Eyeless Off The Sea Near Gaza – Yesh T’guva* – by Paul Usiskin

There’ll be another blunt IDF aphoristic title for the naval commando operation off the Gaza coast –“ Hammerhead”, “Flat Wave”, “Plug-Hole”. What there won’t be is any recognition that this was worse than many Israeli media sources had been predicting for days and there won’t be any success in convincing the world beyond, that this was anything more than another disproportionate Israeli use of force.
You don’t need to go far to get the latest “Israel Right or Wrong” opinion. If you happened to listen to BBC Radio N Ireland you’d have heard Gerry Lewis of Israel Radio calling me “naïve.” Why? Because I couldn’t see that the flotilla of 6 vessels that the Israeli Navy apprehended were a threat to Israel’s national security.
Now I’m not going to reprise all that Gerry said. Perhaps he was in a Bank Holiday traffic jam when he spoke and it was getting to him so he was getting more shrill and the interviewer – Seamus (well it was N. Ireland) – had to intervene. But Gerry ignored my comments. And they weren’t all critical of the Israeli Navy. In the days preceding all this, Israel made it abundantly clear what it expected of the flotilla and what it planned for it and its cargo and passengers.
One photo in Haaretz shows a voyaging peace seeker swathed in white with a beard wielding a large vicious knife – what kind of left-wing peace activist is he? YouTube clips with IDF titles claim to show a commando being attacked as he landed on a ship from a helicopter, another being beaten – there were plenty of tannoy announcements demanding passengers sit down and stay calm, why didn’t they?
Knives, sticks, catapults with marbles, none of these are the accoutrements of left-wing peace activists demonstrating their support for beleaguered Gazans. Rejecting commands and attacking commandos is not the usual response of peace activists along the West Bank separation fence, or at various well-known locations like Bilin. Indeed if you Google Bilin you’ll find a variety of stories and photos of demonstrations which included “shooting” – of tear gas and ‘rubber bullet’ plastic canisters.
What was the Israel Navy commandos response? Initially, according to a detailed article in YNet, which BICOM is circulating, ignorant of the above accoutrements and the refusal to obey orders, the article suggests the commando came armed with paintball guns. Yeah? On further research I discovered there is a new anti-riot gun that looks like a paintball weapon but actually fires lacerating pepper spray. Isn’t Google wonderful and isn’t mankind adept at finding ways of imposing law and order?
What shouldn’t have been and could have been?
What shouldn’t have been is the entry into Hamas and Palestinian mythology of their very own 21st century version of The Exodus 1947. That’s part of my treasured Zionist upbringing. Leon Uris’ highly over romanticised book “Exodus” describes the ship of the same name full of Jewish refugees from Europe after the Holocaust seeking to break the British naval blockade of the coast of Palestine and illegally land its human cargo in the Mandate controlled Promised Land. The elderly paddle steamer was apprehended by a British naval flotilla and boarded and in the ensuing violence meted out mostly by the British, three passengers were killed. So now Marmara has entered the annals of the Palestinian national struggle.
With this almost unpalatable synergy comes another question lurking at the back of my mind. Did anyone absorb the lessons of The Exodus and plan accordingly? For, back in the days, when news headlines from other parts of the world took an age to reach the West – remember newsreels? – at least the way Uris tells it, there was some quite cynical thinking about grabbing and holding headlines. So The Exodus passengers go on hunger strike and the planners are asked, “what if people die?” and they give the answer I imagine Hamas planners would have given about the flotilla, “it’ll keep us in the news”. Now before you start shouting how dare I suggest parallels between Gaza and the Holocaust, let me tell you that I’m not, and better Israelis than I have already done that more subtly – the late Tommy Lapid did it, describing an elderly Gazan woman photographed in an earlier Gazan scene of destruction, said she reminded him of his grandmother, a Holocaust victim. Some of the flotilla passengers were clearly not the run-of-the-mill humanitarian aid donors, and had alternative plans when the Israeli navy “disgorged naval commandos” as Seamus so graphically described it, onto the decks of the Miramar. They were not about to go quietly.
What could have been? There could have been another Prime Minister who wouldn’t use this ugly episode as an excuse to avoid another meeting with a US President who has been embarrassed by the Israeli administration, and reflects much of world opinion in being fed up with a rogue Israel, to want to push said Prime Minister into a peace process. Instead there could have been an Israeli leader ready to insist on his country’s future security and speak from the position of strength his armed forces assure him, enough to say that a genuine negotiated settlement is preferable to more war-war.
This government and this Israeli prime minister prey off weakness and not strength. And that weakness is dangerous because what it produces politically, beneath the Nacht und Nebel* with which it suffuses its public pronouncements, is stasis. Nothing extraordinary happens – its not extraordinary for Palestinians and their supporters to loose their lives. So the prime minister stays one more day on his seat. That he postponed his US visit is much more a reflection of his natural demeanour, which we saw in his last cadence, littered as it was with the careers of countless senior advisers. He simply trusts no one. So he trusts no one now to handle this debacle and he will make pronouncements in solid tones that signify nothing about it and that he thinks will be all it needs.
What’s perplexing is that whilst the loss of life is tragic, this is not a natural catastrophe, heaven forbid a plane crash with enormous loss of life. Normal states have well-rehearsed contingency plans which do not necessitate the personal presence of the national leader.
What is equally true is that the diplomatic fall out to this sorry mess is already affecting fragile relations with reliable friends. The new UK Foreign Secretary, a Conservative on whom friends of Gerry Lewis hoped they could rely, is appalled by what happened to the flotilla.
Since Gilad Shalit was kidnapped, since Hamas went to war with the PLO, since Gaza was besieged, since the war against Hezbollah in 2006, Israel has made no progress in any diplomatic initiative which must be the obvious concomitant of military power, the obvious route to resolving these issues – and always without sheathing the sword. Of course, what stasis produces is grossly more entangled than the status quo ante and it will not be easy to disentangle Israel and the Palestinians from this.
Israel’s right wing leaders have decided that the answer to the question “can Israel live by the sword” is Yes. The late Yitzhak Rabin looks positively angelic as compared with the men who succeeded him. He knew the answer was No; he could see the limits of power. And even in the short time he witnessed the benefits to Israel of that conclusion, Israelis tasted however unevenly and with all the growing antagonism from the Palestinian leadership of the day, a future.
It is said that the current Israeli government knows no red lines. It is also said that majorities of people are usually passive and that is often the consequence of fear. How many more predictably calamitous events are the Israeli nation ready to endure before they take back their country and draw the lines, not just in the sand, but on the map?

