Egyptian Gov't Calling Western Journalists "Israeli Spies"

So, uh, Bibi? How's that "hey, at least the Egyptian dictators are pro-Israel" thing working out for you?

In any case, this is disgusting.

The conventional wisdom goes, when it’s too dangerous to film on the streets, you can always do an interview with someone inside a building.

Not in Alexandria you can’t. Not today.

We had arranged to interview a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood in his apartment, but the neighbours – sitting by the door on the street, snarled like guard dogs when we arrived. They didn’t want foreigners inside their building, they said, and saw us off.

We retreated down the street to our car. A group of young men approached, armed with baseball bats, sticks and machetes. They were the neighbourhood Popular Committee.

For the past few days, these groups have been smiling and friendly to us but this lot started shouting and banging on the roof of our car. They demanded to see our passports.

I think I know why. Last night and today, Egyptian state TV had been broadcasting of Israeli spies disguised as western journalists roaming the country.

It’s a wicked rumour to spread because it puts any westerner – or any Egyptian working with westerners – at risk of a beating or worse. It’s cynical to say the least.

This government did a deal with Israel, but it still stirs up anti-Zionist feelings when it suits and that’s one reason so many journalists have been attacked in Cairo today.

I guess rank anti-Semitism is okay after all, just as long as being stirred up by people who suit your state's interests. Good to know.

Military's in Alexandria and Suez

How does the phrase go? Ah, yes. This shit just got real.

The government's losing control. As they're saying on AJ right now, the government's trying to make concessions, but the demonstrators aren't buying it. They want SERIOUS change. And while one could argue that Tunisia was only a minor regional player, Egypt is about as major as you can get without being either Israel, Iran, or Saudi Arabia.

And, making this more complex, Egypt's an American ally. It's easy to cheer on democratic revolutions in places where you don't like the government. It's far more difficult when it's in countries like Egypt whose leadership is corrupt-but-convenient. Certainly there must be a lot of panicky conversations in Jerusalem right now, too, as they try to sort out what any future Egyptian government might look like and how it'll behave towards the quote-unquote "zionist entity".

Israel Requires Loyalty Oath to "Jewish, Democratic State"

The Israeli Cabinet has apparently approved a bill requiring non-Jewish immigrants to swear loyalty to the "Jewish, democratic state". Yep, Yisrael Beitenu managed to push it through. Not exactly going to endear them further in the Muslim world, especially when the initial effects involve, you guess it, West Bank Palestinians.

Were the bill to be passed by the Knesset, the people immediately affected would be Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who either want to marry a Palestinian-Israeli citizen or have already married and are waiting on their papers to be processed, she said.

Earlier, Ahmad Tibi, an Arab member of the Knesset, told Al Jazeera that the bill was aimed at Palestinians - and not at Jewish newcomers to Israel since they already enter on Israel's Jewish Law of Return.

"Palestinians will have to say that this country is for Jews, and Palestinians are only guests. If you are saying you are democratic, you should treat citizens with equality," Tibi said.

He said that Israel was trying to impose this on the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a pre-condition for peace talks.

Direct peace talks between Israel and the PA, under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, are currently at an impasse due to Israel's refusal to extend the 10-month freeze.

Recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is one of Netanyahu's principal demands in any eventual peace deal with the Palestinians...

...Palestinians have repeatedly rejected Netanyahu's condition as it would amount to an effective renunciation of the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

"The new citizenship law will make it impossible for Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to their homeland," Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, said.

Theoretically, this doesn't change that much. Israel IS a Jewish Democratic state. What bothers me is that little comma there, since it implies that people have to swear to loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state in particular. Israeli Arabs are already feeling more than a little put-upon; this is only going to cement it.

And, as the AJ analyst said, this preempts one of the most important elements of any peace negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians: the question of Palestinian refugees. Requiring them to swear loyalty to the Jewish character of the state of Israel is not going to happen, not after they were pushed out in the first place. It's clearly a move to create "facts on the ground"; and the Palestinians are not going to look kindly on Israel pulling that tactic again.

Not that the negotiations are going anywhere. I'm not convinced that Netanyahu gives a damn about them in the first place. But if there's some future prime minister that is interested in peace and reconciliation, he or she is really going to have their hands tied.

Israel Drops Blockade on Everything Except "Weapons"

Well, it looks like the flotilla worked:

Israel's government decided Sunday to draw up a list of items banned from Gaza limited to weapons and materials deemed to have military uses and said the easing of the three-year-old blockade of the Palestinian territory would be implemented immediately.

The list of banned goods replaces an old list of allowed items that permitted only basic humanitarian supplies for the 1.5 million Gazans. Under the new system, the government said practically all non-military items can enter Gaza freely.

