Updates on the Gaza flotilla

Roi ben Yehuda at Roi Word suggests another Israeli response to the Gaza flotilla - conflict resolution commandos.

Ynet reports that the Gaza flotilla is losing momentum.

Six ships which were slated to take part in the Gaza-bound flotilla are being detained by the Greek port authorities, Ynet learned Sunday night. Senior officials in Jerusalem have confirmed the report, which followed a Sunday decision by Greece to stop the US vessel "Audacity of Hope" from participating in the sea-bound convoy. While the organizers of the maritime convoy claim that more than 1,500 activists are set to take part in the initiative, it now appears that no more than seven ships, carrying 200-500 passengers, will participate in the flotilla.

Howard Jacobson responds to Alice Walker.

It should not need arguing, this late in the ethical history of mankind, that good people can do great harm. One of the finest and funniest novels ever written - Don Quixote - charts the damage left in the wake of a man who would make the world a better place.

Human beings are seldom more dangerous than when they are sentimentally overcome by the goodness of their own intentions. That Alice Walker believes it is right to join the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza I do not have the slightest doubt. But beyond associating her decision with Gandhi, Martin Luther King and very nearly, when she talks about the preciousness of children, Jesus Christ, she fails to give a single convincing reason for it.

"One child must never be set above another child," she says. A sentiment that will find an echo in every heart. But how does it justify the flotilla? Gaza is under siege, Israelis will tell you, because weapons are fired from it into Israel, threatening the lives of Israeli children. If the blockade is lifted there is a fear that more lethal and far-reaching weapons will be acquired, and the lives of more Israeli children endangered.

You may want to argue that had Gaza been treated differently it would have responded differently, but if the aim of the flotilla is to ensure that one child will not be set above another it is hard to see how challenging the blockade will achieve it. All an Israeli parent will see is a highly charged emotionalism disguising an action that, by its very partiality, chooses the Palestinian child over the Israeli.

Human beings are seldom more dangerous than when they are sentimentally overcome by the goodness of their own intentions.

The boat on which Alice Walker will be traveling is called The Audacity of Hope. Forgive me for seeing a measure of self-importance in that reference. It will be carrying, Alice Walker tells us, "Letters expressing solidarity and love." Not, presumably, for Israeli children. Perhaps it is thought that Israeli children are the recipients of enough love already. So what about solidarity? It is meant to sound innocuous. "That is all."...

The flotilla is engaged in an entirely political act ... to call it by any other name is the grossest hypocrisy...

Even before the deed, Alice Walker has her language of outraged moral purity prepared - "but if they insist on attacking us, wounding us, even murdering us..." The Israeli response is thus already an act of unprovoked murder, no matter that the flotilla is by its very essence a provocation. Whatever its cargo, by luring the Israeli military into action which can be represented as brutal, the flotilla is engaged in an entirely political act. To call it by any other name is the grossest hypocrisy.

How the flotilla bound for Gaza Strip sailed into death at sea

This article from the Times of London (June 1: How the flotilla bound for Gaza Strip sailed into death at sea) seems to be a good account of what actually happened once the Israeli commandos rushed the Mavi Marmara. The New York Times has published a similar article, and the footage taken by the IDF and the flotilla members corroborates what both articles say.

Before the Gaza Freedom Flotilla steamed out of Cyprus laden with thousands of tons of aid for the blockaded Gaza Strip, some of the passengers on a Turkish-flagged cruise ship spoke to news crews filming their departure.

“We are now waiting for one of two good things — either to reach Gaza or achieve martyrdom,” said one woman in a headscarf. After a night of bloodshed on the high seas on Monday, at least nine of her fellow passengers, most of them believed to be Turks, had achieved the latter.

The shockwaves from the Israeli commando raid on the Mavi Marmara passenger ferry were still reverberating around the world last night, as Israel scrambled to defend its battered reputation. Already damaged after the Gaza war and a fumbled Mossad assassination of a Hamas militant in Dubai, it faced even tougher scrutiny as it began to examine what happened, and why.

Israel had denounced the Gaza flotilla as a publicity stunt to “humiliate” the Jewish state by publicly breaching its three-year siege of the Gaza Strip, where the Islamist movement Hamas holds sway. Determined to halt the six ships full of international activists — including several MEPs, an Irish Nobel peace laureate, a survivor of the Holocaust and volunteers from America, Iran and Indonesia — three Israeli missile boats slipped out of the northern port of Haifa at about 9pm to intercept the fleet in international waters.

Hours later, Greta Berlin, one of the Gaza fleet’s organisers, received a final message from the ships as the Israeli Navy hove into view: “All is calm, the Israeli warships are on our bow, let’s sleep.”

Over a loudspeaker, an Israeli naval officer warned the ships in English that they were in breach of the Israeli blockade of Gaza — deemed a “hostile entity” by the Knesset following the Hamas takeover. He ordered them to surrender their aid to the Israeli Navy, which would take it to the port of Ashdod and transfer it on lorries across the Israeli-controlled crossing with Gaza.

The captains of the ships said that they intended to deliver their 10,000 tons of aid directly to Gaza. Shortly afterwards, a Twitter message appeared from the Challenger 1, with 16 activists on board, including two Britons: “Intervention is imminent”.

At about 4am, Israeli Navy Seals from the elite Flotilla 13 unit were sent in three helicopters and in Zodiac assault craft to board the vessels. They had trained hard for the mission, but were expecting minor resistance. The plan was to land on the top deck of the Turkish ferry, rush the bridge and take control.

The Gaza fleet’s co-ordinators had said their colleagues on the five other ships had been schooled in non-violent resistance, including linking arms round the ships’ wheelhouses, locking engine rooms and filming the Israeli forces. “The passengers were waving white flags, not clubs,” the Free Gaza group said in a statement later.

However, some of the hundreds of passengers on the Mavi Marmara had other ideas. As the Israeli Navy Seals rappelled, one by one, on to the upper deck of the ship, it was no longer clear exactly who was ambushing whom.

“They beat us with metal sticks and knives,” said one of the Israeli commandos, who hit the deck only to find a mob of furious demonstrators, rather than political protesters, armed with iron bars, baseball bats, knives, petrol bombs and stun grenades. An Israeli military night-vision video released after the chaotic storming showed the first soldier being overwhelmed as he landed, then pitched on to a lower deck by the crowd.

Still the Israeli soldiers kept coming, in a single vertical line, to be set upon. Video footage from the activists showed stunned soldiers being pummelled, one of them reeling for cover from the blows in a hatchway.

Meanwhile, other commandos were trying to scale the ship’s sides, but were having their hands beaten by activists determined to repel the boarders. According to the army, it was a “lynching,” with the passengers trying to break the soldiers’ arms and legs and beating them about the head.

Overwhelmed, some of the elite forces started losing their sidearms to the crowd. Others had their helmets and body armour pulled off them as they were hurled from deck to deck. Some of the Israeli soldiers had to dive into the sea to save themselves.

“They jumped me, hit me with clubs and bottles and stole my rifle,” one commando said. “I pulled out my pistol and had no choice but to shoot.”

An Israeli journalist on the missile boats said that the soldiers had been carrying anti-riot paintball guns to disperse the crowd, as well as pistols. These appeared to have little effect and the order was eventually given to resort to live rounds.

“There was live fire at some point against us,” a commando said. That was when the gunfire erupted at terrifyingly close quarters. When it was over, two hours into the operation, at least nine passengers were dead, dozens more were wounded and Israel stood in the glare of international condemnation as rioters tried to storm its consulate in Istanbul and its ambassadors across Europe were summoned to explain themselves.

Israel said that seven of its soldiers had been wounded, two of them seriously, in the pre-dawn mêlée. Critics said that they had used the wrong forces, pitching crack commandos who are used to storming weapons-smuggling ships into what was, essentially, a sea-borne riot.

Accused by European leaders of using disproportionate force — a charge reminiscent of the Gaza conflict and the subsequent UN inquiry — Israel rushed to defend its actions, saying that IHH, the Turkish Islamic charity that chartered the ferry, had links to Hamas and even al-Qaeda.

