a Turkish flag and killing Turkish citizens, nevertheless has the “right” to say, “this is our business” — and Washington agrees.
Sefi Rachlevsky describes what happens when a nation refuses to set its own limits.
Israel gave itself a nice present to celebrate the 43rd anniversary of losing its borders. The raid on the Gaza flotilla in international waters is like the first Lebanon War – as if in a nightmarish experiment, we seem to be examining the question: What happens when a country has no borders?
Israel’s maritime attack did not happen by chance. A border is one of the fundamental factors that defines a country. Decades without one have distorted Israel’s thinking.
It is self-evident that, just as a person cannot build in an area that he does not own, a country cannot build settlements outside of its borders. And yet Israel has settled hundreds of thousands of its citizens in areas that, according to its laws, are not part of the State of Israel.
It is self-evident that any couple can marry “without regard to religion, race or gender.” And yet in Israel a Jewish man and a non-Jewish woman cannot legally marry. It’s self-evident that there is no arbitrary discrimination, and yet it’s enough to use the magic words “I’m a religious woman” or “I’m an ultra-Orthodox man” and the obligation to serve in the military evaporates.
It’s self-evident that the education provided to children be based on democracy and equality. And yet in Israel, 52 percent of first-graders defined as Jews study in various religious school systems that teach students things like “You are considered a human being and the other nations of the world are not considered human beings.”
They are taught that a non-Jew is not a human being, and that anyone who kills a non-Jew is not supposed to be killed by human hands; that women are inferior, and it is an obligation that males and females be separated; and that secular people, or anyone with secular family members, cannot enter these schools.
It is self-evident that racist education cannot be funded by the government and is illegal. And yet most of the country’s first-graders receive such “compulsory education” from their government.
The results of this nightmarish experiment are self-evident. In the most recent elections, 35 percent of voters defined as Jews cast their ballots for avowedly racist parties – Yisrael Beitenu, Shas, National Union and their friends.
Critics in the Israeli media wake up only when mistakes are made. That is why – after initially cheering the declaration that “the flotilla will not pass” – they changed their tune following the imbroglio, turning into advocates of the twisted logic “be smart, not right.” But what justice is there in an attack on civilians by soldiers on the open seas?
Like the territories, international waters are not Israel; they are outside its borders. A Turkish ship on the open sea is, in effect, a floating Turkish island. An Israeli attack on such an island is not all that different from sending the Israel Defense Forces to take on demonstrators at the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. There, too, unpleasant people who are not friends of Israel can sometimes be found.
Turkey, which is a member of NATO, was not in a state of war with Israel before the attack. Attacking its citizens on territory that is by definition Turkish is another expression of the Israeli lunacy that lacks any kind of boundaries.
An attack beyond the border must be reserved for extreme cases involving a military target that represents an entity fighting against the country and when citizens are in danger. But civilian ships, that are not carrying weapons, but are bringing civilian aid to a population that is denied chocolate, toys and notebooks, are not nuclear reactors in Iraq, Syria or Iran.
A person who grows up without external borders tends to create distorted internal borders. That is the reason for the attack on Arab MK Hanin Zuabi and her colleagues. While there were certain Arab public figures who went too far in their statements, joining a civilian aid flotilla is one of those legitimate acts which are supposed to be self-evident.
And yet, what was self-evident became betrayal. And citizenship, one of the unconditional foundations of existence, has turned into something that can be revoked – in this case on the basis of ethnicity, a tactic used in fascist regimes. The street has returned to the atmosphere that prevailed under “responsible” opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and led to the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin – and the next murder is in the air.
The Israeli deed at sea is liable to reach The Hague. The problem is that Israel has genuine enemies who want to destroy it. A country that does not do everything in its power to accumulate legitimacy, along with turning Iran into an entity that is losing legitimacy and can therefore become a target of activities to undermine it, is a country losing its basic survival instinct. Without borders, it turns out, you lose even that.
Young Israelis who have grown up without borders are now dancing and singing “In blood and fire we will expel Turkey” and “Mohammed is dead.” If this keeps up, Israel will not make it to The Hague. The entity gradually replacing the State of Israel is liable not to exist long enough to get there.
Stephen Sniegoski | June 12, 2010
While the inhabitants of Gaza are suffering under a stifling blockade and a number of peace activists have been killed (bullets in the head at close range) and wounded by Israeli commandos, whom does prominent neocon columnist Charles Krauthammer view as the victim: Israel, of course. For hyper-Zionists such as Krauthammer, Israel is always the victim (Krauthammer: “Those troublesome Jews,” Washington Post, June 4, 2010).
To Krauthammer, none of the international concern is about the suffering of the Gazans because there is no suffering. Krauthammer does not even feel it necessary to try to rebut the reports from International Committee of the Red Cross, the World Health Organization, Amnesty International, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the UN Environmental Program and other international organizations that describe a dire situation in Gaza resulting from the blockade.
No, according to Krauthammer the international concern about Gaza, instead of being a humanitarian act, is really a conscious effort to “de-legitimize” Israel by stopping a perfectly justified blockade. Krauthammer emphasizes that the purpose of the blockade is “to simply prevent enemy rearmament” by Hamas, though, in actuality, is hardly selective, and restricts the importation of food, medicine, building supplies, and many other commodities needed for civilian society. And a recent Israeli government document reveals that the blockade is actually designed to conduct “economic warfare” against Hamas by collectively punishing the Gazan people, which will presumably cause them to turn against Hamas rule.
On the real purpose of the blockade, also see: “Recasting the Gaza blockade as a humanitarian project,
Poor little Israel, Krauthammer laments, has to resort to a blockade because the world “de-legitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself,” which included Israel’s “forward and active defense”—i.e., attacks on its neighbors. Of course, this “forward and active defense” is simply a violation of modern international law that is embodied in the UN Charter. It might be added that participating in such a “forward and active defense” got a number of German generals convicted at Nuremberg in 1945-1946…
Krauthammer bemoans that if Israel cannot maintain its blockade then it has nothing with which to defend itself. “The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense,” he opines. Krauthammer, however, fails to depict any lethal threat to Israel—or even that destructiveness committed against Israel compares to the lethal damage Israel has meted out to the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza. For example, during Israel’s attack on Gaza in December 2008–January 2009 (code named Operation Cast Lead), there were 3 Israeli civilians and 10 soldiers killed, while Palestinian deaths exceeded 1000, the majority of whom were civilians.
To Krauthammer, the international assault on Israel goes far beyond the issue of Gaza.
