By JamieSW, on 01 June 2010 - 14:08 |

Stop the War has also called a demo for today (1 June) outside the Israeli Embassy in Kensington High St., at 5.30pm.
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/

By Paul Schloss, on 06 June 2010 - 10:53 |

To write about a country’s intentions is often speculative, and given the context of the article, which is a call to action, I’m wary about discussing something as abstract as whether Israel is mad, or not.  However interesting in itself the topic!  That said, a number of political choices will depend upon how a state is evaluated: on how it thinks, and how it operates.

It’s difficult to grasp the thinking behind Israel’s attack on the flotilla.  No doubt there was a kind of cost-benefit analysis, with the belief that in the end it would be all right – public opinion in America and Britain would be secured.  However, as Amira Hass says in your reference link, to be irrational is not to be without thought.  What determines irrationality is the context behind that thinking.  In recent talks Chomsky has commented on the impact and nature of right wing Talk Radio in the States.  He says their worldview is insane but internally coherent – once you accept certain assumptions.  This appears the case with Israel.  In another of your reference links there is the following quote from the Jerusalem Post:

“Goldstone is a codeword for an attempt to delegitimize Israel’s right to self-defense.” “The international battle against Israel began in UN Durban Conference I, and continued in the 2005 IJC advisory opinion against the security fence and in the Durban Conference II, as well as the Goldstone Report. This is a comprehensive attack, not on a specific Israeli government but on the state of Israel.” “Fighting against terrorists requires internal unity. We mustn’t search for the cracks through which to weaken or attack the government at these times,”

The article is incredible!  In Netanyahu’s words the UN, the International Court of Justice and the Goldstone report are not just criticizing Israel over this or that particular issue.  No!  They removing the right of Israel to defend herself - they want to destroy Israel.  The penultimate sentence suggests that the Post believes Richard Goldstone is himself a terrorist….  Is everyone who criticizes Israel committing terror?

It seems so (an Israel MP on Chomsky’s denial of entry to the West Bank):

This is a decision of principle between the democratic ideal… and the need to protect our existence,” said Otniel Schneller, of the centrist Kadima party… “Let’s say he came to lecture at Birzeit. What would he say? That Israel kills Arabs, that Israel is an apartheid state?”

In another three months, Mr. Schneller went on, some Israeli would be standing over her son’s grave, the victim of incitement “in the name of free speech.” (New York Times - this is from a centrist)

The actions can be calculated, but the framework within which those actions are thought can bear little relation to the real world.  This seems to be happening to Israel.  To quote Uri Avnery:

THIS EVENT points again to one of the most serious aspects of the situation: we live in a bubble, in a kind of mental ghetto, which cuts us off and prevents us from seeing another reality, the one perceived by the rest of the world. A psychiatrist might judge this to be the symptom of a severe mental problem.

A good example is David Grossman’s piece in the Guardian’s comment is free:

Yet, a small Turkish organisation, fanatical in its religious views and radically hostile to Israel, recruited to its cause several hundred seekers of peace and justice, and managed to lure Israel into a trap, because it knew how Israel would react, knew how Israel is destined and compelled, like a puppet on a string, to react the way it did.

Here is a writer, who I expect most of that newspaper’s readers regard as a liberal critic of Israel (and the article is critical), concocting a conspiracy theory.  Where is this coming from?

Within Israel its religious-nationalist ideology has become fused with even more extreme religious attitudes – hardened by war and occupation.  This was noted years ago: eg Shahak and Mezvinsky’s important book Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel.  How much worse now?

In many respects Israel is behaving like a theocratic state – this is the kind of irrationalism that we now see.

I think there are important consequences: 

• Quite strong limits to rational debate with Israel’s government
• A growing messianic strain within the country
• Ever more disregard for its enemies
• The danger of more of these incidents
• Intolerance of critics both inside and outside the country

Israel’s insanity is akin to the apocalyptic Christianity of the American South and Mid West: however irrational the world view it depends on US technology and power.  Remove that power and Israel will have to take a harder look at the facts, and act appropriately.

Also we need to look at ourselves.  Take the photos of the “weapons” that were found on board.  Only someone that wants to be duped would accept this as evidence of intent to kill Israeli soldiers – spanners, kitchen knives: how do you take out a navy with these?

At present any public criticism reinforces the belief system – as with any true believer.  Thus while there must be criticism, it may be counter-productive.  More important is to undermine American support – that has to be the focus of action.  Most of this American political support has a rational basis, and therefore can be undermined through struggle and organisation.  Moreover, recent trends within the American Jewish community (see Beinert in the New York Review of Books and various lectures by Norman Finkelstein) suggest that the influence of the Israel Lobby, a key factor in the denial of Palestinian rights, could be weakening.  The time might be right for a shift in American politics.

By Samir, on 06 June 2010 - 11:12 |

Jamie, here are questions I’ve encountered at many blogs by concerned Israelis… And because of these questions, I’m not convinced I should be on any one side.

1. Israel evacuated all its citizens from Gaza. And received only rocket fire in return. How was it supposed to respond in the short term, to stop rocket fire from attempting to kill its civilians?

2. If it responds militarily , it is expected to do so without killing civilians. Is that possible?

3. If it imposes a blockade which it did, it received worldwide condemnation. Though it is that very blockade that stopped the missile rain.
Israel has very little interest in removing the blockade, because there is no guarantee that the missiles won’t start again. Why should Israel trust an organization that demands it’s destruction?