“There was extreme violence from the moment that our forces reached the ship. It was premeditated and included weapons, iron bars, knives and at a certain stage firearms, perhaps in some cases weapons that were snatched from soldiers,” said Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli Chief of Staff. But there was no explanation for the intelligence failure that led him to send his men armed primarily with paintball guns to face such a belligerent mob.

Last night the subdued flotilla was being towed into the sealed-off port of Ashdod, to await processing by the police. Those who agreed to deportation were to be escorted to the borders, while those who did not – including the Challenger 1’s two British passengers – were being taken to jail.

In hospital beds across Israel, wounded passengers spent the night under heavy guard by military police officers, still far from Gaza.

Note the highlighted words - it's clear that not all the passengers on the boat intended to resist non-violently.

To see the videos from the IDF - YouTube channel of the IDF Spokesman's Office.

Gilad Atzmon benefit for US Boat to Gaza

As reported initially by David Adler a couple of weeks ago, anti-Jewish agitator Gilad Atzmon, who recently put on a panel discussion in London on "Zionism, Jewishness, and Israel," is currently traveling around the US making mischief. Adam Holland reports today that he will be doing a benefit for US Boat to Gaza in Oakland, California. US Boat to Gaza is sending a boat to Gaza, which they have named the "Audacity of Hope," in another attempt to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. From their statement of purpose:

We are planning to launch a U.S. boat to Gaza, joining a flotilla of ships from Europe, Canada, India, South Africa and parts of the Middle East due to set sail in September/ October of this year. [Now scheduled for Spring 2011.] In order to succeed in this essential but costly human rights project, we need significant financial support.

Signatories of this statement follow below. I think that they should be held responsible for working with Atzmon, who is a notorious antisemite who has been rejected even by other British anti-Zionists like Tony Greenstein and Sue Blackwell.

Nic Abramson, Middle East Crisis Response
Elliott Adams, Past President, Veterans For Peace
Ujju Aggarwal
Laurie Arbeiter, Activist Response Team
Anna Baltzer, Human Rights Activist and Author
Russell Banks, Writer
Kahlil Bendib, Political Cartoonist
Medea Benjamin, Co-founder CODEPINK
Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies
Elaine Brower
Naomi Brussel, Activist Response Team
Allan Buchman, Founder and Artistic Director, The Culture Project
Leslie Cagan, Co-Founder United for Peace and Justice
Henry Chalfant, Film Maker
Kathleen Chalfant, New York
Cindy Corrie
Craig Corrie
Ellen Davidson, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions-USA
Angela Y. Davis, University of California, Santa Cruz
Noor Elashi, Writer
Basem Emara, Gaza Freedom March
Kathy Engel, Poet
Hedy Epstein, Palestine Solidarity Committee, St. Louis, Missouri
Mike Ferner, National President, Veterans For Peace
Lisa Fithian, Alliance for Community Trainers
Felice Gelman, Gaza Freedom March
Jenny Heinz, Activist Response Team/Granny Peace Brigade
Jane Hirschmann, Jews Say No!
Jennifer Hobbs, New York City Attorney/Gaza Freedom March

Nubar Hovsepian, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies, Chapman University

Mary Hughes – Thompson, Free Gaza Movement
Abdeen Jabara, Past President, American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Civil Rights Attorney
Tarak Kauff, Veterans for Peace
Kathy Kelly, Co-Coordinator, Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Eleanore Kennedy
Michael Kennedy
Mona Khalidi
Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University
Naomi Klein, Writer
Ramzi Kysia, Free Gaza Movement
Iara Lee, Cultures of Resistance/Freedom Flotilla Survivor
Richard A. Levy, Labor Lawyer
Karen Malpede, Playwright
Helaine Meisler, Hudson Valley BDS
Gail Miller, Women of a Certain Age
Fatima Mohammadi, Attorney at Law/Freedom Flotilla Survivor
Donna Nevel, Jews Say No!
Michael Ratner, President, Center for Constitutional Rights
Mariam Said, New York
Najla Said, Actor/Writer
Hannah Schwarzschild, American Jews for a Just Peace
Bert Shaw
Moira Shaw
Kathy Sheetz, Free Gaza – USA/Freedom Flotilla Survivor
Ann Shirazi, Granny Peace Brigade/Women of a Certain Age
Starhawk, Alliance of Community Trainers
Eleanor Stein, Albany Law School
Michael Steven Smith, New York City Attorney/Author
Vivian Stromberg, MADRE, Executive Director
Yifat Susskind, MADRE Policy/Communications Director
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Syracuse University
Alice Walker, Author
Naomi Wallace
Darlene Wallach,  Free Gaza Movement, Justice for Palestinians
Donna Wallach,  Free Gaza Movement, Justice for Palestinians
Sarah Wellington, Activist Response Team
Diane Wilson, Writer/Activist
Ret. Col. Ann Wright, Freedom Flotilla Survivor
Rebecca Vilkomerson, Jewish Voice for Peace
Dorothy M. Zellner, Veteran Civil Rights Activist
David Zirin, Sports Correspondent, The Nation Magazine

Adam's report:

Anti-Jewish activist Gilad Atzmon will be speaking in Oakland, CA on Tuesday evening on behalf of the organization US Boat to Gaza - West. (Read here.) The event will raise funds for American participants in a planned convoy of boats to Gaza. It will take place at the Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, recent hosts of an ersatz seder with an anti-Israel theme. (Read here.) A leftist local paper with a reputation for disproportionate and biased coverage of Israel, the Berkeley Daily Planet, is promoting the event. (The paper essentially features local news and anti-Israel editorials.)  A front page notice in the paper describes Atzmon as "worldwide-renowned [sic] jazz saxophonist par excellence (who) holds a PhD in philosophy and is a prolific writer and speaker on Israel-Palestine". 

The poster advertising Atzmon's event. Note that it's being held at a Methodist church. I would have thought they would have learned to reject anti-semitism since the Second World War, but apparently not.

Update on the Gaza flotilla

On Friday the IHH announced that they won't be sending the Mavi Marmara on the latest flotilla to Gaza, scheduled for later this month. This has put the other organizers into a tizzy. Haaretz reports: Gaza flotilla organizers disappointed by Turkish group's decision to cancel ship.

On Saturday, flotilla organizers held urgent consultations. A source familiar with the details told Haaretz that problems have arisen on other boats that are supposed to take part in the flotilla and it is still not known exactly how many ships will participate. The estimate is that five to eight ships will set sail for Gaza. The source also said that the number of activists taking part in the flotilla is being reduced from 1,000 to around 300.

On the other hand, Ynet reports that two French ships will join the flotilla. I don't know if they are included in the number of 5-8 of the Haaretz report. And on yet another hand, the French Jewish community has apparently succeeded in preventing a French ship from sailing from Marseilles.

There's no hint of any of these developments, however, on the web site of the US Boat to Gaza folks - just continued cheerleading for their message.

Sponsor of Flotilla Tied to Elite of Turkey

The New York Times has just published a good investigative report on the IHH - the Turkish charity behind the Gaza flotilla that included the Mavi Marmara - Sponsor of Flotilla Tied to Elite of Turkey.

Apparently the IHH and the ruling party in Turkey, the AK (Justice and Development Party) are very close, and the Turkish government was closely following events on the flotilla. The Turkish government could have ordered the flotilla not to go to Gaza, but did not.

ISTANBUL — The Turkish charity that led the flotilla involved in a deadly Israeli raid has extensive connections with Turkey’s political elite, and the group’s efforts to challenge Israel’s blockade of Gaza received support at the top levels of the governing party, Turkish diplomats and government officials said.

The charity, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, often called I.H.H., has come under attack in Israel and the West for offering financial support to groups accused of terrorism. But in Turkey the group has helped Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan shore up support from conservative Muslims ahead of critical elections next year and improve Turkey’s standing and influence in the Arab world.

According to a senior Turkish official close to the government, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political delicacy of the issue, as many as 10 Parliament members from Mr. Erdogan’s governing Justice and Development Party were considering boarding the Mavi Marmara, the ship where the deadly raid occurred, but were warned off at the last minute by senior Foreign Ministry officials concerned that their presence might escalate tensions too much.

