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The Real Threat Aboard the Freedom Flotilla
The Freedom Flotilla defied Israel's policy of blocking solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict based on international decisions, and so it had to be crushed.
Israel’s violent attack on the Freedom Flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza shocked the world.
Hijacking boats in international waters and killing passengers is, of course, a serious crime.
But the crime is nothing new. For decades, Israel has been hijacking boats between Cyprus and Lebanon and killing or kidnapping passengers, sometimes holding them hostage in Israeli prisons.
Israel assumes that it can commit such crimes with impunity because the United States tolerates them and Europe generally follows the U.S.’s lead.
As the editors of The Guardian rightly observed on June 1, “If an armed group of Somali pirates had yesterday boarded six vessels on the high seas, killing at least 10 passengers and injuring many more, a NATO task force would today be heading for the Somali coast.” In this case, the NATO treaty obligates its members to come to the aid of a fellow NATO country–Turkey–attacked on the high seas.
Israel’s pretext for the attack was that the Freedom Flotilla was bringing materials that Hamas could use for bunkers to fire rockets into Israel.
The pretext isn’t credible. Israel can easily end the threat of rockets by peaceful means.
The background is important. Hamas was designated a major terrorist threat when it won a free election in January 2006. The U.S. and Israel sharply escalated their punishment of Palestinians, now for the crime of voting the wrong way.
The siege of Gaza, including a naval blockade, was a result. The siege intensified sharply in June 2007 after a civil war left Hamas in control of the territory.
What is commonly described as a Hamas military coup was in fact incited by the U.S. and Israel, in a crude attempt to overturn the elections that had brought Hamas to power.
That has been public knowledge at least since April 2008, when David Rose reported in Vanity Fair that George W. Bush, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Elliott Abrams, “backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.”
Hamas terror included launching rockets into nearby Israeli towns–criminal, without a doubt, though only a minute fraction of routine U.S.-Israeli crimes in Gaza.
In June 2008, Israel and Hamas reached a cease-fire agreement. The Israeli government formally acknowledges that until Israel broke the agreement on Nov. 4 of that year, invading Gaza and killing half a dozen Hamas activists, Hamas did not fire a single rocket.
Hamas offered to renew the cease-fire. The Israeli cabinet considered the offer and rejected it, preferring to launch its murderous invasion of Gaza on Dec.27.
Like other states, Israel has the right of self-defense. But did Israel have the right to use force in Gaza in the name of self-defense? International law, including the U.N. Charter, is unambiguous: A nation has such a right only if it has exhausted peaceful means. In this case such means were not even tried, although–or perhaps because–there was every reason to suppose that they would succeed.
Thus the invasion was sheer criminal aggression, and the same is true of Israel’s resorting to force against the flotilla.
The siege is savage, designed to keep the caged animals barely alive so as to fend off international protest, but hardly more than that. It is the latest stage of longstanding Israeli plans, backed by the U.S., to separate Gaza from the West Bank.
The Israeli journalist Amira Hass, a leading specialist on Gaza, outlines the history of the process of separation: “The restrictions on Palestinian movement that Israel introduced in January 1991 reversed a process that had been initiated in June 1967.
“Back then, and for the first time since 1948, a large portion of the Palestinian people again lived in the open territory of a single country – to be sure, one that was occupied, but was nevertheless whole. …”
Hass concludes: “The total separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank is one of the greatest achievements of Israeli politics, whose overarching objective is to prevent a solution based on international decisions and understandings and instead dictate an arrangement based on Israel’s military superiority.”
The Freedom Flotilla defied that policy and so it must be crushed.
A framework for settling the Arab-Israeli conflict has existed since 1976, when the regional Arab States introduced a Security Council resolution calling for a two-state settlement on the international border, including all the security guarantees of U.N. Resolution 242, adopted after the June War in 1967.
The essential principles are supported by virtually the entire world, including the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic States (including Iran) and relevant non-state actors, including Hamas.
But the U.S. and Israel have led the rejection of such a settlement for three decades, with one crucial and highly informative exception. In President Bill Clinton’s last month in office, January 2001, he initiated Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Taba, Egypt, that almost reached an agreement, participants announced, before Israel terminated the negotiations.
Today, the cruel legacy of a failed peace lives on.
International law cannot be enforced against powerful states, except by their own citizens. That is always a difficult task, particularly when articulate opinion declares crime to be legitimate, either explicitly or by tacit adoption of a criminal framework–which is more insidious, because it renders the crimes invisible.
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy. He writes a monthly column for The New York Times News Service/Syndicate.
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Reader Comments
Noam Chomsky forthrightly advocates a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. This does not excuse his totally one-sided view of the conflict.
He indicates that the Israelis broke the ceasefire in November 2008 but does not mention why. They noticed a tunnel being built from Gaza to the Israeli side; this was the same tactic used when Hamas infiltrated Israel a couple of years before to kill two soldiers and capture a third on the Israeli side. In retaliation for destroying the tunnel, Hamas launched heavy rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli towns and cities. It was to silence this attack that Israel launched its massive operations against Gaza in Dec. 2008 and Jan. ‘09.
