"Haaretz" Tuesday Roundup Over Flotilla

Local Editor

The "Israeli" attack against "Freedom Flotilla" aid convoy to Gaza, which resulted in 20 victims and a minimum of 50 injuries, triggered internal "Israeli" stances to criticize such an irresponsible action.

Haaretz daily Zionist newspaper published repercussion articles on Tuesday portraying these perspectives.

"Operation Mini Cast Lead" by Gideon Levy

Like in "Mini-"Israel"," the park where there is everything, but smaller, "Israel" embarked yesterday on a mini Operation Cast Lead. Like its larger, losing predecessor, this operation had it all: the usual false claim that is was they who had started it - and not the landing of commandos from helicopters on a ship in open sea, away from "Israeli" territorial waters. There was the claim that the first act of violence came not from the soldiers, but the rioting activists on Mavi Marmara; that the blockade on Gaza is legal and that the flotilla to its shores is against the law - God knows which law.

Again came the claim of self-defense, that "they lynched us" and that all the dead are on their side. Once more the use of violence and excessive and lethal force was in play and once more civilians wound up dead.

This action also featured the pathetic focus on "public relations," as if there is something to explain, and again the sick question was asked: Why didn't the soldiers use more force.

Again, "Israel" will pay a heavy diplomatic price, once which had not been considered ahead of time. Again, the "Israeli" propaganda machine has managed to convince only brainwashed "Israelis", and once more no one asked the question: What was it for? Why were our soldiers thrown into this trap of pipes and ball bearings? What did we get out of it?
If Cast Lead was a turning point in the attitude of the world toward us, this operation is the second horror film of the apparently ongoing series. "Israel" proved yesterday that it learned nothing from the first movie.

Yesterday's fiasco could and should have been prevented. This flotilla should have been allowed to pass and the blockade should be brought to an end.

This should have happened a long time ago. In four years, Hamas has not weakened and Gilad Shalit was not released. There was not even a sign of again.

And what have we instead? A country that is quickly becoming completely isolated. This is a place that turns away intellectuals, shoots peace activists, cuts off Gaza and now finds itself in an international blockade. Once more yesterday it seemed, and not for the first time, that "Israel" is increasingly breaking away from the mother ship, and losing touch with the world- which does not accept its actions and does not understand its motives.

Yesterday there was no one on the planet, not a newsman or analyst, except for its conscripted chorus, who could say a good word about the lethal takeover.

The "Israeli" Forces too came out looking bad again. The magic evaporated long ago, the most moral army in the world, that was once the best army in the world, failed again. More and more there is the impression that nearly everything it touches causes harm to "Israel". Haaretz also published another article considering that "Israel" is no longer defending itself; it is rather defending its siege on Gaza.

"A Special Place in Hell / The Second Gaza War: "Israel" lost at sea" by Bradley Burston

We are no longer defending "Israel". We are now defending the siege, which is itself becoming "Israel's" Vietnam.

A war tells a people terrible truths about itself. That is why it is so difficult to listen.

We were determined to avoid an honest look at the first Gaza war. Now, in international waters and having opened fire on an international group of humanitarian aid workers and activists, we are fighting and losing the second. For "Israel", in the end, this Second Gaza War could be far more costly and painful than the first.

In going to war in Gaza in late 2008, "Israeli" military and political leaders hoped to teach Hamas a lesson. They succeeded. Hamas learned that the best way to fight "Israel" is to let "Israel" do what it has begun to do naturally: bluster, blunder, stonewall, and fume.

Hamas, and no less, Iran and Hizbullah, learned early on that "Israel's" own embargo against Hamas-ruled Gaza was the most sophisticated and powerful weapon they could have deployed against the Jewish state.

Here in "Israel", we have still yet to learn the lesson: We are no longer defending "Israel". We are now defending the siege. The siege itself is becoming "Israel's" Vietnam.

Of course, we knew this could happen. On Sunday, when the army spokesman began speaking of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in terms of an attack on "Israel", MK Nahman Shai, the "Israeli" forces chief spokesman during the 1991 Gulf war, spoke publicly of his worst nightmare, an operation in which "Israeli" troops, raiding the flotilla, might open fire on peace activists, aid workers and Nobel laureates.

Likud MK Miri Regev, who also once headed the "Israeli" forces Spokesman's Office, said early Monday that the most important thing now was to deal with the negative media reports quickly, so they would go away.

But they are not going to go away. One of the ships is named for Rachel Corrie, killed while trying to bar the way of an "Israeli" forces bulldozer in Gaza seven years ago. Her name, and her story, have since become a lightning rod for pro-Palestinian activism.

Perhaps most ominously, in a stepwise, lemming-like march of folly in our relations with Ankara, a regional power of crucial importance and one which, if heeded, could have helped head off the First Gaza War, we have come dangerously close to effectively declaring a state of war with Turkey.

"This is going to be a very large incident, certainly with the Turks," said Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the cabinet minister with the most sensitive sense of "Israel's" ties with the Muslim world.

We explain, time and again, that we are not at war with the people of Gaza. We say it time and again because we ourselves need to believe it, and because, deep down, we do not.

There was a time, when it could be said that we knew ourselves only in wartime. No longer. Now we know nothing. Yet another problem with refraining from talks with Hamas and Iran: They know us so much better than we know ourselves.

They know, as a song about the Lebanon War suggested that we, unable to see ourselves in any clarity, are no longer capable of stopping ourselves.

Hamas, as well as Iran, have come to know and benefit from the toxicity of "Israeli" domestic politics, which is all too ready to mortgage the future for the sake of a momentary apparent calm.

They know that in our desperation to protect our own image of ourselves, we will avoid modifying policies which have literally brought aid and comfort to our enemies, in particular Hamas, which the siege on Gaza has enriched through tunnel taxes and entrenched through anger toward "Israel".

For many on the right, it must be said, there will be a quiet joy in all of what is about to hit the fan. "We told you so," the crowing will begin. "The world hates us, no matter what we do. So we may as well go on building [Read: 'Settling the West Bank and East Jerusalem'] and defending our borders [Read: 'Bolster Hamas and ultimately harm ourselves by refusing to lift the Gaza embargo']."

Hamas, Iran and the "Israeli" and Diaspora hard right know, as one, that this is a test of enormous importance for Benjamin Netanyahu. Keen to have the world focus on Iran and the threat it poses to the people of "Israel", Netanyahu must recognize that the world is now focused on "Israel" and the threat it poses to the people of Gaza.