“Peace process? What peace process? That’s so nineties. After 18 years, don’t they feel silly…

There are only two scenarios. The optimistic one is more of the same. The pessimistic one is it’s going to get worse.” – Ahmad Aweidah, head of the Palestinian Stock Exchange

Ah, the ‘peace process’. Like Shimon Peres, Big Brother and Ernie the Giant Chicken, it just won’t fucking die already. What was particularly striking about the announcement of its latest iteration, due to kick-off next week, was how little anyone cared. In the stream of public and media consciousness, even in Israel, it barely caused a ripple. Apart from the real die-hards, no one can even muster the energy to pretend anymore. Whereas three years ago Bush officials were having to actively downplay hopes about the “Annapolis summit” – which was not a “peace conference”, you’ll recall, and which would not produce a “declaration of principles” but rather a “declaration of interests” – now US officials are having to make absurd promises, like claiming that a peace agreement will be reached within a year, just to get people to pay attention. Palestinians and Israelis are united in dismissing the talks as an irrelevency.If the ‘peace process’ is indeed redolent of a “soap opera”, it most resembles the relaunch of Crossroads, greeted with a collective shrug and an uneasy feeling that, looking back, the original wasn’t much cop either.

It’s not surprising that the Obama administration is attempting to play up the talks, given how much effort it expended in realising them. Not, as you might expect, because the Israeli government was unwilling to play ball. On the contrary: Netanyahu has been pushing for these talks for months. Rather, the weight of US power was brought to bear on the Palestinian Authority, as usual. Abbas, clinging to what scraps of nationalist dignity he had left, had insisted that no talks would take place without an agreement from Israel to extend its (non-existent) freeze on settlement construction. He also called for a predetermined schedule for negotiations, and for any future peace talks to be based on the principle of an Israeli withdrawal to its legal borders – that is, on the international political and legal consensus. As the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies reports, “renewal of the talks was made possible following heavy pressure leveled by the United States on Abbas to concede” all of these demands. Abbas has been duly attacked by Palestinians for this “surrender”, from within his own party as well as Hamas, but ultimately, the survival of the PA rests not on internal support but on international backing. Its capitulation was thus inevitable:

“[i]n spite of opposition at home, Abbas knows that the bottom line is he could survive different opinions but not an end to economic aid.”

Ha’aretz is correct, then, to report the announcement of the talks as a victory for Netanyahu. But why was the Israeli Prime Minister so keen on them in the first place?

Negotiations about what?

We can discount his own explanation – that the Israeli government seeks a genuine, stable peace settlement – immediately. Netanyahu’s position hasn’t changed from the one elaborated by his communications director back in 1996: Israel will retain control over the West Bank, and

Palestinians can call whatever fragments of Palestine are left to them “a state” if they like — or they can call them “fried chicken”.

What this “fried chicken” will consist of is clear from Netanyahu’s pronouncements – he rejects the ‘67 borders as a basis for negotiations, insists on retaining control over the Jordan Valley, promises that a “united Jerusalem” will remain Israel’s eternal capital and has indicated that all the major ‘settlement blocs’ will remain annexed to Israel. (Netanyahu’s rejectionism is mild compared to that of some of his colleagues: the ‘spiritual leader’ of Shas, a member of Israel’s governing coalition, yesterday called for genocide against “these evil people”, the Palestinians.) More importantly, however, it is clear from Israel’s actions on the ground. July and August saw a “new peak” in the destruction of Palestinian homes – in July alone, 550 Palestinians lost their homes or livelihoods. In just one incident, the Israeli military destroyed “almost the entire Palestinian village of Al Farisiye in the Jordan Valley” [.pdf], consistent with long-term Israeli objectives for the area, described above. The ‘Civil Administration’ has confirmed that it “received instructions from the Ministry of Defense [under the control of Labor’s Ehud Barak] to step up demolitions of Palestinian structures throughout Area C in the near future”. The Israeli government is refusing to freeze settlement expansion for the duration of the talks, and construction continues on the annexation wall, which functions as a “political fence” (Shimon Peres) with “implications” for Israel’s “future border” (Tzipi Livni).

In other words, a ‘peace settlement’ for the Israeli government would represent an acceptance by Palestinians of the plan Israel has been pushing since the occupation began, a formalisation of what it has already implemented on the ground, by force. In short,

“[t]he gap between the positions held by most coalition members, including Netanyahu’s inner cabinet of seven, and those held by the Palestinians is evident – and nothing has happened to indicate it has narrowed”.