He laments that the “Obama administration joined the jackals, and reversed four decades of U.S. practice, by signing onto a consensus document that singles out Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons — thus de-legitimizing Israel’s very last line of defense: deterrence.” But in an effort to bring about a nuclear free Middle East (and Obama has talked of a nuclear free world), it would seem perfectly appropriate to single out the only country in the region that actually has a nuclear arsenal. It is not apparent why nuclear “deterrence” should only be allowed to Israel. It could actually be more justifiably argued that it is Israel’s neighbors who need nuclear weapons to serve as deterrence against Israel’s sizable arsenal of 200-300 nuclear warheads.
Krauthammer ends his article by comparing the situation to the Holocaust. “The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million — that number again — hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists — Iranian in particular — openly prepare a more final solution.”
In Krauthammer’s hysterical presentation, the fact that absolutely no actual constraints have been placed on Israel is completely omitted. Israel has only been faced with purely verbal complaints. It has essentially gotten away with a piratical raid and abduction in international waters in which it killed and wounded a significant number of innocent people with no concrete punishment. The international community has taken no forceful steps to try to stop Israel’s comprehensive blockade of Gaza. Nothing has been done about Israel’s maintenance of a nuclear arsenal, which it can rely on to threaten its neighbors. At the same time, sanctions are imposed against Iran, which essentially guarantee Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly (if, in fact, Iran were really attempting to develop nuclear weapons.)
There is no evidence whatsoever that Iran is planning for a “final solution” for Jews but Israelis and Israel’s American supporters have made repeated references to a possible Israeli air attack on Iran. Krauthammer’s contention that Israel is being “ghettoized,” while Gaza is the victim of a comprehensive Israeli blockade, is mind boggling. In short, all the physical suffering has been inflicted by Israel on others. Yet, in all of this, Krauthammer sees another Holocaust of the Jews!
It is apparent that Krauthammer, as Andrew Sullivan puts it in his article “Israel Derangement Syndrome,” has entered an “alternate reality,” which is actually an inverted reality, where things are just the opposite of how they are in the real world.
Sullivan provides an apt description of the “Israel Derangement Syndrome”:
“This is a form of derangement, or of such a passionate commitment to a foreign country that any and all normal moral rules or even basic fairness are jettisoned. And you will notice one thing as well: no regret whatsoever for the loss of human life, just as the hideous murder of so many civilians in the Gaza war had to be the responsibility of the victims, not the attackers. There is no sense of the human here; just the tribe.”
Note the Sullivan points out that Krauthammer’s only concern is his “tribe”—as opposed to concern for humanity, justice, the interests of his country (the United States), and even truth itself. One would think that educated Americans and especially liberals, with their constant preaching of universal values and denunciation of racism, would be aghast at what Krauthammer has to say. But, unfortunately, that is not the case.
Krauthammer is not a lone nut, or an exponent of a small, insignificant minority viewpoint, as some would like to believe. Of the 1840 comments on Krauthammer’s article on the Washington Post website, it appears that a substantial majority express a favorable view. Washington, DC is a politically liberal area. There are a substantial number of Jews, but they are liberal Jews who consistently vote for Democratic candidates. It would seem, therefore, that this type of thinking must resonate with many liberal Jews and others, as well.
And, of course, liberal Democratic politicos (along with almost all other elected officials in the US) have completely backed the actions of Israel, maintaining that the peace activists were responsible for their own deaths. High profile liberal Congressman Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts), for example, held that “violent force [was] in fact initiated by those whose boat was boarded.” Representative Rep. Eliot Engel (D-New York) maintained that the ships were actually “filled with hate-filled provocateurs bent on violence.” Of course, politicians, in general, are not motivated so much by their own views, as by the views of people with political power.
Sullivan realizes that Krauthammer’s type of outlook influences American foreign policy. He writes:
“Something has been wrong here for a very long time, and now it is inescapable. Until the discourse is rescued from the victims of Israel Derangement Syndrome, Israel and America will slowly be drawn into wars they cannot ultimately win, lose every other ally they ever had, and embolden and fortify the very Islamist forces we are seeking to defuse and defeat.”
For another analysis of Krauthammer’s piece, see Kevin MacDonald
In assuming that the United States and Israel will act in tandem under the influence of the “Israel Derangement Syndrome,” Sullivan essentially acknowledges the influence of the Israel lobby on American foreign policy. However, I would like to make a slight correction of what Sullivan has to say. It is not that the United States would be “drawn into wars” but that this “Israel Derangement Syndrome” will cause the US to initiate or provoke wars—such as an attack on Iran. It is clearly those afflicted with this syndrome who pose a threat to the world, while believing the entire world is attacking helpless, innocent Israel. Their influence on American political culture makes Israel’s enemies America’s enemies and embroils the United States in wars that these Israel – Firsters believe will help Israel.
Sullivan initially was a supporter of the war on Iraq, who even went so far as to imply that the United States might need to make use of nuclear weapons. However, Sullivan came, somewhat belatedly, to recognize publicly the role of the pro-Israel neocons. He would write in February 2009:
“The closer you examine it, the clearer it is that neoconservatism, in large part, is simply about enabling the most irredentist elements in Israel and sustaining a permanent war against anyone or any country who disagrees with the Israeli right. That’s the conclusion I’ve been forced to these last few years. And to insist that America adopt exactly the same constant-war-as-survival that Israelis have been slowly forced into. . . . But America is not Israel. And once that distinction is made, much of the neoconservative ideology collapses.”
Slow learners such as Andrew Sullivan are infinitely more successful than those who early on were able to discern the obvious neocon/Israel connection, which might indicate that intellectual weakness is not an explanation for their initial false analyses. Nonetheless, Sullivan now provides an excellent description of the mindset of Israel and its American supporters, and, for people in important positions who have something to lose, it is still a view that takes a significant degree of courage to mention publicly. But it is necessary that influential individuals publicly express the truth in order to prevent the United States from engaging in endless, destructive wars at the behest of people, such as Krauthammer, who are under the influence of the “Israel Derangement Syndrome.”
By Jonathan Cook | June 9, 2010
Why are Israelis so indignant at the international outrage that has greeted their country’s lethal attack last week on a flotilla of civilian ships taking aid to Gaza?
Israelis have not responded in any of the ways we might have expected. There has been little soul-searching about the morality, let alone legality, of soldiers invading ships in international waters and killing civilians. In the main, Israelis have not been interested in asking tough questions of their political and military leaders about why the incident was handled so badly. And only a few commentators appear concerned about the diplomatic fall-out.
