Israel to World: "Suck It."

btw the video i'm referring to in my post is not that one that mordy posted, but the night vision one that amon posted, haven't watched mordy's yet tho

My first post here after reading reaction all day, so tell me if this is out of line: the Israeli military, often considered the best in the world, surely had more...reasonable ways of dealing with belligerents than shooting them. Couldn't they have restrained the attackers?

or "immobilized" them or whatever

mordy's video hasn't really convinced me of anything besides the fact that maybe the people on the flotilla were too overly ready & eager for a confrontation -- if that video's trying to convince me that these people were smuggling molotov cocktails, wooden poles and power strips into gaza with which to "attack" israel, i wouldn't really have much sympathy for the country with the capabilities to rappel its soldiers onto boats via helicopter

they were definitely bringing shit into Gaza.

You mean knives and bats? I have that shit lying around my house. I thought we were talking about real arms, like explosives and rockets. I don't think that collection of household items will do much against M1A1 tanks, F-16s, and Apache gunships.

xpost

My point way above is that if you're bringing supplies into Gaza, and Israel has already accused you of smuggling weapons, why make it easy for them by actually having frightening fucking knives and molotov cocktails? And if you need them for whatever reason, why would you use them on the army? Anyway, the real point about smuggling isn't about whether this ship had it or not. Smuggling weapons into Gaza is a legit problem. I don't know the percentages of smuggled stuff through tunnels v. through ships, though most ships don't get through. (I do remember a huge weapon cache was recovered being smuggled on a ship to Gaza a few years ago.) That's why the blockade is up. Not because Israel hates Palestinians and wants to torture them for their own sadistic pleasure. Any answer to the matzif is going to involve figuring out a way to keep weapons from being smuggled in while still allowing aid and stuff to come in. I think k3v is right that inspections through a third party neutral might be the way to go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karine_A_Affair

I think Israel has legitimate concerns about weapons being brought it on boats.

it is about whether this ship had them or not, because clearly israel needs a better way of determining such things then to just assume that every single humanitarian aid ship is smuggling weapons in & with according force

& ACT with according force

They asked the boat to dock at Ashkelon so that they could inspect the stuff. The flotilla refused. I guess they could've gotten a third neutral party to inspect it, maybe the flotilla would've agreed to that (they might have done that, I know Egypt invited them to dock, so that was sorta a third party). Or brought a bigger force when they decided to inspect it themselves, that might've resulted in a more successful mission without unnecessary deaths.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/idf-vows-to-block-freedom-flotilla-aid-convoy-to-gaza-1.292424

This was published on the 27th. It basically predicts everything that was about to happen.

I imagine more than just predicting it, the information being out there helped create the situation (a boat filled w/ people who were expecting that israelis were going to board?)

I don't understand why, upon hearing that the IDF are going to board their humanitarian aid ship to inspect for weapons, the people on the flotilla would decide to get weapons and attack the soldiers.

that is certainly a question that needs to be answered

Sort of a side-note, but to be honest, the types of weapons mentioned here sound more likely to be used on Palestinians than Israelis.

Mordy, I understand a lot of what you're saying here, but ... you mention that Trolley Problem. But the whole basis of the Trolley Problem is that the person it's being posed to has control of a switch. And it's not like I'm so positive I'm right about anything, but can I suggest that a lot of your thinking here starts from the position I was talking about earlier -- this position where maybe the Israeli government feels like it has a complete moral right to the switch? And I know we want to be pragmatic and all, but don't you think that might be a fundamental problem? A lot of statements you're making seem to proceed via this logic that Israeli lives and safety are important, therefore Israel has the moral authority to make trade-offs with other people's lives and safety to protect it. But I'm guessing this is not a moral authority you would remotely cede to someone who was mostly concerned with, say, Palestinian lives and safety.

In other words, we could talk a lot (and probably agree a lot!) about what are defensible or productive ways for Israel to operate the switch, but there's this bigger question of claiming the switch in the first place. Maybe it's necessary and, for the time being, unchangeable, but I feel like if you work from the logic that Israel just naturally OWNS that claim from the get-go, there are going to places where you're reasoning from a flawed start. For instance, it's how we get a lot of this "stop hitting yourself" defense mentality -- it's only by assuming ownership of fate, ownership of the switch, that you start saying "you did this to yourself! you knew what the rules were! the rules we made!"