"From now on, there is a green light of approval for all goods to enter Gaza except for military items and materials that can strengthen Hamas' military machine," Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said.

The CSM points out that there are still a lot of problems with this, but the fact remains that Israel's policy towards the Gazans was changed as a result of the flotilla. More than that, it was changed as a result of the international outcry that resulted.
So it would appear that the commando raid was an even more disastrous failure than originally anticipated. Not only did it lose Israel the goodwill of almost everybody outside of North America, it led to the Gazans being taken off their "diet".  One can only wonder what will happen next.

Arab-Israeli MK Receiving Death Threats. And Curses.

It's not every day you hear about somebody getting cursed. Much less a Judaic curse.

You probably already know Hanin Zoaby. She's the Arab-Israeli woman who was on the relief flotilla that provoked—in some peoples' eyes—the Israeli attack that left at least nine people killed and left the Middle East even more unstable than it already was. For that, apparently, she is now the "most hated woman in Israel".

Accused of treason for supporting the Free-Gaza movement, forbidden by the courts to leave the country for 45 days, Ms. Zoaby was attacked, physically, when she spoke in the Knesset last week to explain her decision to join the flotilla of ships hoping to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. She said she viewed her action on behalf of 1.5 million “prisoners” in Gaza as a kind of “mitzvah,” a Hebrew term for a religious good deed. The reference only made her Jewish assailants angrier.
On Sunday, Israel proposed that a three-man internal inquiry probe its bloody attack on the flotilla two weeks ago, and that it be headed by a retired Israeli judge and two high-ranking foreign observers, including a Canadian.

Ms. Zoaby has been labelled an enemy, and a supporter of terrorists. Yet the unmarried, Western-dressed Muslim woman hails from one of Israel’s high-profile Arab families, one that has counted a high court judge, a mayor of Nazareth, a long-serving Knesset member and a deputy cabinet minister among its members.

To many in the Knesset today, Ms. Zoaby’s transgression, like that of the four other Arab Israelis who joined the flotilla, is unforgivable. A Knesset committee has recommended the removal of many of Ms. Zoaby’s parliamentary privileges, including her immunity from prosecution and her diplomatic passport. The Interior Minister, leader of Israel’s Ultra Orthodox Shas Party, has asked whether her Israeli citizenship can legally be revoked.

The government itself wants to revoke her citizenship. But you have to be a citizen of something, right? If she's an Israeli, and they take away her Israeli citizenship, then where does she go? What does she do? She becomes a citizen of nowhere: an unperson.
That may be the Government's game. An unperson has no rights, and if they can arbitrarily take away an Arab's citizenship, then they can arbitrarily strip people of their rights and do with them what they will. They can be thrown into the deepest, darkest hole, in pieces, and nobody could say boo. That would mean they never had any rights at all. A terrible mockery of everything that the Jewish state historically stands for—but it sounds about right for the Netanyahu/Lieberman government.


The Government is not alone in its attitude.

There have been death threats, hundreds of them.
In the wake of the flotilla incident, a Facebook site, called Execute Haneen Zuabi [sic], was established (and later taken down) and a group calling itself Pulsa Denura , (Aramaic for “lashes of fire”) says it has carried out elaborate death curses on several Arab Israelis, including Ahmad Tibi, a member of Knesset who wasn’t even on the flotilla.

(Pulsa Denura was the name of the group that said it had cursed Yitzhak Rabin shortly before he was assassinated, and cursed Ariel Sharon after he decided to evacuate Israeli settlements in Gaza in 2005.)

"Elaborate death curses". For people who weren't even on the flotilla. I'd ask "has it really come to this", but it came to this all the way back in 1995. It has just gotten worse.
To her credit, though, MK Zoabi is not going to ground, nor acting afraid. Her and her supporters know why this is happening.

“She did what few people would dare to do,” said Teres Zbidat, a Dutch-born woman who has lived with her husband in nearby Sakhnin for 16 years.
“Which is why Israelis hate her so much,” Ms. Zbidat said. “They see her as a success story that they allowed to happen. Then they say: ‘But you weren’t supposed to become one of them [the Palestinians].’ ”

Ms. Zoaby explains the contempt for her as a reaction to the world criticism Israel is experiencing, similar to the backlash against Arab Israelis that followed criticism in the war against Hamas in Gaza.

“I embarrassed them,” she said, referring to Israelis. “I was an easy target for their revenge.”
Would she do it again, would she go on another flotilla? In a heartbeat, she says.

“I was appalled by the Israeli behaviour” on board the ship, she said. “I didn’t expect such violence.”

