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<font size=4><b>The day the world became Gaza <br><br>
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<a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/06/2010638557492628.html" eudora="autourl">
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/06/2010638557492628.html<br>
</a> <b>By Ali Abunimah <br><br>
</b>Since Israel's invasion and massacre of over 1,400 people in Gaza 18
months ago, dubbed Operation Cast Lead, global civil society movements
have stepped up their campaigns for justice and solidarity with
Palestinians.<br><br>
Governments, by contrast, carried on with business as usual, maintaining
a complicit silence.<br><br>
Israel's lethal attack on the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza may change that,
spurring governments to follow the lead of their people and take
unprecedented action to check Israel's growing lawlessness.<br><br>
<b>Lip service<br><br>
</b>One of the bitterest images from Operation Cast Lead was that of
smiling European Union heads of government visiting Jerusalem and patting
Ehud Olmert, the then Israeli prime minister, on the back as white
phosphorus still seared the flesh of Palestinian children a few miles
away.<br><br>
Western countries sometimes expressed mild dismay at Israel's
"excessive" use of force, but still justified the Gaza massacre
as "self-defence" - even though Israel could easily have
stopped rocket fire from Gaza, if that was its goal, by returning to the
negotiated June 2008 ceasefire it egregiously violated the following
November. <br><br>
When the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report documented the extensive
evidence of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the
willful killings of unarmed civilians, few governments paid more than lip
service to seeing justice done.<br>
<br>
Even worse, after Cast Lead, EU countries and the US sent their navies to
help Israel enforce a blockade on Gaza which amounts to collective
punishment of the entire population and thus violates the Fourth Geneva
Convention governing Israel's ongoing occupation.<br><br>
Not one country sent a hospital ship to help treat or evacuate the
thousands of wounded, many with horrific injuries that overwhelmed Gaza's
hospitals.<br><br>
<b>Carrot and stick<br><br>
</b>The blockade has never been - as Israel and its apologists claim - to
stop the smuggling of weapons into Gaza.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
The withholding of food, medicine, schoolbooks, building supplies, among
thousands of other items, as well as the right to enter and leave Gaza
for any purpose became a weapon to terrorize the civilian
population.<br>
<br>
At the same time, Western aid was showered on the occupied West Bank -
whose ordinary people are still only barely better off than in Gaza - in
a "carrot and stick" policy calculated to shift support away
from Hamas and toward the Western-backed, unelected Palestinian Authority
leadership affiliated with the rival Fatah faction, who have repeatedly
demonstrated their unconditional willingness to collaborate with Israel
no matter what it does to their people.<br>
<br>
"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. By this standard the blockade - supported
by several Arab governments and the Quartet (the US, EU, UN
secretary-general, and Russia) has been a great success, as numerous
studies document alarming increases in child malnutrition as the vast
majority of Gaza's population became dependent on UN food handouts.