(Does that make sense, or is it too abstract?)

(Sorry, I should be clearer about that first part -- what I mean is I'd guess that blunt/crude weapons that make it into Gaza are probably more likely to be used for internal violence or intimidation than things affecting Israeli security, wouldn't they? I'm NOT saying this is relevant, just noticing it.)

Greenwald:

UPDATE VI: Among the countries condemning Israel for its attack are Russia, Turkey, India, China, Brazil, France, Spain and many more. By stark contrast, the White House issued a statement which conspicuously refused to condemn the Israelis (Obama "expressed deep regret at the loss of life in today’s incident, and concern for the wounded"), while the U.S. State Department actually hinted at condemning the civilians delivering the aid ("we support expanding the flow of goods to the people of Gaza. But this must be done in a spirit of cooperation, not confrontation").

Obama's call for "learning all the facts and circumstances" is reasonable enough, but all these other countries made clear that this attack could never be justified based on what is already indisputably known: namely, that the ship attacked by Israel was in international waters and it resulted in the deaths and injuries to dozens of civilians, but no Israeli soldiers were killed and a tiny handful injured. In any event, Obama's neutrality will have to give way to a definitive statement one way or the other, and soon.

nabisco, I typed something longer, but let me try to clarify something first: You're saying that instead of being able to make a decision of flipping the switch or not flipping the switch, they shouldn't have access to the switch at all? How is that functionally different from not flipping the switch?

Mordy, I don't mean it like a logic problem. (And I hope it's clear that I don't mean it argumentatively, either!)

I'm saying that a lot of logic here follows a certain path: "we need to protect Israeli citizens, and in order to do so, we may have to make decisions that harm many other people."

But there's a huge assumption in that logic -- it just assumes the authority to make those decisions. That authority isn't given to other people. For instance, you and I would probably agree that it would NOT be okay for everyone in the Gaza strip to collectively say "we need to protect our civilians, and in order to do so, we need to kill ever IDF soldier who crosses the border." Right?

So I know what you're asking me: "what, is Israel supposed to do nothing?" No, I'm not saying that. I realize this is no longer an issue of logic or ideals; it's an issue of getting results where people die less often. And sometimes having the force (or the claim on the land) puts those decisions in your hands whether it's fair or not.

But I think that when Israel is making these decisions -- or when we're talking about them -- we kind of need to remember that the authority to make them is not a given. The authority is totally borrowed and imposed on people and in no sense "fair." I think that needs to be remembered, because if we ignore it, we wind up with this "stop hitting yourself" mentality, where the Israel is saying "we set up oppressive, self-serving rules for our own protection, and what are we supposed to do if you keep testing them?"

* the IDF/Israel is saying etc.

And for the record, I don't mean "oppressive" and "self-serving" as some huge criticism, just as a fact -- an act like blockading a population to ensure your security is "self-serving" in that it's pretty obviously for your benefit, not theirs

Okay, I see what you're trying to say. At least I think I see what you're trying to say, but I'd suggest we're coming at this from different perspectives. In contemporary political philosophy, one of the major issues at hand is one of legitimacy -- Pippin describes it as "the legitimacy of the state's claim to a monopoly on the use of legitimate coercive force." So certainly the legitimacy of that claim is at issue, and if that's your question, I think it's fair, though I think it's a question on all states. Israel happens to deploy it in particularly obvious ways, but this is really the condition of state action. Part of that appears to be legitimacy conferred by presence -- ie: It's legitimate to have that monopoly because you technically do have that monopoly. Which was the context that I was bringing up the Trolly Problem. Israel presumes the legitimacy to make decisions for their citizens and for the people of Gaza. While the state exists, this is the paradigm I think we have to work with. How best can that decision be executed to help both actors in the event. You're questioning the legitimacy of that monopoly in the first place, but one reason I like the Trolly Problem is that the question of the legitimacy is built into the problem. You don't have to flip the switch and accept culpability for the crime of killing one person instead of five. That's why I asked why Israel not having access to the switch isn't equivalent to Israel not flipping the switch -- which is to say, it clearly has access to the switch. Now, is it legitimate to flip it.