When leaders of the charity returned home after nine Turks died in the Israeli raid, they were warmly embraced by top Turkish officials, said Huseyin Oruc, deputy director of the charity, who was aboard the flotilla.

“When we flew back to Turkey, I was afraid we would be in trouble for what happened, but the first thing we saw when the plane’s door opened in Istanbul was Bulent Arinc, the deputy prime minister, in tears,” he said in an interview. “We have good coordination with Mr. Erdogan,” he added. “But I am not sure he is happy with us now.”

The raid has caused a rupture between Turkey and Israel, and heightened alarm in the United States and Europe that Turkey, a large Muslim country and a major NATO member, is shifting allegiance toward the Arab world. Turkey has warned that its cooperative ties to Israel could be irreparably damaged unless the Israelis apologize and accept an international investigation, steps Israel has so far refused to take.

The charity’s mission, political analysts said, has advanced Mr. Erdogan’s aim of shifting Turkey’s focus to the Muslim east when its prospects for joining the European Union are dim.

The government “could have stopped the ship if it wanted to, but the mission to Gaza served both the I.H.H. and the government by making both heroes at home and in the Arab world,” said Ercan Citlioglu, a terrorism expert at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul....

“How can such a large country as Turkey, with interests in four continents, and with an export- and investment-driven economy requiring extra caution all around the globe, be dragged to the brink of war by a nongovernmental organization?” asked Semih Idiz, a columnist for the Hurriyet Daily News in Turkey, in a June 7 editorial. The answer, he added, is that the charity is a “GNGO” — a “governmental-nongovernmental-organization.”

Many of the 21 people listed on the charity’s board have or had close links to the AK Party. In January, Murat Mercan, chairman of Parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a senior party official, joined an overland aid convoy to Gaza organized by the charity that tried to force its way through the Rafah crossing from Egypt to Gaza.

A trustee of the charity, Ali Yandir, is a senior manager at the Istanbul City Municipality Transportation Corporation. The corporation controls Istanbul Fast Ferries, which sold the Mavi Marmara, with a capacity for 1,090 passengers, to the charity for about $1.8 million. In 2004, Mr. Yandir was an AK Party candidate for the mayor’s office in Istanbul’s Esenler District.

The charity’s board includes Zeyid Aslan, an AK Party member of Parliament and the acting head of the Turkey-Palestine Interparliamentary Friendship Group; Ahmet Faruk Unsal, an AK Party member of Parliament from 2002 to 2007; and Mehmet Emin Sen, a former AK Party mayor in the central Anatolian township of Mihalgazi.

Those ties partly reflect the common agenda of the party and the charity. Both are involved in relief work among the poor and are bound by a common Islamic ideology. Many of the 60,000 people the charity claims as members come from the religious merchant class that helped Mr. Erdogan sweep to power....

Israeli attack on Gaza flotilla

I spent today driving from Westport, Mass., to Ithaca, NY, so I didn't have time to blog earlier. I really don't know what to say about Israeli attack on the flotilla of ships going to Gaza and the deaths of nine people on the Marmara. I don't feel like I have enough information about what actually happened - the versions I've read have all come from official Israeli sources. I'd be interested in other journalistic accounts and versions from those on the boat itself.

Last night I went to bed worrying about what the Israel might do in response to the flotilla - and it was awful to get up this morning and see the news reports on line. I didn't imagine that ten people could be killed.

Other people are more coherent than I about it, and their main response seems to be how unwise and stupid Israel's reaction to the flotilla was:

Jeffrey Goldberg: On the Disappearance of Jewish Wisdom, Far Out at Sea

David Schraub: Gaza Aid Convoy Reportedly Attacked in International Waters

Haim Watzman: Commandos Against Demonstrators: Israel Shoots itself in the Leg Again

Kishkushim: The Marmara Incident - Preliminary Notes

Noam Sheizaf, Promised Land: Death at Sea: The Attack on the Gaza Flotilla

What to think about the Gaza flotilla disaster?

The analysis by Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel in Haaretz strikes me as accurate and depressing - Hubris on the high seas. It highlights the stupidity and blinkered consciousness of those at the top of the Israeli government - Netanyahu and Barak. The Israeli naval commandos were not prepared for what they encountered on the Mavi Marmara - a mixture of genuine peace activists and thugs prepared to use violence against the commandos. They didn't train for that possibility. The Israeli military didn't correctly assess who was on that boat (those connected to the IHH, the Turkish Islamist charity that chartered the boat) and what their motivations were (those who said before they sailed that they wanted to be martyrs).

The Israeli government is led by people who do not understand that in addition to defending Israel from its actual enemies (Hamas or Hezbollah), they have to understand whose Israel's real friends are, and who might be somewhere inbetween (Turkey, before this week's fiasco). Netanyahu, despite his claim that he supports a Palestinian state alongside Israel, strikes me as someone who still thinks that he can hold onto all of the West Bank and Jerusalem through some kind of trickery to fool the whole world. I can't believe that, despite Obama's unwillingness to unequivocally condemn the Israeli actions this week, he will not eventually tire entirely of Netanyahu and his machinations. (He clearly is already very tired of Netanyahu, but he hasn't yet figured out how to effectively pressure him - I think that Bill Clinton was better at it, when he forced Netanyahu into the Hebron Protocol in 1997, which delivered most of Hebron to the Palestinian Authority, and also forced him to agree to the Wye River Memorandum in 1998).

In all of the upset this week about the Gaza flotilla, one very important thing that happened a couple of weeks ago seems to have been forgotten - that when the international conference on nuclear non-proliferation occurred a couple of weeks ago (attended by those nations who had signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which Israel has not signed), its final communique condemned Israel, not Iran. One of the things that Netanyahu was going to discuss with Obama this week, before he aborted his trip to Washington, was this very communique. Now he's lost his chance because of his own stupidity.

Israel does face real enemies - not only Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, but people like the leaders of the Gaza flotilla whose goal is to destroy Israel (see Greta Berlin's comments). The United States is Israel's real friend, and despite Israel's latest stupidity, most people in this country still support Israel. Will that continue to be true if Netanyahu continues to do what he can to alienate the President of the United States in the name of Israeli security?

Update (later on June 5): See Helene Cooper's article in tomorrow's New York Times, which expresses just what I was trying to get at in this blogpost. She quotes Anthony Cordesman as saying:

Recent Israeli governments, particularly the one led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Cordesman argued, have ignored the national security concerns of its biggest benefactor, the United States, and instead have taken steps that damage American interests abroad.

“The depth of America’s moral commitment does not justify or excuse actions by an Israeli government that unnecessarily make Israel a strategic liability when it should remain an asset,” Mr. Cordesman wrote, in commentary for the centrist Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he is the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in strategy. “It is time Israel realized that it has obligations to the United States, as well as the United States to Israel, and that it become far more careful about the extent to which it tests the limits of U.S. patience and exploits the support of American Jews.”

This is what Netanyahu does not seem to understand (or maybe what he doesn't want to understand, given his own ideology and his dependence on coalition partners who are more right-wing than he is). Israel is the weaker party, and depends upon the United States for diplomatic and military support. It is in Israel's interest not to anger the U.S., especially when it comes to issues that are not crucial to Israel's survival. Settlements in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem endanger Israel's future. If Netanyahu had the seichel that he presents himself as having, he would understand this.

IHH Leader Urges Men to Throw Israelis Overboard 30 May 2010

On the front page of the Haaretz website, a new video from the Israeli foreign ministry about the preparations made on the Mavi Marmara for the Israeli commandos: YouTube - Evidence: IHH Leader Urges Men to Throw Israelis Overboard 30 May 2010.



So much for peaceful humanitarians.

The Foreign Ministry released a new video on Friday in which the leader of the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief, Bulent Yildirim, is seen on board the Gaza flotilla's ship the Mavi Marmara, telling dozens of activists to throw Israeli commandos overboard if they attempt to board the ship.

"If they board our ship, we will throw them into the sea, Allah willing!" says Yildirim, the head of the Turkish pro-Palestinian group that sent an aid flotilla to Gaza last month.
The video was shot on board the Mavi Marmara on May 30 by one of the passengers before the Israel Defense Forces raided the ship and killed nine Turkish activists during clashes.

