World condemnation of Israel is nothing new. The little country that could was spanked for its wars with Muslim nations of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
No matter which political party is in control of the Israeli government over the years, they shrug off the criticism even though it sometimes becomes a public relations nightmare.
Such is the case with internal squabbling in today's Likud coalition under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Einat Wilf, a Labor Party member who sits on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said she warned Defense Minister Ehud Barak weeks ago that military force not be used in the Turkish flotilla's plan to crash the blockade preventing ships from docking at ports in Hamas occupied Gaza.
“This had nothing to do with security,” she said in an interview. “The armaments for Hamas were not coming from this flotilla.”
The Turkish flotilla confrontation pales by comparison to the murderous assault carried out by the Israelis on June 8, 1967, when it tracked the U.S. surveillance ship Liberty in international waters for nine hours. Air and naval forces attacked without warning, killing 34 Americans and wounding 174.
The Johnson administration, according to the Liberty Memorial website, stonewalled and covered up the investigation and offered no serious public protest to Israel, its lone ally in the Middle East.
The Obama administration, despite skeptics of pro-Israeli lobbyists, is unlikely to condemn Israel publicly for the flotilla incident, despite crippling on-going peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority which controls the West Bank but not Gaza in what is accepted as Palestinian territory.
“This regrettable incident underscores that the international blockade of Gaza is not sustainable,” Martin Indyk, the former United States ambassador to Israel, told the New York Times Monday.
Actually, the blockade was established in 2007 by Israel and Egypt and recognized by the entire world that if anyone dared breach it to reach a Gaza port or wharf that human lives would be placed in harm's way. That's the way Israel does business protecting its security.
Gaza is the remains of a half-century-old Palestinian refugee camp with a 1.5 million population growing by the minute now controlled by Hamas, the Islamist organization that refuses to recognize Israel’s existence, operates independently of the Palestinian Authority and has rejected any peace talks.
From Gaza, rockets are periodically launched into southern Israel, a continual source of irritation with a mounting death toll. As a result, Israel allows humanitarian relief into Gaza by road from ports and airfields in Israel and Egypt and inspects each shipment for arms smuggling.
As Charles Krauthammer, the syndicated columnist snobbishly observes, the Palestinians in Gaza at the very least are receiving life-supporting food and medical supplies.
This is why I agree with Jason Arvak, my TMV colleague, and others that the Turkish ships billed as a "humanitarian relief" effort is total nonsense. It was a deliberate effort to run the blockade and create an international incident. Otherwise, the six ships in the flotilla could have unloaded its cargo at the Israeli port of Ashdod, north of Gaza.
Calling itself the Freedom Flotilla, it was led and widely publicized by the Palestinian Free Gaza Movement and a Turlish organization, Insani Yardim Fakfi, which Israel claims is a terrorist movement formed in 1992 to free Bosnians from Serbian rule.
At first, the Turkish government refused to sanction the flotilla, saying it was out of its control. Since the commando incident, the events and public outcry may force its hand in Parliament.
Reports are still sketchy, but the Israeli warships used nets to jam the propellers of five of the flotilla vessels but the larger Mavi Marmara, carrying 600 passengers and a chunk of the total 10,000 tons of food and medical supplies, charged on until a helicopter dropped commandos onto the deck at 4 a.m. Monday.
Israel contends the soldiers were assaulted with clubs and knives and fired in self defense.
Yavuz Dede, deputy director of the sponsoring group said its volunteers were untrained in military combat. “They were civilians trying to get aid to Gaza. There were artists, intellectuals and journalists among them. Such an offensive cannot be explained by any terms.”
From here on, the incident will be a propaganda war with potentially most damaging the removal of diplomatic relations between Israel and Turkey and a "proportionate" retaliatory response by the Turkish navy.
In a propaganda move of its own, Israel maintains the Gaza blockade has squeezed pressure on Hamas resulting on firing fewer rockets, if any, into Israel and fighting discontent among the approaching 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.
For Israel, prospects for ending the blockade is a non-starter until Hamas releases Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit captured in a cross-border raid in 2006.
-------------
EPILOGUE
Taking sides on any issue involving the Israelis and Palestinians is at best perilous since there is valid arguments for and against both dating back to when this turf war first began 4,000 years ago. After all those years, what's a setback in a two-state solution now and then? The flotilla incident is just the latest in a long series of conflicts yet to come. I find my sentiments with Israel identical to those laid out by survivors and families of the Liberty stated in their website. That is:
The USS Liberty Memorial web site abhors the racist and extreme positions taken by antiSemitic, Holocaust denial, conspiracy theorist and other such groups which often seek to identify with us and to usurp our story as their own. We have no connection with and do not support or encourage support from any of these groups including National Alliance, National Vanguard, The New Order, National Socialists, The French Connection, Liberty Lobby, American Free Press, Republic Broadcasting, USS Liberty Radio Hour, Storm Front or other such groups. We wish harm to no one and encourage social justice and equality for everyone; we seek only accountability for the criminal acts perpetrated against us and can do that without help from hate-mongers.
On the Israeli side, the group of pro-Israel, anti-American critics of our story, while small, persists in launching loud, vicious ad hominem attacks on anyone who attempts to discuss the deliberateness of the attack. These anti-American apologists refuse to discuss the facts of the case. Instead, they rely on propaganda and charge anyone who questions the Israeli position with being antiSemitic.
EPILOGUE
Taking sides on any issue involving the Israelis and Palestinians is at best perilous since there is valid arguments for and against both dating back to when this turf war first began 4,000 years ago. After all those years, what's a setback in a two-state solution now and then? The flotilla incident is just the latest in a long series of conflicts yet to come. I find my sentiments with Israel identical to those laid out by survivors and families of the Liberty stated in their website. That is:
The USS Liberty Memorial web site abhors the racist and extreme positions taken by antiSemitic, Holocaust denial, conspiracy theorist and other such groups which often seek to identify with us and to usurp our story as their own. We have no connection with and do not support or encourage support from any of these groups including National Alliance, National Vanguard, The New Order, National Socialists, The French Connection, Liberty Lobby, American Free Press, Republic Broadcasting, USS Liberty Radio Hour, Storm Front or other such groups. We wish harm to no one and encourage social justice and equality for everyone; we seek only accountability for the criminal acts perpetrated against us and can do that without help from hate-mongers.
On the Israeli side, the group of pro-Israel, anti-American critics of our story, while small, persists in launching loud, vicious ad hominem attacks on anyone who attempts to discuss the deliberateness of the attack. These anti-American apologists refuse to discuss the facts of the case. Instead, they rely on propaganda and charge anyone who questions the Israeli position with being antiSemitic.
No comments:
Post a Comment