I hope that makes sense.

I'm totally sympathetic to you vis-a-vis state power btw. I always rooted for Antigone over Creon. But this goes back to something else I've discussed on ILX -- the complete alienation I personally have in the face of state power. I'd always rather contest state power in domains that it doesn't seem to fully extend (places like art, myth, literature, music, which is why I write about what I write), or contest it from within state power itself -- ie through organizing, voting, discourse. But I'm very cynical of my ability to contest the state's monopoly on coercive force.

Assuming the legitimacy of that boarding video, I'm really at a loss as to why the soldiers are immediately set upon so violently. Not excusing the shooting, which seems OTT, but the dudes on the boat didn't even wait for an escalation. They (according to the video) treated the boarding party almost as an act of violence in and of itself, and reciprocated. Which is messed up. I wonder what they thought was going to happen when they one-by-one attacked a descending series of armed Israeli soldiers? IDF bullies or not, why pick a fight with a bully? Even as a PR victory this is dubious. I'm waiting to see the video clip of all the humanitarian aid the boat was carrying rather than a handful of knives and blunt weapons, since the latter seems to slight to fight for and the former would make for a much more symbolic/indignant photo op.

I have to admit, Mordy, I am amazed by that answer, because if you are constituting places like Gaza as part of "the state," aren't you kinda raising way bigger issues? (It's not exactly simpler to reduce people's participation in "the state" down to, like, just the monopoly on violence and the taxation.)

you surely accept that the trolley problem doesn't quite empirically mesh with the situation at hand, though? in the classical problem, we assume that both the group of five and the individual down path B are unrelated to the switch opearator, and to each other. with israel it's different - here you have two distinct groups, the israelis and the palestinians. one group quite clearly does not accept the authority of the operator of the switch, and it's very reasonable to expect the switch operator to be biased by the identity of the two groups between which he's choosing, rather than some ideal utilitarian desire to simply minimize suffering.

this assumes groups A & B are different - if you mean that the israeli govt (or whoever operates the 'switch') simply wants to minimize casualties of its own (if we don't do anything, x number of israelis dies, but if we do this horrible thing to a separate group of people, a lesser number dies), then you just get into the murky ethical questions of whether the lives of the other group (palestinians) are presumably worth less, thus making it okay to sacrifice their lives or liberties, or if it's the obligation of a government to protect its "own" (using that term carefully here) before it considers the needs of its outsiders, or even its enemies (or more to the point, the civilians of its enemies)

anyway i think we can mostly agree that there's hardly a healthy correlation b/w doing bad things to other people and making your own people safer, cf half of america's problems

that's an xpost

Sorry to have even derailed in the direction of that question -- I just feel like you can say a lot of sensible-sounding things from a faulty premise if you really think it's all up to your switch-flipping.

Hold on. I'm not constituting Gaza as part of 'the state.' I'm saying that at this historical moment Israel has a monopoly on certain kinds of power to use against Gaza. I think we all agree that one of the biggest issues of the conflict is that the Gaza state (as it may or may not exist) doesn't have enough of its own power to contest Israel's power. That's why I wrote above that in my eyes the biggest problem with the blockade isn't even that aid can't get through. It's that you can't be a state without being able to deal with other states through things like trade, diplomacy, etc. And if Gaza can't be a state, there really isn't a partner for Israel to negotiate with. (This speaks directly to a history of leftists in Israel trying to find people in Gaza who might be enough of a leader to somehow create this really weird kind of implicit coercive power -- which actually goes back to your first posts on this thread: How could Arafat negotiate for Palestinians if he didn't have this monopoly on power?)

