Yalla Peace: Gaza flotilla and Israeli raid, Stupid, stupid, stupid

Yalla Peace: Gaza flotilla and Israeli raid, Stupid, stupid, stupid

By RAY HANANIA

06/01/2010 JERUSALEM POST

Rather than bring relief to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, all the flotilla brought was death, violence, and int'l condemnation of Israel.

The activists leading the flotilla carrying medicine, food and building supplies to the suffering civilians in the Gaza Strip got exactly what they wanted. The IDF, stained by the indictment of the Goldstone Report, obliged them without hesitation.

Both sides are at fault in this confrontation. The activists are against peace, and want Israel to turn the clock back to 1948, while Israel wants to pretend the Palestinians don’t exist.

The flotilla was a bad idea from the start – not that supplies shouldn’t be brought in, but because the organizers knew full well that the purpose was to embarrass Israel politically. They knew that Israel might attack the convoy, and that’s why they chose to attempt to break the blockade rather than even try to negotiate.

But that’s always been the problem. People like that don’t want negotiations. When Palestinians and Israelis were negotiating, they were opposing the Oslo Accords, doing everything they could to stop them. And they stood by while Hamas, a terrorist organization which is also partly to blame for the suffering of the citizens of the Gaza Strip, used suicide bombings and brainwashed teenagers to kill themselves and to take innocent Israeli civilians with them.

As it stands, nine civilians aboard the flotilla were killed, although that number is not definite.

Israel’s military stormed the ship and for Israelis to claim they didn’t expect violence under those circumstances is ridiculous.

What could and should have been done?

First, the civilians should have negotiated with Israel rather than staging this dramatic PR drive. But Hamas refuses to do so, and the 1.5 million Palestinian civilians living in the Gaza Strip are as much a prisoner of Hamas’s distorted religious oppression as they are of Israel’s blockade.

Negotiation, not confrontation, is the answer. Discussions with Israel would have worked because Israel will never bend to the failed pressures of the Palestinian extremists. The activists who openly denounce Israeli military excesses are silent when it comes to Hamas excesses.

IT IS this hypocrisy that creates such tragedies. The activists have always been willing to have civilians die to make their case against Israel because the Arab world has been a huge failure from the start. The Arab League is a bad joke. It couldn’t argue its way out of a paper bag, but it sure knows how to act after the fact.

Meanwhile, innocent people die, including many of those who joined the flotilla believing, wrongly, that confronting Israel at sea would be the right strategy to break the blockade. But we know history, and confrontations with Israel always end up badly for the Arabs, and even worse for the Palestinians.

The extremists point to the fact that Turkey, Israel’s largest Muslim ally, is breaking off relations with Israel, but the truth is that this shift began long ago.

Rather than bring relief to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the flotilla brought more death and violence. It achieved the international condemnation of Israel it sought, remaining silent when Hamas terrorists attack and murder Israelis.

The Israelis, too, should be ashamed of their policies, which have abandoned moral principles and instead exploit Palestinian extremism. This Israeli practice of using Palestinian extremism to justify excessive brutality is shameful.

Israel claims it wants peace, but the government seems to prefer confrontations, and the oppression of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Let’s face it folks, the people of Europe can scream all they want about Israel’s actions, but until the United States steps up to become a true arbiter of peace, this conflict will continue to rage.

And the activists who knowingly play into the hands of Israel’s military responses are doing nothing to achieve peace.

These activists do not want peace based on compromise, and it is clear this Israeli government does not want peace based on compromise either. Both find it far easier to continue the carnage and spin their stories.

The writer is an award-winning Palestinian columnist. He can be reached at

www.YallaPeace.com.

Criticize, yes; Demonize, no

Criticize, yes. Demonize, no
By RAY HANANIA
Originally published in the Jerusalem Post Newspaper
03/02/2010 21:07

It wasn’t that the NIF criticized its government for moral lapses that angers its critics. That it criticized Israel at all provoked the venom.

I always thought it was the Arabs who had the most extremist fanatics screaming at everyone in my community who dared utter something “moderate” or “middle of the road.” In recent months, though, it seems that Arabs and Jews really have more in common than we think.