In response, I’ve read that -
(a) the blockade has little to do with stopping missiles as it forbids even fishing rods and cement into the strip.
          So let’s assume cement for reconstruction and the deficient medical supplies are provided, would the world activist community feel satisfied with the new status quo? Is the argument then, for a more reasonable, rational blockade? (in the short term that is).

(b) Israel should work for peace (2-state), with all parties concerned, as this would solve the problem.
          But this is something that even the Israelis won’t disagree with. All they say is that it’s going to take time and till then, we’ll give u a much better, more rational blockade. It would be unfair to set a deadline for the peace process, and any process will take a few years to reach fruition, so for now there is no choice but to accept a new status quo, till a peace process begins…and ends?

By David, on 06 June 2010 - 13:51 |

Samir

Israel did not withdraw from Gaza. It withdrew its colonists from the interior of Gaza, but maintained a crippling siege of the territory that has been condemned by the UN and every human rights group and aid agency.

It is not expected to “respond” militarily. It is not “responding” to anything. Israel is the aggressor. It is Israel that is colonising and occupying the land of others.

The blockade causes more death and misery than the rockets did. The argument that it stopped the rockets only holds if you take a deeply racist view of the worth of Israeli life as opposed to the worth of Palestinian life.

There was a long period of quiet from rocket fire in 2008 as a result of an informal ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, not as a result of the siege. Israel broke that ceasefire.

The argument is not for a nicer blockade. The argument is for an independent Palestinian state with full control over its borders. Palestinians have just as much right to this as Israelis do to their state.

Israel does disagree with the two-state solution. Forget talk, which is cheap, look at its actions. The reason there are not two states now is that Israel is illegally stealing and colonising Palestinian land. To create the two state solution that has the best chance of securing peace Israel should simply withdraw from the land it has stolen and colonised and revert to its legal borders.

By Jamie, on 06 June 2010 - 18:57 |

Paul: thanks for that - very interesting. You’re right that it’s always difficult to speculate about a government’s motives, not least because the government itself is far from homogeneous, both in terms of its constituent parts (Israeli politics is always complicated by the reality of coalition government, for example) and in terms of the interests to which it is responding.

But I think there’s good reason for continuing to treat Israel as a ‘rational’ state, within the framework of its desire to retain control of the West Bank and Gaza. If you look the policies it has pursued to this end - the fraudulent “peace process”, the farcical “disengagement” from Gaza, the “proximity talks”, etc. - they have all been carefully calculated, and they have all been fairly successful. That they are becoming less so is not because Israel has become more irrational but because its record is finally starting to catch up with it. That’s not to say Israeli governments don’t make strategic errors - of course they do - but when you look at, say, Weisglass’s explanation of the rationale behind the disengagement, or the discussions in the week leading up to the flotilla attack, “messianic” isn’t an apt description for the deliberation process that’s going on, which does seem pretty lucid and cognizant of the relevant facts (e.g. as linked to in the diary, Israel was well aware of the negative PR consequences of boarding the ship - but after much deliberation it evidently decided that, on balance, it was the least bad option.

I do think we should be careful about taking the paranoid statements of Israeli politicians at face value. I’ve no doubt that some of them are sincere, but equally there’s an obvious propaganda element at work there. This is brought out clearly in the case of Iran, for example, where Israeli officials screech daily about a looming genocide but know full well that Israel has more than enough weaponry of its own to deter an Iranian attack.

Samir: what David said.

By Jerome Stern, on 09 June 2010 - 14:12 |

My one significant disagreement with David’s responses concerns Israel’s siege/blockade of Gaza.  I personally wouldn’t object if all Israel refused to let through were strictly military items, e.g. guns, ammunition,  but that is, of course, not really the point of the blockade.

By David Wearing, on 09 June 2010 - 15:59 |

Jerome - would you accept the Palestinians, perhaps in league with the Arab states, enforcing a blockade of Israel to prevent it importing military equipment? Since Israel is the aggressor it follows that you should.

In any case, the fact that the issue doesn’t arise, because the Palestinians haven’t the means or the support to do such a thing, shows that the whole idea of Israel “defending itself” from them is an absurd fiction.

By Jerome Stern, on 10 June 2010 - 15:56 |

David- If my comment led you to suppose that I was trying in some way to defend Israel’s position in any way, I apologise for that is not the case.  My only objection to your proposal is the one you give yourself: it couldn’t be done. Similar to mine, which could be done (by the Israeli state), it it really meant what it sometimes says, that the purpose is to prevent arms from getting to Hamas, but won’t, because that isn’t the purpose. I do accept that Palestinians have the moral and legal right to resistance, including armed resistance. Whether it is wise to employ armed resistance in their awful situation is for them to decide, but I don’t believe they should ‘renounce the use of violence’ as they are criticised by Israel & its allies for not doing, unless Israel is prepared to do the same. Uri Avnery seemed to seriously suggest on Znet recently (“Kill a Turk and Rest”) that the IDF could instead have boarded the ship in Gazan waters merely to inspect it to ensure it contained only non-military supplies and it let it continue thereafter. He argued that would “upheld the principle of the blockade”. But they couldn’t do that as it would in practice, as well as principle, destroy the kind of blockade they are using as well as defeating its real purpose, the collective punishment of a people for electing a government that refuses to acknowledge the right of their oppressors to continue that oppression.