(Ms. Zoaby is credited by passengers with convincing the Israeli commandos – in her good Hebrew and tenacious style – with getting long-delayed medical treatment for the wounded.) What if doing it again meant losing her citizenship? “Yes,” she said determinedly. “It would just show that what they call citizenship is really just membership in the Zionist movement. It’s not real citizenship.”

"What they call citizenship is really just membership in the Zionist movement?" No wonder they want to hush her up.  That's not one of the talking points. That's not what an MK is supposed to say. Certainly it's not what an Arab-Israeli woman is supposed to say.
I don't even necessarily agree with her. She calls Arab-Israelis "1948 Palestinians". I disagree with that. I think there is a space for Arab-Israelis to care out their own identity as something other than "Palestinians on the wrong side of the wall". But death threats, curses, and unpersonhood? That's what the other guys are doing. That's what Israel is supposed to be a bastion against, which is the stated reason why they get all that American support.

It won't work, either. Look at Ms. Zbidat's comments. She isn't going to be the only one thinking that. The more that MK Zoaby is treated like this, the greater the connection that will be built between the Arab-Israelis and Palestinians. Arab-Israelis will only become more and more alienated from the Israeli state at a time when Israel badly needs to show the world that it's about more than exclusivist ethno-nationalism.

IDF Using Activist's Bank Cards? (Edit: According to Haaretz, Yes!)

 This is from PressTV, which is an Iranian source and therefore something to be taken with more than a bit of salt, but see for yourself:

A US activist, who has survived an Israeli attack on a convoy of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, says Israeli forces are looting money from her bank card.

Former US nurse and aid worker Kathy Sheetz, who was on Mavi Marmara ship, has provided Press TV with bank statements proving her bank card, taken by the Israeli forces during the attack, has since been used in Tel Aviv.

"It looks as though they tried to use it without the PIN code and could not, but they could use it in a vending machine and had multiple accesses to my card to buy beer, according to the statement," Sheetz said.

"What it means is that I witnessed the Israeli Navy going and killing people and at the end buying beer with my card," she added.

Press TV has also learned that the Freedom Flotilla activists may have been robbed of cash and equipment, worth $3.5 million, by Israeli military after their ships were attacked on May 31.

The Israeli attack on the six-ship convoy in the Mediterranean Sea killed at least 20 peace activists, including nine Turkish citizens on board the M.V. Mavi Marmara, and injured over 40 others.

There are a lot of reports of people having their stuff taken, but who uses a capturees' bank card? It's almost too bizarre to believe.

Then again, with this issue, I'm starting to think that NOTHING is too bizarre to believe. 

Edit: Another journo made the same claim in Haaretz. So it's likely true. And ridiculous.

Possible Video of Activist's Execution by IDF Commando (Edit: Or Possibly Not)

(See addendum below)

There's a video linked over at Juan Cole that appears to show an IDF commando pretty much executing a flotilla activist.

I'm not sure if it is real and accurate or not; it certainly appears to be. It's difficult to see what's going on, but it shows one of the commandos kicking somebody while they're down, and then possibly firing several rounds downward, presumably at the activist.

Cole believes it genuine; if it is, then it puts the lie to the claim that the commandos were only defending themselves.  If this is what it appears to be, it wasn't defense. It was cold-blooded murder.

Edit: Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander. It looks like the IDF aren't the only ones playing edit games. Here's the full clip, from WarinContext:

There is a significant time gap that was glossed over by the edited "execution" video.  We cannot take the edited clip as given.

Still, I agree with WiC's take:

The truth behind what the video depicts will only become known if the soldiers involved face questioning and if all the existing video is made available to independent investigators. If the Israeli Defense Forces have nothing to hide, they should welcome an international inquiry.

There is enough evidence that contradicts the IDF party line to warrant a full and impartial investigation. Since there is no way that Israel's current hard-right government is going to undertake such an investigation, it must be international.

So Long, San Remo Justification: Israeli Government Sez Blockade is "Economic Warfare"

Well, well, well. Looks like we may have a better idea of why Gazans don't get margarine. From McClatchy:

Last week, after Israeli commandos killed nine volunteers on a Turkish-organized Gaza aid flotilla, Israel again said its aim was to stop the flow of terrorist arms into Gaza.

However, in response to a lawsuit by Gisha, an Israeli human rights group, the Israeli government explained the blockade as an exercise of the right of economic warfare.

"A country has the right to decide that it chooses not to engage in economic relations or to give economic assistance to the other party to the conflict, or that it wishes to operate using 'economic warfare,'" the government said.

McClatchy obtained the government's written statement from Gisha, the Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, which sued the government for information about the blockade. The Israeli high court upheld the suit, and the government delivered its statement earlier this year.

