Category Archives: Issues

Russian-speaking immigrants push Israel further right

Haaretz reports:

Immigrants from the former Soviet Union who came to Israel in the 1990s are moving further to the right of the political spectrum, even as they increasingly feel part of Israeli society, according to a new poll.

According to the study, only 13 percent of immigrants polled said they were prepared to concede any territory at all in exchange for peace with the Palestinians, down from 37 percent in 1999.

The report also found that 84 percent of immigrants say they feel “at home” in Israel, up from 53 percent in a survey conducted 12 years ago. Nevertheless, only 62 percent said they are sure they will stay here, virtually unchanged from 60 percent in 1999.

Dr. Zeev Khanin, the Immigrant Absorption Ministry’s chief scientist, dismissed the significance of this finding, saying that similarly high percentages of veteran Israelis describe themselves as being unsure they will stay here. This ambivalence is due mainly to the challenges of life in Israel, “and isn’t necessarily connected to absorption difficulties,” he argued.

Central Bureau of Statistics data seems to contradict this claim, showing that of Israelis who left the country in 2008 and stayed away for more than a year, almost one-third were immigrants from the former Soviet Union. But the ministry said the number of people leaving the country permanently has dropped since 2004, and today, only some 97,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union live overseas.

The study also surveyed the immigrants’ attitudes toward Israeli Arabs and the Israeli-Arab conflict. It found that while immigrants from the former Soviet Union had negative attitudes toward Arabs back in the 1990s as well, this trend has strengthened in the intervening decade. According to Prof. Majid Al-Haj, Haifa University’s vice president and dean of research, who served as lead researcher on the study, the immigrants’ views are more extreme than those of veteran Israelis.

For instance, the study found, 55 percent of the immigrants said Israel should work to reduce the number of Arabs in the country, compared to only 41 percent of veteran Israelis. About two-thirds said Israeli Arabs constitute a national security risk, compared with 59 percent of veteran Israelis. And only 4 percent would accept their child marrying a Muslim Arab, compared to 9 percent of veteran Israelis.

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U.N. slams Israel for lethal reply to protesters along Lebanese border

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The United Nations sharply criticized Israel for using live ammunition in May against Palestinian protesters who tried to scale an Israeli security fence on the Lebanese border, according to a U.N. report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The confidential report to the U.N. Security Council, dated Friday, also accuses Israel of violating the 2006 cease-fire agreement that ended the six-week conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite group. The May 15 incident near Maroun al-Ras, Lebanon, led to seven deaths and 111 injuries.

The report also accuses about 1,000 protesters of a group of 10,000 that day of violating the cease-fire by carrying out a “provocative and violent act.”

The report appears to have further strained relations between the U.N. and Israel and is likely to increase Israel’s isolation amid an international campaign to challenge its policies on the occupied territories.

The U.N. blamed Israel for turning too quickly to live ammunition to stop the protesters advancing on the Israeli border. “Other than firing initial warning shots, the Israel Defense Forces did not use conventional crowd-control methods or any other method than lethal weapons against the demonstrators,” the report said. It added that the act “constituted a violation of [the cease-fire] resolution and was not commensurate to the threat to Israeli soldiers.”

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Journalists barred from flight to Israel

Al Jazeera reports:

Two Dutch journalists were not allowed to board a flight from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv late yesterday.

Security Correspondent Bud Wichers and Photographer Ettora Hesseling, who are both working for an International news agency, recently covered the preparation of the Dutch Flotilla activists from Greece.

They intended to sail with flotilla, but backed out after a disagreement between the Dutch organizers and Dutch journalists.
They were told by a staff member of El Al Airlines, an Israeli company, that that they would pose a serious flight risk, and for that reason could not board the plane.

“We wanted to tell both sides of the Flotilla story and scheduled interviews with Israelis who oppose the action of the activists,” said Wichers.

“Later on we wanted to go to Gaza to see how Israel is bringing aid to the people there. Israel denied us the opportunity to tell their side of the story. Instead we are labeled terrorists now, even though Netanyahu’s office specifically said they would not target journalists who covered the Freedom Flotilla 2.”

Wichers has worked numerous times in the Israel and the Palestinian areas and covered the Middle East for over 10 years.