The Israeli government continues to reject the international consensus two-state settlement, which is the minimum any Palestinian leader – even Mahmoud Abbas – can accept. In these circumstances, one can only ask, along with (fucked clock) George Will, “[n]egotiations about what?”

Obama

“Aha!”, supporters of the ‘peace process’ might say at this point. “You’re forgetting about the Obama factor!” Or trying to, at any rate. The ‘Obama factor’, always a somewhat mystical affair, is even less grounded in evidence here than usual. His administration’s record in Palestine differs from his predecessors in precisely two ways. First, US military aid to Israel has significantly increased and military ties have deepened. As recently as April the Pentagon agreed to sell Israel three Hercules aircraft in an arms deal worth nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. Second, it has ruled out imposing significant material pressure on Israel to reverse, or even moderate, its rejectionism. As the Washington Post reports,

“[t]he diplomatic crisis between the U.S. and Israel has sent a tremor through their alliance, but one key part of the bond seems virtually untouchable: the roughly $3 billion a year in U.S. military aid”

– which ought to raise questions about the sincerity of said “diplomatic crisis”. “[T]here has been no serious talk of using aid as a club”, the Post continued. This is critical, because while the US backs the occupation, Israel has no incentive to end it. As Alon Liel, director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry while Barak was PM, explains,

“[i]t’s not possible for the strongest kid and the weakest kid in the neighborhood to conduct talks on reconciliation and friendship when the talks are based on arm wrestling. It’s absolutely clear who will win.”

Particularly when the “strongest kid” is backed by the global military superpower.

It is true that there have been mumblings of discontent within the US establishment recently – witness, for instance, Gen. Petraeus’s averral that perceptions of US “favouritism for Israel” damage “our interests” – but this is nothing new, and they show little sign of becoming dominant.

Talks as formaldehyde

Why, then, have the US and Israel insisted on the resumption of talks, given the opposition of both to a two-state settlement? For Obama, as one Arab diplomat has noted, the announcement of talks allows him “to claim some kind of success, especially ahead of the upcoming elections and at a time when his popularity in the polls does not seem to be all that good”. One of Obama’s principle virtues for US power – what made him distinct from McCain and Bush – is his ability to put a human face on American hegemony, to consolidate the US position and try to repair some of the damage caused by Bush-era adventurism. In the Middle East that meant being seen to empathise with regional concerns, and appearing to do something to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To that end he engaged in a highly visible campaign to pressure ‘both parties’ (in fact, the Palestinians) to resume talks – without, as discussed above, acting to ensure that there was anything substantive to talk about.

For Israel, meanwhile, the talks represent the latest manifestation of “the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history”, a “fiction that has served primarily to provide cover for its systematic confiscation of Palestinian land”. As the Financial Times chief international affairs correspondent writes,

“[t]he Middle East peace process long ago turned into a tortured charade of pure process while events on the ground – in particular the relentless and strategic Israeli colonisation of occupied Palestinian land – pull in the opposite direction to peace. “We have all been colluding in a gigantic confidence trick,” is how one Arab minister puts it, “and here we go again”.

As with the “road map”, an agreement signed with much fanfare in 2003 and then obliterated a day later, when the Israeli government entered 14 “reservations” that rendered the entire process meaningless, and as with the more recent ‘Annapolis process’, which proceeded in tandem with a 60% increase in settlement construction, the point is simply to ensure that “we are forever engaged in some negotiations”. This strategy is nothing new. As Yossi Sarid recalls, “[t]hey used to say about Yitzhak Shamir that he conducted peace negotiations with our neighbors as long as they never ended”. “There are no sacred dates”, insisted Rabin. As veteran diplomatic correspondent Aluf Benn wrote of the ‘Annapolis process’,

“Conducting high-level talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority; Israel’s willingness to discuss the principles for ending the conflict; and gestures such as the release of prisoners are in themselves sufficient to remove international pressure on Israel to withdraw from the territories and to end the occupation.

At the same time, as long as it’s all talk and there are no agreements or decisions that involve the evacuation of territories and the settlements, there is no internal pressure on the government either”.