Instead, Israelis are engaged in a Kafkaesque conversation in which the military attack on the civilian ships is characterised as a legitimate “act of self-defence”, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it, and the killing of nine aid activists is transformed into an attempted “lynching of our soldiers” by terrorists.
Benny Begin, a government minister whose famous father, Menachem, became an Israeli prime minister after being what today would be called a terrorist as the leader of the notorious Irgun militia, told BBC World TV that the commandos had been viciously assaulted after “arriving almost barefoot”. Ynet, Israel’s most popular news website, meanwhile, reported that the commandos had been “ambushed”.
This strange discourse can only be deciphered if we understand the two apparently contradictory themes that have come to dominate the emotional landscape of Israel. The first is a trenchant belief that Israel exists to realise Jewish power; the second is an equally strong sense that Israel embodies the Jewish people’s collective experience as the eternal victims of history.
Israelis are not entirely unaware of this paradoxical state of mind, sometimes referring to it as the “shooting and crying” syndrome.
It is the reason, for example, that most believe their army is the “most moral in the world”. The “soldier as victim” has been given dramatic form in Gilad Shalit, the “innocent” soldier held by Hamas for the past four years who, when he was captured, was enforcing Israel’s illegal occupation of Gaza.
One commentator in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper summed up the feelings of Israelis brought to the fore by the flotilla episode as the “helplessness of a poor lonely victim, confronting the rage of a lynch mob and frantically realising that these are his last moments”. This “psychosis”, as he called it, is not surprising: it derives from the sanctified place of the Holocaust in the Israeli education system.
The Holocaust’s lesson for most Israelis is not a universal one that might inspire them to oppose racism, or fanatical dictators or the bullying herd mentality that can all too quickly grip nations, or even state-sponsored genocide.
Instead, Israelis have been taught to see in the Holocaust a different message: that the world is plagued by a unique and ineradicable hatred of Jews, and that the only safety for the Jewish people is to be found in the creation of a super-power Jewish state that answers to no one. Put bluntly, Israel’s motto is: only Jewish power can prevent Jewish victimhood.
That is why Israel acquired a nuclear weapon as fast it could, and why it is now marshalling every effort to stop any other state in the region from breaking its nuclear monopoly. It is also why the Israeli programme’s sole whistle-blower, Mordechai Vanunu, is a pariah 24 years after committing his “offence”. Six years on from his release to a form of loose house arrest, his hounding by the authorities — he was jailed again last month for talking to foreigners — has attracted absolutely no interest or sympathy in Israel.
If Mr Vanunu’s continuing abuse highlights Israel’s oppressive desire for Jewish power, Israelis’ self-righteousness about their navy’s attack on the Gaza flotilla reveals the flipside of this pyschosis.
The angry demonstrations sweeping the country against the world’s denunciations; the calls to revoke the citizenship of the Israeli Arab MP on board — or worse, to execute her — for treason; and the local media’s endless recycling of the soldiers’ testimonies of being “bullied” by the activists demonstrate the desperate need of Israelis to justify every injustice or atrocity while clinging to the illusion of victimhood.
The lessons imbibed from this episode — like the lessons Israelis learnt from the Goldstone report last year into the war crimes committed during Israel’s attack on Gaza, or the international criticisms of the massive firepower unleashed on Lebanon before that — are the same: that the world hates us, and that we are alone.
If the confrontation with the activists on the flotilla has proved to Israelis that the unarmed passengers were really terrorists, the world’s refusal to stay quiet has confirmed what Israelis already knew: that, deep down, non-Jews are all really anti-Semites.
Meanwhile, the lesson the rest of us need to draw from the deadly commando raid is that the world can no longer afford to indulge these delusions.
– Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is http://www.jkcook.net.
By Gilad Atzmon | June 8, 2010
“… then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.” (Deuteronomy 7:1-2)
“… do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them… as the Lord your God has commanded you…” (Deuteronomy 20:16)
I am here to announce as loud as I can: There is no need for any “international”, “impartial” or “independent” inquiry into the latest Israeli massacre on the high seas. Although the Israeli opposition to such an inquiry suggests that the Israelis have much to hide, the truth of the matter is actually deeper. If you want to grasp what underlies the deadly Israeli barbarism, all you have to do is open the Old Testament.
Although it is certain that there is no ethnic or racial continuum between the biblical Israelites and the Khazarians who lead the Jewish state and its army, the similarities between the murderous zeal described in Deuteronomy and the current string of lethal Israeli actions cannot be denied. Israel’s is a murderous society not because of any biological or racial lineage with its imaginary “forefathers” but because it is driven by a fanatical tribal Jewish ideology and fuelled by a merciless, poisonous psychotic biblical zeal.
The Jewish state is beyond the law. It doesn’t follow any recognized universal value system either. In recent years Israel flattened Lebanon (2006) and left more than 3,000 civilians dead; it managed to shell a United Nations Relief and Works Agency shelter with white phosphorus (2009); and it left Gaza with 1,500 fatalities, most of them women, children and elderly people. Earlier this year it carried out an assassination in Dubai using forged foreign passports, and last week we saw the kosher navy slaughter peace activists in international waters.
The emerging forensic reports of the massacre suggest Israeli executions on board the Turkish aid ship, the Mavi Marmara. Viewed together with the eyewitness accounts of the Turkish survivors and the Israeli spokesmen’s justifications for their killing squad’s actions, this leaves no room for doubt. The Israeli society has passed the no return zone. In fact, it must have drifted away from humanity a long time ago. Also, it would be reasonable to argue that the initial Zionist attempt to “build a new civilized Jew” should be regarded as a total failure. In fact, the Israeli Jew is the most brutal of them all, even more deadly than the fictional character depicted by Tarantino’s film, Inglorious Bastards.
One way to explain the rapid moral deterioration of the Jewish state is to point out that Zionists have never really been committed to ethics. They were quick to learn that rather than truly internalizing the meaning of humanism, a spin would serve their cause as effectively.
The entire hasbara (propaganda) project is grounded on a dissemination of lies. For years the hasbara project, which has been supported by sayanim all along, was there to present Israel as a “Western”’ and “democratic” nation in a “sea of Arabs”. All that time the Jewish state was inflicting pain on its neighbours, murdering, starving and ethnically cleansing the indigenous people of the land.
Enough is enough! It is time to name and shame every Israeli and Zionist infiltrator within political circles, the media and academia. This shouldn’t be complicated at all because until very recently those sayanim and traitors within our midst were doing it all in the open.