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Libyan rebels gain inches toward link to Tripoli

The New York Times reports:

Rebels opposed to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi seized control of this village in the mountains on Wednesday, extending their hold in western Libya and inching toward a supply route to the capital that they hope to sever.

After a half-day gun battle, Colonel Qaddafi’s soldiers yielded the town in the early afternoon, firing rockets and mortars to cover their withdrawal. The ordnance exploded on the hillsides around the town with reverberating booms and plumes of dust and smoke that briefly kept the rebels away.

But the rebels flowed in behind the fleeing troops, capturing more than a dozen of them and collecting the departed soldiers’ abandoned ammunition and equipment. Soon they were refueling their cars and pickup trucks at the gas station they now held.

Qawalish changed hands while rebels elsewhere reported making progress outside of Misurata, east of the capital, Tripoli. They said they were advancing toward the city of Zlitan. Those reports could not be independently confirmed.

In the mountains, the rebels said they hoped their day signaled new momentum for a fight in western Libya that had been deadlocked for more than a week. “We are doing well,” said Sofian Alhaj, a fighter who said he was a former employee of an investment company run by Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, one of the Libyan leader’s sons. “Now we will keep going, until we are in Tripoli.”

That ambition, if realized, would most likely occur in increments. Geographically, the seizure of Qawalish marked a minor shift in the front lines. But it moved the rebels within about 35 miles of Gharyan, a small city astride a strategic highway running south from Tripoli.

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Juliano ship heads for Gaza

Ynet reports:

The Gaza-bound Juliano ship left Greece Wednesday afternoon, after suffering huge delays due in part to a ban set by Athens on the departure of flotilla ships from its ports.

On board the ship are 20 activists. Last week flotilla organizers claimed that Israel had sabotaged the ship in an attempt to prevent it from sailing.

“We are at sea,” former Israeli Dror Feiler, one of the organizers, told Ynet. “All roads lead to Gaza. It will be a small but high-quality flotilla.”

Greta Berlin, a spokeswoman for the Free Gaza movement, told Ynet that the Juliano will rendezvous, in international waters, with a French boat already at sea before heading towards the Strip. She gave no details on the location of the meeting.

Feiler also refused to provide details on the progress planned for the boats. “At this point I can only say that after a lengthy battle we finally succeeded in departing. The Greeks gave us a lot of trouble, but we met all of their conditions and they couldn’t hold us any longer,” he said. “It was like David versus Goliath.”

The former Israeli also lamented the fact that a Greek company had reneged on a deal to provide cement for the people of Gaza.

“They gave us our money back, said they had been pressured and that they could not hold up their end of the deal,” he said, adding that the flotilla organizers plan to sue the company.

The Juliano had previously attempted to set sail on Tuesday, but the Greek coast guard surrounded the ship and quashed the attempt. Now, Feiler believes, the only thing standing between them and Gaza is the IDF.

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‘Sexy Israel’ getting treatment for flotilla nightmares – updated

Dimi Reider writes:

I’m somewhat of a fool for excruciatingly bad Hasbara videos, but this one surely takes the cake:

From this video, we learn “Israel” is massively paranoid, even somewhat hysterical, believing edited second-hand evidence from biased sources (IDF spokesman’s video from the flotilla), suspicious of people trying to help her and storming out of treatment – so far so true. Apart from making rather poorly judged use of the experience of real women with real trauma, the July 1st video is also ridiculously sexist; beginning with the cheap camera-pan up the actress’s legs and ending with the fact it was first posted on Youtube a day earlier, under the title “Sex with the Psychologist”.

Is this for real? Your guess is as good as mine. This is so embarrassingly counterproductive one feels it simply has to be satire. But then again, so is our foreign policy.

Update: The actress is Tel Aviv based Aimee Niestat. Niestat confirmed to +972 it was her in the video, but declined to say who was behind it. However, +972 was able to confirm through a source with knowledge of the actress’ engagement that the gig was indeed a Hasbara video commissioned by the government. It’s unclear whether this was specifically the Information Ministry – we’ll confirm as soon as we get their response.

