It seems possible, therefore, that the same principle may be at work in case of Israeli attack on the relief ships. Right wingers could have done it to gain partisan support inside Israel and further impress the warmongering mentality on the society.
This internal political dimension seems to be missing from most accounts of the event. Can anyone knowledgeable about Israeli partisan politics comment on this?
Wojtek
On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 9:20 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> [This is sophisticated bourgeois opinion, but it does suggest that there's
> really no global ruling class consensus in favor of Israel.]
>
> Financial Times - May 31, 2010
>
> Israel is lost at sea
>
> With Monday’s brazen act of piracy, Israel dealt a blow to the legitimacy
> of its own struggle. The killing of activists aboard the captured ships sent
> Israel’s way of defending its security, which it was already imperative to
> return within the bounds of international law, hurtling into lawlessness.
>
> Israel claims the activists had links with extremist groups and that some
> attacked Israeli soldiers with knives and sticks (and in some accounts the
> odd light firearm). Even if true, this would not justify the illegal capture
> of civilian ships carryinghumanitarian aid in international waters, let
> alone the use of deadly force.
>
> Outrageous as this behaviour was, the true outrage is the illegal blockade
> of Gazathat it enforced. Since the January 2009 Gaza war, which exposed
> Israel’s determination to destroy Hamas’s capabilities regardless of the
> cost to innocent Palestinians, Israel and Egypt have colluded to prevent the
> enclave’s reconstruction. According to the United Nations, three-quarters of
> the damage has not been repaired and 60 per cent of homes do not have enough
> food.
>
> The ostensible goal is to weaken Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot
> that rules Gaza (and whose Egyptian incarnation is Hosni Mubarak’s only real
> opposition). But the blockade aimed at crushing it, besides the illegal
> collective punishment it implies, only shores up Hamas’s support. If Israel
> and Egypt wanted to turn Gaza into a mafia-run statelet, they could hardly
> do better than sever any alternatives to Hamas’s smuggling network, leaving
> the population even more at its mercy.
>
> Hamas engages in terrorism and fires occasional rockets into Israel, but it
> is an example of that rarest of Middle Eastern species: a popularly elected
> government. It has also signed up to the 2002 comprehensive peace offer by
> the Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. If this is a
> bluff, it is one Israel has yet to call. That is what this is ultimately
> about. Israel’s government has been pretending it is ready to negotiate for
> peace, but that there is no one to negotiate with on the other side. The
> attack on the blockade-busters lays bare the country’s slide into contempt
> for international law, intolerance of dissent and wilful sabotage of viable
> representation for Palestinians.
>
> Israel has always known the importance of its conduct being judged legal by
> the world’s leading powers. Those powers – in the body of the Quartet and
> the UN Security Council – must now make clear it has gone too far.
>
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