Sari Bashi, the director of Gisha, said the documents prove that Israel isn't imposing its blockade for its stated reasons, but rather as collective punishment for the Palestinian population of Gaza. Gisha focuses on Palestinian rights.

(A State Department spokesman, who wasn't authorized to speak for the record, said he hadn't seen the documents in question.)

The Israeli government took an additional step Wednesday and said the economic warfare is intended to achieve a political goal. A government spokesman, who couldn't be named as a matter of policy, told McClatchy that authorities will continue to ease the blockade but "could not lift the embargo altogether as long as Hamas remains in control" of Gaza.

I will be honest: I'm not precisely confident in all this, considering that there's no link to the Gisha piece. But it's certainly likelier than not; likely enough to be able to take as a given until other sources arise.

Assuming that this IS a smoking gun about the blockade, a whole lot of the arguments about the blockade fall apart. It's officially no longer justifiable under San Remo, for example, because it violates the proportionality and humanitarian provisions of section 2, paragraph 102, subparagraph (b): "The declaration or establishment of a blockade is prohibited if...the damage to the civilian population is, or may be expected to be, excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the blockade". It was always fairly clear that the damage is excessive; what we now see is that it was always intended to be excessive.

That doesn't just mean that the blockade is now illegitimate. It means that the blockade  always was illegitimate. According to the same manual that the IDF used to justify its operation, it was created illegitimately.

The activists were justified.

Does the Washington Post Ever Get Tired of Apologias?

While I'm on the subject of the Post, what the hell is going on over there? Now they're blaming Erdogan for the flotilla massacre.  It's unfocused—big surprise there—but apparently he's the bad guy because of his ties to IHH, and because he criticizes Israel without criticizing Iran.

Yes, they're reviving that whole "IHH are terrists!" thing, despite the U.S. being unwilling to hang that hat on their heads, and that assertion being a bit dicey no matter how you approach it. It's yet another game of "if the IDF says it, it must be true". (It's all the rage at the Post these days.)

Leaving that aside, why on earth would it be surprising that Erdogan is criticizing Israel and not Iran? I hate to be reductionist, but Iran didn't kill a whole bunch of Turks on a boat around a week and a half ago. I'm sure Iran could do such a thing, and I'm sure that Iran would do such a thing. Iran is run by violent idiots. But the important thing is that they didn't do such a thing, and Israel did. Turkey being a bit miffed at Israel sort of makes sense.

Sure, the Post already discredited itself by saying that there was no violence on any ship but the Mavi, thus implying that the IDF beating and electrocuting undoubtedly innocent activists on the other ships doesn't count. Violence is only really "violence" if it's being done against the IDF, after all. And sure, the Post will give a space to idiots like Charles Lane, who is still pretending that the real problem with American finance is FREDDIE freaking MAC.

(They publish George Will, for God's sake, and at this point that should be legal grounds for having those pie-in-the-face guys show up in your office with a batch of cream pies and a meaningful expression.)

But you'd think that the editorials would be slightly more professional and slightly more, well, journalistic. No wonder they're getting their asses kicked by random bloggers. I'm a random blogger, and this would be beneath even me.

Quick Tip for Bernard Henri-Levi:

Cardamon and Cilantro aren't used to make arms, yet they're banned by the Israeli blockade. So are tubs of margarine.

So don't go on about how "the blockade concerns only arms and the material needed to manufacture them", because unless the Gazans are putting together some incredible Biscuit Bombs, that chien just won't hunt.

You'd think someone like Henri-Levi would be a bit more careful to make sure that his sentences are supportable, all things considered. Of course, since he also used the word "fascislamist" without a trace of irony, that may have been too much to hope. Even so.

Edit: Gideon Levy has a lovely response. 

Description of the Commandos' Injuries By a Doctor Who Treated Them

From Robert Mackey and Sebnem Arsu at the Times, an interview with a doctor who helped treat the captured (yet basically unharmed) Israeli flotilla commandos :

In a telephone interview conducted in Turkish, Dr. Uysal said that he had treated three Israeli commandos and argued that this proved that the passengers had no intention of killing them:

First of all it’s against logic that these soldiers would not be killed but instead be taken to the medical center if the intention of the activists was to kill them. If people on board were so eager to hurt them, why would they not just shoot them to death once they had taken their guns? Why bother carting them inside for treatment? It just doesn’t add up.

I am a doctor, and the Israeli soldiers were brought to me to check their medical situation and treat them properly. I had our dead bodies and injured people lying in front of me and I was treating the soldiers that actually killed and wounded them. None of our friends in the center approached to harm or hurt them. Our injured people were lying on the ground, but I rested the soldiers on our chairs.

