[News] The Real Threat Aboard the Freedom Flotilla

[Anti-Imperialist News]

The Real Threat Aboard the Freedom Flotilla



Israel’s violent attack on the Freedom Flotilla 
carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza shocked the world.

By <http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/noamchomsky>Noam Chomsky

http://inthesetimes.com/article/6064/the_real_threat_aboard_the_freedom_flotilla/
Friday, June 11, 2010

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 country­Turkey­attacked 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 towns­criminal, 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, although­or perhaps 
because­there 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 framework­which is more 
insidious, because it renders the crimes invisible.




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