From aggression to victimhood
However, the Israelis are not just an ordinary murderous collective. As much as they were enthusiastic to unleash hundreds of their most brutal military unit (Fleet 13) against unarmed peace activists, the Israelis also insist on regarding their commandos as innocent victims. It was amusing to follow Israeli officials and representatives talking about their “lynched commandos” who were “attacked” as soon as they were dropped from helicopters. “What did the commandos expect pro-Palestinian activists to do once they boarded the ships – invite them aboard for a cup of tea with the captain on the bridge?” asked a Guardian newspaper editorial just one day after the massacre.
The inability of the Israelis to understand that they were the aggressors in a military raid that they themselves initiated is symptomatic of the Jewish political incomprehension of the notion of history and of historical causality. From a Jewish perspective, history always starts where a Jewish suffering is detected. For the Israelis, the event on the Mavi Marmara started only when the first kosher commando faced resistance on the upper deck. In the Israeli press, the fact that Israeli commandos were actually the attackers was completely ignored. They in fact took part in a criminal military raid; they were dropped from Israeli military helicopters; they landed on a civilian ship carrying humanitarian aid in international waters. For the Israelis, the Mavi Maramara massacre event was isolated from the conflict or any understanding of the conflict.
Within the discourse of Jewish politics and history there is no room for causality. There is no such a thing as a former and a latter. Within the Jewish tribal discourse, every narrative starts to evolve when Jewish pain is established. This obviously explains why Israelis and some Jews around the world can think only as far as “two- state solution” within the framework of the 1967 borders. It also explains why for most Jews the history of the Holocaust starts in the gas chambers or with the rise of the Nazis. I have hardly seen any Israelis or Jews attempt to understand the circumstances that led to the clear resentment of Europeans towards their Jewish neighbours in the 1920s-1940s.
I am pretty convinced that Israel and the Jewish national project will not recover from this last massacre on the high seas. The reason is simple. In order to save itself from its doomed fate, Israel would need to look in the mirror. This is not going to happen. By the time Israel looks in the mirror it will become a self-hater. Israel won’t take the risk.
Instead of looking in the mirror the Jewish tribal agitator reverts to spin. The hasbara man releases a clumsily produced video that can be easily dismissed.
In case some Westerners have failed to see it until now, it is not just the Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims who fall victims to the deadly biblical practice. In fact, Zionism doesn’t really distinguish between goyim [gentiles]. From a Zionist perspective, every gentile is a potential enemy. This must explain why Israel possesses so many nuclear bombs.
As one may guess, an atomic bomb is not exactly something you use against your next-door neighbour. Israel’s nuclear arsenal is not there to deter the Palestinians or the Syrians. The Israeli bomb is there for us, the Britons, the Turks, the French, the Russians, the Chinese – in short, the rest of humanity. Israel’s nuclear arsenal should be realized in reference to the Masada, the first century fortified kosher bunker where a few Jewish extremists committed suicide rather than surrender to the Romans.
The new Israelites have an Armageddon scenario in mind. Their philosophy is pretty simple. From Auschwitz they took the “never again” (like a lamb to the slaughter) slogan. From the Masada they deduced their survival motto: “if we are going down, this time we take everyone with us”. This is in fact the true Israeli interpretation of the story of Samson, the biblical genocidal murderer who pulled down a Philistine shrine on himself together with some 3,000 children, women and elderly people.
I guess that with Israeli nuclear submarines stationed in the Gulf and last week’s slaughter on the high seas, other nations do not need any more warnings. In fact, there is no way of getting the Israeli nation “off the tree”. What world leaders must do is decide together how to dismantle this morbid collective without turning our planet into dust.
Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born musician, writer and anti-racism campaigner. His latest jazz album, “In loving memory of America”, was released on 1 March 2009 and can be purchased here.
By David Cronin | IPS | June 4, 2010
BRUSSELS – Within three days of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Monday, the pro-Israel lobby in Brussels was already seeking to deflect attention from the killing of nine peace activists in international waters.
The European Friends of Israel, a grouping of parliamentarians, issued a statement Jun 3, which made no reference to the assault earlier in the week. Instead it highlighted the findings of a survey published by the Institute for Management Development in Switzerland, which named Israel as the economy most resilient to variations in the global economy and as a top spender on scientific research and innovation.
These findings might help explain why the collective response of the European Union’s 27 member states to the attacks has been weak. For despite growing revulsion at Israel’s occupation of Palestine among ordinary people throughout the world, the EU has been so impressed with the robust performance of the Israeli economy that it has integrated it into many of its activities in recent years.
While some individual EU governments made plain their displeasure with the attacks by summoning Israeli ambassadors to an urgent meeting, the Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton merely described the attacks as a “tragedy”, a term usually reserved for accidents. Initially Ashton called on Israel to conduct its own investigations. When she released a subsequent statement – during a visit to Russia – urging a “full and impartial enquiry of the events and circumstances”, she did not specify if this should be undertaken by Israel or by a United Nations-appointed team.
Over the past decade Israel has been integrated into several EU programmes, ranging from satellite navigation to business promotion. The European Commission, the EU’s executive, administers many of these programmes. Yet José Manuel Barroso, the Commission’s president, would not comment when asked if he would be seeking a review of Israeli participation in the EU’s activities. “I fully agree with the position taken by the EU High Representative Cathy Ashton,” he told IPS, declining to elaborate.
Barroso is one of several top-level politicians in Brussels to have cultivated strong links with the pro-Israel lobby. Last year, he was guest of honour at the opening of a new EU affairs office for the European Jewish Congress (EJC), where he praised the organisation for “being fully committed to the resumption of the peace process” in the Middle East.
The EJC has subsequently mounted an intense campaign designed to convince the European Parliament not to approve motions critical of Israel’s conduct in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The EJC responded to Monday’s massacre perpetrated by Israeli troops on board the Turkish-owned vessel the Mavi Marvara by calling on the EU to officially declare one of the key groups in the Free Gaza campaign as a terrorist organisation. Moshe Kantor, the EJC’s president, accused the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (known by the acronym IHH) as having links to al Qaeda. The Israeli government has made similar claims recently, but these have been fiercely contested by international peace activists and supporters of the Palestinian solidarity movement, who insist the allegations are baseless.
Scientific research has been among the largest areas of cooperation between the EU and Israel. The EU has become a major provider of research grants to Israeli firms and research institutes over the past decade, thanks to Israel’s status as the main foreign partner for the EU’s multi-annual research programme, which has been allocated 53 billion euros (64 billion dollars) for the 2007-13 period. Companies such as Motorola Israel, Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries are taking part in the programme’s activities.