Asked about the wounds the commandos suffered, the doctor said:

None of the soldiers had any fatal wounds that would cause organ loss or defects. There were scratches on their faces, but since facial skin is sensitive and very likely to bleed in any trauma, there was blood on their faces — which I cleaned carefully to see what kind of injuries they had. In the end, they happened to be only scratches.

The third soldier, however, suffered a cut in his stomach that reached his stomach membrane but not the organ itself. It was nothing fatal. As a doctor, I wouldn’t want to guess the nature of this injury but it could have been caused by either landing on a sharp pole from the helicopter or a blow from a pipe with a sharp edge. I couldn’t tell.

In either case, it was not fatal but it had to be stitched. However, since we did not ever expect such a confrontation, we had not brought any stitching equipment on board. All we had was simple medical material to dress simple wounds, or drops to ease burning in case tear gas was used. If I had stitching material with me, although I am an eye doctor, I would have treated the boy properly in accordance with my general medical knowledge. I couldn’t.

Dr. Uysal said the commandos “were very startled and very scared.” He added:

With my broken English I tried to tell them that I was a doctor and there was no need to be afraid and that nobody was going to hurt them. They relaxed after a while and watched us running around, jumping from one patient to another in tears, faced with our friends bathed in blood. I also asked our assistants to keep an eye on them so that they would not be threatened.

We could have as well left them to their fate, but this is not the humanity that we act with. We asked photographers not to film in the medical center and I have no idea how and when that picture was taken but God never leaves good deeds unheard. That picture shows the difference between the Israelis and us.

Asked if he could tell how long after sound grenades were thrown at the ship, at the start of the raid, that the gunshots were fired, Dr. Uysal said: “I was in the lower deck, but could hear all the explosions and gunfire. There was no way I can differentiate the gunshots or other sounds — I am only a doctor, after all.”

And what happened to the doctors and other passengers in return?

After the Israeli military took control of the ship, the doctor said that he was treated no differently from the other passengers:

They handcuffed all of us with plastic bands so tightly that they could easily cause irreversible damage to our shoulder tissues. They made us kneel on our knees with hands handcuffed as the helicopters caused sea water to splash on us for three hours. I was shouting that I was a doctor and that my shoulder hurt in a very serious way. They pretended not to hear me. I wanted to go to the toilet; they didn’t let me. After I kept yelling about my shoulder they let my hands loose but not those of my friends.

This fits the other accounts of how the prisoners were treated.

Don't buy into the propaganda. The "murderous" flotilla passengers made a point of calming the commandos and treating the wounds they inflicted in self defense—despite having already been shot at by the helicopters. In return, they were forced to piss themselves.

Sums it up pretty well, doesn't it?

"We'll Find Out Where You Live!" vs. "No to Fascism!"

Overheard at a pro-Israeli counter-protest:

Admittedly, that was just one guy yelling that scary crap, though nobody called him out on it.

He was not, however, the only one calling the Jewish protesters "kapos". The word "kapo" refers to death camp collaborators.

Lovely.

(Credit to Max Blumenthal, by the way.)

Edit: Meanwhile, here are some other Israelis whom, I'm sure, these guys would call "kapos" as well, who are continuing to rally despite right-wingers throwing a smoke grenade at them:



The speaker stopped his speech when the smoke bomb was thrown to start singing "no to fascism" along with the crowd, who appeared unperturbed by the fact that they were ringed by right-wing football hooligans.

Good for 'em.

Australian Shot in Raid Nearly Bleeds Out

From ABC in Australia:

The Australian shot during last week's raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla says Israeli soldiers left him to bleed on the deck after a bullet hit an artery in his leg.

Ahmed Luqman was shot twice during the raid and lost so much blood he nearly died. His condition meant he was one of the last activists deported from Israel.

He is now in an Istanbul hospital, from where he gave an interview to the ABC.

Mr Luqman said he was on the back deck of the flotilla flagship the Mavi Marmara, running to get inside, when he saw a laser sight settle on his leg.

Then he was down.

"I obviously knew that I'd been shot when I could see a bullet on the floor and a puddle of blood," he said.

"Blood just pissing out of my leg, from two holes. You put two and two together, and it looks like you've been shot."

The first bullet tore through his leg, partially severing his femoral artery. Another shot hit near his knee

The article goes on:

Mr Luqman says Israeli soldiers refused him any sort of medical attention.
"They made me walk, without a stretcher, and climb all the stairs on my own without any assistance, and I passed out like three or four times just getting up the stairs on my own," he said.

Mr Luqman's wife Jerry was with him. The nursing student helped keep him alive as his blood drained out.

Later, as other activists were deported, she chose to remain in detention in Israel to stay with her husband. She says the harsh treatment did not end on the ship.

