Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: The Facts Are On Israel's Side

Look, I wish the Israeli raid on the so-called “Freedom Flotilla” had 
ended differently. Why, I ask, didn’t Israel’s navy disable the engine 
of the Mavi Marmara and drag the ship into port? Who knows? The engines 
of the other boats were apparently disabled—or so reliable sources say.
But, frankly, when some 800 men and women, distributed over six boats 
after weeks and weeks of preparation, are headed towards Gaza on the 
wings of slogan and hysteria, you don’t take that many chances. Somebody 
has trouble in mind.
The first five vessels were steered quietly to the Israeli port city of 
Ashdod, which means that neither their passengers nor the Israeli 
commandos were especially provocative. The sixth ship, which had 600 
activist Turkish voyeurs on board, is an entirely different story. 
Sponsored by an organization labeled the Humanitarian Relief Fund 
(I.H.H.), it is said to have ties to Al Qaeda. Which would be logical 
since Al Qaeda is an ally of Hamas. An intriguing tripartite liaison.
But I.H.H. is also a satrap of the ever-more-Islamist government in 
Istanbul, which seems, in turn, to have volunteered itself as a front 
for jihadism everywhere, most especially in dealing with Iran and its 
nuclear ambitions. There is hardly a Muslim cause that the Erdogan 
regime in Ankara has not taken to heart and under its belt. (Recall that 
Turkey kept U.S. forces from traversing Turkish soil in 2003.)
Turkey was also once an important ally of Israel, which protected it 
from Syrian ambitions and gave it a non-Arab friend in a sea of Arabism. 
Israeli commerce and Israeli military cooperation—that is, modernizing 
Turkish armaments and units—will not continue much longer with this 
still-backward country. The Israelis will be sad to lose this friend, 
but, in fact, they have lost it already. And this is a reciprocal loss.
It wasn’t so long ago that Turkey—Erdogan’s Turkey—aspired to membership 
in the European Union. They can kiss that goodbye. The Turks may now be 
heroes on the Arab street, but they certainly aren’t heroes in Europe’s 
chancelleries, which prefer controversies on paper. And, much as some 
E.U. states have huffed and puffed about Israel, the Union is not 
anxious to add nearly 80 million Muslims to what would no longer be Europe.
It rings symbolically true that the two European countries first in line 
to bash Israel were the continent’s prime basket cases: Greece, whose 
fakeries and troubles have no end; and Spain, saddled with hundreds of 
thousands of non-working Muslim immigrants and two ongoing separatist 
movements, one of which (Catalonia) has much justice on its side. Both 
Greece and Spain are, of course, “progressive,” which is to say 
socialist (and unbelievably corrupt).
In Massachusetts, where I live, one young man—an Irish-American dual 
national who took part in the flotilla—has become a hero. His father is 
Joseph Bangert, a Cape Cod resident who, according to The Boston Globe, 
is a retired Marine and Vietnam veteran. Under a photograph of his son, 
a strapping reddish-haired youth of 28, is the Globe’s caption: Bangert 
“said he had not spoken with his son, Fiachra O’Luain, directly and has 
had to rely on news reports, information on Facebook, and a YouTube video.”
What was his seed doing in the eastern Mediterranean? This was not, 
after all, the Easter Rebellion. He was either a fighter, in which case 
he might have anticipated getting hurt in the excitement. Or he was a 
voyeur--an idealistic voyeur, to be sure--in which case, whatever ...
The propaganda for the flotilla has been in the works for months. Most 
of it was simply false. The poverty in Gaza is not qualitatively greater 
than that of your average Arab city. (Take Cairo. Or Amman, for that 
matter.) The markets are full of fruit and vegetables ... and flowers. 
Persistent pockets of deprivation exist in the historic refugee 
concentrations, which the Palestinian political class maintains as 
evidence of the ancient wrong. And, no, nobody is building big houses 
... except again the elites, to the extent that they can smuggle 
materiel through the hundreds of tunnels which are perhaps less corrupt 
than the ordinary channels of commerce.
Who is behind this overhyped mission of mercy? And who is its 
beneficiary? It is none other than Hamas, the Gazan outpost of the 
global jihad, cousin of the Taliban, second cousin once-removed of 
Hezbollah. Wishing Hamas well, laboring for its success, is actually a 
crime against the Palestinians themselves. Of course, the new realists, 
so-called, will now beat the drums for a “pragmatic” opening to Hamas. 
It is an old trope for Robert Malley and his ilk. So, over the last two 
days, they have returned with the same message: Hamas is the future. 
Soon we will hear from James Baker, James Wolfensohn, even Paul Volcker, 
who knows a lot about some things but absolutely zero about the Middle East.
But Hamas is the past, the ugly past of ignorance. That does not mean it 
has no future. Hamas is the Palestinian counterpart of the movements of 
dread that now course throughout the world of Islam, and against which 
the West and moderate Muslims are struggling. The backward Muslims were 
Lost in the Sacred, as Dan Diner put it in his dazzling book-long essay, 
subtitled Why the Muslim World Stood Still. Pascal Bruckner depicts 
their Western sympathizers in The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western 
Masochism. Read these two books and you’ll understand the desperate and 
comradely pity educated men and women have for pitilessness.
