Monthly Archives: June 2010

US-Israeli relations improve — time to bulldoze Palestinian homes

Since US-Israeli relations are so famously cozy, maybe it’s time to extend the familial metaphor a bit further: Washington is a victim of domestic violence.

Every time the Obama administration reaches out to the Netanyahu government, it gets slapped in the face. Netanyahu has once again been invited to Washington — due to the poorly-time Mavi Marmara massacre he had to bail on a visit planned for early this month. He’s now due for his long-awaited kiss and make up session at the White House on July 6. But true to form, as soon as this was announced, word came from Jerusalem that 22 Palestinian homes are going to be bulldozed to clear space for a tourist center.

Another diplomatic snafu? On the contrary. These unfortunate “coincidences” have become so predictable that it’s hard to interpret them in any other way than as a calculated effort by Israeli officials to humiliate their American counterparts.

Just as some victims of serial abuse collude with their abuser by finding ways to excuse their partner’s violence, Washington’s tolerance of treatment that would be unthinkable coming from any other ally, is perpetually excused when the offending nation is Israel.

Haaretz now reports:

The Jerusalem municipal planning committee approved Monday a contentious plan to raze 22 Palestinian homes to make room for a tourist center that Palestinians fear would tighten Israel’s grip on the city’s contested eastern sector.

Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat has asked the municipal planning committee earlier Monday to give preliminary approval to the plan which affects the neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem, and risks more U.S.-Israeli friction.

Tensions have already been raised in Jerusalem, when conflict erupted during the meeting between committee members and the residents of Silwan. Silwan residents starkly objected to the plan and demanded the committee discuss their alternative plan, which does not include razing homes.

What will the White House say? That this is “unhelpful”? Hillary Clinton has already expressed her “dismay and disappointment.”

Just as the expansion of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land has been relentless, the Israeli assault on Washington perpetually expands the boundaries of impunity. The notion that Israel might go too far in testing the limits of American tolerance is repeatedly invalidated as Washington demonstrates that its diplomatic tool box is equipped with nothing more threatening than the occasional harsh word — and even those are in short supply and never particularly harsh.

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White House welcomes empty promise from Israel on Gaza

“Today, the United States welcomes the new policy towards Gaza announced by the Government of Israel, which responds to the calls of many in the international community. Once implemented, we believe these arrangements should significantly improve conditions for Palestinians in Gaza, while preventing the entry of weapons,” the White House press secretary’s office said in a statement released on Sunday morning.

And what, one might wonder, is the substance of the new policy that Washington is so swift to praise? This is what an Israeli official told Haaretz: “we will allow the entry of food items, house wares, writing implements, mattresses and toys. Beyond that, we have not said a thing.” The Los Angeles Times notes: “the government has yet to specify what items will be banned or when the changes will take effect.”

The Guardian says:

Aid agencies have cautioned that concrete implementation of any relaxation of the siege could be hampered by Israeli foot-dragging. “The siege must be ended, not just eased,” said UN spokesman Chris Gunness. “Otherwise Israel continues to be in breach of international law.”

Gisha, an Israeli human rights organisation, said in a statement: “A policy consistent with international law would allow free passage of raw materials into Gaza, export of finished goods, and the travel of persons not just for ‘humanitarian’ reasons but also for work, study, and family unity – subject only to reasonable security checks.”

Ziad al-Zaza, a Hamas cabinet minister, called the Israeli move a “deception”. The blockade must be lifted completely “to allow Gaza to import all necessary materials, particularly cement, iron, raw materials for industry and agriculture, as well as import and export between Gaza and the world”, he said.

Meanwhile, if Israel is adopting a more liberal approach to Gaza, this wasn’t evident on Saturday.

Haaretz reported:

German Development Aid Minister Dirk Niebel was denied entry into the Gaza Strip during his current visit to Israel, German officials said Saturday evening.

A ministry spokesman said talks had continued to the last moment with Israeli officials over Niebel’s aim to visit the Palestinian areas.

Niebel, who arrived in Israel earlier Saturday, had hoped to visit a sewage treatment plant being financed with German development aid.

Speaking on the second German TV network ZDF program”heute” (today) Saturday evening, Niebel expressed his anger about being denied entry.

“I would have wished for a clear political signal would be sent for an opening and for transparency,” said Niebel, of Germany’s liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP).

“Sometimes the Israeli government does not make it easy for its friends to explain why it behaves the way it does,” he added.

Niebel said that Israel’s latest announcement on easing the Gaza blockade was “not sufficient” and that Israel must “now deliver” on its pledge.

Beyond that, the government in Jerusalem should be “clear about how Israel, within an international context, wants to cooperate with its friends in the future as well,” the German minister said.

The United States has no fear of meeting a similar rebuff. As far as one can tell, George Mitchell has no interest in visiting Gaza.

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Mordechai Vanunu: prisoner of conscience

How many countries in the world are there where someone can be thrown in jail for talking to a foreigner? That was one of Mordechai Vanunu’s most recent “crimes” as a citizen in “the only democracy in the Middle East.”

Having spent 18 years in prison — more than 11 of those in solitary confinement — after revealing to the world Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program, Vanunu is now back in solitary confinement.

Amnesty International has rightly declared that he is a “prisoner of conscience,” and called for his immediate release.