"Their treatment of us was just completely unacceptable. I've never met anyone whose heart has become so hard and so black in my life," she said.

This while the "terrorists" were treating the commandos' injuries.
Meanwhile, Helen Thomas was pretty unceremoniously kicked out of the journalistic profession for saying that the Israelis "should get out of Palestine go back to Poland". Yes, that statement is unacceptable. Yet so is what happened to this man—and the American media isn't even covering it.

Account From Activist Kenneth Nichols O'Keefe

Here's the video:

The two key take-aways here are that:

1) They had complete control over the commandos, and did not harm them. As we see from the IHH pictures, they actually treated their wounds; and

2) they had taken away some of the commandos' weapons, but did not necessarily fire back; O'Keefe took two weapons and simply removed the (live) ammunition before discarding the weapons and ammo.  This fits other accounts stating that the activists did wrest the weapons away from the commandos, but did not use those weapons against the commandos.

(Oh, and taking all his stuff? Classy. Real classy.)

Go The Hell Away, Ahmadinejad

Iran really, really shouldn't have offered to help with the flotillas. You aren't going to help. At all. In fact, by merely making the offer, you are providing the blockade's apologists with more ammo than they could have possibly dreamed of.

Then again, considering Iran, maybe that was the entire idea. Their regime isn't exactly popular right now, so picking a fight with the Israelis may be the entire point. Sure, it won't be good for the region or the Gazans, but since when has Ahmadinejad and his crew cared about anybody but themselves?

Pictures of "Radicals" Treating IDF Soldiers

So apparently some pictures got out of what happened on the Mavi. They show the busted-up IDF soldiers, but more importantly, they show the activists treating their injuries.  That's something to remember when you heard the IDF's apologists ranting about "kidnapping" or "capturing" or whatever of the commandos. They weren't taken hostage, they were being treated.

(Not that that will deter those who just want to paint these people as Savage Mohammedans, but it's definitely something to consider.)

"Death to the Arabs" Followup

Apparently this isn't a one-off thing. From Professor Neve Gordon, about the pro-government demonstration at Ben-Gurion University:

A group of opposition students from Ben-Gurion University prepared a big banner on the street near their off-campus apartment: ‘15 Dead. The Israeli government, as usual, has its reasons, and the Zionist majority, as usual, extends its support.’ Their neighbours spat on them and called them ‘cunts’, ‘whores’ and ‘traitors who love Arabs’ until the students fled...
...At one point a Jewish provocateur, who is not a member of any group (and could even be a police agent), raised his hand in the air: ‘Heil Lieberman!’ The response of the pro-government students was immediate: ‘Death to the Arabs!’ Luckily the university security managed to create a wedge between the protesters, and in this way prevented the incident from becoming even more violent.

These people obviously do not speak for all Jews or all Israelis; these "counter-demonstrations", however, were much larger than the demonstrations over the flotilla massacre. Students don't tend to be hard-core right-wingers either.
Either way, the quotations above are incredibly disturbing. "Cunts"? "Whores? "Traitors who love Arabs?" And they spat on them?

This whole "traitor" thing seems to be more and more of an issue, too:

A Palestinian student with a Palestinian flag was shoved and had his flag torn from him by some of the pro-government protesters, who were chanting: ‘No citizenship without loyalty!’ In response, the Jewish and Palestinian oppositionists shouted: ‘No, no, it will not come, fascism will not come!’ and ‘Peace is not achieved on the bodies of those killed!’...
...[p]ro-government students interviewed in the press said they were ’shocked to see faculty members, together with students from the left and Arab students shouting slogans against Israel’. Their classmates posted pictures of the protests on Facebook, asking likeminded students to ‘identify their classroom “friends”’.

Anybody else find this incredibly disturbing? "No citizenship without loyalty"? To what, Israel? Or is it to Likud/Beiteinu?  And Are they seriously assuming a minority's disloyalty? Without any irony?
It's not that surprising, mind you. The same thing happens in America all the time, but isn't Israel supposed to be different, all things considered? Hell, forget America, this sounds like something you'd get in CHINA, with its recent headlong rush towards hardcore nationalism. And just like in China, you're encouraged to turn in "dissidents".

Including the professor who wrote the blog entry:

A Facebook group was created to call for my resignation: by the end of the day more than 1000 people had joined. As well as hoping that I die and demanding that my family be stripped of our citizenship and exiled from Israel, members of this Facebook group offer more pragmatic suggestions, such as the need to concentrate efforts on getting rid of teaching assistants who are critical of the government, since it is more difficult to have me – as a tenured professor – fired.

What is troubling about these pro-government students is not that they are pro-government, but the way they attack anyone who thinks differently from them, along with their total lack of self-criticism or restraint. If this is how students at Israel’s best universities respond, what can we expect from the rest of the population?