The Goldstone Report on the Gaza Strip has been a lightning rod for propaganda and hypocrisy on both sides. Authored by a Jewish jurist of the highest caliber, the report details the excesses that some – I repeat some – in Israel’s military engaged in last year against Hamas. It also details war crimes by Hamas against Israel.

If we could ever strip away the political layers of this issue and tune out those who scream that Israel is a “Nazi state” or those who call Israel’s critics anti-Semitic, we might get to a truth that is good for everyone.

Innocent people died in the conflict. The response from Israel was excessive and did not always show concern for the well-being of civilians. Of course, Hamas rockets fired wildly across the border did no better in caring for civilians’ well-being.

Some 1,387 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died. Maybe had the number of deaths been more equal, both Palestinians and Israelis might have taken pause to see this conflict not for the political points that could be scored, but rather for the humanitarian toll it involved. Maybe the debate would not have provoked such tragic hyperbole from both sides.

ON THE Arab side, I can say much of the debate is not about the war crimes or provocations of Hamas, but rather about blaming Israel. I happen to believe Israel’s government made a conscientious choice to attack Hamas even though the data compiled by reputable Israeli institutions showed that for the most part, Hamas was abiding by the summer “lull” agreement of 2008. I think some Israeli generals and government officials were playing politics, and the attack against Hamas had another purpose besides disabling its rocket-firing capabilities. But to the extremist Arabs, the Goldstone Report is a gold mine of hatred.

Tortured images of children mangled by bombs and fire are casually distributed on the Internet, not with condolences to the relativesbut with fiery words of hatred toward all Israelis.

Not saddened by the deaths, the Arab activists are moved to near glee to have finally caught Israel in a mistake, even though mistakes have been made consistently by all sides. The dominant Israeli response has been the same, but focused more on rejecting the criticism. How could a Jewish state founded in the wake of the Holocaust engage in such brutal behavior? It’s a dilemma few Israelis want to address. Nor will they admit to a weakening of Israel’s morality in its assault on Gaza.

But there are a few who recognize that addressing faults is what makes a people strong. In other words, recognizing the excesses of the Israeli military, despite all the arguments of Hamas provocation, strengthen rather than weaken Israel.

Strong leaders are not those who outgun critics in rhetorical skills or PR spin. A leader who recognizes his own faults and seeks to correct them is strong and courageous. It is the correction of a failure, not the denial of that failure, that is the substance of great nations.

RECENTLY, ONE courageous group in Israel, the New Israel Fund, stood up and questioned the IDF’s conduct during the Gaza war. By Arab standards, the NIF critique hardly satisfied the “Down with Israel!” protests that characterize most Arab responses. But the criticism stings nevertheless.

It wasn’t that the NIF criticized its government for moral lapses that angers its critics. That NIF criticized Israel at all is what has provoked the venom.

Calling Goldstone “anti-Semitic” does not seem to bother right-wing fanatics who defend Israel by demonizing the NIF leadership with Nazi-like caricatures.

NIF calls the attacks despicable, as they are. One such assault screams loudly: “Without the New Israel Fund, there would be no Goldstone Report, and Israel would not be facing international accusations of war crimes.” Really? Without the NIF, the Goldstone Report would not have come about?

The criticism is ridiculous, of course. War crimes are not based on accusations but on facts. Ugly facts. Distasteful facts. Unwanted facts. But facts nonetheless. Facts mitigated by context and circumstance perhaps, but facts that must be unbearable to those who have embraced Israel’s dreams through blindness rather than principle.

The accusation, repeated by other hard-line groups, is the equivalent of a police officer who sees a fellow officer commit a crime and turns that colleague in. It’s not easy and in many countries, including Arab nations, it is taboo.

I know Israelis have a tough time acknowledging ugly truths. Arabs have a tough time, too.

I hope to one day experience this simple dream where Israelis and Palestinians, instead of pointing fingers at each other, look first within to acknowledge and correct their own misguided actions.

When a Palestinian can denounce the Palestinian murder of an Israeli, and when an Israeli can denounce the Israeli murder of a Palestinian, then we might have begun to restore the moral compass we need to lead us all to peace.

Yes, it’s just a dream, but I can be criticized for that.

www.YallaPeace.com