Sympathy for Hamas is an odd reality in the Western world, and Israel 
needs to puzzle over how it has lost so much ground in its struggle 
against Arab and Muslim barbarism. I understand that the revival of a 
certain chic anti-Semitism has paved the way for the grosser 
anti-Semites and for the Muslim phantasts who deal in torment and 
salvation. Among these were the voyagers on the ship of fools who, a 
clip from Al Jazeera demonstrates, awaited the shores of Gaza ... or 
martyrdom.
The front page of the Financial Times reads “Israel faces global 
backlash.” Turkey, it says, “calls flotilla attack ‘inhuman.’ ” This is 
Turkey, mind you, which can’t admit to the Armenian genocide of nearly a 
century ago and won’t relent on the Kurds today. As it happens, the 
Security Council, meeting way into Tuesday morning, passed a balanced, 
even judicious, resolution that was, in true meaning, at least as much a 
rebuke to the Turks as it was a criticism of Israel. Neither Russia nor 
China stood in the way—at least not in the end—of fairness to Israel. 
And they did not try to exculpate Hamas or the macabre joy riders, 
including young Fiachra O’Luain.
And I must admit that this marks a turning point in the Obama 
administration’s attitude to Israel. Although it made some de rigeur 
criticisms, it was not about to make Jerusalem a sacrificial lamb for a 
faltering foreign policy. Susan Rice, with whom you know I have many 
problems, made all the appropriate visits and phone calls—bravely, 
conscientiously, and wisely. Maybe it was at least as much for the 
Palestinian Authority as it was for the Jewish state. Or for ultimate 
peace, unlikely as it is. But it was. Neither did anyone walk out of the 
“proximity talks,” non-talks as these are. And, for this, I assume the 
president is responsible. Mazel tov.
In fact, many people are having second thoughts … or are freeing their 
initial thoughts from the tiresome orthodoxies in smart parlors.
There were several smart pieces yesterday about the flotilla fallout. 
One was written by Michael Sean Winters in the lefty National Catholic 
Reporter. It is called “Judging Israel.” And it judges the Jewish state 
fairly. But perhaps the most important take on the episode appeared in 
The Daily Beast. The piece (“Israel Was Right”) was written by Leslie H. 
Gelb, a senior ideas man in the American foreign policy establishment, a 
former New York Times columnist, and the longtime president (now 
president emeritus) of the Council on Foreign Relations. Writes Gelb:
     Israel had every right under international law to stop and board 
ships bound for the Gaza war zone late Sunday. Only knee-jerk 
left-wingers and the usual legion of poseurs around the world would 
dispute this. And it is pretty clear that this "humanitarian" flotilla 
headed for Gaza aimed to provoke a confrontation with Israel. Various 
representatives of the Free Gaza Movement, one of the main organizers of 
this deadly extravaganza, have let it slip throughout Monday that their 
intention was every bit as much "to break" Israel's blockade of Gaza as 
to deliver the relief goods.
     […]
     Regarding international law, blockades are quite legal. The United 
States and Britain were at war with Germany and Japan and blockaded 
them. I can't remember international lawyers saying those blockades were 
illegal—even though they took place on the high seas in international 
waters.
On that note, here are the relevant passages from the Helsinki 
Principles on the Law of Maritime Neutrality:
     5.1.2 (3) Merchant ships flying the flag of a neutral State may be 
attacked if they are believed on reasonable grounds to be carrying 
contraband or breaching a blockade, and after prior warning they 
intentionally and clearly refuse to stop, or intentionally and clearly 
resist visit, search, capture or diversion.
     5.1.2 (4) Merchant ships flying the flag of a neutral State may be 
attacked if they (a) engage in belligerent acts on behalf of the enemy; 
(b) act as auxiliaries to the enemy’s armed forces; (c) are incorporated 
into or assist the enemy’s intelligence system; (d) sail under convoy of 
enemy warships or military aircraft; or (e) otherwise make an effective 
contribution to the enemy’s military action, e.g., by carrying military 
materials, and it is not feasible for the attacking forces to first 
place passengers and crew in a place of safety. Unless circumstances do 
not permit, they are to be given a warning, so that they can re-route, 
off-load, or take other precautions.
     5.2.1 As an exception to Principle 5.1.2. paragraph 1 and in 
accordance with Principle 1.3 (2nd sentence), belligerent warships have 
a right to visit and search vis-à-vis neutral commercial ships in order 
to ascertain the character and destination of their cargo. If a ship 
tries to evade this control or offers resistance, measures of coercion 
necessary to exercise this right are permissible. This includes the 
right to divert a ship where visit and search at the place where the 
ship is encountered are not practical.
     5.2.10 Blockade, i.e. the interdiction of all or certain maritime 
traffic coming from or going to a port or coast of a belligerent, is a 
legitimate method of naval warfare. In order to be valid, the blockade 
must be declared, notified to belligerent and neutral States, effective 
and applied impartially to ships of all States. A blockade may not bar 
access to neutral ports or coasts. Neutral vessels believed on 
reasonable and probable grounds to be breaching a blockade may be 
stopped and captured. If they, after prior warning, clearly resist 
capture, they may be attacked.
The law is on Israel’s side. Ethics and history are on Israel’s side. 
Those who are on the side of Hamas are actually enemies of civilization.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-spine/75249/the-great-flotilla-debate-the-facts-are-israels-side


i saprofiti che sostieni, guardando ai fatti