"If we show fear, they will win once again….we don't want to be recorded in Allah's book as cowards," says Yildirim in the video, as dozens of passengers are seen chanting ""millions of martyrs marching to Gaza!"

"They (Israel) are so weak that for 4-5 days they have been engaging in propaganda (against us)…they have been humiliated in front of the whole world… now they are saying that they will launch a fleet (against us)… that they will send the commandos here (to the ship)."

"And we say: 'If you send the commandos, we will throw you down from here and you will be humiliated in front of the whole world," Yildirim tells the passengers.

On Wednesday, Israel added the IHH to its terror watch list following the events of the Gaza-bound flotilla.

IHH told members of the European Parliament it has assembled six ships for its next flotilla and asked others to join its effort to break through Israel's blockade of Gaza.

Some questions for the Gaza flotilla from Christopher Hitchens

Some excellent questions for the Gaza flotillistas from Christopher Hitchens.

A sample:

It seems safe and fair to say that the flotilla and its leadership work in reasonably close harmony with Hamas, which constitutes the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. The political leadership of this organization is headquartered mainly in Gaza itself. But its military coordination is run out of Damascus, where the regime of Bashar Assad is currently at war with increasingly large sections of the long-oppressed Syrian population. Refugee camps, some with urgent humanitarian requirements, are making their appearance on the border between Syria and Turkey (the government of the latter being somewhat sympathetic to the purposes of the flotilla). In these circumstances, isn't it legitimate to strike up a conversation with the "activists" and ask them where they come out on the uprising against hereditary Baathism in Syria?...

Only a few weeks ago, the Hamas regime in Gaza became the only governing authority in the world—by my count—to express outrage and sympathy at the death of Osama Bin Laden. As the wavelets lap in the Greek harbors, and the sunshine beats down, doesn't any journalist want to know whether the "activists" have discussed this element in their partners' world outlook? Does Alice Walker seriously have no comment?

Hamas is listed by various governments and international organizations as a terrorist group. I don't mind conceding that that particular word has been used in arbitrary ways in the past. But what concerns me much more is the official programmatic adoption, by Hamas, of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This disgusting fabrication is a key foundational document of 20^th-century racism and totalitarianism, indelibly linked to the Hitler regime in theory and practice. It seems extraordinary to me that any "activist" claiming allegiance to human rights could cooperate at any level with the propagation of such evil material. But I have never seen any of them invited to comment on this matter, either.

Somehow I doubt that any of them will bother considering these questions, since it would require them to pull themselves out of their magnificent self-regard for a moment and think about the real world. The latest "action alert update" that I received from the US Boat to Gaza informed me about the eight members of the group who had just been arrested by the Greek authorities in front of the American embassy. Not a word about the people of Gaza about whom they supposedly passionately care.

Another Gaza flotilla

This morning I received an email from my favorite correspondents, US Boat to Gaza, informing the world that boats are now sailing to Gaza. From the press release:

At this moment, two boats are in international waters in the Mediterranean heading to Gaza.  One boat, the Saoirse from Ireland, includes parliamentarians among its passengers.  The other, the Tahrir, carries representatives from Canada, the U.S., Australia, and Palestine.  The U.S. Representative on the Tahrir, Kit Kittredge, was a passenger on the U.S. Boat to Gaza, The Audacity of Hope mission in Athens in July.  A journalist from Democracy Now is on the Tahrir also. Civil society organizations in Gaza await their arrival, and look forward to the delivery of letters collected from thousands of U.S. supporters in the To Gaza With Love campaign.  

It appears to me that this time around, they kept the sailing completely quiet before the boats reached international waters, in order to prevent what happened this summer from happening again, when the boats were basically stuck in Greek ports, under heavy pressure from Israel and the US. (I hope Israeli intelligence knew they were sailing!) Also, the boats sailed from Turkey, which supports the attempt to break the Israeli embargo on Gaza. (See article from Haaretz, which confirms that they kept the plan quiet so they wouldn't be stopped; apparently the Turkish authorities insisted that they send fewer people on the boats than they had originally planned).

Reuters reports:

The Israeli navy will prevent two yachts carrying pro-Palestinian activists which left Turkey on Wednesday from breaching an Israeli blockade and reaching the Gaza Strip, an Israeli military official said. Lieutenant-Colonel Avital Leibovich, speaking to reporters by telephone, would not say how the boats might be stopped, saying only "we will have to assess and see if we are facing violent passengers."

Israel was aware two yachts had set sail carrying Irish, Canadian and U.S. activists, Leibovich said. Describing their journey as a "provocation," she said they were still far from the Israeli and Gazan coast. Israel would offer to unload any aid supplies on board and deliver them to Gaza, Leibovich said. Israel blockades the Gaza coast to prevent the smuggling of weapons to Palestinian gunmen in the territory, she added.

There is, apparently, an unidentified boat following the Canadian one, about which @PalWaves says, "The #Tahrir captain is 99% sure it's Turkish Coast Guard following them, still trailing." I hope not - the worst thing would be a confrontation between the IDF and any part of the Turkish military.

UPDATE: apparently it was *not* the Turkish Coast Guard, and the Israeli Navy intercepted them yesterday (Nov. 4) and led them to Ashdod port. 

Israeli war criminal at NYU?

I'm on the email list of the "US Boat to Gaza" group, for some reason (I didn't sign up), and they've just sent an "urgent alert" that an "Israeli war criminal has been invited to speak at an American university." The university is NYU. The alleged "war criminal" is one of the Israeli commandos who landed on the Mavi Marmara (part of the Gaza flotilla) last year.

According to the Facebook site for the NYU "Students for Justice in Palestine," he was invited by students at NYU who are putting on an "Israel Peace Week" to counter the "Israel Apartheid Week" that anti-Israel students have organized. The SJP is organizing a counter-demonstration outside the hall where the presentation will occur. They write, "During that brutal attack on unarmed human rights activists nine people were killed, including a Turkish American and over fifty wounded." Yes, nine people were killed by the commandos - but they were not unarmed human rights activists. They were part of the IHH and came armed. I wrote a lot about it on my blog at that time - see my articles at Gaza flotilla.

I hope that the NYU students who have invited the speaker are aware of the opposition this has aroused among the anti-Israel organizations, and have planned accordingly.

Notes on the Gaza Flotilla

Alice Walker: Why I'm sailing to Gaza

Highlights

Our boat, The Audacity of Hope, will be carrying letters to the people of Gaza. Letters expressing solidarity and love. That is all its cargo will consist of. If the Israeli military attacks us, it will be as if they attacked the mailman. This should go down hilariously in the annals of history. But if they insist on attacking us, wounding us, even murdering us, as they did some of the activists in the last flotilla, Freedom Flotilla I, what is to be done?

There is a scene in the movie "Gandhi" that is very moving to me: it is when the unarmed Indian protesters line up to confront the armed forces of the British Empire. The soldiers beat them unmercifully, but the Indians, their broken and dead lifted tenderly out of the fray, keep coming.

Unexpectedly, I find myself being moved by some of Alice Walker's words here - in particular, her memory of the non-violent Indian protests against the British Empire. If Palestinians had been able to act like this decades ago, there might now be a Palestinian state.

When I lived in Israel from 1987-1989 (I was a visiting graduate student at the Hebrew University), I went to many demonstrations against the occupation and in favor of negotiations between Israel and the PLO. (At that point it was illegal for Israelis to meet with representatives of the PLO, so this was a radical demand). My second year, I got involved with a group called "The 21st year of the occupation." A good friend of mine was involved, and I decided to join as well in supporting them in non-violent civil disobedience against the occupation. [For a glimpse at what it felt like to be involved with Israeli anti-occupation groups during the late 1980s, during the first intifada, see an article by Milton Viorst in Mother Jones, December 1988 - on Google Books].

Before I came to Israel in 1987, I had been part of a group in Boston called "Pledge of Resistance," which was a nationwide group founded to protest against the policies of the U.S. government in central America, in particular against the threat of a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua. We trained in tactics of civil disobedience, and those involved pledged either to engage in civil disobedience (which could lead to arrest) or to support those doing the civil disobedience. I chose to be a supporter - I was afraid of being arrested. There was one big protest that I remember taking place at the Federal Building in downtown Boston, where people blocked the doors of the building and were arrested en masse - about 500 as I recall. Several friends of mine were arrested, and I remember going to the bail hearing later in the day. Those who refused to identify themselves (including my friends) were kept in jail for a couple of days until they were released.

