How to understand Israel's Response to the Gaza Flotilla

The developing diplomatic and media reaction to Israel's interdiction Monday of a pro-Palestinian flotilla steaming toward the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip speaks volumes: about Israel's deepening isolation in the world and the perverted moral priorities of the international community.

Even before Defense Minister Ehud Barak presented Israel's preliminary report at a 1 p.m. Tel Aviv news conference the censorious deluge had begun. The European Union called for an end to the quarantine of Gaza; Greece cancelled a scheduled visit by the commander of the Israeli Air Force; France unleashed a stinging denunciation; Switzerland called in the Israeli ambassador.

A morning anchor on Britain's Sky News demanded an Israeli spokesman tell him why Israel had no respect for international law. Not one satellite news channel in the region carried Barak's English-language briefing. Only a few bothered to broadcast an earlier statement by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon.

As soon as operational conditions permitted, Jerusalem wasted no time in presenting its case, but what it said was promptly ignored, denigrated or dismissed.
These basic facts were known early on:

• Organizers: The flotilla was instigated by the IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, an extremist Islamist organization based in Turkey in collaboration with the violence-prone International Solidarity Movement. Their moves were coordinated with Turkey and Hamas.

• Aid was a pretext: Organizers were offered the opportunity to ship any humanitarian supplies to Gaza via the Israeli port of Ashdod; a million tons of humanitarian supplies have entered Gaza from Israel over the last 18 months. They refused.

• Propaganda was the aim: IHH was repeatedly warned that under no circumstances would its convoy be permitted to sail into Gaza. Only when last-minute sea-to-sea warnings to desist were ignored were the vessels boarded by Israeli navy commandos. There was minimal resistance on five of the six boats as the troops, equipped with anti-riot gear, came aboard.

• Violence was premeditated: Instead of encountering "peace activists" the commandos rappelling down from helicopters onto the largest boat – the multi- story ocean liner Mavi Marmara with hundreds of militants aboard -- were set upon by crowds armed with knives, metal bars, and Molotov cocktails. At least two commandos are in hospital with gunshot wounds; another has a fractured skull. The commandos radioed that they feared being overwhelmed and lynched (video) and were given permission to use live fire.

These are the circumstances – self-defense – in which 9 pro-Palestinian activists, mostly Turkish nationals, were killed.

Nevertheless, Israel confronts a media intifada in which rage replaces rationality. From the outset, Arab news outlets and their enablers, stoked anti-Israel sentiment with bogus claims disseminated by new media technologies that 20 "activists" had been wantonly slaughtered, and that the Islamic Movement's northern branch chief Raed Salah (an Islamist agitator who carries an Israeli passport and was on board the Mavi Marmara) had been "assassinated." He is alive and well.

Arab leaders in Israel have called for raucous a general strike; Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad has urged Hamas to put aside its differences with Fatah in the common struggle against Israel. Radicalized Turkey, now allied with Iran and Hamas, may have found a pretext for a formal break in diplomatic ties with Israel.

Liberal Europe has trotted out the usual litany of charges. Israel is accused of violating international law, notwithstanding that it is legally entitled to quarantine Hamas which has declared war on Israel. The Jewish state is excoriated for acting on the high-seas, though that's where the unlawful intent of the flotilla could best be preempted. It is criticized for disproportionate use of force, though its soldiers met with lethal opposition.

In practice, any steps Israel takes in self-defense are adjudged "disproportionate."

In many ways, Monday's dawn clash off the Israeli coast was an incident foretold. At the UN, U.S. diplomats blocked a completely one-sided formal Security Council resolution condemning Israel that had demanded a Goldstone-like commission of inquiry. Instead, they tiredly acquiesced to a less equivocal censure which calls for an "impartial investigation."

Yet this is an administration that prides itself on "never letting a serious crisis go to waste."

It is, therefore, not too late for President Barack Obama to lead the civilized word out of its moral stupor; to emphatically declare that the season for shameless scapegoating of the Jewish state is over; to assert that Israel is in the forefront of a struggle against Western civilization by insidious Islamist fanaticism.

Meet This Year's Israel Prize Winner for Hebrew Literature

Introducing Hanoch Bartov:

To judge by the many prestigious awards his country has bestowed upon him, and by his prolific output—including ten novels, six collections of short stories, and three books of essays—the eighty-four-year-old Hanoch Bartov should need no introduction. And yet, outside Israel, this master of Hebrew style and quintessential son of the Jewish people and the Jewish state is relatively little known.

Please see my interview:

www.jewishideasdaily.com

New Elections Have Been Called in the UK

Will a change in government matter to US-Israel relations?
Please visit:

www.Jewishideasdaily.com

This blog has moved

This blog is now located at http://elliotjager.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://elliotjager.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

Musings on Moses & Muhammad

During the last full week of February, Jews and Muslims memorialized their respective founding prophets who, coincidentally, both died on their own birthdays.

Judaism commemorated Adar 7 as the day when Moses was born and died (coinciding with February 21); Islam commemorated Rabi-al-Awwal 12 (coinciding with February 26) as Muhammad's birthday and the anniversary of his death. The day, Milad an-Nabi, has religious as well as cultural significance. In Southeast Asia, for instance, it is marked by a carnival atmosphere. More conservative Muslim authorities hold that there is no theological basis to sanctify the day.

Yet this year in Damascus, it was a pan-Islamic occasion which saw Syrian President Bashar Assad, an Alawite, and the Persian Shi'ite president of Iran, Mahmud Ahmadinijad, attend a Sunni-led service.

Among Jews, the day is set aside for fasting and penitence but nowadays observed only by sectors within the Orthodox world. During medieval times, in Egypt, for example, Adar 7 took on communal and cultural significance; while Adar 8 was a carnival day! This made some conservative rabbis unhappy and they imposed restrictions on the participation of women.

The two faiths use different calendars so this year's convergence of birth/death anniversaries was mere coincidence. Yet there are some notable parallels along with dissimilarities between the two founders.

Moses was raised as a prince, but his birth father plays only a cameo role in the Torah and Muhammad's father, Abdullah, died while the prophet-to-be was still in his mother's womb. Some of Muhammad's successors were uncomfortable with the parallels the Koran draws with the Torah -- as when the Muslim holy book replicates the Torah's story of Moses smiting the rock for water.

Where Moses was a reluctant leader; Muhammad was keen and confident. Both men were warrior prophets, but Moses went to battle unenthusiastically, and appeared not to relish the role as commander-in-chief. Perhaps that is a reason why modern Israel memorializes those of its fallen soldiers whose graves are not known on the same day it remembers Moses.

Muhammad saw himself as more than the inheritor of Moses' mantle; he had come to perfect the earlier prophet's message. Muhammad, who came into contact with the Jewish tribes of Arabia viewed Judaism as a direct challenge to his religious mission. There is an account, for instance, of how his face changed color when he saw a follower reading from the Torah. The Hadith has Muhammad declaring that were Moses his contemporary, the Israelite would have become a Muslim.

Whereas Moses died with Joshua designated as his clear successor, Israelite fragmentation along tribal lines, notwithstanding -- Muhammad's demise led to a schism played out to this day between Sunnis and Shi'ites.

In the end, Moses expired in presence of God alone, whereas Muhammad passed away from an illness in his wife Aisha's home today. No one knows where Moses' burial place is. Muhammad is buried in the Al-Masjid al-Nabawi Mosque in Medina.