Update: Max Blumenthal adds:

A source who works inside Haaretz told me that Neistat is a Haaretz employee who translates Hebrew content into English (occasionally staffers at the translation desk produce original journalist content and editorials). Of course, everyone at Haaretz is entitled to their opinion, but Neistat’s involvement in a government-sponsored propaganda campaign seems like an ethical breach. As appallingly bad as the video was, the fact that an apparent staffer for one of Israel’s major newspapers played a starring role is far worse.

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Challenging Israeli apartheid — by plane

Mazin Qumsiyeh writes:

This week, hundreds of activists plan on challenging Israel’s apartheid apartheid by flying in to Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv as part of the “Welcome to Palestine” initiative. Heraclitis once stated that “There is nothing permanent except change,” and indeed human history is a chronicle of change — and the Welcome to Palestine project follows that tradition.

No change happens without challenging the status quo. Few people reflect even on modern history to understand how we achieved things like civil rights in the US, enlightenment in Europe, ending slavery, giving women the right to vote and establishing democracies around the world. All these changes from an unjust situation (the status quo) required the agency of mass movement.

On our horizon today is of course the mass movement of Arab people yearning for freedom from decades of dictatorships — many of those structures created and supported by the West.

Rebellion against injustice of course is also a hallmark of the struggle against apartheid in Palestine, a struggle that can be traced back to the first Zionist colony built 131 years ago and that took a giant leap forward by the 1948 founding of the racist state of Israel as a culmination and embodiment of this colonial venture, and the subsequent expansion of this state in 1967 to occupy the rest of Palestine.

Now 7 of the 11 million Palestinians in the world are refugees or displaced people. Palestinian refugees constitute one-third of all refugees worldwide, according to UN statistics. Yet, we are optimistic and we believe change is on the way.

Noam Sheizaf adds:

Though the intention of the international activists to visit the West Bank has been known for sometime, it was only picked up by the Hebrew media in the last couple of days. Citing security officials, Israeli papers have reported on special deployment of police forces at Ben-Gurion international airport to take place from Thursday.

A police source told the daily Maariv that an effort will be made to locate the activists before they board their flights to Israel. “Those who will try to disturb public order will be dealt with,” a spokesperson for the Foreign Office told the site Walla.co.il.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office has released a statement declaring that the arrival of the protesters “is a continuation of the efforts to undermine Israel’s right to exist.” Netanyahu ordered the Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharomowitz (Israel Beitenu) to handle the preparation of all security agencies to the arrival of the activists. Aharonowitz will conduct a joint session of senior police officials tomorrow, the Army Radio reported.

“We will block those Hooligans from entering the state,” Aharonowitz told the press today.

The local media has labeled the event as “the air flotilla.”

The Israeli warning doesn’t seem to deter the activists from coming, though it is nor clear how many of them did buy tickets to Tel Aviv, and how many of those will be able to pass through the security questionings at the gate and board their flights.

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The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians along Greater Israel’s eastern frontier

The Washington Post reports:

The Israeli troops and bulldozers arrived in the early morning and quickly got to work, tearing down shelters made of plastic netting and poles that had served as homes for about 100 people in this impoverished Bedouin community in the parched Jordan Valley.

The aftermath of the sweep last month against what Israeli authorities said were illegally built structures was still visible on a recent afternoon. Battered appliances, broken furniture, tattered clothing and other belongings that residents said they were prevented from removing were strewn in the dirt piled on the collapsed dwellings.

People took cover from the baking sun in makeshift tents constructed from the remains of their former homes and in others supplied by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. Mobile tanks and electricity cables temporarily strung across the ground were the only sources of water and power.

“We have nowhere else to go,” said Talib Abayat, sitting in the shade of a lone tree.

The desolate scene reflected the state of the neglected Palestinian communities of the Jordan Valley, an area that amounts to more than a quarter of the West Bank but remains largely under Israeli control, with wide gaps between the resources allocated to Palestinians and Israeli settlers.

Running along the West Bank’s border with Jordan, the Jordan Valley has long been considered an area of strategic importance by Israel, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has demanded a long-term military presence there as part of any future peace deal with the Palestinians.