The "21st year of the occupation" had similar actions in mind - public civil disobedience, with certain people risking arrest, and others watching out for them and supporting them. As in the U.S., my choice was support, not to risk arrest - especially since I was living in a foreign country. I went early one morning in Jerusalem to a training session in civil disobedience along with another friend.

The first and as it happened only action of the "21st year" that I took part in was an aborted attempt in May, 1989, to visit a Palestinian family in Qalqiliya, on the West Bank - one of the sons of the family had been arrested and was accused of being a terrorist, and in response the IDF was going to seal off one of the rooms of the house (this was a common punishment at that time - I don't know if the IDF continues to do this). The group's intention was not to engage in civil disobedience - no one planned to get arrested. Our goal was to express support for the family.

We set off for Qalqiliya and at the entrance of the city we were halted by the local IDF commander, who told us that we were forbidden to enter a "closed military zone." A foreign film crew was waiting outside the city, presumably to film us. We turned around, and some people left (including Dedi Zucker, a member of the Israeli Knesset then and a founder of B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights group). Instead of going back to Jerusalem, however, we sneaked into Qalqiliya by going through the orchards around the city (something impossible to do now, because the city is surrounded by the separation wall, an apt name in this case). We ended up in a main square of the city, and asked some passersby how to get to the street of the family we were going to visit. We started in that direction, and then an IDF patrol came upon us and asked what we were doing. They then ordered us to leave. Since the group had decided not to engage in civil disobedience, we started to walk out of the city. There were a number of local Palestinian residents watching us, and one of the men of the group decided to give them the "V" sign for solidarity. The soldiers saw the gesture, and went up to him and told him not to do that again, or he would be arrested. He made the sign again, and they started to arrest him. Then another man in the group did the same thing.

Reuven Kaminer, in his book "The Politics of Protest: the Israeli peace movement and the intifada" (1996) writes of this moment (p. 129): "It seems that everything was going to end quietly when one of the protestors flashed a 'V' sign to the local residents (later, the 'V' sign became the basis for the charge that the 27 had incited the local population to rebellion....)." The IDF charged later that we yelled "להמשיך באינתיפדה" - "continue the intifada" - but this was an invention to support the charge of incitement to rebellion. Kaminer continues, "The officers were incensed and began arresting; first, several men in the group, and then all the women who refused to abandon them." (Women were the majority of the group). Kaminer then writes, "In a matter of minutes, 27 demonstrators were being held in the local police station and a chain of events was set in motion which forced the 27 to remain in prison for five full days."

I was not one of them. At the last minute, as I was about to get into one of the police trucks, one of the leaders of the "21st year" shouted out - "You don't have to get arrested if you don't want to be." I didn't want to, and dropped off the back of the truck with two other people who also didn't want to get arrested. The soldiers told us to leave the city, and we started to walk out the main entrance. Fortunately for us, the film crew was still there, and they gave us a ride to the bus station in Kfar Saba, the closest Israeli city to Qalqiliya. When we got to Jerusalem I went home and called the office of Dedi Zucker to let him know what happened.

As Kaminer reports, those arrested spent five days in jail before being released. I went to the court at least a couple of times as a supporter during hearings for the arrested protestors, bringing clothing to my arrested friend. They were eventually brought to trial in the fall of 1989, but charges were dismissed because it turned out that the order the IDF commander was holding for a "closed military zone" had never been signed.

The feeling I was left with after the whole incident was over (including court hearings, publicity, demonstrations, etc.) was that the members of the "21st year" simply weren't prepared to engage in civil disobedience both because they/we didn't really understand what civil disobedience was, nor the possible consequences to ourselves of it. Did the two men who flashed "V" signs know that they were doing something that could provoke the soldiers to arrest them? They certainly displayed no awareness of this risk. The group members in Qalqiliya were not prepared to get arrested - in fact, after the soldiers ordered us all to leave the city, we had a short discussion on whether to engage in civil disobedience, and decided that we had not come with that purpose. As Kaminer points out in his book, a number of the arrested women were mothers with children at home who did not want to risk a stay in jail. Those arrested were not prepared for conditions in the jails, nor for the (initial) seriousness of the legal charges against them.

Compared with those who risked their liberty and their lives in the American civil rights movement, we were rank amateurs. For example, the people who were involved in the 1960 sit-ins that desegregated lunch counters in the South (for example Diana Nash in Nashville) prepared themselves physically, spiritually, and psychologically for their non-violent struggle. From the Wikipedia article about Diana Nash:

After experiencing such shocking discriminatory events, Nash decided to search for a way to challenge segregation, Nash began attending civil disobedience workshops led by Rev. James Lawson.^[2] James Lawson had studied Mahatma Gandhi's techniques of nonviolent direct action and passive resistance while studying in India.^[9] By the end of her first semester at Fisk, she had become one of Lawson's most devoted disciples. Although originally a reluctant participant in non-violence, Nash emerged as a leader due to her well-spoken, composed manner when speaking to the authorities and to the press.

I don't know if a strong religious faith is necessary for effective civil disobedience, but I think that it helps a great deal in standing up to the difficult circumstances that participants may have to confront. Thorough training in how to remain non-violent when faced with a violent reaction is an absolute necessity. Our group had neither of these advantages.

Are the members of the Gaza Flotilla really prepared for what may happen to them? Alice Walker talks a good line, but have she and the other Americans on the "Audacity of Hope" trained for how to respond if the IDF decides to board their boat? Are they all really committed to nonviolence? How would they have behaved if they had been on the Mavi Marmara last year? How would they have responded to the IHH activists on the boat who prepared to fight off the IDF commandos? Have the passengers on the boat organized themselves to resist nonviolently? Walker suggests in her essay that all of the responsibility for possible violence is on the shoulders of the IDF - but what if it turns out that some of the passengers do want to resist violently? I hope that the passengers have discussed these issues thoroughly. While I don't support the flotilla, I have no desire to see the passengers injured or killed - and both the passengers on the boats and the IDF have a responsibility to make sure that there is no violence.

Bitterness

This is an email that I sent to some friends about my feelings during this visit to Israel:

I know I haven't written anything to people about Israel, other than a few Facebook updates (all they said was that I had arrived and have watched some soccer games - the World Cup is definitely the most important public event going on now). I guess I've been feeling a bit depressed about the situation here. It just seems like such a mess.

When I arrived the immediate issue was of a court case involving a Haredi community in the West Bank where they were accused of discriminating against Sephardi girls in admission to the local school (state-funded by the way). The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the discrimination was illegal, and then took the further step to order the Haredi Ashkenazi parents who had taken their daughters out of the school (in protest of the order to integrate it) - to go to jail for two weeks, both mothers and fathers. That happened a week ago. Most of the fathers went to jail, but none of the mothers, and today the court ruled that most of the mothers won't have to go to jail. In reaction to the ruling, there were extraordinarily large Haredi demonstrations all over Israel, including one of 100,000 people in Jerusalem! (Fortunately, I was nowhere near it).

And then there's the whole business with the flotilla and its aftermath. Everything I've read in the Israeli press about the makeup of the Israeli inquiry commission suggests that it's a joke, that the government set up this commission simply to mollify the U.S. (which actually isn't working, since the U.S. is still calling for an international inquiry). Israel has now been forced to lighten the blockade on Gaza because of international pressure, which is obviously better for the people of Gaza but makes the Israeli government look weak, which it is. And more flotillas are on their way, from Lebanon and Iran. Who knows how the incompetent Israeli government will deal with them - not well, I imagine.

See these articles on the planned flotillas: Lebanon has just told Israel that it will be "fully responsible" if Israel attacks the boats that will be coming from there. Iran is also sending a boat to break the blockade.

Iran said Tuesday it would send a blockade-busting ship carrying aid and pro-Palestinian activists to Gaza, fueling concern in Israel, where commandos were training for another possible confrontation at sea.

