[News] A Cornered Israel is Baring Its Teeth
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Thu Jun 3 11:41:09 EDT 2010
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook06032010.html
June 3, 2010
"Mad Dog" Diplomacy
A Cornered Israel is Baring Its Teeth
By JONATHAN COOK
Nazareth
Moshe Dayan, Israels most celebrated general,
famously outlined the strategy he believed would
keep Israels enemies at bay: Israel must be a
like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.
Until now, most observers had assumed Dayan was
referring to Israeli military or possibly nuclear
strategy, an expression in his typically blunt
fashion of the countrys familiar doctrine of deterrence.
But the Israeli commando attack on Monday on the
Gaza-bound flotilla, in which nine activists have
so far been confirmed killed and dozens were
wounded as they tried to break Israels blockade
of the enclave, proves beyond doubt that this is
now a diplomatic strategy too. Israel is feeling
cornered on every front it considers important
and like Dayans mad dog, it is likely to strike out in unpredictable ways.
Domestically, Israeli human rights activists have
regrouped after the Zionist lefts dissolution in
the wake of the outbreak of the second intifada.
Now they are presenting clear-eyed and
extremely ugly assessments of the occupation
that are grabbing headlines around the world.
That move has been supported by the leadership of
Israels large Palestinian minority, which has
additionally started questioning the legitimacy
of a Jewish state in ways that would have been
unthinkable only a few years ago.
Regionally, Hizbullah has progressively eroded
Israels deterrence doctrine. It forced the
Israeli army to exit south Lebanon in 2000 after
a two-decade occupation; it stood firm in the
face of both aerial bombardment and a ground
invasion during the 2006 war; and now it is
reported to have accumulated an even larger
arsenal of rockets than it had four years ago.
Iran, too, has refused to be intimidated and is
leaving Israel with an uncomfortable choice
between conceding to Tehran the room to develop a
nuclear bomb, thereby ending Israels regional
nuclear monopoly, and launching an attack that
could unleash a global conflagration.
And internationally, nearly 18 months on from its
attack on Gaza, Israels standing is at an
all-time low. Boycott campaigns are gaining
traction, reluctant support for Israel from
European governments has set them in opposition
to home-grown sentiment, and even traditional
allies such as Turkey cannot hide their anger.
In the US, Israels most resolute ally, young
American Jews are starting to question their
unthinking loyalty to the Jewish state. Blogs and
new kinds of Jewish groups are bypassing their
elders and the American media to widen the scope of debate about Israel.
Israel has responded by characterizing these
threats all as falling within its
ever-expanding definition of support for terrorism.
It was therefore hardly suprising that the first
reaction from the Israeli government to the fact
that its commandoes had opened fire on civilians
in the flotilla of aid ships was to accuse the
solidarity activists of being armed.
Similarly, Danny Ayalon, the deputy foreign
minister, accused the organizers of having
connections to international terrorism,
including al-Qaeda. Turkey, which assisted the
flotilla, is widely being accused in Israel of
supporting Hamas and trying to topple Benjamin Netanyahus government.
Palestinians are familiar with such tactics.
Gazas entire population of 1.5 million is now
regularly presented in the Israeli media in
collective terms, as supporters of terror for
having voted in Hamas and therefore legitimate
targets for Israeli retaliation. Even the
largely docile Palestinian Authority in the West
Bank has rapidly been tarred with the same brush
for its belated campaign to boycott the settlements and their products.
The leaders of Israels Palestinian citizens too
are being cast in the role of abettors of terror.
The minority is still reeling from the latest
assault: the arrest and torture of two community
leaders charged with spying for Hizbullah. In its
wake, new laws are being drafted to require that
Palestinian citizens prove their loyalty or have their citizenship revoked.
When false rumors briefly circulated on Monday
that Sheikh Raed Salah, a leader of Israels
Islamic Movement who was in the flotilla, had
been gravely wounded, Israeli officials offered a
depressingly predictable, and unfounded,
response: commandoes had shot him after they came under fire from his cabin.
Israels Jewish human rights community is also
under attack to a degree never before seen. Their
leaders are now presented as traitors, and new
legislation is designed to make their work much harder.
The few brave souls in the Israeli media who try
to hold the system to account have been given a
warning shot with the exile of Haaretzs
investigative journalist Uri Blau, who is
threatened with trial on spying charges if he returns.
Finally, Israels treatment of those onboard the
flotilla has demonstrated that the net against
human rights activism is being cast much wider,
to encompass the international community.
Foreigners, even high-profile figures such as
Noam Chomsky, are now routinely refused entry to
Israel and the occupied territories. Many foreign
human rights workers face severe restrictions on
their movement and efforts to deport them or ban
their organizations. The Israeli government is
agreed that Europe should be banned from
interfering in the region by supporting local human rights organizations.
The epitome of this process was Israels
reception of the UN report last year into the
attack on Gaza by Richard Goldstone, a respected
judge and international law expert who suggested
Israel had committed many war crimes during its
three-week operation. Goldstone has faced savage personal attacks ever since.
But more significantly, Israels supporters have
characterized the Goldstone report and the
related legal campaigns against Israel as
examples of lawfare, implying that those who
uphold international law are waging a new kind of
war of attrition on behalf of terror groups like Hamas and Hizbullah.
These trends are likely only to deepen in the
coming months and years, making Israel an ever
greater pariah in the eyes of much of the world.
The mad dog is baring his teeth, and it is high
time the international community decided how to deal with him.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in
Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745327540/counterpunchmaga>Israel
and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and
the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press)
and
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1848130317/counterpunchmaga>Disappearing
Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair
(Zed Books). His website is <http://www.jkcook.net>www.jkcook.net.
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