Hundreds have died for lack of access to proper medical care.<br><br>
<b>Filling the 'moral void'<br>
</b> <br>
While inaction and complicity characterized the official response, global
civil society stepped in to fill the moral and legal void.<br><br>
In the year and a half since Cast Lead, the global, Palestinian-led
campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel (BDS) has been
racking up impressive victories.<br>
<br>
From the decisions by Norway's pension funds and several European banks
to divest from certain Israeli companies, to university divestment
initiatives, the refusals by international artists to perform in Israel,
or the flashmobs that have brought the consumer boycott to supermarkets
around the world, Israel sees BDS as a growing "existential
threat".<br>
<br>
At this point, the effect may be more psychological than economic but it
is exactly the feeling of increasing isolation and pariah status that
helped push South Africa's apartheid rulers to recognize that their
regime was untenable and to seek peaceful change with the very people
they had so long demonized, dehumanized and oppressed.<br><br>
Indeed, the BDS movement is only likely to gather pace:
world-best-selling Swedish author Henning Mankell who was among the
passengers on the Turkish ship <i>Mavi Marmara</i> kidnapped and taken to
Israel, said on being freed: "I think we should use the experience
of South Africa, where we know that the sanctions had a great
impact."<br>
<br>
The Freedom Flotilla represented the very best, and most courageous of
this civil society spirit and determination not to abandon fellow human
beings to the cruelty, indifference and self-interest of
governments.<br><br>
The immediate response to Israel's attack on the Flotilla may indicate
that governments too are starting to come out of their slumber and shed
the paralyzing fear of criticizing Israel that has assured its impunity
for so long. <br><br>
<b>Growing gap<br><br>
</b>Indeed, the global reaction demonstrates the growing gap between the
US and Israel on one side and the rest of the world on the
other.<br><br>
While Israeli officials scrambled to offer justifications from the
ludicrous (elite commandos armed with paint ball guns) to the benign (the
attack was an "inspection"), the US has once again stood behind
its ally unconditionally.<br><br>
As the Obama administration forced a watered-down presidential statement
in the UN Security Council, Israeli apologists in the mainstream US media
repeatedly attempted to excuse Israel's actions as lawful and
legitimate.<br><br>
Senior administration officials, including Joe Biden, the vice president,
openly began to echo their Israeli counterparts that Israel's attack was
not only legitimate but justified by its security needs.<br>
<br>
Despite the predictable and shameless US reaction, international
condemnation has been unusually robust.<br><br>
In his speech to the Turkish parliament following the attack, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, denounced Israeli "state
terrorism" and demanded that the international community exact a
price.<br><br>
Erdogan vowed that "Turkey will never turn its back on Gaza,"
and that it would continue its campaign to lift the blockade and hold
Israel accountable even if it had to do so alone.<br><br>
There are hopeful signs it may not have to.<br><br>
European and other countries summoned Israeli ambassadors and several
recalled their envoys from Tel Aviv.<br><br>
Franco Frattini, the Italian foreign minister and one of Israel's
staunchest apologists in Europe, said his country "absolutely
deplored the slaying of civilians" and demanded that Israel
"must give an explanation to the international community" of
killings he deemed "absolutely unacceptable, whatever the flotilla's
aims".<br>
<br>
Small countries showed the greatest courage and clarity. Nicaragua
suspended diplomatic ties completely, citing Israel's "illegal
attack". Brian Cowen, Ireland's prime minister, told parliament in
Dublin that his government had "formally requested" of Israel
that the vessel Rachel Corrie still heading toward Gaza, be allowed to
proceed, and warned of the "most serious consequences" should
Israel use violence against it. <br>
The boat - named after the young American peace activist killed by
Israeli occupation forces in Gaza in 2003 - is carrying Malaysian and
Irish activists and politicians including Nobel Peace Prize winner
Mairead Maguire.<br><br>
<b>Crossed a threshold<br>
</b> <br>
These are still small actions, but they indicate Israel may have crossed
a threshold where it can no longer take appeasement and complicity for
granted.<br><br>
It is a cumulative process - each successive outrage has diminished the
reserve of goodwill and forbearance Israel enjoyed.<br><br>
Even if most governments are not quite ready to go from words to
effective actions, growing public outrage will eventually push them to
impose official sanctions.<br><br>
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, may have hastened that
day with his fulsome pride in, and praise for, the slaughter at sea even
after the outpouring of international condemnation.<br>
<br>
Despite its intensive efforts to hide and spin what happened aboard the
<i>Mavi Marmara</i> in the early hours of May 31, the world saw Israel
use exactly the sort of indiscriminate brutality documented in the
Goldstone Report.<br><br>
This time, however, it was not just "expendable" Palestinians
or Lebanese who were Israel's victims - but people from 32 countries and
every continent. It was the day the whole world became Gaza. And like the
people of Gaza, the world is unlikely to take it lying down.<br><br>
<b><i>Ali Abunimah is author of One Country, A Bold Proposal to End the
Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and co-founder of The Electronic Intifada
(<a href="http://www.electronicintifada.net/">
http://www.electronicintifada.net</a>).<br><br>
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.<br><br>
<br><br>
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