The state persecution that Vanunu has suffered for decades and other details provide reason to suspect that he may the individual who in a report several days ago was simply referred to a Mr X.

A June 13 report in the Hebrew edition of Ynet (translated by Didi Remez, h/t to Richard Silverstein) said:

Nobody knows who Mr. X. is. Ynet has learned that a man has been imprisoned for some time in wing 15 of Ayalon Prison but nobody knows who he is and what charges he is being jailed for. Nobody talks to him, nobody sees him, nobody visits him, nobody knows he is in jail. “He was placed in full and complete separation from the outside world,” said an Israel Prison Service official.

To enter the wing where the detainee is being held, you have to pass the jailers on the southern side of the prison and go through double iron doors. Unlike regular separation wings, where prisoners can talk loudly between the cells or see the goings-on in the corridors with mirrors, wing 15 has only one cell without neighboring cells and without a corridor, so that whoever is jailed in it is completely isolated from any living being.

“I don’t know any other prisoner or IPS detainee held in such severe conditions of separation and isolation,” said a Prison Service official. “There is confidentiality surrounding the detainee in wing 15 in every respect, including his identity and the crimes he committed. I doubt even the jailers in charge of him know who he is. There is too much confidentiality surrounding him. It is scary that in 2010 a man is imprisoned in Israel without us even knowing who he is.”

The official said, “it is simply a person without a name and without an identity who was placed in complete and absolute isolation from the outside world. We don’t know if he gets visits, if he gets the rights that every detainee deserves by law and if anybody even knows he is in jail.” The IPS declined to divulge who the person jailed there is. Its spokesman, Lt. Col. Yaron Zamir, said: “The IPS does not provide information about locations and names out of security considerations.”

Mr. X. is being kept in the wing originally built in order to jail Prime Minister Rabin’s assassin, Yigal Amir. Amir was jailed in the same cell under heavy security, with security cameras in the cell until December 2006, when he was moved to the separate wing at Rimonim prison in the Sharon district. The cell in wing 15 is relatively large and, in the case of Amir, his family met him in the cell so that he would not have to be taken out during visits.

Amnesty confirms that Vanunu is being held in Ayalon Prison.

Earlier this year, Rannie Amiri wrote on Vanunu’s “Nobel stand”:

“He [Vanunu] has written letters to us this year and last year also, where he stated explicitly that he did not want to be a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. The reason he gave was that Simon Peres had received the Nobel Peace Prize, and Peres he alleged was the father of the Israeli atomic bomb and he did not want to be associated with Peres in any way.” – Geir Lundestad, Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute and Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, 24 February 2010.

For the first time in the history of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, a preemptive request to withdraw a nomination—by the nominee—was made.

It was revealed last week that in a letter to the Committee, Mordechai Vanunu had asked for his candidacy to be rescinded. It was unusual enough for Geir Lundestad to acknowledge that a nomination had even been received, let alone publicly disclose Vanunu’s request. But for Vanunu—a man who should have been awarded the Peace Prize long ago—it was in full keeping with the dignity, integrity and uncompromising nature of one to whom the world owes a great debt.

Mordechai Vanunu – more than just a whistleblower

Vanunu worked as a technician at Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant in the Negev Desert from 1976-1985. In a 1986 interview with The Sunday Times, he courageously exposed, for the first time, his country’s clandestine nuclear activity. A week prior to the interview’s publication, he was lured by a Mossad agent from London to Rome, where he was apprehended and whisked off to Israel. In secret proceedings, Vanunu stood trial for treason, was swiftly convicted, and sentenced to 18 years behind bars. He spent more than 11 of them in solitary confinement.

Vanunu was released from Ashkelon’s Shikma prison in April 2004, unapologetic and unrepentant. “I am proud and happy to do what I did,” he said.

As for enduring nearly two decades of incarceration?
“I said to the Shabak [Shin Bet], the Mossad, ‘you didn’t succeed to break me, you didn’t succeed to make me crazy.’”
Conditions of his parole prohibited him from speaking with journalists, supporters, or non-Israelis of any kind. He was restricted from travelling within the country and barred altogether from leaving it.

In 2007, Vanunu was found to be in violation of his parole, in part for attempting to travel from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, and it landed him in jail for another three months. Being a convert to Christianity and an advocate for Palestinian rights did not help his case, but only served to increase the scorn heaped upon him by his countrymen.

Although the term “whistleblower” is usually appended to Vanunu’s name, the description is weak and understated. He was more like the “siren” that alerted the world to Israel’s undeclared nuclear bombs and the introduction of weapons of mass destruction to the Middle East.