Israeli settlements housing about 9,400 people line the road through the valley, scattered among ramshackle villages and encampments where about 80,000 Palestinians live. Nowhere in the West Bank is the contrast more stark between the settlements, with their intensively irrigated farmland, red-roofed homes and streets shaded by shrubs and trees, and the dusty Palestinian communities and their fields, dependent on limited water supplies.

A series of demolition operations last month underlined Israel’s claim to the area, which a recent poll showed most Israelis believe is part of Israel, not occupied territory, and populated mostly by Israelis. The poll was commissioned by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has asserted that there can be no Palestinian state without the Jordan Valley, which he called the Palestinian breadbasket. Yet with more than 70 percent of the area under Israeli control — designated as state land, military firing zones or nature reserves — the Palestinian Authority has little influence over the region’s development and the use of its resources.

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Egypt to Gaza: The road begins here

An editorial in Egypt’s Al-Masry Al-Youm says:

Egypt owes its unique history prior Mubarak to its pro-activeness in the region. A revolutionary Egypt must now reclaim its former prominence.

Perhaps the re-opening of Rafah border crossing and the success of the Palestinian reconciliation in Cairo are living proof that the Arab World’s national dignity following Egypt’s freedom from the grasp of the former regime, which succeeded in ripping the people of their sense of solidarity and responsibility for regional causes.

These positive changes come on the heels of years of the Egyptian state sponsoring the Gaza blockade under the Mubarak regime.

Today, the international community is tested – yet again – on its stance toward the Palestinian cause. The Freedom Flotilla II, a convoy of ships aiming to bring supplies and express support to the besieged people of Gaza, is now stuck in Greek waters following Israel’s pressure on Greece to prevent flotilla vessels from departing the port.

Following discovery that propeller shafts of two ships have been damaged, there are speculations that the Mossad may have sabotaged the boats.

Arab governments remain silent in the face of vehement international criticism of Israeli policy vis-à-vis the Palestinian people. Once more, we revert back to people – to our people – for only they can initiate an act of resistance.

As part of Egypt’s conscience and its rising revolutionary fabric, we at Al-Masry Al-Youm call for a public campaign to invite the Freedom Flotilla II to sail to the Gaza Strip from one of Egypt’s ports.

While we believe the Freedom Flotilla II is better off sailing from Egypt for logistical reasons, we also think the decision gives a strong political message. This is the political message of enacting popular solidarity with the Palestinian cause and challenging the incumbent naval blockade. This is also our chance to rewrite a shameful political history of Egypt sponsoring the blockade, especially during Israel’s war on the strip during the 2009 Cast Lead operation, when over 1000 Palestinians – mostly civilians – lost their lives.

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Greece confines Gaza flotilla and frees U.S. captain

Reuters reports:

The captain of a U.S. ship arrested for trying to sail to Gaza as part of a flotilla aiming to deliver aid to Palestinians despite a Greek ban was freed on Tuesday, but three other activists were still in custody.

Just over a year after nine people were killed when Israeli marines stormed a pro-Palestinian flotilla, authorities last week banned ships destined for Gaza from leaving Greek ports to stop the latest flotilla “for their safety.”

American John Klusmire, 60, captain of the “Audacity for Hope” ferrying mostly U.S. activists, was charged with breaching the Greek ban and putting lives at risk after being intercepted last week at sea by armed Greek coastguards.

“He is released, there is no charge against him. He is free to go,” Adam Shapiro, one of the organisers of the Free Gaza Movement told Reuters by telephone from the port of Piraeus. “Our destination remains the freedom of the Palestinian people.”

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A July Fourth shame on America’s founders

Ray McGovern writes:

Yes, that was I standing before the U.S. Embassy in Athens on the eve of the July Fourth weekend holding the American flag in the distress mode — upside down.

Indignities experienced by me and my co-guests on “The Audacity of Hope,” the American boat to Gaza, over the past ten days in Athens leave no doubt in my mind that Barack Obama’s administration has forfeited the right to claim any lineage to the brave Americans who declared independence from the king of England 235 years ago.

In the Declaration of Independence, they pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to a new enterprise of freedom, democracy and the human spirit. The outcome was far from assured; likely as not, the hangman’s noose awaited them. They knew that all too well.

But they had a genuine audacity to hope that the majority of their countrymen and women, persuaded by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and the elegant words of Thomas Jefferson, would conclude that the goal of liberty and freedom was worth the risk, that it was worth whatever the cost.