Although these companies have manufactured weapons and components used in attacks on Palestinian civilians, Israel’s war against Lebanon in 2006 and by the US-led alliance in Afghanistan, Janez Potocnik, the EU’s research commissioner between 2004 and 2009, expressed no regrets about the firms’ involvement in a programme financed by the European taxpayer. “What we have tried to provide is something that is of benefit of European partners,” he told IPS. “We are talking about research itself and nothing more than research.”
The EU, meanwhile, would not support a motion brought before the United Nations Human Rights Council Jun 3 condemning Israel’s attacks. Most European states on the council abstained from the vote, with Italy and the Netherlands siding with the US in voting against the resolution, which was carried by 32 votes to 3. The resolution demanded that Israel lift the blockade of Gaza and that it immediately allow food, medicine and other essential supplies to be delivered there.
Maysa Zorob, Brussels representative with the Palestinian human rights group Al Haq, said she was a “bit sick” of how the EU has been willing to call for Israel to conduct its own investigations into human rights abuses by its armed forces. “This whole ‘let’s ask for investigations’ approach is getting us nowhere,” she added. “Nothing concrete is being done by the EU or anyone else.”
By Alex Pareene | June 1, 2010
Rep. Anthony Weiner’s completely non-measured, non-conciliatory remarks on the Israeli attack on the humanitarian aid flotilla are proof that he’d rather be a successful New York politician than a prominent national liberal.
It’s a little odd, actually. Weiner has spent the last year becoming the sort of unapologetic liberal Democrat that netroots activists and cable news bookers love.
After deciding not to run for mayor of New York last year, Weiner dedicated himself to being a relentless advocate for the Democratic healthcare reform plan. (He blogged on HuffPo and everything.) He’s great with a sound bite and he’s a born street fighter in a party full of timid moderates. He’s Jon Stewart’s old college roommate. He’s taking on Glenn Beck and sparring with Bill O’Reilly. He’s easily one of the most prominent liberal politicians in the nation.
But at the end of the day, he still wants to be mayor of New York, once billionaire Mayor-for-Life Michael Bloomberg finally grows bored and steps aside.
Will the liberals who only know Weiner from his feisty MSNBC appearances and his staunch support of the president’s domestic initiatives be put off when they hear him taking the “Israel can do no wrong” side in the debate over Israel’s botched raid, in international waters, of a humanitarian aid flotilla?
Weiner’s statement is comical. “Even if we are the only country on earth that sees the facts here,” Weiner says, “the United States should stand up for Israel.” That’s the statement of a man with whom there can be no reasoning.
And it’s not, by any means, outside the norm for Weiner. He’s precisely the sort of liberal establishment politician that Peter Beinart accused of failing young American Jews in the New York Review of Books recently. In the past, Weiner has matter-of-factly accused Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International of being anti-Semitic. And not just them!
“I would argue that in many cases, the New York Times has” anti-Israel bias, Weiner told Amy Goodman in 2006. The idea of any elite, establishment newspaper in New York having an “anti-Israel bias” makes sense only if you consider any criticism of any action taken by the state of Israel to be out of line.
Also in 2006, Weiner introduced legislation banning aid to the Palestinian Authority and barring the Palestinian delegation to the U.N. (and kicking them out of the county). Weiner insisted that the PLO was a terrorist organization. And the delegation, he said, “should start packing their little Palestinian terrorist bags.”
His demagoguery on this particular issue largely stopped once he decided he couldn’t beat Bloomberg. But he’s hawkish enough that Ronn Torossian, a scummy publicist who once told a journalist that he wants a thousand Arabs to be killed for every Jew, threw Weiner a “breakfast reception” in January. I doubt Torossian (who’s represented right-wing religious cranks Benny Hinn and John Hagee) appreciates Weiner for his advocacy for single-payer Medicare for all Americans.
Support for Israel in all its conflicts is still the bipartisan norm in Congress, but the rise of the neocons in the Republican Party has made unquestioning support of Israel’s current right-wing government increasingly a right-wing concern in the U.S. Democrats face pressure from the young, activist base to be more critical of Israeli actions than they were expected to be a generation ago.
But Weiner needs the support of New York’s Orthodox and Hasidic communities if he wants to be mayor. And it’s bad enough that he recently married a Muslim woman! (Check out the comments here if you want to see how quickly some right-wing Israel supporters can turn on one of their most steadfast political allies.) Philip Weiss says Weiner just repeats the talking points of the Israel lobby because that’s what his constituency wants to hear. If that’s true or not, he’ll continue repeating the far-right line on Israel.
It will be interesting to see what sort of statement Sen. Chuck Schumer makes, if he makes one. Schumer’s untouchable in New York, and he’s been, like his protégé Weiner, a staunch ally of Israel throughout his carer. But Schumer wants to be the Senate majority leader. And a good portion of the senators who might support Schumer want an unapologetic liberal leader. I imagine Schumer will put out something equally uncritical of Israel, but way less confrontational than Weiner’s statement.
By Paul Woodward on June 3, 2010
For several days, Israel has been able to contain some of the fallout from the flotilla massacre by withholding information about the dead and injured. The object of this exercise has clearly been to slow the flow of information in the hope that by the time the most damning facts become known, the international media’s attention will have turned elsewhere.
But the dead now have names and faces and one turns out to be a nineteen-year-old American: Furkan Dogan.
Dogan is alleged to have been shot with five bullets, four in the head.
Does the Obama administration intend to investigate the circumstances in which one of its citizens was killed? Protecting the lives of Americans is after all the most fundamental responsibility of our government.
Dogan’s death was presumably instant, but according to Al Jazeera’s Jamal Elshayyal there were others on board the Mavi Marmara who died because Israeli soldiers refused to treat their injuries.
“After the shooting and the first deaths, people put up white flags and signs in English and Hebrew. An Isreali [on the ship] asked the soldiers to take away the injured, but they did not and the injured died on the ship.”
Crimes have been committed and since the suspects all acted under the direction of the Israeli government and its defense forces and took place on international waters outside Israel’s area of legal jurisdiction, “a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards” — a demand made by the UN Security Council with the support of the Obama administration — cannot be conducted by the Israeli government or a commission appointed by them. An investigation conforming to international standards must also be an international inquiry.
By Ali Abunimah | Al-Jazeera | June 3, 2010
Since Israel’s invasion and massacre of over 1,400 people in Gaza 18 months ago, dubbed Operation Cast Lead, global civil society movements have stepped up their campaigns for justice and solidarity with Palestinians.
Governments, by contrast, carried on with business as usual, maintaining a complicit silence.