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Israel’s Secret Weapon

A BBC documentary, “Israel’s Secret Weapon,” which first aired in 2003 just weeks before the start of the war in Iraq, examines Israel’s nuclear weapons program, the secrecy in which it has always been shrouded, and the ruthless measures through which Israel’s “nuclear taboo” is enforced. The film reveals:

  • The brutality with which Mordechai Vanunu, Israel’s most famous political prisoner has been treated. By the time this film was made, Vanunu had been held in solitary confinement for longer than any prisoner in the West.
  • The mafia-like power wielded by the ulta-secret Yechiel Horev, who as Director of Security of the Defense Establishment was committed to ensuring that Vanunu never be permitted to leave Israel.
  • The deception through which Israel concealed the most sensitive areas of the Dimona nuclear facility from scrutiny by American inspectors.
  • The cover-ups and threats that have forced injured Dimona workers to maintain their silence about accidents, injuries and sickness caused their exposure to nuclear materials.
  • Israel’s biological and chemical weapons program that appears to have involved the use of chemical weapons in Gaza.
  • The blanket refusal by members of the Bush administration to discuss any questions relating to Israel’s large stock of weapons of mass destruction just as Washington was insisting that an active WMD program in Iraq (which of course turned out to be non-existent) necessitated war.
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    Reclaiming self-determination

    In a policy brief for Al-Shabaka, Ali Abunimah reviews the evolution of the concept of self-determination, its applicability to the Palestinian people, and its gradual erosion since 1991. He argues not only that self-determination must return to the center of the Palestinian struggle; he also shows how the Palestinian exercise of this right can be compatible with eventual coexistence with Israeli Jews.

    In his 1974 speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasir Arafat addressed “the roots of the Palestine question,” declaring, “Its causes do not stem from any conflict between two religions or two nationalisms. Neither is it a border conflict between neighboring States. It is the cause of a people deprived of its homeland, dispersed and uprooted, and living mostly in exile and in refugee camps.”

    How ironic then that the “peace process” has reconceived the Palestine question precisely as little more than a border dispute between Israel and a putative Palestinian state. The “roots” were first reduced to a laconic list of “final status issues”: borders, settlements, Jerusalem and refugees and then gradually buried. Lost has been any commitment to self-determination in principle or in practice.

    Although they have rarely been formally discussed, it has long been conventional wisdom in peace process circles that the “final status” issues have already effectively been settled, largely according to Israel’s requirements (we have heard ad nauseam the refrain “everyone knows what a final settlement will look like”). The United States and its hand-picked Palestinian leaders have accepted that large Israeli “settlement blocs” housing most of the settlers, will remain where they are in the West Bank.

    The same formula has been adopted for Jerusalem, as per the so-called Clinton parameters: Israel would get “Jewish neighborhoods” and the Palestinian state would get “Arab neighborhoods.” What this means in practice is that Israel would keep everything it illegally annexed and colonized since 1967, and Palestinians might get some form of self-rule in whatever is left – which is shrinking daily as Israel aggressively escalates its Judaization of eastern Jerusalem. While everything east of the 1967 line is divisible and “disputed,” the same does not apply to the west. Palestinians would not be entitled, for example, to seek the return of their West Jerusalem neighborhoods ethnically cleansed and colonized by Israel in 1948. The “peace process” has actually created an incentive for Israel to accelerate its colonization of eastern Jerusalem because Israel knows that whatever is left uncolonized would become the new maximum ceiling of what the United States and other peace process sponsors would support as Palestinian demands.

    Similarly, the refugee question has been virtually “settled” as well. Palestinian Authority-appointed chief negotiator Saeb Erekat revealed in a paper he circulated last December that Fatah leader and acting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had proposed to Israel that no more than 15,000 Palestinian refugees per year for ten years return to their original lands in what is now Israel.1 According to Erekat, then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had countered with an offer of 1,000 refugees per year for a period of five years. In other words, the parties had already agreed to abrogate the fundamental rights of millions of Palestinian refugees, and were haggling only over the difference between 5,000 and 150,000, or less than three percent of the Palestinian refugees registered to receive services from UNRWA (the United Nations Works and Relief Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East).

    So what is left to negotiate? Camille Mansour’s policy brief accurately summarizes the outstanding issues – as seen from within the peace process – the final borders and attributes of sovereignty of the Palestinian state. Mansour doubts that negotiations in present circumstances would lead to a peace treaty in which “Palestinian sovereignty requirements could be attained.”

    Let us assume for the sake of argument that Israel were to agree to a Palestinian state in the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip that satisfies official Palestinian positions and provides for a state no more or less sovereign than any other. The question that then arises is: Does this sovereign state provide for the self-determination of the Palestinian people? Does it restore and guarantee their fundamental rights? As argued, below, the answer is a clear no. And this underscores the need to distinguish the limited goal of sovereignty from that of self-determination.

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    Interview with Ken O’Keefe

    Ken O’Keefe, an activist who was on board the Mavi Marmara, is interviewed by Mark Dankof on his podcast, The Ugly Truth.

    (During the first ten minutes of the broadcast, Phil Tourney, a survivor from the USS Liberty, describes the circumstances in which Israel attacked that American intelligence vessel in 1967.)

    In a statement O’Keefe released soon after his expulsion from Israel, he said:

    I said this straight to Israeli agents, probably of Mossad or Shin Bet, and I say it again now, on the morning of the attack I was directly involved in the disarming of two Israeli Commandos. This was a forcible, non-negotiable, separation of weapons from commandos who had already murdered two brothers that I had seen that day. One brother with a bullet entering dead center in his forehead, in what appeared to be an execution. I knew the commandos were murdering when I removed a 9mm pistol from one of them. I had that gun in my hands and as an ex-US Marine with training in the use of guns it was completely within my power to use that gun on the commando who may have been the murderer of one of my brothers. But that is not what I, nor any other defender of the ship did. I took that weapon away, removed the bullets, proper lead bullets, separated them from the weapon and hid the gun. I did this in the hopes that we would repel the attack and submit this weapon as evidence in a criminal trial against Israeli authorities for mass murder.