Good question. Again, this is somewhat reminiscent of Daniel Pipes' campaign to remove "anti-semitic'  professors from American schools, with the added complication, of course, of Gordon being Jewish and thus reasonably immune to the charge. (Barring that "self-hating" stuff.)  Again, though, you would think that the Israelis would be a bit more accepting of controversy, considering their umpteen-thousand-year traditions of discussion and debate. Times change, I suppose. 

It speaks to why the IDF keeps on pushing these feeble arguments. (Of late they're admitting that they fired "warning shots" before hitting the deck, without realizing that that is an implicit admission that they fired first.) The point of the arguments is not to win the debate. The point of the arguments is to provide cover, so that voices of dissent from both within and without can be browbeaten into silence. Not surprising. But definitely disturbing, and a little sad. Israel was supposed to be better than this.

Lies, Damned Lies, and the ACLJ

You know, if you want to defend the legality of an action, you should probably not make your argument so ridiculous that it hurts your credibility.

Yet here we are.

Never mind the whole "it's not collective punishment" bit; I wouldn't expect a lawyer to be able to explain how cardamon and margarine are used in the production of bunkers, but whatever. How on EARTH can he pretend that the Gazans isn't an occupied, subject people when Israel has completely military control over the territory?

Gaza is not sovereign, not even close, and if it isn't sovereign then by definition it is occupied. And, yes, sovereignty matters; the United States is not permitted under international law to do whatever it feels like on sovereign territory to chase Al Qaeda; it either works with the sovereign states that actually control the territory (like Pakistan or Afghanistan) or goes into conflict with the sovereign states because they're helping Al Qaeda.  Either way, it all comes down to who controls the territory: and in the case of Gaza, Israel does.

I was also really amused by the selective quotation of San Remo. If he knew about San Remo, and was drawing on San Remo (which may not even apply: that's a state-to-state conflict doctrine), San Remo makes it perfectly clear that you can't blockade goods in a way that causes disproportionate harm to the military benefits. Anybody and everybody can see that the harm is disproportionate. Under the law that he cited himself, the blockade is illegal.

"Kill All Arabs! Kill All Arabs!"

This is a bit of video I wish I hadn't seen. It's from the port of Ashdod. The title quote is a direct one.
In addition to the "Kill all Arabs" bit, we also get to see one of the pro-IDF protesters harass a young, scared Arabic-looking woman, and another attempt to assault an Arabic-looking man.

Other choice quotes:
"You know what the Israeli Army is guilty of? It's not whipping off the whole ship and killing everyone".

"Next time it will be you", aimed at the girl. She was later told that she was a "cockroach" and to "go find a man to fuck".

My favorite, of course, "Death to the leftists! Death to the leftists!"

As I said in response to the Sully piece, this isn't new, or surprising, or rare. It's tribal identification: "us" vs. "them". Sooner or later "they" stop being people. They become "cockroaches".

Which, by the by, is the slander the Hutu inciters were using to egg on the slaughter of Tutsi during the Rwandan genocide.

No, it's not new, or novel, or surprising. But damned if it isn't depressing.

Sully on the "Israel Derangement Syndrome"

I'd missed this piece about how Israel is thought of in the United States, but it's also worth linking to and quoting. First, he gets into the religious right:

for much of the Republican right, Israel simply isn't a foreign country at all. For many Christianists, it is part of a civilizational war of Judeo-Christianity (an obvious oxymoron) against Islam. Not Islamism, Islam. Ever wonder why Sarah Palin, the next GOP nominee, wore a twinned Israeli-American flag lapel for an address to the Tea Party convention? Ever wonder why every rule we normally apply to foreign countries is automatically suspended when it comes to Israel?

This is undeniably true. If anything, it's understated: I suspect that the most important book for American foreign policy these days is not anything Morgenthau wrote, but Left Behind. Millennialism has more impact than we give it credit for.

But then he gets into the sensitive issue of Jewish Americans and their relationship with Israel:

The other dimension is the deep and understandable commitment of many American Jews, particularly of the older generation, to Israel, right or wrong. You listen to Anthony Weiner, for example, a left-liberal Democratic firebrand on almost every issue, suddenly becoming an uber-neoconservative in foreign policy in one area, and one area alone: Israel. The idea of a Jewish congressman actually taking Israel's policies on is close to absurd. Name one. This is not a conspiracy. It is a mindset.