Israel warned archenemy Iran to drop the plan. The Iranian announcement came days after Israel eased its three-year-old blockade of Gaza under international pressure following its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla last month.

"No one in their right mind can believe that a ship sent by the ayatollahs and their Revolutionary Guards has anything to do with humanitarian aid," said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor. "I don't think there is one single country in this region and beyond that would let such an ayatollah ship come near its coasts."

Security officials said the prospect of an Iranian boat headed for Gaza had Israel deeply worried, and that naval commandos were training for the possibility of taking on a vessel with a suicide bomber on board. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose operational details.

Maybe I'm just being negative, but it certainly seems to me that if there is an armed encounter with the Iranian ship, it could be the beginning of a war.

From here it seems that Iran, Hizbollah, and Hamas are just getting stronger politically (and militarily). Honestly, I think a war with one or all of them is inevitable - I don't know when or how it will begin, but I think there will soon be a pretty terrible war. I was hoping that my anxious feelings about war were just projections from far away, but the reality here is bad, and it doesn't seem to me that the current government has the wisdom to deal with a real war.

From here it also seems that Israel is getting more and more isolated politically, in part due to the stupid right-wing government which can't even manage not to antagonize the U.S. government (today the Jerusalem municipality just announced its plans to tear down 22 Palestinian homes in Silwan, which is just down the hill from the Dung Gate, and build an archaeological park there - the U.S. government immediately protested).

The right-wing government also seems to view the simple exercise of certain civil rights as anti-Israel (or maybe the exercise by certain people of those civil rights). I was watching the news last night, and one of the stories was about a conference at Ben Gurion University in the Negev held to deal with the legal problems of the Bedouin in the Negev - many of their villages are unrecognized by the state and therefore get no state services, including running water and electricity. The conference was intended to help people learn about the relevant laws and how to file court cases. The local prosecutor's office accused Ben Gurion of anti-state activity and threatened legal action against the university for doing something entirely legal!

US Boat to Gaza and Gilad Atzmon

This morning I received another one of the delightful missives from the US Boat to Gaza, reminding me of upcoming events in advance of the sailing of the flotilla in "the third week in June from a number of European ports," and asking me for "help." Well, here's the help I plan to give them.

They are asking their supporters to send them letters to carry to the people of Gaza. I don't quite understand this, since Gaza has a postal service too, as well as internet access. Why put them on a boat?

US Boat to Gaza, Fellowship of Reconciliation, US Campaign to End the Occupation, and CodePink are organizing a conference in Washington May 21-24 called "Move Over AIPAC!" Apparently AIPAC are to blame for everything bad that's happened in Gaza, especially since they are responsible for US support for Israel. If you go to the website you'll find the usual gang of anti-Israel organizations sponsoring it. One of the individual supporters is Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, someone I used to respect. The keynote speakers are Charles Freeman, John Mearsheimer, and Stephen Walt.

And, they're advertising two fundraising events, the first of which will occur tonight in Oakland: "On May 10, world renowned jazz saxophonist Gilad Atzmon will give a concert and talk to benefit the Bay Area passengers who will be on board The Audacity of Hope."

To me, the prominent notice of Atzmon's concert is a red flag - the organizers of the US boat to Gaza do not care if they are receiving the public support of a notorious anti-semite. They may claim not to be anti-semites, and merely to be anti-Zionist, but working with Atzmon gives the lie to that claim.

UPDATE: A commenter to Adam Holland reports that there will be a vigil today opposite the church, put on by San Francisco Voice for Israel.

ACTION ALERT:
May 10 4- 5pm
Vigil against Anti-Semitism in Oakland: Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave, Oakland

Tomorrow, Tuesday night, May 10 the Lake Merritt United Methodist Church in Oakland is hosting a talk by Gilad Atzmon as a fundraiser for the US boat to Gaza. Atzmon is an ex-Israeli who now resides in the UK; he has renounced not only being Israeli, but his membership in the Jewish people and now writes and promotes classically anti-Semitic remarks.....

San Francisco Voice for Israel will hold a vigil outside the church from 4-5

Suggested signs:

"Hate speech: not welcome here"
"Hate speech is unjust"

Please invite your non-Jewish friends to this event. This is about hate speech in the Bay Area, and decent people of all religions and (almost) all political orientations should be justifiably concerned about this type of extremism being welcomed into our community.

StandWithUs/ San Francisco Voice for Israel
www.SFVoiceForIsrael.org
www.StandWithUs.com

for further information or questions: e-mail us at sfvoiceforisrael@yahoo.com

Join the SF Voice For Israel group on Facebook!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22259707003

News from Greece & the flotilla

On Reshet Bet of Israel Radio now:

"We are coming! We are coming!" The Gaza flotilla participants shouted today at their press conference in Athens. According to the Kol Israel reporter, the Greek authorities "threw the book at them," demanded that they pay customs, etc., and is doing what it can to delay them. The press conference was short and didn't provide a whole lot of information.

He also reported on how the Greek government is dealing with the threat of a national default and the constant demonstrations against it (including threat of a general strike for a couple of days), which are protesting the austerity measures required by the EU, the IMF, and the World Bank.

Other flotilla news - yesterday, the director of the Government Press Office, which is responsible for foreign journalists, threatened that if any sailed on the flotilla, they would be at risk of not being permitted to enter Israel again for ten years. But now, today the government has dropped this threat.

A statement issued by the Prime Minister's Office said: "The prime minister has instructed not to apply standard policy against infiltrators and those entering the country illegally. It was also decided to allow Israeli and international media outlets on Navy boats in order to enable transparency and credible reporting of the events."

Notes on Canadian boat to Gaza

Fear and no clean clothing: Amira Hass preparing to sail for Gaza

Amira Hass, the Haaretz writer, is going on the Canadian boat "Tahrir" that is part of the Gaza flotilla. She writes about how they have prepared for a violent IDF response:

In advance of the departure of our ship, we - the participants - sat in a Greek hotel, getting to know one another and rehearsing the prospect that the Israeli Navy would take control of the ships in the flotilla. In simulation drills over several hours, about 50 civilians - ranging in age from 20 to 69 - attempted to imagine themselves facing Israeli warships and M16 rifles with fighter helicopters hovering overhead, along with water cannon, tear gas and Taser stun guns. The participants also imagined verbal abuse along with physical blows, dogs, and masked commandos.

The activists concluded from the exercise that they should acknowledge their fears and learn as a group of people, mutually responsible for one anther, how to confront their fears.

I'm glad they decided to prepare themselves for the possibility of violence - but what are they preparing to do? "Acknowledging their fears" is fine, but have they trained to do something specific?

Once again, Alice Walker

A good essay by Marc Tracy of Tablet on why Alice Walker Is Sailing to Gaza.

Alice Walker dreams of classic civil disobedience. She quickly name-checks Gandhi as well as Schwerner, Cheney, and Goodman in an essay explaining why she will participate in the flotilla set to disembark for Gaza in a few days. But there is something fishy about her essay that betrays her stated cause of universalism (“One child must never be set above another”). It begins when she weirdly isolates Schwerner and Goodman, the two young civil rights martyrs who happened to be Jews, from Cheney, who was black, and it culminates in the story’s concluding anecdote, in which she reports what inspired her ex-husband to be a civil rights activist:

He was a little boy on his way home from Yeshiva … He was frequently harassed by older boys from regular school, and one day two of these boys snatched his yarmulke (skull cap), and, taunting him, ran off with it, eventually throwing it over a fence.

Two black boys appeared, saw his tears, assessed the situation, and took off after the boys who had taken his yarmulke. Chasing the boys down and catching them, they made them climb the fence, retrieve and dust off the yarmulke, and place it respectfully back on his head.

Walker seems unaware of how easily she—a novelist, who should know better—allows everyone their standard roles: The meek, pious Jew taunted by the evil, brutish goyim and saved by the goodhearted and even more powerful Magical Negroes (“appeared!”).... Regardless, a stereotype-laden fable, even if depicting a real event, is not a sufficient basis for a grown-up to adopt a cause. Does Walker’s objection to the blockade derive from liberal humanism or from a recoiling at Jewish power? Sadly, her essay suggests the latter.