Israel’s typical strategy, once a new round of fraudulent negotiations commences, is to declare that “security” and “institutional” issues must be agreed upon (and even implemented) before any ‘final status’ issues – borders, Jerusalem, the refugees – are discussed, and to focus on red herring issues like demanding recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state”. This explains the convoluted structure of Oslo and the Road Map, for instance. The effect of this is to bog the whole process down in minutiae and defer discussion of Palestinian political claims to an unspecified point in the distant future. And sure enough, right on cue:

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish homeland is chief among essential components for a peace deal, days ahead of renewed negotiations.”

and

“Netanyahu says he plans to focus on security arrangements before addressing final borders … Netanyahu said during his meetings he wants to discuss security issues with the Palestinians first; only then would the two sides focus on borders of a future Palestinian state.”

This strategy of endlessly drawn-out negotiations recalls Dov Weisglass’s account of the objectives behind the Gaza “disengagement”, which was designed, he explained, to put the ‘peace process’ in “formaldehyde”. This formulation isn’t quite accurate, since the ‘peace process’ is itself a form of formaldehyde, intended to maintain the diplomatic status quo while enabling continued entrenchment of the occupation on the ground.

Netanyahu’s desire to launch a new round of ‘peace talks’, then, is explicable as a continuation of a long-running Israeli strategy to reduce the diplomatic costs of continued occupation, and as a response to the unusual level of international criticism directed at Israel following the Gaza massacre and the attack on the Gaza Freedom flotilla. “So what is Israel actually trying to achieve?”, asks Avi Issacharoff.

“Basically, nothing. There is a superficial peace process which is going nowhere but eases international pressure on Israel to reach a deal with the Palestinians”.

Better than nothing?

Despite widespread cynicism about this latest round of talks, there is an attitude, particularly prevalent among liberal Obama supporters, that despite their low probability of success they are nonetheless worth supporting on the basis that they are, after all, ‘better than nothing’. As an Economist article puts it,

“[w]hether Mr Obama is trying to solve the conflict or simply to manage it is hard to say, since the secret of “managing” is to maintain the pretence that the peace process will indeed one day produce. Either way, it cannot be a bad thing to get old enemies to talk”.

This approach is misguided, for reasons that should already be clear. The ‘peace process’ should be understood as an attempt to consolidate and facilitate, rather than end, Israeli occupation. It “allows Israel to pose as a willing peacemaker while carrying on with business as usual”. Participating in the charade does indeed improve the chances that the ‘peace talks’ will “succeed”, but “success” in this context represents a setback for anyone seeking a genuine negotiated settlement to the conflict.

Furthermore, as Gideon Levy points out, there is always the risk (a small one, in my view, but certainly not one worth being complacent about) that a collapse in negotiations will herald another round of bloodshed. Moreover, launching another diplomatic process from which Hamas is pointedly excluded “spells the demise of any serious dialogue between Fatah and Hamas”. Reuters reports that

“Western diplomats believe efforts to reconcile Hamas and Fatah will be off the agenda entirely for the 12-month duration of negotiations.”

Indeed, the Obama admin apparently views the talks as a method of weakening and isolating Hamas, a continuation of a Bush administration approach that produced (deliberately) internal Palestinian conflict, the administrative separation of Gaza and the West Bank and a divided, weakened Palestinian polity. All serious observers of the conflict recognise that a minimum level of cooperation between Hamas and Fatah is a prerequisite to any serious attempt at peace. The fact that the Obama admin continues to oppose this is telling.

Some people will inevitably continue to believe that Obama, despite all the evidence and historical precedents to the contrary, genuinely intends to force Israel to end its rejectionism. Fine. I won’t attempt to fight the persuasive power of that smile. Instead of disputing whether Obama – or European governments – will act on their words, what we should be doing is organising to ensure that they do. As Stephen Walt puts it, “[i]f you think I’m being too gloomy, then do the world a favor and prove me wrong”. ‘Better than nothing’ assumes that ‘nothing’ is the only alternative. On the eve of the ‘Oslo process’ Haider Abdel-Shafi, head of the Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid Conference, dismissed official “negotiations” as a “not worth fighting about”. “The critical issue”, he continued,

“is transforming our own society… We must decide amongst ourselves to use all our strength and resources to develop our collective leadership and the democratic institutions which will achieve our goals and guide us in the future.” [cit. Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, pp. 539-40]

Words worth paying attention to, and not just by Palestinians.