I grabbed some food the other night with a longtime Jewish friend. We had an honest conversation - the kind you cannot have on US television. He's a big liberal but strongly sided with Israel in this latest incident. Why? "They're my people." But you're an American, I countered, you're not an Israeli, let alone a supporter of Netanyahu. None of that mattered to him. His attachment to Israel was indistinguishable from his attachment to America, and, if push came to shove, Israel came first, right or wrong. This had been dinned into him since childhood. His iPhone was deluged with texts from relatives and friends all appalled by any criticism of the commando attack, and immediately seeing it as anti-Semitic or designed to end the state of Israel for ever.

To charge dual loyalty is described as a blood libel, a vile anti-Semitic charge, and it often is. But my friend was very frank about it and unapologetic. That's just the way it is, he said.

This is a disturbing topic for me. I have no tolerance for this idea that "the jews did x", or "the jews feel y". Even in this time where Israeli public opinion is slamming rightward, there are still a LOT of Israelis who not only despise the IDF's actions aboard the flotilla, but are protesting against it.  And as Peter Beinart pointed out, claiming ubiquity of opinion among American Jews these days is even more wrongheaded, since a division is growing between younger liberal Jewish-Americans who have had enough of this tribalist cant, and their older counterparts who, in Beinart's opinion, "check their liberalism at Zionism’s door." (And the conservatives who only cheer Israel on.)

Yet I do think that Sullivan has a point. Culture does not impose ubiquity and does not justify stereotyping or collective punishment, but it can have an effect. 

Sullivan goes on to discuss the Shoah and its effects; I'll pick up afterwards.

But the fanaticism and emotionalism that many Jewish Americans have with respect to Israel is so intense that, for some, it overwhelms rationality, and makes a cool strategic analysis of America's national interest close to impossible. Their total identification with Israel is often emotionally as strong, if not stronger, as their identification with America.

And this tragically means that an honest disagreement with Israel's policies is sometimes taken as a breach of friendship, a profound personal betrayal, rather than a moral and political judgment about the actions of a foreign country. It means that the head of the Mossad can be more rational in his assessment of US national interest than Joe Biden. You reach a brick wall in this. And we might as well admit it.

It has pained me enormously to have obviously hurt my countless Jewish friends and colleagues because I cannot support, morally or strategically, the actions of Israel these past two years, and especially its virulent disdain for the new American president who represented, it seems to me, the best chance for Israel in decades. I realize that the difference is that while I admire and support Israel, I do not identify with it. For me, it is a foreign country and an ally. To them it is something far more profound and indelible. So when I attack Israel's policies, it feels as if I am attacking them. I really am not. But I cannot erase how they feel; and I understand why they feel it.

A lot of this is about identification. The people and places and things you identify with have a profound impact on what sorts of arguments you are going to find acceptable.  I don't necessarily agree that "their identification with Israel is stronger than their identification with America"; I think many of Israel's American advocates see no difference whatsoever. Israel and America are two sides of the same coin; two "shining cities on the hill" in a world of darkness.  They aren't just allies, but friends and brothers.  To benefit Israel IS to benefit America, and the rest of the world can go hang. (As we've seen here.)

That's how any conflicts or "libels" can be resolved: you don't have "divided" loyalties. You have one loyalty: to "Israel-America."

(This is, by the way, not to say that Israel dictates American foreign policy or domestic policy or any of that nonsense.  It's just about identification.)

Sully goes on again, discussing his own situation:

Tribalism, of course, is universal. It is by no means the exclusive property of Jewish Americans. Irish-Americans retain a similar knee-jerk alliance with entities that plenty of people in Ireland find repugnant - just as Israelis are far more candid in their debates than Americans are. Trust me, in my own family, I know the nature of this kind of identification and the righteousness of it in many instances.

People these days tend to forget the "Troubles", and what it meant to Irish-Americans. A lot of the accusations that are levelled at Jewish-Americans today about "divided loyalties" and an over-focus on what was going on in the Home Country were far more accurate when it came to Irish-Americans. Without Irish-American fundraising, for example, the various armed groups and militias (and, yes, terrorist orgs) that fought in Northern Ireland would have closed up shop long, long before that conflict ended.  People were openly supportive of the IRA and its various militant offshoots—and let us not forget, that was a religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants.
That's something that a lot of Jewish-Americans who lose their minds at the accusation of over-identification with Israel seem to forget. While the Holocaust was a unique evil, and the plight of the Jews during their years without a homeland was tragic, this sense of nationalist identification isn't unique at all. It happens with Turks and Irishmen, Indians and Chinese, Serbs and Lebanese, Greeks and Colombians, Cubans and Bosnians. It happens with EVERYBODY. 

It's not special. It's common. Boringly, dully common.

Go read the whole piece. It's excellent, even if I disagree with a lot of it. There's an excerpt from Glenn Greenwald, for example, that I didn't cover but is worth checking out. I still have no idea what's happened to Sully, but I won't complain.