Israel’s lethal attack on the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza may change that, spurring governments to follow the lead of their people and take unprecedented action to check Israel’s growing lawlessness.
Lip service
One of the bitterest images from Operation Cast Lead was that of smiling European Union heads of government visiting Jerusalem and patting Ehud Olmert, the then Israeli prime minister, on the back as white phosphorus still seared the flesh of Palestinian children a few miles away.
Western countries sometimes expressed mild dismay at Israel’s “excessive” use of force, but still justified the Gaza massacre as “self-defence” – even though Israel could easily have stopped rocket fire from Gaza, if that was its goal, by returning to the negotiated June 2008 ceasefire it egregiously violated the following November.
When the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report documented the extensive evidence of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the willful killings of unarmed civilians, few governments paid more than lip service to seeing justice done.
Even worse, after Cast Lead, EU countries and the US sent their navies to help Israel enforce a blockade on Gaza which amounts to collective punishment of the entire population and thus violates the Fourth Geneva Convention governing Israel’s ongoing occupation.
Not one country sent a hospital ship to help treat or evacuate the thousands of wounded, many with horrific injuries that overwhelmed Gaza’s hospitals.
Carrot and stick
The blockade has never been – as Israel and its apologists claim – to stop the smuggling of weapons into Gaza.
Its goal has always been political: to cause the civilian population as much suffering as possible – while still politically excusable – in order for the Palestinians in Gaza to reject and rise up against the Hamas leadership elected in January 2006.
The withholding of food, medicine, schoolbooks, building supplies, among thousands of other items, as well as the right to enter and leave Gaza for any purpose became a weapon to terrorise the civilian population.
At the same time, Western aid was showered on the occupied West Bank – whose ordinary people are still only barely better off than in Gaza – in a “carrot and stick” policy calculated to shift support away from Hamas and toward the Western-backed, unelected Palestinian Authority leadership affiliated with the rival Fatah faction, who have repeatedly demonstrated their unconditional willingness to collaborate with Israel no matter what it does to their people.
“The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger,” senior Israeli government advisor Dov Weisglass notoriously explained in 2006. By this standard the blockade – supported by several Arab governments and the Quartet (the US, EU, UN secretary-general, and Russia) has been a great success, as numerous studies document alarming increases in child malnutrition as the vast majority of Gaza’s population became dependent on UN food handouts. Hundreds have died for lack of access to proper medical care.
Filling the ‘moral void’
While inaction and complicity characterised the official response, global civil society stepped in to fill the moral and legal void.
In the year and a half since Cast Lead, the global, Palestinian-led campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel (BDS) has been racking up impressive victories.
From the decisions by Norway’s pension funds and several European banks to divest from certain Israeli companies, to university divestment initiatives, the refusals by international artists to perform in Israel, or the flashmobs that have brought the consumer boycott to supermarkets around the world, Israel sees BDS as a growing “existential threat”.
At this point, the effect may be more psychological than economic but it is exactly the feeling of increasing isolation and pariah status that helped push South Africa’s apartheid rulers to recognise that their regime was untenable and to seek peaceful change with the very people they had so long demonised, dehumanised and oppressed.
Indeed, the BDS movement is only likely to gather pace: world-best-selling Swedish author Henning Mankell who was among the passengers on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara kidnapped and taken to Israel, said on being freed: “I think we should use the experience of South Africa, where we know that the sanctions had a great impact.”
The Freedom Flotilla represented the very best, and most courageous of this civil society spirit and determination not to abandon fellow human beings to the cruelty, indifference and self-interest of governments.
The immediate response to Israel’s attack on the Flotilla may indicate that governments too are starting to come out of their slumber and shed the paralysing fear of criticising Israel that has assured its impunity for so long.
Growing gap
Indeed, the global reaction demonstrates the growing gap between the US and Israel on one side and the rest of the world on the other.
While Israeli officials scrambled to offer justifications from the ludicrous (elite commandos armed with paint ball guns) to the benign (the attack was an “inspection”), the US has once again stood behind its ally unconditionally.
As the Obama administration forced a watered-down presidential statement in the UN Security Council, Israeli apologists in the mainstream US media repeatedly attempted to excuse Israel’s actions as lawful and legitimate.
Senior administration officials, including Joe Biden, the vice president, openly began to echo their Israeli counterparts that Israel’s attack was not only legitimate but justified by its security needs.
Despite the predictable and shameless US reaction, international condemnation has been unusually robust.
In his speech to the Turkish parliament following the attack, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, denounced Israeli “state terrorism” and demanded that the international community exact a price.
Erdogan vowed that “Turkey will never turn its back on Gaza,” and that it would continue its campaign to lift the blockade and hold Israel accountable even if it had to do so alone.
There are hopeful signs it may not have to.
European and other countries summoned Israeli ambassadors and several recalled their envoys from Tel Aviv.
Franco Frattini, the Italian foreign minister and one of Israel’s staunchest apologists in Europe, said his country “absolutely deplored the slaying of civilians” and demanded that Israel “must give an explanation to the international community” of killings he deemed “absolutely unacceptable, whatever the flotilla’s aims”.
Small countries showed the greatest courage and clarity. Nicaragua suspended diplomatic ties completely, citing Israel’s “illegal attack”. Brian Cowen, Ireland’s prime minister, told parliament in Dublin that his government had “formally requested” of Israel that the vessel Rachel Corrie still heading toward Gaza, be allowed to proceed, and warned of the “most serious consequences” should Israel use violence against it.
The boat – named after the young American peace activist killed by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza in 2003 – is carrying Malaysian and Irish activists and politicians including Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire.
Crossed a threshold
These are still small actions, but they indicate Israel may have crossed a threshold where it can no longer take appeasement and complicity for granted.
It is a cumulative process – each successive outrage has diminished the reserve of goodwill and forbearance Israel enjoyed.
Even if most governments are not quite ready to go from words to effective actions, growing public outrage will eventually push them to impose official sanctions.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, may have hastened that day with his fulsome pride in, and praise for, the slaughter at sea even after the outpouring of international condemnation.
Despite its intensive efforts to hide and spin what happened aboard the Mavi Marmara in the early hours of May 31, the world saw Israel use exactly the sort of indiscriminate brutality documented in the Goldstone Report.
This time, however, it was not just “expendable” Palestinians or Lebanese who were Israel’s victims but people from 32 countries and every continent. It was the day the whole world became Gaza. And like the people of Gaza, the world is unlikely to take it lying down.