These days we have been seduced into thinking that such principles have become “quaint” or “obsolete” – words used by President George W. Bush’s White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to make light of important international agreements like the Geneva Conventions.

As every American should know, and remember, the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence were based on the firm belief that ALL men are created equal, that they have UNALIENABLE rights — among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Not just “all Americans,” mind you, but all people. The Declaration of Independence was meant to be a statement expressing the “self-evident” rights of all mankind. Those principles had a universality that was a beacon to the world.

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Time to ditch the Oslo Accords

Akiva Eldar writes:

In October 1991 he came with U.S. President George H.W. Bush to the Madrid Conference, which squandered the fruits of the Gulf War victory. In September 1993 he celebrated, with U.S. President Bill Clinton, the birth of the battered Oslo Accords. In early 1997 he managed to get Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sign the Hebron Accord, which left tens of thousands of Palestinians to the mercy of the students of Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba. In late 1998 he was among those who gave birth to the Wye River Memorandum, which died in infancy. In 2000 he was a senior partner to the reverberating failure of American diplomacy in Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. And here he is again, this time as U.S. President Barack Obama’s special envoy responsible for prolonging the death throes of the terminally ill patient known as the peace process.

Before Dennis Ross’ comeback, our acquaintance managed to write a new book (together with David Makovsky ) called “Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East.”

It would be tough to find a bigger expert than Ross on the myths and illusions related to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. For years he has been nurturing the myth that if the United States would only meet his exact specifications, the Israeli right would offer the Arabs extensive concessions.

During the years he headed the American peace team, Israeli settlement construction ramped up. Now Ross, the former chairman of the Jewish People Policy Institute, is trying to convince the Palestinians to give up on bringing Palestinian independence for a vote in the United Nations in September and recognize the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people – in other words, as his country, though he was born in San Francisco, more than that of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who was born in Safed.

If they give up on the UN vote, Ross argues, then Netanyahu will be so kind as to negotiate a final-status agreement with them. Has anyone heard anything recently about a construction freeze in the settlements?

Ross is trying to peddle the illusion that the most right-wing government Israel has ever seen will abandon the strategy of eradicating the Oslo approach in favor of fulfilling the hated agreement. In an effort to save his latest boss from choosing between recognizing a Palestinian state at the risk of clashing with the Jewish community and voting against recognition at the risk of damaging U.S. standing in the Arab world, Ross is trying to drag the Palestinians back into the “peace process” trap.

If Obama really intended to justify his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, he would not have left the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the hands of this whiz at the never-ending management of the conflict.

Let us hope that the Palestinians are not tempted to give up on the UN vote in favor of the appearance of negotiations, which will serve to further prolong settlement expansion under the cover of the Oslo Accords. All we need is to recall the statement by Netanyahu, in which he was recorded telling settlers in Ofra in 2001 that he had previously extorted from the Americans a commitment that he would be the one to determine what qualifies as the “defined military sites” in the territories that will remain under Israeli control.

Netanyahu said that from his perspective the entire Jordan Valley qualifies. “Why is this important?” he asked. “Because from that moment I put a halt to the Oslo Accords.”

As for Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the Palestinians need to trap him with his own words; he had previously threatened that if the United Nations recognizes a Palestinian state, Israel will annul the Oslo Accords.

If I were in Abbas’ place, I would tell Dennis Ross that he should tell his president to forget about negotiations without recognition in writing from Netanyahu stating that the permanent borders will be based on the 1967 lines with agreed-upon changes and committing to a total freeze of settlement construction during negotiations and a set timetable for withdrawal from the territories.

You don’t want Oslo? Fine, we don’t need it. No more “Palestinian Authority”; no more Area A, B or C (a division that has in effect created a Land of the Settlers on 60 percent of the territory ); no more “peace process.”

Restore military rule in the West Bank. At the same time, you can reoccupy Gaza and go back to Gush Katif.

According to the Oslo Accords, the final-status agreement was supposed to have been decided upon 13 years ago – meaning that we would be celebrating its bar mitzvah this year. On September 13, the accords themselves will be turning 18, the number signifying life in the Jewish mystical tradition. The time has come to put the Oslo Accords out of their misery.

