Revolutionary Moderation

Isolation

So, perhaps my initial reaction was too strong, too angry, and certainly too unrealistic.  However, I've been clear enough about my feelings that I have objected to much of Israel's behavior toward its neighbours in the occupied territories and beyond over the last decade.  I've said as much on this blog on occasion.  I believe that Israel's government prefers bullying its neighbours to learning to get along with them.  I'm offended at how strongly the world believes that Iran's nuclear ambitions are a threat to world peace, but that Israel's current possession of nuclear weapons isn't, as if the former wasn't a direct result of the latter.  I haven't faced accusations of anti-Semitism, which I appreciate, and yet I've seen other more popular writers face that charge when they write similar things on their own blogs, so clearly I haven't been the staunchest defender of the current Israeli government.  In fact, watching moderates in that government being held hostage by an extreme right owning the balance of power in nearly any coalition keeps me from supporting Proportional Representation in Canada.

So what I have to say now might be dismissed as easily as the fellow interviewed by Global yesterday at the Legislature protest, who said the right things and sounded perfectly reasonable, except that he was wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh over his nose and mouth, obscuring his face, and honestly, could you look more like a scary terrorist to anyone who might have otherwise been sympathetic to what you were saying, you idiot kid?  I digress.

Israel, you're losing friends.  Some of that is for dropping on to a humanitarian aid ship in international waters, guns-a-blazing, in order to enforce a blockade that large swaths of the world are already unsympathetic toward.  But some of it is for your flat denial to acknowledge that you've done something wrong, for your attempt to portray peaceful international political activists as terrorists, and for your continued attempts to claim hatred is the only reason anyone would not unquestioningly swallow your version of events as the unvarnished truth.

There are more ships coming to run your Gaza blockade.  It is probably true that these six ships you boarded on Monday were more interested in bringing world attention to the blockade by loudly defying it than they were in delivering aid.  When the next ships come, you had better find a diplomatic solution.  No tank, no airplane, no nuclear warhead is going to guarantee your long-term security.  That comes from peace, trade, and interdependence.  Your isolation works against all of those things.