By Glenn Greenwald | June 3, 2010
One of the primary reasons the Turkish Government has been so angry in its denunciations of the Israeli attack on the flotilla is because many of the dead were Turkish citizens. That’s what governments typically do: object vociferously when their citizens are killed by foreign nations under extremely questionable circumstances. Needless to say, that principle — as all principles are — will be completely discarded when it comes to the U.S. protection of Israel:
A U.S. citizen of Turkish origin was among the nine people killed when Israeli commandos attacked a Gaza-bound aid flotilla . . . An official from the Turkish Islamic charity that spearheaded the campaign to bust the blockade on Gaza identified the U.S. citizen as 19-year-old Furkan Dogan . . . . Dogan, who held a U.S. passport, had four bullet wounds to the head and one to the chest . . . .
Will the fact that one of the dead at Israel’s hands was an American teenager with four bullet wounds to his head alter the Obama administration’s full-scale defense of Israel? Does that question even need to be asked? Not even American interests can undermine reflexive U.S. support for anything Israel does; even the Chief of the Mossad acknowledged this week that “Israel is progressively becoming a burden on the United States.” One dead 19-year-old American with 4 bullet holes in his head (especially one of Turkish origin with a Turkish-sounding name) surely won’t have any impact.
Yesterday, newly elected British Prime Minister David Cameron became the latest world leader to unequivocally condemn Israel, saying the attack was “completely unacceptable” and demanding an end to the blockade. But last night on Charlie Rose’s show, Joe Biden defended Israel with as much vigor as any Netanyahu aide or Weekly Standard polemicist. Biden told what can only be described as a lie when, in order to justify his rhetorical question “what’s the big deal here?,” he claimed that the ships could have simply delivered their aid to Israel and Israel would then have generously sent it to Gaza (“They’ve said, ‘Here you go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship — if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza’.”). In fact, contrary to the Central Lie being told about the blockade, Israel prevents all sorts of humanitarian items having nothing whatsoever to do with weapons from entering Gaza, including many of the supplies carried by the flotilla.
One can express all sorts of outrage over the Obama administration’s depressingly predictable defense of the Israelis, even at the cost of isolating ourselves from the rest of the world, but ultimately, on some level, wouldn’t it have been even more indefensible — or at least oozingly hypocritical — if the U.S. had condemned Israel? After all, what did Israel do in this case that the U.S. hasn’t routinely done and continues to do? As even our own military officials acknowledge, we’re slaughtering an “amazing number” of innocent people at checkpoints in Afghanistan. We’re routinely killing civilians in all sorts of imaginative ways in countless countries, including with drone strikes which a U.N. official just concluded are illegal. We’re even targeting our own citizens for due-process-free assassination. We’ve been arming Israel and feeding them billions of dollars in aid and protecting them diplomatically as they (and we) have been doing things like this for decades. What’s the Obama administration supposed to say about what Israel did: we condemn the killing of unarmed civilians? We decry these violations of international law? Even by typical standards of government hypocrisy, who in the U.S. Government could possibly say any of that with a straight face?
* * * * *
What this really underscores is that the mentality driving both Israel and the U.S. are quite similar, which is why those two countries find such common cause, even when the rest of the world recoils in revulsion. One of the more amazing developments in the flotilla aftermath is how a claim that initially appeared too self-evidently ludicrous to be invoked by anyone — Israel was the victim here and was acting against the ship in self-defense –has actually become the central premise in Israeli and (especially) American discourse about the attack (and as always, there are far more criticisms of Israeli actions in Israel than in the U.S.).
How could anyone with the slightest intellectual honesty claim that Israel and its Navy were the victims of a boat which Jon Stewart said last night looked like “P Diddy’s St. Bart’s vacation yacht”; or that armed Israeli commandos were the victims of unarmed civilian passengers; or, more generally, that a nuclear-armed Israel with the most powerful military by far in the Middle East and the world’s greatest superpower acting as Protector is the persecuted victim of a wretched, deprived, imprisoned, stateless population devastated by 40 years of brutal Israeli occupation and, just a year ago, an unbelievably destructive invasion and bombing campaign? The casting of “victim” and “aggressor” is blatantly reversed with such claims — which is exactly the central premise that has been driving, and continues to drive, U.S. foreign policy as well. In Imperial Ambitions, Noam Chomsky — talking about America’s post-9/11 policies — described the central mental deception that is at the heart of all nations which dominate others with force:
In one of his many speeches, to U.S. troops in Vietnam, [Lyndon] Johnson said plaintively, “There are three billion people in the world and we have only two hundred million of them. We are outnumbered fifteen to one. If might did make right they would sweep over the United States and take what we have. We have what they want.” That is a constant refrain of imperialism. You have your jackboot on someone’s neck and they’re about to destroy you.
The same is true with any form of oppression. And it’s psychologically understandable. If you’re crushing and destroying someone, you have to have a reason for it, and it can’t be, “I’m a murderous monster.” It has to be self-defense. “I’m protecting myself against them. Look what they’re doing to me.” Oppression gets psychologically inverted; the oppressor is the victim who is defending himself.
Thus, nuclear-armed Israel is bullied and victimized by starving Gazans with stones. The Israel Navy is threatened by a flotilla filled with wheelchairs and medicine. And the greatest superpower the Earth has ever known faces a grave and existential threat from a handful of religious fanatics hiding in caves. An American condemnation of Israel, as welcomed as it would have been, would be an act of senseless insincerity, because the two countries (along with many others) operate with this same “we-are-the-victim” mindset.
* * * * *
A prime cause of this inversion is the distortion in perception brought about by rank tribalism. Those whose worldview is shaped by their identification as members of a particular religious, nationalistic, or ethnic group invariably over-value the wrongs done to them and greatly under-value the wrongs their group perpetrates. Those whose world view is shaped by tribalism are typically plagued by an extreme persecution complex (the whole world is against us!!!; everyone who criticizes us is hateful and biased!!!). Haaretz today reports that “Jewish Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. gave a rare demonstration of unity on Wednesday when they backed Israel’s raid of a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla.” Gee, whatever could account for that “rare demonstration of unity” between these left-wing Jewish progressives and hard-core, Jewish right-wing war cheerleaders who agree on virtually nothing else? My, it’s such a mystery.