I agree with Tracy. Walker does have a problem with both Jews and Jewish power. Despite the fine words about nonviolence she wrote in her CNN essay, she is not merely anti-Zionist, she is anti-Semitic.

From an essay she published a couple of years ago, about her trip to Gaza in 2009 with Code Pink:

And so I have been, once again, struggling to speak about an atrocity: This time in Gaza, this time against the Palestinian people. Like most people on the planet I have been aware of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict almost my whole life. I was four years old in 1948 when, after being subjected to unspeakable cruelty by the Germans, after a “holocaust” so many future disasters would resemble; thousands of European Jews were resettled in Palestine. They settled in a land that belonged to people already living there, which did not seem to bother the British who, as in India, had occupied the land and then, on leaving it, decided they could simply put in place a partitioning of the land that would work fine for the people, strangers, Palestinians and European Jews, now forced to live together....

[A description of meeting a Palestinian woman - RL] Coming upon another grouping of tents, I encountered an old woman sitting on the ground in what would have been, perhaps, the doorway of her demolished, pulverized home. She was clean and impeccably dressed, the kind of old woman who is known and loved and respected by everyone in the community, as my own mother had been. Her eyes were dark and full of life. She talked to us freely. I gave her a gift I had brought, and she thanked me.

Looking into my eyes she said: May God Protect You From the Jews. When the young Palestinian interpreter told me what she’d said, I responded: It’s too late, I already married one. I said this partly because, like so many Jews in America, my former husband could not tolerate criticism of Israel’s behavior toward the Palestinians. Our very different positions on what is happening now in Palestine/Israel and what has been happening for over fifty years, has been perhaps our most severe disagreement. It is a subject we have never been able to rationally discuss. He does not see the racist treatment of Palestinians as the same racist treatment of blacks and some Jews that he fought against so nobly in Mississippi. And that he objected to in his own Brooklyn based family. When his younger brother knew he was seeing me, a black person, he bought and nailed over an entire side of his bedroom the largest Confederate flag either of us had ever seen....

The people of Israel have not been helped by America’s blind loyalty to their survival as a Jewish State, by any means necessary. The very settlers they’ve used American taxpayer money to install on Palestinian land turn out to be a scary lot, fighting not only against Palestinians, but against Israelis, when they do not get their way. Israelis stand now exposed, the warmongers and peacemakers alike, as people who are ruled by leaders that the world considers irrational, vengeful, scornful of international law, and utterly frightening. There are differing opinions about this, of course, but my belief is that when a country primarily instills fear in the minds and hearts of the people of the world, it is no longer useful in joining the dialogue we need for saving the planet.

There is no hiding what Israel has done or what it does on a daily basis to protect and extend its power. It uses weapons that cut off limbs without bleeding; it drops bombs into people’s homes that never stop detonating in the bodies of anyone who is hit; it causes pollution so severe it is probable that Gaza may be uninhabitable for years to come, though Palestinians, having nowhere else to go, will have to live there. This is a chilling use of power, supported by the United States of America, no small foe, if one stands up to it. No wonder that most people prefer to look the other way during this genocide, hoping their disagreement with Israeli policies will not be noted. Good Germans, Good Americans, Good Jews. But, as our sister Audre Lorde liked to warn us: Our silence will not protect us. In the ongoing global climate devastation that is worsened by war activities, we will all suffer, and we will also be afraid.

The world knows it is too late for a two state solution. This old idea, bandied about since at least the Eighties, denounced by Israel for decades, isn’t likely to become reality with the massive buildup of settlements all over what remains of Palestinian land....

What is to be done? Our revered Tolstoi asked this question generations ago, speaking also of War and Peace. I believe there must be a one state solution. That Palestinians and Jews, who have lived together in peace in the past, must work together to make this a reality once again. That this land (so soaked in Jewish and Palestinian blood, and with America’s taxpayer dollars wasted on violence the majority of us would never, if we knew, support) must become, like South Africa, the secure and peaceful home of everyone who lives there. This will require that Palestinians, like Jews, have the right of return to their homes and their lands. Which will mean what Israelis most fear: Jews will be outnumbered and, instead of a Jewish state, there will be a Jewish, Muslim, Christian country, which is how Palestine functioned before the Europeans arrived. What is so awful about that?

As I wrote earlier, Walker's essay is marked by serious errors of fact. She doesn't seem to be aware of the actual history of Palestine before the establishment of Israel, revealing no knowledge of either the British Mandate or the Ottoman Empire. She refers to the "holocaust," as if doubting that it occurred, and thinks mistakenly that it was the British who decided to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza - does she actually know what genocide is? With such willful ignorance, how can she reach valid conclusions?

But what is most unnerving about her essay is not these errors, but her statement that Israel "is no longer useful in joining the dialogue we need for saving the planet." In other words, Israel is not a partner in solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - it is an object, rightfully subject to the plans of others. It has committed crimes so awful that it cannot be worked with, only upon.

"What is so awful about that?" Walker asks about Jews becoming a minority in a unified Palestine. Do I need to instruct her in the sorry progress of Jewish history in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? Apparently, yes, because she refers to the "holocaust" without understanding its devastating effect on both those Jews who survived it and Jews living elsewhere in the world who were not physically affected by it (including the Jews living in Palestine during the British Mandate). She seems to have no knowledge of the growth of political and racial antisemitism that led to the birth of the Zionist movement and the conviction that the only way Jews would be safe would be to create their own state. Jews have a well-founded fear of becoming a minority, especially if it means living in a unified state of Palestine where Hamas and Fatah would have the upper hand. There would be no return to a mythical "living together in peace" - the one state solution is a recipe for an intense and cruel civil war, with the losers being massacred and expelled. And I do not assume that the Jews would be the losers. For the sake of both the Israelis and the Palestinians, a two-state solution is an urgent need.

Stephen Sizer, hanging out at an antisemitic conference in Iran again

The Reverend Stephen Sizer is in the news again, and not for a good reason. He's one of the people who attended the latest Iranian conference, New Horizon, which provided a venue for Jew-haters and conspiracy theorists of all kinds. The purpose of the conference from the point of view of the Iranian regime seems to be to bolster the Iranian position in the ongoing talks on its nuclear program. Its official title was "New Horizon – The 2nd Annual International Conference of Independent Thinkers & Film Makers."

Sizer spoke on two panels. At the opening ceremony, he gave a talk entitled "Christian Jihad vs. Christian Zionism." In another panel, titled "The Mechanisms of Action of the Israeli Lobby and their Effects in Western Capitals," he reported on "The Israeli Lobby in England."

[Incidentally, Sizer has published a talk called The Christian Jihadist on his website which may provide the gist of what he talked about at the conference].

Press TV has a short video about the conference, and Sizer appears briefly, speaking at the opening ceremony, but we don't hear what he's saying. Here's a screen grab from the video, showing him speaking:

He also participated in the "Conversations" part of the conference, in a session titled "Christian responsibility against Systematic Iniquity." The other participants were Randy Short, who has appeared many times on the Iranian propaganda channel Press TV, Maria Poumier, and Marzieh Hashemi. Poumier is a French filmmaker who was the director of a movie about Roger Garaudy, the Holocaust denier. She also worked on a movie called "L'antisémite" together with the French antisemitic comedian, Dieudonné M’bala M’bala. Hashemi is an American who converted to Islam, moved to Iran, and now works for Press TV. Randy Short is a Protestant minister, but Hashemi is a Muslim, and Poumier doesn't appear to be connected to religion at all. A strange set of interlocutors for Sizer.

Sizer has also just uploaded a bizarre video to Vimeo, "Syrian Tourist Board Promo." It has to be seen to be believed, because it is so out of touch with the current reality of civil war and atrocities in Syria. [Update from September 22, 2018 - the video is still available!]

Another interesting participant was Medea Benjamin, of Codepink. She was one of only a few female participants (although from the New Horizon website it also appears that Alison Weir [not the historian] is also speaking, although she's not listed among the participants). Despite her feminist beliefs, she covered her hair with a scarf, as the Iranian regime requires of all women.

Medea Benjamin being interviewed by Iranian state TV - image is from ADL article on the conference.