    I also helped to physically separate one commando from his assault rifle, which another brother apparently threw into the sea. I and hundreds of others know the truth that makes a mockery of the brave and moral Israeli military. We had in our full possession, three completely disarmed and helpless commandos. These boys were at our mercy, they were out of reach of their fellow murderers, inside the ship and surrounded by 100 or more men. I looked into the eyes of all three of these boys and I can tell you they had the fear of God in them. They looked at us as if we were them, and I have no doubt they did not believe there was any way they would survive that day. They looked like frightened children in the face of an abusive father.

    But they did not face an enemy as ruthless as they. Instead the woman provided basic first aid, and ultimately they were released, battered and bruised for sure, but alive. Able to live another day. Able to feel the sun over head and the embrace of loved ones. Unlike those they murdered. Despite mourning the loss of our brothers, feeling rage towards these boys, we let them go. The Israeli prostitutes of propaganda can spew all of their disgusting bile all they wish, the commandos are the murders, we are the defenders, and yet we fought. We fought not just for our lives, not just for our cargo, not just for the people of Palestine, we fought in the name of justice and humanity. We were right to do so, in every way.

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    Time for the West to shed its cultural arrogance

    “The westerly excrescence of the continent of Asia,” is how the British historian Barry Cunliffe describes Europe’s topographic form. It’s a useful image because it emphasizes what this nominal continent is anchored on to rather than what sets it apart. Seen in this way, the importance of Turkey — a figurative bridge between two continents that actually reveals how indivisible they are — cannot be overestimated. Yet now more than ever, Europe’s eastern edge is being viewed warily.

    Western disquiet about the political trajectory upon which Turkey might be heading has been growing ever since the AK party became the dominant political force. At the same time, there’s no denying that under Islamist governance Turkey’s economy has thrived as never before. But what offends Western capitals more than anything else right now is the perception that Turkey no longer looks up to its cultural superiors.

    “Who do they think they are?” the Americans, Germans and French must be muttering as they witness Turkey step out of line by voting against Security Council sanctions on Iran. Worst of all, why does the Turkish prime minister repeatedly insist on exposing the obsequious nature of the ways in which so many Western governments indulge Israel?

    Just as Recep Tayyip Erdogan has embarrassed most Arab leaders by presenting a model of leadership that cannot be emulated without democracy, he likewise exposes the weakness of Western leaders — politicians who instead of showing leadership have become service managers catering to the needs of special interests.

    In this context, Turkey’s rising power is increasingly being characterized as a rogue tendency. Maturity is being cast as insubordination.

    But at the Financial Times, Philip Stephens explains why the claim that “Turkey has been lost,” really has no foundation.

    [T]he message I took from policymakers and business leaders at a recent conference in Istanbul convened by Chatham House was far more subtle than the present discourse in the west. Far from turning its back on Europe, the [Turkish] government hopes that the country’s rising regional influence will strengthen its claim for admission [to the EU].

    It is not often these days that you hear anyone praise the EU. Turkish politicians are the exception. The Union, one of Mr Erdogan’s ministers told the conference, had been a “greatest peace project in the history of mankind”. Securing Turkey’s membership remained a “national and a strategic” objective.

    Nor, according to ministers, had Turkey taken pleasure in opposing a new UN Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran – a vote that followed an abortive Turkish-Brazilian initiative to broker a deal over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

    The initiative, which would have seen the transfer of part of Iran’s stockpile of uranium to Turkey, was dismissed in Washington as at best naive. Ankara was accused of falling into an Iranian trap. Turkish ministers offer a rather different version of events. The terms of proposal, they insist, were entirely consistent with those set out in a private letter sent to Mr Erdogan in April by US president Barack Obama. The initiative was never promoted as a comprehensive solution, but rather as a confidence-building measure that could lead to broader negotiations with Tehran.

    Whatever the precise details and chronology, nothing that I heard in Istanbul spoke to a nation looking for a breach with the west; what I took away instead was that 20 years after the end of the cold war Turkey has decided that it can sometimes shape its own foreign policy. Membership of the west once meant doing whatever Washington said. Now it has interests, opinions and rights of its own.

    For many Americans, and for some Europeans, this is more than irritating. The Turkey of their imagination was one forever in their debt and forever grateful for any seat at the western table.

    The irony, of course, is that the new, assertive, Turkey has more to offer the west than its pliant precedessor. With a mind of its own, it has greater strategic credibility in the Middle East and the Muslim world. This is the Turkey the west really must not lose.

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    Syria’s Bashar al-Assad warns of Middle East war

    The BBC’s Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen interviewed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who says Israel’s raid on the Gaza aid flotilla has increased the risk of war in the Middle East.

    A few days before the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara, Charlie Rose did a full length interview with the Syrian president which is well worth watching. He’s a serious and articulate strategic thinker.

    Assad gets far less attention in the US media than he deserves. To some extent this may result from his reserved manner and the perception that he rules in the shadow of his father, the late Hafez al-Assad, but to a larger extent I see it as standard-fare Washington contempt for Syria itself. Perennially branded a rogue state, a relatively minor oil producer, Syria is a country that interests America no more than can be measured by its willingness (or unwillingness) to bow to American pressure.

