The Gaza Blockade disaster

For June 11, 2010
From the Old Olivetti
By Josh Stein

The world’s attention is on the catastrophic oil spill off the Gulf Coast and the president’s enfeebled response, a disappointment to his advocates (I include myself), confirmation to his foes. But while the oil continued to spew from the earth beneath the sea, on the high seas, Israel’s navy attempted to commandeer a flotilla bent on breaking its blockade of Gaza. The consummation, deaths aboard the lead ship, was devoutly to be wished by the organizers of the expedition. For them it was a no lose situation. If Israel allowed the boats to land it would be a small triumph. If the materials were seized without deaths, and, as the Israelis promised, checked then sent to Gaza, it would be a lesser victory, but not nearly as good theater as what actually happened. That was a bonanza—or was it a calculation? We’ll never know. Israel will transfer the food, medicine and building materials to Gaza and Hamas will have martyrs, the world will be able to blame Israel for the loss of life. The world will little note, nor long remember concurrent Muslim murders by Muslims. As Tom Friedman reminds in the Times, within the week, Muslim suicide bombers murdered nearly 100 Muslims in mosques in Pakistan and pro-Hamas gunmen destroyed a U.N.-sponsored summer camp in Gaza because it wouldn’t force Islamic fundamentalism down the throats of children. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/opinion/02friedman.html?hp)

On May 31, when I first heard the news of the deaths aboard ship I had a feeling akin to dispair. “Where,” I asked myself “are the people who planned and executed the raid on Entebbe airport to free hostages 2500 miles away?” Israel was the world’s hero back then on July 4, 1976, almost upstaging all the hoopla of the 200 year anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Lightning fast the Israelis freed 100 people. According to the mission’s overall commander, Brigadier General Dan Shomron, the plan succeeded because since “no one expected the Israelis to take such risks … they took them.” One Israeli was killed, the leader of the strike force, Yonatan Netanyahu, elder brother of the current Prime Minister. But that was then. Now we have been snookered by people whose public relations skills are exceeded only by Israel’s ability to fall into an obvious trap.

Ehud Toledano, University Chair for Ottoman Studies, Department of Middle East and African History at Tel Aviv University (and a cousin of mine) writes in an E-mail that the commandos were sent into a mission that was ill-planned and ill-conceived by the high command of the navy.” There was “no, or totally insufficient intelligence, both in terms of info gathering and analysis... And, hence, a bad plan for what was wrongly supposed to be a group of peaceniks, but in fact were terror-trained Islamic radicals, ready to use violence in order to kill our soldiers, not just stop the takeover, which they knew they could not do.” He points out that information is “coming out now …to the effect that they were well organized, armed, and had thousands of dollars in their pockets. Families in Istanbul told the press a few hours ago that their relatives had a strong desire to die as martyrs.” This confirms a statement in last Wednesday’s Times that “The Gaza Freedom March made its motives clear in a statement before Monday’s deadly confrontation: ‘A violent response from Israel will breathe new life into the Palestine solidarity movement, drawing attention to the blockade.’” Ehud continues: Those seeking martyrdom “were on the upper deck, about 40 of them, with the [foreign sympathizers] staying on the lower decks, [who] therefore had no knowledge of what was being planned and executed upstairs. It is due to their high skilled professionalism that the commandos avoided being killed and ended up killing so few of the terrorists.”

Amos Oz, published in the same issue of the Times the Friedman column appears bemoans two simultaneous sieges—Israel of Gaza; Israel by Arabs. He wants Israel to sign a peace with the Fatah government in the West Bank, returning to the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the Palestinians’ capital. Once this is done, Hamas in Gaza will either continue to be isolated or will join with Fatah. More pie in the sky? I think so. Even an isolated Hamas still has the capacity to do irreparable harm, much as that tiny hole in the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. Neither is going away; Israel can sign peace treaties with willing Arab partners, but the unwilling will still be there and president Obama will probably be as incapable of dealing with the one as he is with the other. I wish it weren’t so, but my wishes count for little.