Gaza Aid Flotilla Assault Serves to Isolate Israel

By Kourosh Ziabari

Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, June 21, 2010

 
Israel's brutal nature is comprehensibly evident to everyone. The independent nations of the world in Asia, Africa and Latin America know well that Israel's existence is blended with inhumanity and violence.
 
Even the ordinary people in the Northern America and Europe are well aware of the fact that Israel is an insane and vicious regime; it's only their respective governments who refuse to submit to the reality of Israel and believe that this rogue state does not benefit the international community in any way.
 
Israel's suicidal incursion into the flotilla of humanitarian aids which was heading from Turkey to the besieged Gaza strip once again discredited the flimsy legitimacy of Tel Aviv. As Trudy Rubin, the pro-Israel columnist of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote on Thursday, this "botched" attack neared Israel to an irreparable loss: its diplomatic ties with Turkey.
 
The pro-Zionist writer, who repeatedly called Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan an emotional man in her article, fears that Israel's thoughtless and hysterical treatment of the peace activists aboard the Freedom Flotilla might lead to Tel Aviv's growing isolation and its separation from its sole Muslim partner in the Middle East.
 
Rubbin refers to her 2008 interview with Mr. Erdogan in which the Turkish premier had angrily complained that Israel did not allow the humanitarian aids to be transferred to the besieged Gaza strip. She suggests that Israel should make an official apology to Turkey and take some tactical steps to repair its already strained ties with the Muslim nation and make up for the serious trouble it has been entangled in. She also noted that Israel should temporarily allow the humanitarian aids in the Gaza strip so as to pacify the growing international agitation against Tel Aviv.
 
Despite the fact that these ephemeral solutions might ease the tensions between the two states to some extent, the pro-Zionist writer has neglected that Israel is in any event moving towards losing its feeble credibility whatsoever and this is what the Tel Aviv leaders already know. The Israeli ambassadors have been summoned to the foreign ministries of some 10 European countries over the past three days and this is a remarkable change in EU's stance towards Israel.
 
Should you remember the 2009 Aftonbladet - Israel controversy which was followed by an August 17, 2009 article by the Swedish freelance photojournalist Donald Bostr?m in which he accused the Israeli troops of harvesting the organs of Palestinian detainees which they kept, it were the Swedish officials, including the Swedish Ambassador to Israel, who implicitly apologized to Israel and strongly condemned the article.
 
Now, the equations have changed dramatically and the European countries are coming to the conclusion that Israel did not worth their political, diplomatic and ideological investment over the past 60 years. How can a regime which detains, tortures, kills and massacres as easy as apple pie be trusted as the representative of democratic values? How can Israel, which has been introduced as the sole democracy of the Middle East by the Freedom House, boast of being a democratic establishment while it violates the most essential rights of human beings?
 
Paveen Yaqub, one of the peace activists who were on board the Mavi Marmara sailboat to the Gaza strip, revealed some details of the ways she was treated by the Israeli troops, upon her deportation to Istanbul: "They were kicking my legs to make me fall and mocking me in Hebrew. They were trying to take trophy pictures with me and they liked laughing in my face. They also searched me but I won't go into that. They took pleasure in humiliating us."
 
Henning Mankell, one of the world's best-selling authors and dramatists whose books have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and were translated into 40 languages was one of the renowned figures aboard the Freedom Flotilla. After his deportation to Berlin by the Israeli militants, he described his own account of the disaster: "It was an act of piracy. We were actually kidnapped. Our idea was not to make any resistance. The soldiers were masked, they had machine guns; there were women among them. They were very aggressive. There were people who were on the boat who were quite old, and a little slow. One was attacked with a stinger weapon, and he fell down as it was extremely painful."
 
Mankell said that he was taken by an Israeli soldier to a holding center on the shore and then was told that he entered Israel illegally and should be deported immediately. Mankell called for the imposition of financial sanctions on Israel to force the Zionist regime retreat from its violence and aggression: "I think we should use the experience of South Africa, where we know that the sanctions had a great impact. It took time, but they had an impact."
 
Anyway, Israel is already en route to growing isolation and this is something which the Israeli journalist, Joel Schalit has unequivocally testified to: "Following the Israeli government's humiliation over the Dubai passport affair earlier this year, in which nearly twenty of its agents were found to have used forged foreign passports to enter Dubai and kill a Hamas operative, this was not a good sign. If anything, the assault on the 'Freedom Flotilla' only served to underline Israel's growing isolation."