Last Monday, the Israeli navy shot and killed four Palestinians wearing diving gear, who Israeli officials said were planning a terrorist attack off the Gaza coast. International comment was relatively muted compared with the reaction to another deadly incident the previous Monday, May 31. Then, Israeli commandos intercepted an aid flotilla trying to break Israel’s three-year blockade on the Gaza Strip – imposed since the Iranian-backed, Islamic militant group Hamas seized control in June 2007 – and boarded a Turkish vessel, the Mavi Marmara, killing nine Turkish activists. The full details of what really transpired on the Mavi Marmara are yet to emerge. The Israelis claim that their men shot in self-defence but they have produced no convincing supporting evidence to date.
In September 2007, the Israeli government had declared the Strip a “hostile entity” in response to continued rocket attacks on southern Israel and Israel views attempts to breach the blockade as cover for smuggling weapons to Hamas. The Mavi Marmara action has however provoked widespread outrage and condemnation. The general international sentiment is that the Israelis were guilty of disproportionate use of force, notwithstanding their protestations to the contrary.
On Saturday, in marked contrast to the incident on May 31, Israeli forces took control of another Gaza-bound aid ship, the Rachel Corrie, without resistance and without loss of life. However, the symbolism of the name of the Irish-registered ship seized on Monday will not have been lost on the Israelis or, indeed, on knowledgeable observers.
Rachel Corrie was an American peace activist who, seven years ago, at the age of 23, was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer, as she tried to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip. In giving her life defying the Israeli authorities, she was held up as a powerful symbol of the capacity of ordinary Americans to care about the suffering of innocents in foreign lands and the injustices wrought upon the weak and powerless by uncaring, belligerent governments, including her own. Remember that Rachel Corrie was killed during the George W Bush presidency.
Sadly, Rachel Corrie’s death was marked by an outrageous lack of official outrage on the part of the United States government. And the Israeli authorities, quite probably emboldened by the disinterest of US officialdom, ruled that her death was an accident, despite eyewitness accounts that said otherwise.
Now, in the case of the Mavi Marmara, Israel is resisting international calls led by the UN secretary general for an independent, external investigation. Even US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made a nuanced statement, saying that the US is “open to different ways of ensuring a credible investigation including international participation.”
Notwithstanding the force of world opinion, the Israeli government continues to breathe defiance. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects the rest of the world’s interpretations of morality and international law, arguing that “Israel will continue to exercise its right to self-defence.” Israel’s ambassador to the United States told Fox News on Sunday: “Israel is a democracy. Israel has the ability and the right to investigate itself, not to be investigated by any international board. I don’t think the United States would want an international inquiry into its military activities in Afghanistan, for example.” This argument, of course, highlights a basic double standard in international relations whereby the powerful do not necessarily practise what they preach.
On the other hand, Israel, ever since the Holocaust and its formal establishment in 1948, has never cared much about anything except the survival of the Jewish state and the determination that never again will Jews be prey to murderous ideologies. Whilst understandable, this attitude, when taken to extremes, does not win Israel many friends. Indeed, it is having quite the opposite result, even as tensions escalate in the Middle East.
No one but the most rabid anti-Semite would deny Israel’s right to existence. Anyone who understands the centuries of persecution endured by Jews, culminating in the horrors of the Holocaust, would accept the Israeli argument for self-defence. But should Israel maintain its position at all costs? Does it serve the Israelis’ cause for them to be compared with those who pursued their extinction with cold-blooded zeal or even with the very terrorists who continue to murder innocent Israelis and threaten the existence of the Jewish state?
There is no justification for terrorism of any political or ideological stripe and there certainly can be no vindication of terrorist atrocities inflicted upon Israel. But neither is there justification in today’s world for a policy of self-defence which equates with the biblical injunction of “an eye for an eye” and consequently becomes blind to all reason. Surely no cause can be so just that it eschews a higher morality.
Sometimes, however, it is difficult to tell who exactly occupies the high ground. Rachel Corrie did and paid the ultimate price. How many more senseless deaths must there be before the cycle of violence and hatred in the Middle East is broken?