    But Assad belongs to and is articulating the vision of a new generation of regional leaders who recognize that the fate of the Middle East rests firmly in the hands of those who refuse to define themselves on the basis of their relationship with the United States.

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    100,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews rally in Jerusalem in support of segregation

    “It’s like putting Americans and Africans together. They can’t study together with such huge mental differences,” an ultra-Orthodox Jewish parent said when explaining why he cannot allow his daughters to share a classroom with Sephardi Jewish girls.

    It’s hard to countenance the concept of a “demographic threat” and treat it as socially acceptable without also opening the door to other forms of bigotry that a liberal Zionist cannot possibly tolerate.

    This is the dilemma many Israelis now face: How do you justify the idea that the rights of a non-Jewish minority can be restricted (this being a practical necessity if Israel is to remain a Jewish state), and then stand up in defense of religious and racial pluralism when ultra-Orthodox Jews insist that the “purity” of their children will be tainted if they are forced to share classrooms with Sephardi Jews?

    Today, as 100,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews protested in Jerusalem in support of segregation, many Israelis probably feel conflicted about which particular demographic threat now poses the greatest danger to Israel.

    The liberal commentator, Yossi Sarid, expresses what I take to be commonplace Israeli secular Jewish contempt for and exasperation with the ultra-Orthodox when he writes: “[T]he rebellious Haredim must be put in their place.”

    Last December, Haaretz reported:

    The Ashkenazi students of the ultra-Orthodox Beit Yaakov girls’ school in [the West Bank settlement] Immanuel stayed home on Wednesday, yet again, as part of an organized protest against the decision by the Education Ministry and High Court to end the segregation between Sephardi and Ashkenazi students.

    “No court ruling or Education Ministry decision can bring the two groups together,” an Immanuel resident said Wednesday.

    “It’s like putting Americans and Africans together. They can’t study together with such huge mental differences,” he said.

    Some 70 Ashkenazi students of the Beit Yaakov girls’ school stopped attending classes two days before the Hanukkah holiday – in protest of the ministry’s efforts to force the ultra-Orthodox school to rescind the segregation, in keeping with the High Court ruling.

    The father of one Mizrahi student was in no doubt about the basis for discrimination: “The Ashkenazis think they’re more intelligent than we are, but what really bugs them is our skin color.”

    Sami Michael, an Israeli author who grew up in Baghdad and settled in Israel in 1949 when he was 23, notes that even in the darkest days in Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon, they never separated Jews from Muslims and Christians in schools.

    On segregation in Immanuel he writes:

    My nerves are tingling and my flesh is crawling as I write these lines. This is a small story about two girls attending the same school who became friends and who are now required, by racist order, to wear school uniforms of different colors.

    They have been forbidden to come in contact with each other and in order to make the prohibition concrete, a fence covered with an opaque cloth has been stretched between them. They preserve their friendship by passing notes through a hole in the fence.

    This story did not happen in the days of apartheid South Africa or in the dark times before the civil rights movement in the United States or in a ghetto in an insane Europe during World War II.

    The two schoolgirls wearing uniforms of different colors are Jewish girls from the Israeli settlement of Immanuel in the West Bank, which is flourishing under the flag and armed protection of the Israel Defense Forces. The school also receives funding courtesy of the Israeli taxpayer.

    The two schoolgirls’ crime is their different ethnic origins. One is an Ashkenazi Jew, whose family’s roots are in Europe, and her friend is a Mizrahi Jew, whose family comes from Middle Eastern and North African countries. Was it for this that the state of Israel forged its path through rivers of the blood of its sons and its enemies?

    Even in the darkest days in Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon, they never separated Jews from Muslims and Christians in schools.

    One of the initiators of the segregation in Immanuel commented: “This isn’t ethnic separation, but rather religious.” He was right, but only partially. Indeed, this separation is not ethnic but rather “racist,” a word rarely used, even by those of courageous and honest determination.

    The Supreme Court’s justices, whom I see as the last bastion of democracy in Israel, used the term “discrimination.”

    To my regret, intellectuals whose voice resounds from time to time from here and abroad have sealed their lips. They and the vast majority of Israeli society used to think of “discrimination” as something unclean. What? Here? In our enlightened country?

    Along came the righteous Supreme Court justices, headed by Edmond Levy and Hanan Melcer, who smashed the taboo and used the despised word “discrimination.”

    Let us imagine for a moment a school, say in Germany or Britain, which puts up a separation fence for “religious” reasons, as the Immanuel racists claimed, and compels the Jewish students to wear a uniform of a different color. What a ruckus we would be raising!

    I have personally met the current head of the Jewish community in Tehran and I have conversed with many Iranian expatriates in Europe and the United States. I am also in touch with combative elements in Iran. I can attest that Jewish schoolchildren and students living in Iran today are not required to wear clothing of a different color.

    How has it happened that rabbis, at least in Immanuel, are even more benighted than the ayatollahs we excoriate and abominate day and night? And why have the intellectuals here mostly disappeared?

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    Entering the Soviet era in America

    As President Obama addressed the nation last night, he employed the impoverished language of a nation for which all things must supposedly be seen in terms of war. He spoke of “the battle we’re waging against an oil spill that is assaulting our shores and our citizens.”

    “We will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes,” Obama said unconvincingly invoking a Churchillian spirit for tackling this sticky foe. He then laid out his “battle plan.”

