Method and Madness: The Hidden Story of Israel's Assaults on Gaza (8 page)

True, the international community would probably not have pressured Israel were it not for the Turkish state’s high decibel intervention. The grassroots movement in and of itself, and however many its mortal sacrifices, is not yet able to inflect state policy. On its own, the murder of Rachel Corrie did not rattle American complicity with the Israeli occupation, nor did the murder of Tom Hurndall rattle British complicity. Nor has the heroic nonviolent resistance in West Bank villages like Bil’in yet stirred the world’s conscience. But the solidarity movement is still in a nascent stage and has yet to draw on its vast reserves. One can only imagine the potential of a movement that taps the dormant talent and ingenuity of its ever-expanding ranks; of a committed leadership that harnesses this restless but diffuse energy and doesn’t let petty jealousies, turf wars and ego aggrandizement obscure the common objective; of one, two, three, many flotillas determined to break the cruel siege, once and for all. Energizing as these prospects might be, one must simultaneously bear in mind the magnitude of the will that is required, how concentrated, tenacious and sustained this collective will needs to be, in order to extract even the most meager concession from those ruthlessly wielding power. Despite the universal condemnation of Israel’s commando raid, and the concerted calls by world leaders for Israel to lift the siege of Gaza, there was still “no tangible change for the people on the ground”
³⁶
in the ensuing months, while the humanitarian crisis again vanished from the headlines.

The fact that the murders of Corrie and Hurndall still resonate and that the murder of nine foreigners aboard the
Mavi Marmara
evoked global condemnation should serve as a fillip to the solidarity movement. However unfair, it remains true that a higher value is attached to some lives—and deaths—than others; that Palestinian lives are expendable, while the lives of foreigners are not. The US Civil Rights Movement immortalized the names Schwerner and Goodman, and who can deny the nobility of their sacrifice? Yet, a forgotten Black person was killed in Mississippi in each of the five months preceding the deaths of these two white (and Jewish) volunteers in Freedom Summer.
³⁷
The inequality in valuating life should outrage, but it should also prod us to redouble our commitment because the presence of a “higher-graded” life can direct attention to an atrocity that would otherwise go unnoticed.

A skeptic might wonder whether the bloody spectacle aboard the
Mavi Marmara
proved the power of nonviolence or, in fact, of violence. Would the world have paid heed if the passengers had not forcefully resisted and the Israeli killings had not ensued? But such a reading of what happened doubly errs. At some point, Israel’s resort to massive bloodshed was inevitable, however peaceful the opposition. The death toll on the
Mavi Marmara
was probably greater than Israel intended, but ultimately Israel has no recourse except to lethal force against determined nonviolent resistance. Moreover, nonviolent resistance does not preclude but, in fact, is predicated on the prospect of mortal self-sacrifice. Mahatma Gandhi
demanded
of
satyagrahis
that they seek out martyrdom at the hands of their oppressors: for, the whole point of nonviolent resistance was to prick the public conscience into action against injustice.
³⁸
No sight was more likely to arouse respect than innocents willing to die for their basic rights, and no sight was more likely to arouse indignation than innocents being killed for aspiring to these rights; indeed, the willingness to die nonviolently in pursuit of these rights affirmed the victims’ worthiness of them. Although it appalled grassroots activists, some leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were “elated” when Southern segregationists sicked dogs on nonviolent demonstrators. “They said over and over again,” James Foreman bitterly recounted, “‘We’ve got a movement. We’ve got a movement. They brought out the dogs. We’ve got a movement!’”
³⁹
The promise of nonviolence is not that it will preempt suffering and death but, as Gandhi never tired of repeating, that it can achieve the same results as violence at far lesser cost. Or, as a Hamas legislator put it, “The Gaza flotilla has done more for Gaza than 10,000 rockets.”
⁴⁰

The overarching lesson of the
Mavi Marmara
is to focus, not up above on meaningless sideshows like the “peace process,” but on summoning forth our own internal capacities. Instead of hoping against hope that President Barack Obama will yet redeem himself, our challenge is to muster sufficient political will from below so that he does the right thing—or, at any rate, doesn’t keep doing the wrong thing—
regardless
of what he wants. Deferring to the powers on high or waiting for a messiah is a confession of impotence. The simple but fundamental truth of politics, which even the most resolute of atheists would hasten to affirm, is that God helps those who help themselves.

Although the
Mavi Marmara
bloodbath marked yet another data point in the decline of Israel’s global standing,
⁴¹
still, public opinion has yet to be organized into an effective political force, and Israel was able to contain the immediate diplomatic and legal fallout.

In a gesture designed to placate Turkey, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed on 2 August 2010 a Panel of Inquiry (hereafter: UN Panel) to “examine and identify the facts, circumstances and context of the incident,” and to “consider and recommend ways of avoiding similar incidents in the future.”
⁴²
Israel initially opposed an international investigation but then reversed itself, proclaiming it had “nothing to hide,”
⁴³
after Ban Ki-moon eviscerated the proposed panel’s mandate
⁴⁴
and appointed as its vice-chair the singularly corrupt and criminal Colombian ex-president Alvaro Uribe, who is also an outspoken proponent of closer military ties between Colombia and Israel.
⁴⁵
It was predictable—and predicted at the time—that the panel would produce a whitewash.
⁴⁶
In the event, the report it produced, which vindicated Israel’s claim that its naval blockade of Gaza is legal, is probably the most mendacious and debased document ever issued under the aegis of the United Nations.