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Britain’s arrest of Sheikh Raed Salah

Jonathan Cook writes:

He is an Islamic “preacher of hate” whose views reflect “virulent anti-Semitism” and who has funded Hamas terror operations, according to much of the British media.

The furore last week over Sheikh Raed Salah, described by the Daily Mail newspaper as a “vile militant extremist”, goaded the British government into ordering his late-night arrest, pending a fast-track deportation. The raid on his hotel, from which he was taken handcuffed to a police cell, came shortly before he was due to address a meeting in the British parliament attended by several MPs.

The outcry in Britain against Sheikh Salah has shocked Israel’s 1.3-million Palestinian citizens. For them, he is a spiritual leader and head of a respected party, the Islamic Movement. He is also admired by the wider Palestinian public. The secular Fatah movement, including Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority’s prime minister, were among those condemning his arrest.

Many Palestinians, like millions of Muslims in the Middle East, revere Sheikh Salah for his campaign to protect Muslim and Christian holy places from Israel’s neglectful, and more often abusive, policies. They struggle to recognise the British media’s characterisation of him as an Osama Bin Laden-like figure.

Most in Israel’s Jewish majority would not have been aware of Sheikh Salah’s supposed reputation as a Jew hater either, despite their hyper-vigilance for anything resembling anti-Semitism. True, he is generally loathed by Israeli Jews, but chiefly because they regard his brand of Islamic dogma as incompatible with the state ideology of Jewish supremacism. They fear him as the leader of a local Islam that refuses to be tamed. Those Israelis who conclude that this qualifies him as an anti-Semite do so only because they class all pious Muslims in the same category.

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Obama plans re-election campaign visit to Israel

Why hasn’t President Obama visited Israel yet? Is his love of the Jewish state not deep enough? Does he not have a strong enough commitment to the unshakable relationship with America’s closest ally?

I guess no one need have worried over such troubling questions when the answer has long been obvious: Obama always intended to visit Israel when to do so would yield the maximum political profit, i.e. during the 2012 presidential campaign.

Of course his visit will be billed as part of his presidential rather than election campaign agenda, but have no doubt: it will be a campaign event.

James Cunningham, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Israel, said Tuesday that U.S. President Barack Obama intends on visiting Israel.

Cunningham mentioned that Israel is on Obama’s agenda during a farewell meeting with Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, who thanked Cunningham for his service as the two discussed the current state of U.S.-Israel relations.

In their discussion, Rivlin told Cunningham that many Israelis feel the mood in the White House has changed for the worse. “[They worry] Israel has become a burden rather than a strategic asset to the United States,” Rivlin said.

The same theme appears in this report:

Every year, a few days before the Fourth of July, the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Herzliya Pituach opens its gate to thousands of guests in a celebration of American independence. The usual ritual – lots of American kitsch, a notable presence of the business, political and military elite, McDonald’s and Pizza Hut stands and sappy speeches by the prime minister and the president.

Over the past three years, despite the growing tensions between Washington and Jerusalem, the event held last Thursday did not rock the boat. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu played the role he was assigned. “When the American people celebrate their independence, the people in Israel celebrate with them, – because we know how blessed we are, how meaningful what happened on July 4, 1776 is for us,” he said. “Over the years we have had to defend ourselves again and again. Our freedom, our independence. This struggle was possible because of the U.S.’ support.”

Netanyahu kept congratulating and the audience kept cheering, yet beneath the surface it is clear that the relations between the U.S. and Israel are undergoing a crisis, and that both sides are re-examining those very relations. There is a reason that these days there is a cynical remark being uttered around Washington – “For the U.S., Israel has been turned lately from an asset to a pain in the ass-et.”

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Sabotaging Flotilla II: waging war against civil society

International law and international relations scholar, Richard Falk, writes:

The reports that two of the foreign flagged ships planning to be part of the ten vessel Freedom Flotilla II experienced similar forms of disabling sabotage creates strong circumstantial evidence of Israeli responsibility. It stretches the imagination to suppose that a sophisticated cutting of the propeller shafts of both ships is a coincidence with no involvement by Israel’s Mossad, long infamous for its overseas criminal acts in support of contested Israeli national interests. Recalling the lethal encounter in international waters with Freedom Flotilla I that took place on 31 May 2010, and the frantic diplomatic campaign by Tel Aviv to prevent this second challenge to the Gaza blockade by peace activists and humanitarian aid workers, such conduct by a state against this latest civil society initiative, if further validated by incriminating evidence, should be formally condemned as a form of ‘state terrorism’ or even as an act of war by a state against global civil society.