But I'm speaking personally. Personally I may find the states monopoly on power illegitimate, but my venues to challenging it are severely limited. I can vote in the elections of the state that I live in, though the potency of that vote is at question often. I can resist peacefully or violently, and those methods have their various ways that they cede and retake power from the state, obv very complicated grounds that span Antigone to Gandhi. I can retreat into venues that I don't think the state completely touches (tho someone like Adorno would obviously call me a fool for doing that). I can participate in the political system to try to make changes, but that's a form of flipping the switch, not removing the state's monopoly on power.

k3v, I think you're right about the nationality bias in this case. But your second concern, about the valuation of human life, is built into the original problem.

i don't think it is, though - in the second part of my post, both group A & B are israeli - it's like sacrificing the one guy but using the mad scientist's face to smash the switch down

Okay, so that sounds like the fat man variation a little, right? Can you throw a fat man onto the tracks if it'll kill him, but it'll save the five people's lives on the tracks. Unless you believe the Palestinians at play here are the mad scientist -- that variation is generally included to discuss whether your answer changes if the villain responsible could die and save the people. I don't believe that is the case here -- we're talking about innocents. More people tend to find the fat man variation even more upsetting and reprehensible than the basic flip the switch. You're right tho that this isn't a 1:1 comparison. For one, a lot of the upset is over actually pushing the dude yourself. A lot of these political decisions are really hands off, so the meaning of your actions are never totally visible (and thus the horror is always somewhat contained, which is why I called the Israeli government thoughtless).

haha yeah i instantly regretted unwittingly making the palestinians the mad scientist there

I feel kinda shitty giving this huge explanation for why I believe I can't challenge state power, and clearly people like Glenn Greenwald believe they found a means of changing the dynamic in Israel (by trying to get the US to remove support from Israel, thus allowing other states to push against Israel more effectively). This is just the reason why on a thread like this I'm likely to feel really awful about what's going on, stumble around for possible solutions, and ultimately try to explain Israel's actions. I don't see any value in delegitimizing Israeli state power atm (not to mention all the reasons why I think Israel state power is a really important thing to have), and I'd rather try to figure out how we can work out a compromise, or at least make life less shitty for the people in Gaza. (Sometimes I feel like all decisions are just trying to find what makes things less shitty for people. It kinda blows that life feels that way. It's probably a failure of imagination on my part that I can't see a better way through things.)

well Utah Phillips said "the joy is in the struggle", and I think that speaks to a way of letting the act of resistance to power (in whatever form) become life-affirming in and of itself. I was struck by how much I agreed with your take on the problems of confronting state power, but at the same time your take seems much less optimistic than mine in terms of the value of resistance.

I do think you walk a fine line between trying "to explain Israel's actions" and sounding like an IDF press release, but I think I have a better idea of where you're coming from now. so I apologize for heated words and agree to disagree.

The thing is, if your ship is boarded by hostile, armed IDF guys, is the oar or pipe or whatever in your hand an offensive weapon or a defensive one? One thing *nobody* has been able to explain is why the IDF felt justified in boarding an aid vessel in INTERNATIONAL waters, armed or not. This is a dick move that would not be supported by any sane person or government were we discussing some other actor who had done the same to Greenpeace people, for example.

Something I wanted to address that history mayne brought up: the idea that supporters of the flotilla in Europe are some grab-bag of Muslims, the far left and anti-Americans. No, no, no, no. In Europe, there is not the pressure of groups like AIPAC throwing a spaz whenever you mention that Palestinians are actually human beings with needs and claims of their own, so people brought up to believe that apartheid and segregation are wrong and the narcissism of petty difference is misguided draw parallels with how the Israelis treat the Palestinians. These people are not anti-American or anti-Semitic (some are even Jewish or American) and as to their leftism, I think it's a broad leftism rather than oh say Tariq Ali throwing a hissy fit.

one of the people on the boat is a former american ambassador

Mairead Corrigan-Maguire was on one of the other boats

I know! She's VERY OLD. And Henning Mankell, and loads of others. I opened up my Twitter a few minutes ago to see that Roger Ebert had done an RT of sarahfuckingpalin telling all her flying monkeys to read Krauthammer and Horowitz on the flotilla to get what the mainstream is trying to hide. ARGH.

xp to Suzy above.