* Yesh T’guva is the Hebrew for the opposite of Ain Teguva – No Comment
*Nacht und Nebel is German for Night and Fog

Published in: on May 31, 2010 at 9:10 pm  Leave a Comment  

Topsy Turvy

“The New Politics” is the favourite spin in the aftermath of the UK general elections Phrases like “hearing the voice of the electorate”,“for the good of the nation”, “stable government”, “tough decisions” and are already well worn. Observers watch the minutiae for any sign that all is not well with the first government coalition since 1945. For right of centre Conservatives, “first past the post” is in their political DNA; any electoral reform is anathema. For their Liberal Democrat opposites, electoral reform is an absolute and the chance of achieving it compelled them to coalesce. Whilst both parliamentary parties approved the deal their leaders proposed, a referendum on electoral reform isn’t happening tomorrow.

Other election models exist and one with which many British voters are unfamiliar is Germany’s which mixes both proportional representation and constituency as its basis and has survived 50 years of German democracy. Another with which some British voters may be vaguely aware is Israel’s. The minutiae of it would escape them, but they note its propensity for crashing in advance of its full term, and the preponderance of tiny parties which become sine quae non for the creation of this or that government.

In the heat of those frenetic hours before the historical coalition formation, “the arithmetic doesn’t add up” daunted a Labour-Liberal Democrat arrangement. The much vaunted “chance to create real progressive politics” by Labour and Liberal Democrat sources gained some traction. But, it all rang hollow when it became obvious that it would depend upon the three “devolved nations”, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Northern Irish were the most referenced as having only one consideration – lots of money from the UK, and at a time when the UK doesn’t have it. This sounded very familiar territory to any Israeli voter, like me.