The Israeli Government has so far done little to deny its culpability. Its highest officials speak of the allegations in self-righteous language that is typically diversionary, asserting an irrelevant right of self-defense, which supposedly comes mysteriously into play whenever civil society acts nonviolently to break the siege of Gaza that has persisted for more than four years. From the perspective of the obligations to uphold international law it is the Flotilla participants who are acting legally and morally, certainly well within their rights, and it is Israel and their friends that are resorting to a variety of legally and morally dubious tactics to insulate this cruel and unlawful blockade from what is essentially a symbolic challenge. The behavior of the Greek Government, surely a reflection of its precarious financial and political situation, also violates the law of the sea: foreign flagged vessels can be detained in port only if they are acting in violation of national law or are proven to be unseaworthy and dangerous to international navigation. Otherwise, interference by detention or by seizing while en route within Greek territorial waters is an unlawful interference with the right of innocent passage. Greece would be very vulnerable to defeat and damages if the Freedom Flotilla victims of these encroachment on rights were to have recourse to the Hamburg International Tribunal for Law of the Sea.

The most relevant precedent for such government-sponsored sabotage is the Rainbow Warrior incident of 1985. There French agents detonated explosives on a Greenpeace (an environmental NGO) fishing trawler docked in the Auckland, New Zealand harbor prior to proactively challenging the French plans to conduct underwater nuclear tests off the shore of the nearby Pacific atoll, Moruroa. Fernando Pereira , Greenpeace photographer for the mission, was killed by the explosions, although the devices were detonated at night when no one from Greenpeace was expected to be on board the vessel. At first, the French government completely denied involvement, later as incriminating evidence mounted, Paris officially claimed that its agents who were identified as being near the scene were only spying on Greenpeace activities and had nothing to do with the explosives, and later still, as the evidence of French culpability became undeniable, officials in France finally admitted government responsibility for this violent undertaking to eliminate activist opposition to their nuclear test, even acknowledging that the operation had been given the bizarre, although self-incriminating, code-name of Operation Satanique.

After some further months of controversy the French Prime Minister, Laurent Fabius cleared the air by issuing a contrite statement: “The truth is cruel. Agents of the French secret service sank the boat. They were acting on orders.” (the decision to destroy the Rainbow Warrior were later confirmed to have come from France’s supreme leader at the time, the president of the Republic, Francois Mitterand) The French agents who had by then been arrested by the New Zealand police, charged with arson, willful damage, and murder, but due to pressure from the French government that included a threatened European economic embargo on New Zealand exports, the charges were reduced. The French defendants were allowed to enter a guilty plea to lesser charges of manslaughter that was accepted by the Auckland court, resulting in a ten-year prison sentence, and later supplemented by an inter-governmental deal that virtually eliminated the punishment. The French paid New Zealand $6.5 million and issued an apology, while the convicted agents were transferred to a French military base on Hao atoll, and were later wrongly released only two years after being genteelly confined in comfortable quarters provided by the base.

It is useful to compare the Flotilla II unfolding experience with the Rainbow Warrior incident. At the time, the French nuclear tests in the Pacific were considered legal, although intensely contested, while the blockade of Israel is widely viewed as a prolonged instance of collective punishment in violation of international humanitarian law, specifically Article 33 of the 4th Geneva Convention. Although Israel could argue that it had a right to monitor ships suspected of carrying arms to occupied Gaza, the Freedom Flotilla II ships made themselves available for inspection, and there was no sufficient security justification for the blockade as the investigation by the UN Human Rights Council of the 2010 flotilla incident made clear. The overriding role of the blockade is to inflict punitive damage on the people of Gaza. Even before the blockade was imposed in 2007 all shipments at the Gaza crossing points were painstakingly monitored by Israel for smuggled weapons.

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