Published at New Left Project

“During the visit by leaders of the Palestinian community to Libya a few months ago, MK Hanin Zuabi (Balad ) stood out in particular – the only woman in the “Arabs of 1948″ delegation invited to visit Muammar Gadhafi. When we met with Gadhafi in his tent in the town of Sert, this remarkable woman showed courage that is rare in these parts.

The leader preached to us and advised us to practice one of the tenets of Islam – marry four women and bring many children into the world to fight the Israelis. Zuabi, who is known for her struggle for the rights of Palestinian women in Israel, did not hesitate and pointed out to Gadhafi that his philosophy was not acceptable to her because it oppresses women. The tent went silent. It’s not customary to interrupt the leader, we had been told in the briefing before the meeting. Gadhafi listened and simply went on with his speech.

This story proves that Zuabi is cut from tough and unyielding cloth – an uncompromising fighter for her party’s principles both domestically and abroad.”

For previous installments, see here and here.

Gohmert’s colleague, Texas state Rep. Debbie Riddle (R – District 150), similarly took to CNN to warn viewers of the threat posed by “little terrorists”, an “organized criminal element” bent on destroying the US.

Of course, the concept of weaponised babies is hardly new. Islamophobes like Christopher Caldwell have long warned gravely of the “demographic time bomb” set to explode Europe, while in Israel Palestinian citizens are prevented from living with their families for fear of upsetting the “demographic balance”. As MK Zahalka recently joked, in the fevered Israeli imagination, “Palestinian romance” involves two Palestinians getting together and plotting to undermine the country’s “demography”. In the same vein, sociologist Gunnar Heinsohn has pleaded with the ‘West’ to stop funding “extreme demographic armament” in Gaza – a technical term referring to the phenomenon of Palestinians having children.

And the infant offensive does not, of course, stop there. Consider for example the Palestinians’ use of what Prof. Alan Dershowitz calls the “dead children strategy”, in which Palestinian children trick the State of Israel into killing them in order to besmirch its image abroad. Thus the following, sickening caption in the Israeli newspaper Ynet:

Being born and getting killed: both strategies deployed to devastating effect by Palestinian children.

Portraying “enemy” infants as proto-terrorists has obvious propaganda value: if what you thought was an innocent baby is in fact a weapon with a human face, you will be less likely to protest when it is killed. Murder becomes self-defence. The slaughter of children becomes disarmament.

But there is an extension that’s worth noting: not only are we supposed to view ‘their’ children as latent terrorists; we’re supposed to believe that this is the only value they hold for their parents as well. Where Palestinian children are not treasured as weapons to be expended in combat, they are not valued by their families at all. Thus the claim, conventionally attributed to Golda Meir, that “[p]eace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us”. Indeed, the contention that ‘they don’t mind being killed’ is a pretty conventional imperial trope. A British commander observed, during the British occupation of Iraq during the 1920s, that Iraqi “[Sheikhs]… do not seem to resent … that women and children are accidently killed by bombs”, while Gen. Westmoreland was reassured that Vietnamese families don’t care when their children are mowed down by gunfire or incinerated by napalm, since “[t]he Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient.”

The third propaganda effect of rendering ‘enemy’ infants and children as combatants-in-disguise is that if even their children are dangerous and bent on violence, then clearly we are dealing with a truly savage people and must adjust our methods accordingly. This is the meaning of the movie Rules of Engagement, produced in cooperation with the Department of Defense (skip to 5:00):

The US is currently experiencing increasing anti-Muslim sentiment, manifested not least in nationwide campaigns against mosques, such as the so-called ‘Ground Zero mosque’ in New York. As the New York Times reports, “in all of the recent conflicts” surrounding the construction of mosques, “opponents have said their problem is Islam itself”. Islamophobia is hardly new, but what is different, according to one observer, “is the heat, the volume, the level of hostility”. It is in this context that Gohmert and Riddle floated the notion of Muslim “terrorist babies”.