The UN Panel alleges that, in light of the “real threat” posed by Hamas rocket and mortar attacks, Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza constituted a “legitimate security measure” and “complied with the requirements of international law.”
⁴⁷
Its conclusions flatly contradicted those reached by other authorities, which unanimously judged Israel’s blockade a “flagrant violation of international law” (Amnesty International).
⁴⁸
Waving aside the findings of human rights organizations came easily to vice-chair Uribe who, in one of his periodic rants against these organizations, had earlier denounced Amnesty’s “blindness” and “fanaticism.”
⁴⁹

The argument contrived by the UN Panel to justify Israel’s naval blockade consists of a sequence of interrelated propositions:

To pronounce the naval blockade legal, the UN Panel had to sustain each and every one of these propositions. If even one were false, its defense of the blockade collapsed. The astonishing thing is that they are
all
false. Each will be addressed in turn.

T
HE
I
SRAELI NAVAL BLOCKADE OF
G
AZA WAS UNRELATED TO THE
I
SRAELI LAND BLOCKADE
. The critical first premise of the UN Panel is that the Israeli naval blockade was both conceptually and practically “distinct from” the land blockade.
⁵⁰
In fact, however, in design as well as implementation, the Israeli land and naval blockades constituted complementary halves of a unified whole: both served identical functions, while the success of each was essential to the success of the other. The Israeli government itself acknowledged these points.

Since the inception of its occupation in 1967, Israel has regulated passage of goods and persons along Gaza’s land and coastal borders. After Hamas gained full control of Gaza in 2007, Israel imposed a yet more stringent blockade on it.
⁵¹
The blockade was conceived to perform a twofold function: (a) a
security
objective of preventing weapons from reaching Gaza, and (b) a
political
objective of “bringing Gaza’s economy to the brink of collapse”—as Israeli officials repeatedly put it in private—in order to punish Gazans for electing Hamas and to turn them against it. The list of items Israel barred from entering Gaza—such as chocolate, chips, and baby chicks—pointed up the irreducibly
political
dimension of the blockade.
⁵²

Even the Turkel Commission, a quasi-official Israeli inquiry that unsurprisingly vindicated Israel on all key points regarding the flotilla assault,
⁵³
did not contest the dual security-political purpose of the naval blockade. For example, its final report cited testimony by Tzipi Livni, who was Israel’s foreign minister when the naval blockade was imposed, as well as a document delineating the purposes behind the blockade submitted by Major-General (res.) Amos Gilad, head of the Political, Military and Policy Affairs Bureau at Israel’s Ministry of Defense:

Tzipi Livni said . . . that the imposition of the naval blockade . . . was done in a wider context, as part of Israel’s comprehensive strategy (which she referred to as a “dual strategy”) of delegitimizing Hamas on the one hand and strengthening the status of the Palestinian Authority vis-à-vis the Gaza Strip on the other. . . . According to her approach, . . . the attempts to transfer [humanitarian] goods to the Gaza Strip by sea . . . give legitimacy to the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip. . . . Livni also stated that
it would be a mistake to examine the circumstances of imposing the naval blockade from a narrow security perspective only
.

…

The document [by Gilad] contains two considerations [regarding the blockade]: one . . . is to prevent any military strengthening of the Hamas; the other . . . is to “isolate and weaken Hamas.” In this context, Major-General (res.) Gilad stated that the significance of opening a maritime route to the Gaza Strip was that the Hamas’s status would be strengthened significantly from economic and political viewpoints. He further stated that opening a maritime route to the Gaza Strip, particularly while it is under Hamas control, . . . would be tantamount of [sic] a “very significant achievement for Hamas.” . . . Major-General (res.) Gilad concluded: “In summary, the need to impose a naval blockade on the Gaza Strip arises from security and military considerations . . . and also
to prevent any legitimization and economic and political strengthening of Hamas and strengthening it in the internal Palestinian arena
[vis-à-vis the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank].”

“It would therefore appear,” the Commission concluded, “that even though the purpose of the naval blockade was fundamentally a security one in response to military needs,
its imposition was also regarded by the decision makers as legitimate within the concept of Israel’s comprehensive ‘dual strategy’ against the Hamas in the Gaza Strip
.”
⁵⁴

The Israeli Turkel Report also did not contest that the naval blockade was
integral
to the strategy of achieving the twin goals. Indeed, it explicitly maintained that the land and sea blockade must be treated as a seamless whole:

Both the naval blockade and the land crossings policy were imposed and implemented because of the prolonged international armed conflict between Israel and the Hamas. . . . [O]n the strategic level . . . the naval blockade is regarded by the Government as part of Israel’s wider effort not to give legitimacy to the Hamas’s rule over the Gaza Strip, to isolate it in the international arena, and to strengthen the Palestinian Authority.