But here may be something almost qualitatively different in present Israeli policy in comparison with the past. One informed observer seems to think so:
"What happened with the Gaza flotilla was not an accident. You have to remember that the Israeli cabinet met for fully a week. All the cabinet ministers discussed and deliberated how they would handle the flotilla. There were numerous reports in the Israeli press, numerous suggestions, numerous recommendations about what to do. At the end of the day, they decided on a nighttime armed commando raid on a humanitarian convoy. Israel is now a lunatic state. It's a lunatic state with between two and three hundred nuclear devices. It is threatening war daily against Iran and against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah in Lebanon has already stated on several occasions: if Israel attacks it will retaliate in kind. Things are getting out of control. We have to ask ourselves a simple, basic, fundamental question: can a lunatic state like Israel be trusted with two to three hundred nuclear devices when it is now threatening its neighbors Iran and Lebanon with an attack?" [Norman Finkelstein]
On 6/2/10 11:54 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> [WS:] It seems that this whole critique of Israel cum the US takes it for
> granted that both states are singular entities rather than assemblies of
> different political factions that use governmental structures to pursue
> their partisan interests. Bush's war on Iraq was more the means to advance
> right wing Repug agenda than a pursuit of the US national interests. If
> anything, the latter were sacrificed for the former. Likewise, Israeli
> right wingers assassinated Prime Minister Rabin whom they saw as an obstacle
> to their warmongering
>
> 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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