Needless to say, neither representative has produced any evidence to substantiate their claims, citing anonymous “former FBI officials” and refusing to provide further details upon request (the only former FBI official to have publicly commented on the issue, as far as I’m aware, dismissed it as “absurd”). But then, demands for evidence are beside the point. Where you see babies, they see “little terrorists”; where you see dead children, they discern a dead children strategy; where you see a grieving mother, they snort at the poor production values of “Pallywood”; where you see a loving family, they identify a terrorist cell. Portraying infants and children as threats isn’t about anything they’ve done – how could it be? – it’s about what, and who, they are. It’s about existential threat – existence as threat. The genocidal implications of this logic – of phrases like “demographic armament” and “terrorist babies” – are not difficult to discern.

Published at New Left Project

-  interview with Norman Finkelstein

- article on the coalition’s embrace of the arms industry

- posts on the assault on the public sector, the Israeli Knesset’s attack on MK Zuabi and the “quiet transfer” in Hebron.

And much else besides.

Speaking of which, NLP has set its very own blog, to which I’ve offered a contribution here. This blog is still active (well, as active as it has been over the past few months), but I’ll probably be posting more frequently over there, as will lots of other clever people, so BOOKMARK IT.

Over 70% of Cabinet and other Ministers went to Oxbridge; over 50% went to one of six public schools, over 30% having attended Eton alone. [Lupton & Wilson, 1959]

2010:

Approx. 70% of Cabinet Ministers and 50% of Ministers went to Oxbridge; over 60% of Cabinet and other Ministers went to public school; 62% of MPs went to leading universities. With the exception of Gordon Brown, every Prime Minister since 1936 who went to university graduated from Oxford (including Cameron). [Sutton Trust, 2010]

These figures become especially significant when one considers that only 9% of Oxbridge students are working class (compared to, say, 33% of Anglia Ruskin students).

Most Israelis blamed the global outcry against the massacre not on their political and military leadership but on pervasive antisemitism and treacherous human rights organisations. The past year has seen a “systematic crackdown” on dissent within Israel, with senior government ministers branding human rights organisations “enemies … from within” (Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon), guilty of “aiming to destroy Israel” by “undermining the Zionist enterprise” (Interior Minister Eli Yishai). Israeli leftists face routine harassment and violence, and nonviolent activism against the occupation is being repressed with increasing brutality. Needless to say, special venom is reserved for Palestinian citizens of Israel, those remnants of the ethnic cleansing in ‘48 whose mere existence is perceived as a threat to the “Zionist enterprise” itself.

Israel’s governing coalition includes Yisrael Beiteinu, a far-right party that ran on an explicitly anti-Arab platform whose leader, a former Kahanist, has called for mandatory “loyalty oaths” and the criminalisation of the ‘Nakba’. But the persecution of Israeli-Palestinians is not confined to the ‘right wing’. As Ha’aretz observes, “dangerous incitement” against Israel’s Palestinian minority is supported by “most of the parties in the Knesset”, with the “enthusiastic encouragement of most ministers”. Last year both Labor and Kadima voted with the ultra-nationalists to ban Israel’s two leading Arab parties, in a move described by Meretz as a “declaration of war on Israel’s Arab citizens”. It was former Kadima Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who described – to no detectable demurral – Israel’s Arab minority as a “manageable problem”, and it was his Kadima administration that threatened to de facto criminalise opposition to zionism in an attempt to thwart the “strategic threat” presented by the existence of Israeli Palestinians.

Thus, it was no surprise that Israeli outrage at the Freedom Flotilla’s attempt to break the siege of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid to its population was trained in particular on its Israeli-Palestinian participants. Israel’s assault on the aid convoy was perceived within Israel, through the usual prism of racism and perpetual victimhood, as a legitimate exercise of ‘self-defence’. As Chomsky explains, this reversal of ‘victim’ and ‘aggressor’ is “a constant refrain of imperialism”:

“You have your jackboot on someone’s neck and they’re about to destroy you.”

With the world united in revulsion at the massacre, Israeli society was equally outraged – at the victims, and at the Palestinian victims in particular. MK Haneen Zoubi of the Arab nationalist Balad party was one of the Palestinian citizens of Israel aboard the convoy. Even before the attack on the flotilla Israel’s most popular newspaper asked whether Zoubi was an “MP in the service of Hamas”. Afterwards, MK Danon of the ruling Likud party led calls for her to be “tried for treason”. A Facebook group was set up demanding her execution while other Arab MKs likewise received death threats. The Interior Minister Eli Yishai announced his intention to strip Zoubi of Israeli citizenship for leading a group of “terrorists” against IDF soldiers. The Knesset House Committee voted 7-1 to revoke Zoubi’s parliamentary privileges, in a move condemned by the Knesset Speaker as a step towards “tyranny and the nullification” of the Arab population. The process leading up to the vote was farcical, with the “evidence” presented against Zoubi including a quote from the Balad party website in which she ‘identifies as a Palestinian’.

