Israel turns its crack forces against an Aid Ship

galway | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Monday May 31, 2010 18:06 by donkylemore - self

Israeli's commandos finest hour ??

Is this attack on an Aid ship Israel's taking advantage of an erstwhile preoccupied and unfortunate American President ? Or is it just more of Israel doing what Israel does best ..taking murderous and disproportionate action against civilians to further subjugate the Palestinian people - and doing all of this under the pre configured ideation imprinted on the Israeli mind that Europe 'owes' her because of the Holocaust - and therefore whatever would be deemed unacceptable by another country is Ok for Israel ?

I see Mark Regev just now describing the approaching Aid ship as an attack on Israel... an assault on the State of Israel. The Aid ships are now being accused of being an invading flotilla
Catapults and iron bars against automatic weapons in the hands of marksmen ?? where's the proportionality there.
Will there be an international enquiry.? Of course not . The commandos will probably be decorated .
And as for the aid so necessary in Gaza , will the embargo on tonnage be 15,000 tons/wk be lifted.? Unlikely More likely to be restricted further . The Gazans need about 45,000 tons of product ranging from construction materials such as cement to food to clothes , wood ( magnanimously the Israelis do allow in some medicines ).. but not cement , or pencils or computer parts. Pencils?

The Israelis have used the trump card of the Holocaust every time there has been international condemnation of her actions against the Palestinians . The aptly named '' Operation grapes of Wrath'' where they slaughtered over a hundred Lebanese in a UN refugee camp scarcely raised a finger of international admonishment .
The refugees were mostly Lebanese but some Palestinians who had been assimilated into Lebanese society were among them.
Why does Europe now particularity that we have our own relationship with Israel, one not codependent on the USA opinion , speak out against this atrocity.

Part of the answer is that our EU spokesman to the EU is Tony Blair- a man reviled for his duplicity in the Arab world, and the least possible trusted head of state in the western World.A lap dog of the previous Bush administration. Blair is a perfidious master of self advancement . He has visited the beleagured Gaza just once sunce his appointment as EU representative to the Middle East.To the Arabs he is capricious ,and serves as a reminder to the Arab mind of the UK treachery to the Arabs in WW1.

What will happen now . Bibi is back and has been justifying the attack . - they were attacking our soldiers with bars- this coming form a country whose commandos have the most sophisticated weaponry available from taser guns to - hallucinogenic drugs, to instant paralyzing agents - all for use in the field .. and they responded to an attack with ''steel bars'' with devastating gun power.

But the world will watch and forget . As we all did even after Operation Cast Lead showed the disproportionate response to the Hezbollah where the Israelis used white phosphorus against civilians.

How will the relationship between Israel and Turkey develop ? Will the Israelis retaliate againstthe wrath of Turkey by changing its mindset from one of forbearance to one of enmity over the Turkish massacre of Armenian civilians in 1915 ?-
But this is not a time for history lessons ,
It is a time for expulsion of Israel from all civilian discourse until she adheres to the UN determination that she withdraw to her pre 1966 borders.
And this happens while a troubled Mr Obama is wallowing in his BP difficulties- difficulties which may well swamp him.
Obama , whose soaring rhetoric in his Cairo speech brought some hope for a renewed relationship between the West and the Arab world , whose audacity to hope, whose determination to dream against adversity ..it all seems sadly pathetic now.

We all wanted to hope to dream with him.. even to the extent of his finally bringing to an end the USA as the most reliable apologist for Israeli hegemony against the Palestinians and its threat of the Nuclear option against Iran.

Now it is Europe's turn to show its resolve. It is timely how this will also test Turkish diplomacy .
Leaving aside the USA , the EU and Turkey have a problem now dealing with this atrocity .With the Turkish application to the EU still on hold much is to be learned from each other in the coming weeks