Legal scholars disagree on this, but there are many who argue that Israel had the legal right to interdict and inspect cargoes heading toward Gaza, to prevent the importation of offensive weaponry. The Israelis were unprepared for the fact that the sixth ship they boarded included “activists” intent on a violent confrontation. Cornered, outnumbered and beset by attackers, Israel’s naval commandos used lethal force.
There is much that Israel can be blamed for before, during and after this tragic incident, but there is also much blame to go around. Prof. Chomsky is smart enough to know this.
Posted by rseliger on Jun 8, 2010 at 8:18 AM
rseliger,
I think you make some good points. I saw youtube video footage of the violent altercation between the ship’s passengers and the IDF soldiers. It certainly looks as though the activists also used lethal force. They attacked and beat several soldiers with clubs and threw one over board into the sea. This has less to do with self defense than blind, bloody rage at Israel. It was certainly not necessary for the activists to attack the soldiers and had they not done this nine people would not have been killed. I’m sure there could be legal problems with the way this whole thing was handled by the IDF but they do have the right to inspect ships coming into Gaza. The Egyptians also exersized this right during their three year blockade and it was found acceptable. Gaza is not a legally recognized part of Egypt either.
I am not suprised that Chomsky didn’t provide the context for the broken ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in November 2008. Failure to do so is tantamount to outright lying. He was deliberately misleading. He didn’t provide a context for this accusation either;
“For decades, Israel has been hijacking boats between Cyprus and Lebanon and killing or kidnapping passengers, sometimes holding them hostage in Israeli prisons.”
One loses all credibility as a journalist or scholar not merely because of bias, but arguing in a deliberately misleading fashion. I expect this from FOXNews but not a noted scholar who taught for years at MIT. This is very disappointing. Regardless of one’s political beliefs regarding Israel it is necessary to be objective and fair, reserving judgement until all the facts are accurately presented by all parties concerned. It is important to deal in facts and not hyperbole. This is as much a part of the problem as anything else.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Jun 8, 2010 at 10:30 AM
Contrary to rseliger’s assertion, the Gaza blockade is not and never has been about “interdicting and inspecting” cargo for the “importation of offensive weaponry.” Its goal has always been political: to cause the civilian population as much suffering as possible - while still politically excusable - in order for the Palestinians in Gaza to reject and rise up against the Hamas leadership elected in January 2006. “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger,” senior Israeli government advisor Dov Weisglass notoriously explained in 2006.
See: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/03
Maintaining a strict embargo on arms and related materiel, which could be used by Hamas against Israeli civilians, is arguably reasonable. But Israel’s severe restriction on medicines, food, and construction material needed to rebuild the thousands of homes - as well as schools and medical facilities - destroyed in Israel’s three-week military offensive two and a half years ago is NOT.
Rseliger “is smart enough to know this,” and his blatantly false assertion about the goals of the Gaza blockade are exposed by simply reviewing the items listed by Israel itself as embargoed.
Posted by Imran on Jun 8, 2010 at 10:43 AM
Sorry, I left out the link for the current embargoed items. See the Economist at:
http://www.economist.com/node/16264970
The source for the Economist article is the Israeli human rights group Gisha.
Posted by Imran on Jun 8, 2010 at 11:03 AM
And rseliger’s statement about the heavily armed Israeli commandos being “cornered, outnumbered and beset by attackers” is a laughable attempt at role reversal.
“As for the Israeli argument that its soldiers were attacked, that is ridiculous. Israeli commandos were ordered to board a civilian ship in international waters and the government that sent them claims that the resisting passengers attacked them without provocation. This is like a carjacker complaining to the police that the driver bashed him with a crowbar that was under the seat. Neither carjackers nor hijackers should expect their victims to acquiesce peacefully.”
For the full article by M.J. Rosenberg, see:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/03-7
The primary Israeli defense that the passengers attacked heavily armed commandos first, and the poor fellows only responded in kind (i.e. that the passengers were to blame, they should have cooperated non-violently) seemed ludicrous on its face. It is not surprising that even this flimsy excuse for murdering innocents on the high seas is falling apart as the IDF now admits “doctoring” the video, and the hostages side of the story is finally being revealed.
“According to survivors - who include a former ambassador, a Nobel laureate and several well-known human rights activists - the Israeli commandos came heavily armed with explosives and automatic weapons, and some opened fire from the air before landing on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish-flagged vessel leading the flotilla ...
Among those offering a contradictory account was Ed Peck, a former U.S. ambassador and deputy director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism during the Reagan administration. who was on board the Sfendoni vessel of the Freedom Flotilla.
‘The first thing we knew was the sound of footsteps, and my eye lids flicked open, and there they were, heavily armed,’ said Peck, who was one of the first hostages to be released. ‘The Israeli government keeps referring to the paint guns, but the paint guns were attached to the automatic weapons and the stun grenades and the pepper spray and the tasers and everything else that these guys carry.’”
See: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/05-0
Rseliger’s post defending these outrageous IDF actions demonstrates a much more biased view of the conflict than anything he claims regarding Mr. Chomsky’s excellent peice above.
Posted by Imran on Jun 8, 2010 at 12:11 PM
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