In a parliamentary session she attempted to address the Knesset but was continually interrupted with cries of “Go back to Gaza, traitor!”, “terrorist”, “Hamas”, and “Trojan horse”, while one MK from the governing Yisrael Beiteinu party actively chased her around the room to prevent her from speaking. “The mood was so hostile”, Zoubi recounts, “that, had MPs been allowed to carry guns, I am sure someone would have shot me”. Notable again is that the persecution of Zoubi was not confined to the Likudnik right. As Gideon Levy writes, Kadima members “shouted the loudest against Zuabi”, while Kadima head Tzipi Livni, often contrasted with the Evil Netanyahu by American and European liberals, stayed silent throughout. “Israel has no opposition”, Levy concludes, just “a random bunch of nationalist, McCarthyist, militarist, chauvinist, loudmouthed bawlers, raising anti-democratic proposals in the Knesset as if it were the last radical right-wing party”.

Here is the video of the session, with English subtitles:

The scene is strongly reminiscent of Malalai Joya’s courageous speech before the Loya Jirga in Kabul. One important difference between the two incidents, however, is that few liberals in the US and Europe would be so cowardly, so unprincipled, and so inconsistent in their application of basic moral principles as to pretend that the warlords who shouted down Joya were anything other than a bunch of thugs or to take the “democratic” pretensions of the regime they represented as anything other than vulgar propaganda. Would that they showed the same integrity in the case of Israel’s brutal repression in the Occupied Territories and its progressive descent into fascism at home.

Apologists for Israel in the US and Europe often respond to criticism of the occupation and other crimes by trumpeting its alleged “democratic” and “liberal” character. In fact, by defending the Israeli state’s oppression of the Palestinians, both outside and within the Green Line, they are enabling the most illiberal, undemocratic elements of Israeli society. As Noam Chomsky has observed, most “supporters” of Israel are in fact supporters of its degeneration into barbarism.

“Of all the defences of Israel killing unarmed Turkish protestors – the majority of them shot in the back, four in the back of the head execution style – Nick Cohen’s ramble must be the least coherent by a very highly paid hack.

As far as I can make any sense at all of his nine pint muddle, it relies chiefly on his usual contention that anti-semitism and anti-zionism are the same thing, plus the idea that anybody who opposes Israeli brutality, supports Islamic extremism”.”

Personally, I’d still go with Freedman on the grounds that at least Cohen can string half a sentence together, but reasonable people can disagree. Meanwhile, rumours have it that Jeffrey Goldberg, Paul Berman and Petra Marquardt-Bigman are all preparing last-minute bids for the highly coveted award – you can pick up a free wall-chart in today’s Observer to keep track of them all.

“I struggle to see what option Israel’s leaders had, other than to take the kind of action that they took this weekend”.

Freedman wrote a total of six pieces during the massacre, a full four of which either defended Israel’s actions or attacked those who opposed them. It took him until January 16 – a day before Israel announced its unilateral ‘ceasefire’ – to acknowledge that opposition to the assault was “understandable, and acceptable” and to condemn the scale of the IDF’s brutality (without, needless to say, questioning Israel’s right to attack in the first place). Finally, on January 29, Freedman managed to squeeze out a single sentence expressing ‘contrition’ for his role in apologising for war crimes – in the context, unbelievably, of criticising other people for their zealotry in defending Israel’s attack.

If Freedman’s moment of contrition appeared insincere even then, it should come as no surprise to discover that he’s at it again. In a column published today, Freedman defends Israel’s assault on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and attacks the peace activists it killed as “ultra-violent” “[c]lub-wielding” “activist aggressors” who launched a “vicious assault” on poor, innocent “boarding soldiers”. It’s worth noting that Freedman does here at least recognise that the violence took place on the activists’ boat – a fact that doesn’t, however, trouble the rest of piece.