    It’s not that war is inherently a useless metaphor, but, to borrow one of Tom Engelhardt’s favorite expressions and the title of his new book, when it comes to the American way of war, war now has all the wrong connotations.

    War spreads, is expensive, messy, difficult to end and difficult to justify. If the Obama administration claims it’s fighting a war against an oil spill, why exactly at this point in America’s history are we now supposed to have confidence in America’s war-fighting capabilities?

    It seems that the path of war that America’s leaders persistently tread is a path they continue down (whether literally or metaphorically) not because they have confidence in reaching a desirable destination but because this has become the only path they know.

    In this respect, as Tom Engelhardt points out, the United States is now following resolutely in the footsteps of the Soviet Union.

    Mark it on your calendar. It seems we’ve finally entered the Soviet era in America.

    You remember the Soviet Union, now almost 20 years in its grave. But who gives it a second thought today? Even in its glory years that “evil empire” was sometimes referred to as “the second superpower.” In 1991, after seven decades, it suddenly disintegrated and disappeared, leaving the United States — the “sole superpower,” even the “hyperpower,” on planet Earth — surprised but triumphant.

    The USSR had been heading for the exits for quite a while, not that official Washington had a clue. At the moment it happened, Soviet “experts” like Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (then director of the CIA) still expected the Cold War to go on and on. In Washington, eyes were trained on the might of the Soviet military, which the Soviet leadership had never stopped feeding, even as its sclerotic bureaucracy was rotting, its economy (which had ceased to grow in the late 1970s) was tanking, budget deficits were soaring, indebtedness to other countries was growing, and social welfare payments were eating into what funds remained. Not even a vigorous, reformist leader like Mikhail Gorbachev could staunch the rot, especially when, in the late 1980s, the price of Russian oil fell drastically.

    Looking back, the most distinctive feature of the last years of the Soviet Union may have been the way it continued to pour money into its military — and its military adventure in Afghanistan — when it was already going bankrupt and the society it had built was beginning to collapse around it. In the end, its aging leaders made a devastating miscalculation. They mistook military power for power on this planet.

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    Credibility, once shredded, is impossible to piece together again

    “The man who ordered the attack on the aid flotilla to Gaza, set up the inquiry, chose its members and determined its mandate, has announced its outcome even before it has started,” wrote Chris Doyle, noting Benjamin Netanyahu’s visible satisfaction, confident that he has mounted an effective response to international pressure.

    If the only audience the Israeli prime minister needed to satisfy was made up by the likes of Jeremy Ben-Ami and Barack Obama, Netanyahu could indeed take satisfaction as he proves how easy it is to win unprincipled support.

    On the day of the Mavi Marmara massacre, J Street’s president Ben-Ami issued a statement which included this:

    There will undoubtedly be calls in the coming days for a UN investigation into today’s events. A credible, independent commission appointed by the Israeli government should provide the world with a full and complete report into the causes and circumstances surrounding the day’s events and establish responsibility for the violence and bloodshed.

    The world? And which world would that be?

    There is nothing mysterious about the nature of credibility, but if the Israeli government and members of the pro-Israel lobby and the Obama administration assign themselves the exclusive role of being the arbiters of “credibility” then the term as applied has itself lost credibility.

    The real arbiters of credibility have to include the Turkish government and the Turkish people. In its May 31 statement and a statement issued yesterday, J Street makes no reference to them.

    Indeed, echoing those who see all Israeli violence as justifiable we hear J Street repeat the mantra, Israel has the right to self-defense.

    Given that there has not been a single call for Israel to renounce its right to self-defense, this reiteration of Israel’s “defensive” posture implicitly endorses the claim that the attack on the Mavi Marmara in international waters was itself an act of self-defense.

    The New York Times editorial board — not renowned for its political courage — managed to be bold enough to say that on this matter Israel cannot simply investigate itself. The paper has called for an inquiry overseen by The Quartet and says that Israeli and Turkish representation would have to be included: “That is in Israel’s clear interest. And it is in Turkey’s clear interest. The Obama administration should be pressing both its allies to embrace the idea.”

    Anyone who now holds the position that this is Israel’s business and Israel can somehow impartially investigate itself, apparently regards the families of the dead as irrelevant.

    But as an editorial in Haaretz makes clear, a move by Netanyahu that J Street, the Obama administration and other Israeli apologists have welcomed, does not meet the credibility test even inside Israel.

    The government’s efforts to avoid a thorough and credible investigation of the flotilla affair seem more and more like a farce. The conclusions of an ostensible probe are intended to justify retroactively the decision to blockade Gaza, to forcibly stop the Turkish aid flotilla in international waters and to use deadly force on the deck of the Mavi Marmara.

    To make the costume seem credible, the Prime Minister’s Bureau asked a retired Supreme Court justice, Yaakov Tirkel, to chair the committee. Alongside him will sit foreign observers in order to legitimize the conclusions in international public opinion. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even pledged to testify before the committee, together with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, other ministers and the chief of staff, so “the truth will come out.”

    The truth that Netanyahu wishes to bring out involves the identity of the flotilla’s organizers, its sources of funding and the knives and rods that were brought aboard. He does not intend to probe the decision-making process that preceded the takeover of the ship and the shortcomings that were uncovered. As far as Netanyahu is concerned, it will be enough for television channels to broadcast footage of dark-suited jurists, and politicians addressing them, to present the semblance of an “examination.”