Of course there is no direct parallel between the UK and Israel. The culture and histories are entirely separate even if they once collided in the dimming days of Empire and Mandate. The Israeli media became feverish at the notion that Nick Clegg, seen by them as the most anti-Israeli UK politician, would partner with Labour. This lack of any real understanding of either Clegg or his party smacks of the kind of ignorant dismissal with which they treat President Obama.

There is some synergy in how UK and Israeli electorates have felt about their political classes. In the UK the electorate was saying “none of you alone deserve to lead us; all of you have been tainted with the expenses scandal”. Israelis have given up on their political class. What they do about it is disconcerting. They condone corruption by not speaking out about it and demanding new leadership and legislation to eradicate it. They keep electing people whose promises of peace and stability are vacuous. They resent and reject external criticism even if they voice the self same criticisms.

This last is reflected in how the Israeli media and some of its politicians have reacted to the emergence of J Street. There is a palpable softening of that, less “anti-Zionist” “self-hating Jew” rhetoric, after J Street’s meeting with US Ambassador Oren, who had rejected their invitation to their inaugural last October, and with President Peres and other luminaries earlier this month in Israel.

There is more than a tinge of paranoia in the general tone still. It’s a kind of “how dare they question us?” A constant response is “they don’t pay our taxes or wear our uniforms”. Many J Street supporters have done both, but all believe in and support the continued existence of Israel. They just don’t think they should shut up any more with their criticisms, but still keep sending Israel their cash.

J Street is nothing like the “hodgepodge of anti-Zionists, Israel supporters who identify with leftist Meretz ideology, and decent but naive people who don’t always know what’s going on in Israel,” as described by Shlomo Avineri in Haaretz last week. It is a movement of some 170,000 American Jews that has taken at least three years in research and development, and is lead by people who are genuinely Pro-Israel and Pro-Peace. Had it been a hodgepodge, President Obama would not have sent his National Security Adviser General George Jones to speak in his name at the inaugural. And Jones knows a thing or too about our little conflict.

Avineri ignores the obvious – that the US is the leading western power with a primary role in resolving the conflict. Its Jews are predominant in Diaspora-Israel relations and are very often – some feel too often – the fall back of Israeli politicians at odds with US administrations. Of all Diaspora communities, American Jewry has the most influence over Israel, far beyond that of European Jews whose very post-Shoah existence is something of a mystery to many Israelis and whose governments are frequently branded with the two “antis” – Israel and Semite- despite representing Israel’s most necessary trade markets.

Perhaps it was the ‘vision-statement-and-signatures’ approach of J Call that appealed more to Avineri. J Call seeks to create a movement of Jews across Europe which expresses an almost universal Jewish identity with and support for Israel but which shares a deep anxiety about Israel’s future and is no longer scared to say so. The differences between J Call and J Street are reflected in different cultures and histories and thence how to express the idea and attract support.

The political reality is entirely different. J Street lobbies in support of the Obama administration’s Mid-East policy and draws its strength from a community located in the nation that leads the West. In some senses the EU is already where Obama is. Amongst profound questions J Call must answer is whether there is to be a joint EU policy direction, or different policies for different European governments, or both. J Call having announced its intentions in Brussels on May 3rd now has to package the reality of what its stands for and that is no mean feat. J Call has to unite the diversity of Europe’s national, cultural and linguistic paradigms. Unlike J Street which can claim to speak for the heretofore silent majority of Progressive American Jews, J Call does not enjoy a pan European Progressive Jewish hinterland – the Progressive voice is not yet a dominant force in European Jewish life.

What is happening is Topsy Turvy. UK politics may indeed never be the same again. Diaspora-Israel relations are in the throes of a fundamental and urgent re-assessment. The former is prompted by external economic circumstances which are of such crisis proportions the electorate could not trust one party to solve them. Successive Israeli governments have acted not only without accountability to the family of nations it claims to be part of, but without answering the very people it serves. What Israel faces is potentially much more catastrophic than a financial crash. The vibe generated by J Call in Brussels is identical to that of J Street – Diaspora Jews care deeply for and about Israel. Rather then denying caring voices, Israel must listen to the family it has.

Published in: on May 17, 2010 at 10:59 pm  Leave a Comment  
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.