True to form, Freedman argues that the Israeli forces who aggressively hijacked a humanitarian convoy in international waters had “no choice” but to do so. To sustain this claim with respect to the Gaza massacre, Freedman ignored, as discussed above, the fact that Hamas had unilaterally adhered to a ceasefire that it had repeatedly offered to renew. To sustain the claim with respect to the attack on the flotilla, Freedman narrows his vision even further, managing, in a truly impressive feat of selective blindness, to almost entirely ignore the fact that the violence took place on the flotilla. No one, not even Freedman, has accused the activists of rappelling onto an IDF helicopter and bashing the pilot with metal pipes. And no one, not even the Israeli government, has alleged that the activists were in Israeli waters, or that they had any intention of entering them. So unless Freedman allocates to Israel the right to aggressively rappel onto and hijack any ship anywhere in the world, all his whining about the activists’ alleged attack on the soldiers once they had boarded (needless to say, he regurgitates the official Israeli account of the fighting uncritically, ignoring the increasingly extensive eyewitness accounts testifying that Israeli forces fired unprovoked and continued firing even after the white flag had been raised) is so much hot air. It amounts to a complaint that the activists did not sit back and do nothing while they were aggressively attacked by a hostile military power. Diddums.

Even less convincing is his insistence that we treat Israel’s attack in isolation from its collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population. The reason why Israel attacked the flotilla was precisely in order to maintain the siege, which has been condemned almost universally as a “flagrant violation of international law” [.pdf], possibly amounting to a “crime against humanity” – except by Freedman, for whom it is merely “unpalatable and unfortunate” (contrast this language with the intensity of invective he levels against the flotilla activists, who, unlike Israel’s siege, have killed precisely no one). It is only by ignoring this that Freedman is able to argue that

“Israel made repeated efforts during recent weeks to assist the activists in their mission and avoid bloodshed”

by “repeatedly… [offering] to allow the aid in as long as the activists handed it over to the army to be inspected”. This is deeply dishonest, for two reasons. First, Israel only offered to let in aid that met its regulations for what is ‘permitted’ to enter Gaza, and it is precisely those regulations that have reduced 80% of Gaza’s population to aid dependency and forced some two thirds of its population into food insecurity. Second, the flotilla’s “mission” was to break the siege, not to cooperate with it. Freedman’s argument amounts to condemning Rosa Parks for sitting down when a standing area had clearly been reserved for her. Israel has no right to dictate what goes in and out of Gaza, to decide what the population of Gaza is and isn’t entitled to, and to determine how many calories per day Palestinian children are permitted to consume. Presumably Freedman wouldn’t allocate to Iran the right to determine which items he has access to, to decide which constitute “necessities” to be grateful for and which constitute “luxuries” to be prohibited, and yet he freely grants this right to Israel over Gaza.

The rest of his piece rehearses the standard ‘liberal Zionist’ litany of rhetorical tricks – contriving a ludicrous symmetry between occupier and occupied; tossing off a brief pro forma acknowledgement that what happened was “tragic” (but, he hastens to add, necessary and proper); claiming the Serious ‘moderate’ middle-ground by criticising two “extremes” (those opposed to collective punishment and those in favour); and so forth. Except…not quite. Reaction to Israel’s attack has been almost uniformly negative, even among ‘liberal Zionists’ – see, for instance, the responses of J Street, Americans for Peace Now, Ha’aretz and CRIF (described by Max Blumenthal as “France’s AIPAC”). Even stalwart apologist for Israel and former IDF Cpl. Jeffrey Goldberg responded to the massacre, at least initially, with more nuance than Freedman could muster. Freedman is virtually alone in his absurd defence of the killings – Cif’s resident ‘pro’-Israel “progressive” has placed himself to the right of even the EU and the US government, Israel’s two staunchest international backers.

No doubt, once the furore has died down, and the opportunity to use his position to support human rights instead of those who trample them has vanished, Freedman will again produce a cursory note of ‘contrition’ for his full-throated defence of murder. At which point he will resume his pose as a ‘moderate’, ‘critical’, ‘progressive’ supporter of Israel, until the next time Israel goes on a killing spree, when the mask will slip again.

Gisha:

“In a court submission, the State of Israel admits that, contrary to its previous claims, it does indeed possess documents related to its policy on the transfer of goods into the Gaza Strip, including a list of “permitted” goods…

Israel admits the existence of a “Red Lines” document that establishes the minimum nutritional requirements for residents of Gaza, but refuses to reveal it.”