I can’t express how many emails I’ve received over the last week, from self-identified Jewish readers (almost exclusively), along the lines of: I’m a true progressive, agree with you on virtually every issue, but hate your views on Israel. When it comes to Israel, we see the same mindset from otherwise admirable Jewish progressives such as Anthony Weiner, Jerry Nadler, Eliot Spitzer, Alan Grayson, and (after a brief stint of deviation) Barney Frank. On this one issue, they magically abandon their opposition to military attacks on civilians, their defense of weaker groups being bullied and occupied by far stronger factions, their belief that unilateral military attacks are unjustified, and suddenly find common cause with Charles Krauthammer, The Weekly Standard, and the Bush administration in justifying even the most heinous Israeli crimes of aggression.
It will never cease to be mystifying (at least to me) that they never question why they suddenly view the world so differently when it comes to Israel. They never wonder to themselves:
I had it continuously drummed into my head from the time I was a small child, from every direction, that Israel was special and was to be cherished, that it’s fundamentally good but persecuted and victimized by Evil Arab forces surrounding it, that I am a part of that group and should see the world accordingly. Is this tribal identity which was pummeled into me from childhood — rather than some independent, dispassionate analysis — the reason I find myself perpetually sympathizing with and defending Israel?
Doesn’t the most minimal level of intellectual awareness — indeed, the concept of adulthood itself — require that re-analysis? And, of course, the “self-hating” epithet — with which I’ve naturally been bombaded relentlessly over the last week — is explicitly grounded in the premise that one should automatically defend one’s “own group” rather than endeaveor to objectively assess facts and determine what is right and true.
This tribalism is hardly unique to Israel and Jews; it’s instead universal. As the Bush years illustrated, there is no shortage of Americans who “reason” the same way:
I was taught from childhood that America is right and thus, even in adulthood, defend America no matter what it does; my duty as an American is to defend and justify what America does and any American who criticizes the U.S. is “self-hating” and anti-American; the wrongs perpetrated by Us to Them pale in comparison to the wrongs perpetrated by Them on U.S.
Or listen to Fox News fear-mongers declare how Christians in the U.S. and/or white males — comprising the vast majority of the population and every power structure in the country — are the Real Persecuted Victims, from the War on Christmas to affirmative action evils. Ronald Reagan even managed to convince much of the country that the true economic injustices in America were caused by rich black women driving their Cadillacs to collect their welfare checks. This kind of blinding, all-consuming tribalism leads members of even the most powerful group to convince themselves that they are deeply victimized by those who are far weaker, whose necks have been under the boots of the stronger group for decades, if not longer.
That’s just the standard symptom of the disease of tribalism and it finds expression everywhere, in every group. It’s just far more significant — and far more destructive — when the groups convincing themselves that they are the Weak and Bullied Victims are actually the strongest forces by far on the planet, with the greatest amount of weaponry and aggression, who have been finding justifications for so long for their slaughtering of civilians that, as Israeli Amos Oz suggested this week about his country, there are virtually no limits left on the naked aggression that will be justified. Thus, even when Israel attacks a ship full of civilians and wheelchairs in international waters and kills at least 9 human beings, this is depicted by its tribal loyalists as an act of justified self-defense against the Real Aggressors.
Press TV – June 3, 2010
Israel has dismissed a decision by the UN Human Rights Council to launch a probe into its deadly attack on an aid convoy, calling the UN body of no moral authority.
“The authority of this council, which once again is working stubbornly against Israel, has reached rock bottom,” AFP quoted said Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Ygal Palmor as saying on Thursday.
A six-ship fleet carrying some 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid and accompanied by hundreds of international activists, the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla came under Israeli fire while it was in international waters.
Amid mounting international protests against the Israeli attack, the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Wednesday adopted a resolution which condemned the “outrageous” move and ordered an independent international investigation into the naval strike.
The Israeli foreign ministry, however, criticized the UNHRC’s decision, arguing some of the council’s members states who signed the resolution were in a “bad position to present themselves as defenders of human rights,” accusing them of “massive violation of human rights.”
The Human Rights Council earlier conducted an independent probe into the devastating Gaza offensive Israel launched in late 2008, which claimed the lives of more than 1,400 people — mostly civilians — and left thousands more injured.
A final report by the council’s special Gaza war commission, led by South African judge Richard Goldstone, found Israel guilty of war crimes, including deliberate targeting of civilians and using Palestinian civilians and human shields.
Backed by the United States, Israel refused to cooperate with the Goldstone investigation.
Al-Manar TV – 02/06/2010
Israel on Tuesday night rejected international calls to end its naval blockade of Gaza and to launch an “independent” investigation into the Israeli navy commandos killing of at least nine unarmed activists during a raid of the Mavi Marmara passenger ship, which was part of a flotilla that aimed to break the blockade on Gaza.
“It’s important to understand that this [blockade] is essential to protect Israel’s security and its right to defend itself,” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told a special meeting of the diplomatic-security cabinet in Jerusalem.
“Gaza is an “Iranian-sponsored terrorist state,” and as such it is vitally important to prevent the entry of weapons there, whether by air, sea and land,” he said.
Netanyahu, who expressed full backing to Israeli forces and their decision to execute the raid and commit the massacre, acknowledged that weapons are already smuggled into Gaza through tunnels, but said there was a vast difference between the scope of that operation and the scale and quantity of weapons that could be brought into Gaza by ship if cargo was allowed to arrive unchecked.
“Opening a naval route to Gaza would be a huge threat to the security of our citizens. That is why we insist on maintaining the blockade and on examining the ships” in spite of the international pressure and criticism against it, he said.
Calls for an immediate investigation into the raid have been issued by the United Nations, the European Union and the United States. Britain, France, Russia and China — four of the five veto-wielding Security Council members — have also urged Israel to lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip.
The flotilla was supposed to deliver 10,000 tons of aids, medical supplies, and construction material to the besieged people of Gaza. After searching the ships, Israel found what it termed as “weapons”; they were kitchen knives, tools and wrenches for maintenance, tables and chairs and they were used by the activists to defend themselves from Israeli soldiers shooting at them live rounds from assault rifles in international waters.
US President Barack Obama said Wednesday that he supports an ‘independent’ probe that would examine the events leading to Israel’s Monday raid on the Gaza-bound protest flotilla, Israeli Army Radio reported. Earlier, White House sources hinted that they might demand an international investigation of the affair. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said they backed the UN Security Council’s call for an investigation
But Clinton sought to ease the pressure on Washington’s closest ally. She added that the US could support “an Israeli investigation that meets those criteria” and was open to different means of assuring a credible investigation, including international participation. She said that the Obama administration would be discussing these avenues with Israel and other countries in the days ahead.
Israeli public opinion was split over the calls for a probe, according to a poll published on Wednesday in the Maariv daily, which found 46.7 percent in favour, while just over half — or 51.6 percent — thought it unnecessary.
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More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
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