    But Netanyahu’s panel will have no powers, not even those of a government probe, and its proposed chairman does not believe in such a panel. In an interview to Army Radio, Tirkel said there is no choice but to establish a state committee of inquiry. He opposed bringing in foreign observers and made clear that he is not a devotee of drawing conclusions about individuals and dismissing those responsible for failures. When a Haaretz reporter confronted Tirkel about these remarks, the former justice evaded the question saying, “I don’t remember what I said.”

    The disagreements that erupted at the week’s end between Netanyahu and his deputy, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon, over the question of whether Ya’alon was updated in time about the action underscored the suspicion of serious faults in the decision-making process with regard to the flotilla. Instead of being part of the whitewash, Tirkel, whose dodging of his earlier statements does him no honor, should return his mandate to the prime minister and demand that Netanyahu establish a government committee of inquiry with real powers. The public, as Netanyahu said, has a right to know the truth.

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    Did Israel target Raed Salah in the Mavi Marmara raid?

    In an Al Jazeera documentary on the Israeli assault on the Mavi Marmara, it is claimed that Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the northern branch of the Israeli-Arab Islamic Movement, was the target of an attempted assassination during the raid.

    (Video cannot be viewed in the U.S.)

    AJ commentary: Meanwhile, a recording surfaced [from Cultures of Resistance] that appeared to suggest that some activists had been deliberately targeted in advance of the raid.

    Durmus Aydin, Vice Chairman, IHH organization said: “In the pictures there were picture of the Raed Salah. Instead of killing Raed Salah, they killed other one. They’ve killed another people who looks like Raed Salah. And then Raed Salah said that when they killed that guy, the soldier was telling the others, ‘We finished off Raed Salah’.”

    The Alternative Information Center adds:

    Shortly after the Freedom Flotilla was attacked, rumors circulated that Sheikh Salah had been critically injured, hospitalized or even killed. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that he had suffered only minor injuries.

    It has been widely reported, however, that during a hearing shortly before his release at the Ashkelon Magistrates’ Court, Salah stated, “The [Israeli] soldiers tried to kill me. They shot in the direction of someone they thought was me.”

    Born in 1958 in the city of Umm al-Fahm in the Haifa area, Salah was known for his poetry before becoming involved with the Islamic Movement.

    Today, the Islamic Movement in Israel acts on three tracks: religious, social and national. In 1989, the party decided to participate in municipal elections for the first time. Sheikh Salah succeeded in being elected mayor of Umm al-Fahm that year, and was re-elected to the position twice during the 1990s.

    A long-time advocate of the right of return for Palestinian refugees, Sheikh Salah has non-violently protested against the Israeli occupation for decades. His primary focus has been on reinforcing and rebuilding destroyed mosques throughout Israel, and more specifically, protecting the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City. The Israeli authorities have arrested Sheikh Salah on numerous occasions for his promotion of Palestinian human rights.

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    In a different voice: a letter from Israel

    Ronen Shamir, a professor of sociology and law who chairs the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University, writes in Today’s Zaman:

    The truth must be said: The present-day Israeli regime is not interested in peace. The Israeli establishment has become prisoner to an ever growing public of Jewish fanatics — informed by messianic visions of Greater Israel — who over the years not only irreversibly settled in the occupied West Bank, with state funding, but have also penetrated the ranks of army officers, the civil service and the government. The outcome is that the current Israeli regime is firmly grounded in a religiously guided, ultranationalist and xenophobic worldview, one which is bound to bring calamity to the whole region, including Israel.

    Deteriorating relations with Turkey are, sadly, an inevitable outcome of a siege mentality common among Israelis. For many, criticism of Israel’s policies from abroad is not heeded as yet more proof that “the world is against us” in general and that “the world is anti-Semitic” in particular. The Israeli regime, for its part, fosters this view, one that deliberately obscures the crucial difference between criticism of Israeli policies and a principled stand against Israel’s right to exist. The two become one in the Israeli media, the Israeli political propaganda machine, and ultimately, in the Israeli mind. Things became worse when criticism came from Turkey. Over the course of less than two years, following a string of events that reached its tragic climax last month, Turkey has been systematically demonized by the Israeli government. Relying on and further fostering well-embedded stereotypes of Muslims among Israeli Jews, Turkey — abstracted and depicted as a homogenous social-political entity — is now portrayed as the natural ally of militant and radical Islamists around the world.

    It is in the context of such a cynical trope, at this dangerous juncture, that I wish to express my personal apology to the Turkish people for the deadly attack on the flotilla. It is also at this point in time that I believe it important to remember that there are many Israelis who are shocked and dismayed by the way Israel is governed, by the continuous blockade of Gaza and by Israel’s unwillingness to put an end to its occupation and repression of the Palestinian people. There are also many Israelis who understand and lament the folly involved in losing a long-time ally like Turkey, another step along a suicidal road that is leading us into an abyss.

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    The UN and Red Cross agree: the siege of Gaza is unsustainable — it must end

    Although President Obama acknowledges that the situation in Gaza is “unsustainable”, he refuses to draw the obvious conclusion and insist that Israel’s siege must end. But if it can’t continue, it must end, right?