She was part of a panel on "The Gaza War & BDS Movement Strategies against the Zionist Regime," and participated in two "conversations": on "Different Facets of the Resistance," along with Tim Pool and Caleb Maupin, on "Paradigms Old & New," with Ken O'Keefe, Tim Pool, and Caleb Maupin. The panel discussion also included Randy Short, and two Iranians, Vahid Jalili and Khaled Qoddumi.

Here's how O'Keefe is described on Wikipedia: "Ken O’Keefe (born July 21, 1969) is an Irish-Palestinian citizen and activist and former United States Marine and Gulf War veteran who attempted to renounce US citizenship in 2001. He led the human shield action to Iraq and was a passenger on the MV Mavi Marmara during the Gaza flotilla raid. He said that he participated during clashes on the ship including having been involved in the disarmament of two Israeli commandos."

Tim Pool has worked for Vice Media and is praised on his Wikipedia page for his use of new technology in covering event such as the Occupy Wall Street protests. It's not clear to me from reading about him why he would participate in a conference overflowing with conspiracy theorists and antisemitic nut cases.

Caleb Maupin works for the International Action Center, which still defends North Korea as a communist state. He is also a member of the Workers World Party, another Marxist-Leninist group that supports the vicious North Korean regime. The abstract of his talk at the conference can be found here. He writes, "The same banking institutions which drive the US toward war and support for Israel, are devastating the US economy. I will point to key events that I directly observed during the Occupy Wall Street protests that showed the potential for building a higher level of solidarity. I will identify the harmful role of Zionist Non-Governmental Organizations in controlling the movement’s politics, and blocking it from building a broader perspective."

Who is Vahid Jalili? A report in Alahednews on the conference cites him:

A few Iranian figures spoke during the conference among which was Vahid Jalili, the Director of Cultural Front of Islamic Revolution. He assured that "Israel" failed to establish its land from Nile to the Euphrates. He also said its army is no longer known as the invincible army, and is unable to protect itself. 

Jalili stressed on the cultural aspect of recognizing the fact that the Palestinian cause is international and humane not only Islamic and Arab. He also underlined that efforts worldwide should be joined to fighting the presence of a body that was entrenched in the Middle East.

Some media coverage:

Rosie Gray in Buzzfeed: "Antiwar Activists, 9/11 Truthers Gather In Tehran For Anti-Zionist Conference: Everyone from Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin to French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala."

An article by Ben Cohen in the Algemeiner: "Anti-Semites Gather in Iran for Regime Sponsored Hate-Fest"

Meir Javendafar, "Iran Regime Returns to its Antisemitic Propaganda - Again."

An article by Elham Hashemi in Alahednews, "New Horizon Conference: In Support of World Justice." The article reports that the Islamic Jihad representative in Iran, Nasser Abu Sharif, spoke on the evils of Israel. It also reports on the session with Medea Benjamin and Caleb Maupin:

Medea Benjamin, an American political activist, best known for co-founding Code Pink assured during her speech that there is not even one congress person in the US government who is ready to say ‘I want to cut aid to "Israel", even among the progressives as they are too afraid to take the step. 

Benjamin assured that BDS; Boycott Divestment Sanctions and other movements such as Students injustice for Palestine have become very prominent and vibrant in the United States. She assured these movements raise a very important issue in supporting the Palestinian people and bringing justice to the world. The activist assured that the effort now is to direct these campaigns correctly, and to find the best targets to boycott such as the Ahava cosmetic products, which not only are made by "Israel" but also steals salts from the Dead Sea. 

Other good targets, according to Benjamin, are G4S company, BAE systems, and Soda stream which are major supporters to the Zionist entity. 

In addition, Caleb Maupin, political analyst and journalist from the International Action Center assured that the list of corporations in charge of the economic trouble the US has been facing is almost identical to that of the boycott list, hence proving boycott fruitful. He stressed that boycott is one of the real keys to a major change in the world balance that people would want to see.

A press release by the ADL - "Iranian Hatefest Promotes Anti-Semitism, Draws Holocaust Deniers and U.S. Anti-Israel Activists." See also an earlier article: "Iran New Horizon Conference Draws U.S. Anti-Semites, Holocaust Deniers." An article published on October 2, "Details Emerge On Anti-Semitic Gathering In Tehran," gives more information on the speakers.

Arrival in Israel

I arrived in Israel yesterday afternoon around 5:00 p.m. Israel time. One of the things that has always puzzled me about my reaction to flying here is why the amount of time between when I land and the next day always seems absurdly short. I was finally awake enough yesterday to figure it out (after 23 years of flying to and from Israel). Coming from the U.S. east coast to Israel we lose seven hours (because of the difference in time). Yesterday, to my perception, was ridiculously short - only 17 hours long instead of 24. So it wasn't natural suddenly for it to be June 16 instead of June 15. Does that make sense? Well, maybe I'm still not that awake.

A few news items, from the particular to the general:

1) the Jerusalem Pool, an institution in the Emek Refaim neighborhood of Jerusalem (near where I'm staying in Baka), has been threatened with closure by its owners, who want to sell the land to developers who will build a big apartment building plus parking lot in the space. Apparently, however, that plan has been stopped because the owners signed an agreement when they first bought the location that specifies the land can only be used for a pool. The pool was closed over the winter months, requiring regular pool-goers to go to alternate locations, like the Hebrew University pool or the Kibbutz Ramat Rahel pool, both of which are less convenient to people who live in southern Jerusalem. It's open now for swimming, but one can buy only a monthly subscription (instead of the previous yearly ones), and the future of the pool is in doubt.

2) religious news: in the Haredi settlement of Immanuel, parents are fighting an Israeli court ruling that requires the local Bais Yaakov school for girls to admit Ashkenazic and Sephardic students equally. The Israeli Supreme Court ruling came down today that if the parents don't agree to send their daughters to the school, the parents themselves will be sent to jail. For some supportive opinions in the Israeli press, see the translations on False Messiah.

The Israeli high court also decided today to strike down the provision in the state budget that gives income stipends to kollel students (these are married men with children studying in yeshiva), without giving equivalent stipends to students in other educational frameworks, like colleges and universities.

These two court judgments strike at the racism of the Ashkenazic Haredi community and at the support the supposedly secular state gives to the Haredim above all others. The second decision, if it is actually put into practice (and not circumvented by a weak coalition government that needs the Haredi parties to survive) would signal a real revolution in the relationship between the state and the Haredi community, since it would cut off the main support given to men who refuse to work on the pretext that they have to study Torah full time. Instead of taking responsibility for making sure that they can support their families and study Torah, the Haredi community has blackmailed successive Israeli coalition governments into giving these men stipends, at the expense of the secular and religious working public.

3. On the plane here, I read through some articles in the Hebrew Yediot Aharonot about the makeup of the Israeli inquiry commission into the Gaza flotilla fiasco (linked article is from Haaretz - I wasn't able to find the Yediot article). Yediot, which is hardly the most left-wing of Israeli newspapers, wrote scathingly about the three Israelis appointed to the commission, pointing to the age of two of the three (one in his 80s, another in his 90s), and writing about former Supreme Court justice Turkel, aged 75 (who is heading the inquiry panel) that in his court judgments he tended to go very slowly and be deferential to the government.

Going to Israel

I'm sitting here in the Newark airport, waiting for my flight to Israel. I'll be there for about 5 weeks, until July 21, when I fly to Riga, Latvia and then to Tartu, Estonia for the international SBL. It will be interesting to hear from my friends what their reactions are to the Gaza flotilla and the Israeli interception. It's always hard to get an impression of what's going in Israel simply by reading the press - even reading the Israeli press online one only gets a partial picture.

I bought a camcorder a few days ago so I could make some short movies about the Old City and the rest of Jerusalem - I'd like to give the students in my Jerusalem class an appreciation for the lived reality of Jerusalem, not just the books and articles about it that we'll be reading. Last year I put a lot of my photos up on Picasa, which I think helped in giving them a better impression of the reality of the city, but I hope that short videos will be more helpful. I'm also thinking of going on a tour of the Separation Wall in Jerusalem (there's a group called Ir Amim which does those tours) and it would be useful to have some video clips in addition to still photos.