Just to echo that - in Europe, abhorrence of this is mainstream. At a protest yesterday evening at the Israeli embassy in Dublin, there were two backbenchers from the government party (centre-right Fianna Fail) among the speakers, both of whom had intended to be on the flotilla, until they were prevented by Cypriot police, presumably acting under instruction from Jerusalem.

Assuming it's true that these two guys were prevented from joining the flotilla: How does Jerusalem control the (presumably Northern) Cypriot police? Why do they want to stop these two guys in particular? How can they stop these two guys, but be powerless to prevent the flotilla sailing at all?

You can't even call it a left movement in Europe if you've got Tories and Fianna Fail denouncing the attacks. Ismael, they'd have passed intelligence to the elected officials through government channels.

John Humphrys is currently giving the Israeli ambassador to the UK a very hard time, while the ambassador is spinning the hell out of the 'armed flotilla' meme because he feels he is on the frontline and we in Europe are lightweights with no challenges worth comparing to it. Twat.

Assuming it's true that these two guys were prevented from joining the flotilla: How does Jerusalem control the (presumably Northern) Cypriot police? Why do they want to stop these two guys in particular? How can they stop these two guys, but be powerless to prevent the flotilla sailing at all?

No, 'southern' Cypriot police. and it wasn't just the paddies they stopped.

I think Israel has legitimate concerns about weapons being brought it on boats.

― Mordy, Tuesday, June 1, 2010 1:18 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

There's so many headaches with armed occupation.

matt otm -- israel should stop occupying gaza.

they don't occupy gaza

Wasn't the Provisional Wing of the IRA actually supposedly fairly limited memberwise until the hunger strikes where Thatcher let them starve to death, which lead to anger in nationalist communities and a huge propaganda boost to the Provisional IRA and membership increased in great numbers. The Brighton bombing was a response to the hunger strike deaths.

At least that's how it was always as perceived as being. maybe someone more in the know can correct this if it's wrong.

Was the ceasefire in effect by 1990?

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Tuesday, June 1, 2010 2:06 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

calling it the 'provisional wing of the 'ira' is always an interesting construction

the ceasefire came in 1994, but the increased support for the republican cause post-bobby sands translated more into political activity rather than more murders. i doubt that membership of the provos increased much -- not sure, though i guess the number of mi5 agents who joined went up, since that ended up doing for them. the worst years of the troubles were in the mid-late 1970s.

i suppose you could call the brighton bombing as response to the strikers' suicides three years before, but i hadn't heard it called that and the ira's statement doesn't mention them. usual boilerplate about living under occupation.

xpost

i know, that was my zing @ matt

Something I wanted to address that history mayne brought up: the idea that supporters of the flotilla in Europe are some grab-bag of Muslims, the far left and anti-Americans. No, no, no, no. In Europe, there is not the pressure of groups like AIPAC throwing a spaz whenever you mention that Palestinians are actually human beings with needs and claims of their own, so people brought up to believe that apartheid and segregation are wrong and the narcissism of petty difference is misguided draw parallels with how the Israelis treat the Palestinians. These people are not anti-American or anti-Semitic (some are even Jewish or American) and as to their leftism, I think it's a broad leftism rather than oh say Tariq Ali throwing a hissy fit.

― I eat truffle fries because my captors say they'll kill me if I don't (suzy), Tuesday, June 1, 2010 7:41 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

it wasn't me who brought this up; but actually a lot of people involved in this *are* very much anti-american and anti-semitic -- to name one of them, lauren booth, or anyone else involved in press tv.

or these dudes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3L7OV414Kk

ihh itself is affiliated with hamas -- you'll have to google for that, but im not bullshitting -- and the facebook page for the convoy -- http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=359073569674&ref=search&sid=8YdSIz92yKixYGTYuMzYSQ.1546318140..1 -- trades in 'from the river to the sea'-type slogans whose implications i don't need to point out

all that said, of course i think something needs to be done about gaza to let in basic supplies, that the israeli government is continually its second worst enemy, etc. it's just important to keep your eyes open.

n Europe, there is not the pressure of groups like AIPAC throwing a spaz

i mean, i just don't have too high a view of european commentators on these matter, what with the continent's inglorious recent history

unoccupied countries typically are able to have ships dock on their beach.