    The International Committee of the Red Cross and the UN are happy to adopt Obama’s term (unsustainable) but are less willing to equivocate. Indeed, the Red Cross has gone even further and accuses Israel of breaking international law through its use of collective punishment.

    As the ICRC has stressed repeatedly, the dire situation in Gaza cannot be resolved by providing humanitarian aid. The closure imposed on the Gaza Strip is about to enter its fourth year, choking off any real possibility of economic development. Gazans continue to suffer from unemployment, poverty and warfare, while the quality of Gaza’s health care system has reached an all-time low.

    The whole of Gaza’s civilian population is being punished for acts for which they bear no responsibility. The closure therefore constitutes a collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law.

    “The closure is having a devastating impact on the 1.5 million people living in Gaza”, said Béatrice Mégevand-Roggo, the ICRC’s head of operations for the Middle East. “That is why we are urging Israel to put an end to this closure and call upon all those who have an influence on the situation, including Hamas, to do their utmost to help Gaza’s civilian population. Israel’s right to deal with its legitimate security concerns must be balanced against the Palestinians’ right to live normal, dignified lives.”

    The international community has to do its part to ensure that repeated appeals by States and international organizations to lift the closure are finally heeded.

    Likewise, the UN is pushing for the blockade not merely to be “eased” or — to use Tony Blair’s language — made “softer” (suggestive of a more compassionate collective punishment?). No, the siege must end.

    [T]he UN said Tuesday that an international consensus has emerged demanding that Israel lift the blockade of Gaza Strip and replace it with a “different and more positive strategy.”

    “The flotilla crisis is the latest symptom of a failed policy,” said Robert Serry, the UN special envoy for Middle East peace process.

    “The situation in Gaza is unsustainable and the current policy is unacceptable and counter-productive, and requires a different, more positive strategy,” Serry said during a UN Security Council session on the Middle East.

    The closure and blockade of the Gaza Strip needs to come to an end,” he said. “There is now a welcome international consensus on Gaza.”

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    The latest threat to Afghanistan’s existence

    Ask a foreigner what Afghans most need and he’s most likely to say: to escape from poverty. Ask an Afghan and he’s more likely to say: to escape from foreign interference.

    The latest news from Afghanistan is no cause for celebration. The New York Times reports:

    The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

    The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

    An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

    The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

    While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

    After all, who wants fight a holy war when you could instead be risking your life for Rio Tinto or Anglo-American?

    Mining is the quintessential parasitic relationship that humans have with this planet. As an exercise in plundering the resources of the earth, it’s natural that the enterprises engaged in this activity have a habit of giving far more attention to what they are in the business of acquiring, than they do to the means by which they acquire it. They have as little respect for their workers as they do for the environment.

    The US officials who told the New York Times that Afghanistan is the new Eldorado, probably thought they were sharing “good news” from a place where that particular commodity is in a desperately short supply.

    Afghans themselves now have reason to wonder whether after having succeeded for centuries in holding back imperial forces they are now in danger of falling victim to the most destructive possible takeover — by global mining conglomerates.

    Some existential threats are imaginary or abstract but Afghanistan now faces a material and cultural threat that could ultimately prove more destructive than decades of war.

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    Obama’s contempt for international standards

    The National Security Strategy of the Obama administration says: “if nations challenge or undermine an international order that is based upon rights and responsibilities, they must find themselves isolated.”

    Israel is currently resisting international pressure to accept an international investigation into the circumstances in which at least nine Turkish civilians were killed by Israeli soldiers on board the Mavi Marmara while the ship was in international waters moving away from Israel.

    The UN Security Council, under pressure from the Obama administration, watered down a call for an international investigation into the massacre by saying that such an inquiry should merely meet “international standards.”

    When team Obama came up with that phrase — as they surely did — did they first consult with George Bush’s former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton? It’s his kind of language. It cynically gives a passing nod to the idea that an inquiry needs international legitimacy, yet leaves it to Israel — a state that views the international community with contempt — to determine how that requirement might be met.

    The answer, as far a Benjamin Netanyahu is concerned, is to toss in a couple of international figures who can observe the workings of the Israeli commission — a three-man body whose members have an average age of 85.

    One of the two internationals is David Trimble, former First Minister of Northern Ireland. Are his the eyes that can ensure this commission conducts “a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation”?

    On the day of the Israeli assault, the Jerusalem Post reported on the launch of the “Friends of Israel Initiative,” a new project in defense of Israel’s right to exist, led by Spain’s former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar. This group of international leaders includes none other than, David Trimble.

    The initiative is being launched now, its sponsors said in a statement, because of their outrage and concern about the “unprecedented delegitimation campaign against Israel, driven by the enemies of the Jewish state and perversely assumed by numerous international authorities.”

    So will a commission in which there is an international observer with a declared suspicion of international organizations, meet “international standards”?

    The White House calls this “an important step forward” and says:

    We believe that Israel, like any other nation, should be allowed to undertake an investigation into events that involve its national security. Israel has a military justice system that meets international standards and is capable of conducting a serious and credible investigation, and the structure and terms of reference of Israel’s proposed independent public commission can meet the standard of a prompt, impartial, credible, and transparent investigation.

    Credible perhaps to an American president who serves at the pleasure of the Israel lobby, but on this matter Obama doesn’t even have the support of the New York Times.

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    What happens when a country has no borders?

    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.

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