The New Voices blog takes on the crisis off the Gazan shore.
Idiocy at Sea: The Bigger Picture
by Sam Melamed
I spent my entire day huddled over my computer, constantly refreshing Ha’aretz and JPost, periodically checking the Gaza flotilla trending topic on Twitter, and generally just trying to make sense of last night’s flotilla fiasco. And twelve hours into it, I’m still at a loss.
Thus far, here’s what we know: early Monday morning, 130 kilometers off the coast of Gaza in international waters, elite Israeli naval troops boarded the Mavi Marmara, a ship filled with humanitarian aid – and 600 some passengers – that was headed for the Gaza Strip. During the ensuing melee, a number of activists were killed (I’ve seen figures ranging from 9 to 20) after commandos opened fire on them. Two soldiers were also seriously hurt in the clash.
Israel has predictably blamed the activists themselves, as well as the Turkish organizers of the relief mission/provocation, for the unfortunate casualties. Their claims, spelled out in stunning detail by Ron Ben Yishai, are that IDF soldiers raided the ship peaceably and only used live rounds after fearing for their own lives; they even have the video to “prove” it. The only problem is that neither that article nor that video clip actually proves anything.
First, we have no evidence to the validity of Ron Ben Yishai’s recap. Was he actually there, alongside the IDF forces as his writing seems to indicate? It seems unlikely, and given that he never actually says so, it appears he’s just regurgitating the Israeli position. If indeed he was there, his testimony is extremely valuable and would do much to quell the rising tide of blame engulfing the Israeli forces, as well as my own skepticism herein detailed. Second, that oh-so-trustworthy aerial footage is fraught with question marks. Most glaringly, none of the sequences shown are given context. Yes, we know activists threw a soldier onto a lower deck. No, we do not know, for instance, if said activists had just watched commandos shoot and kill their best friend from a neighboring navy vessel. Without context, it’s impossible to know who really threw the first punch (or fired the first shot, or wielded the first “large metal object”). The written play-by-play is also misleading; as grainy as the footage is, there’s really no way to determine the accuracy of a number of those descriptions, particularly the stun grenade and firebomb accusations.
Given all that, I place the blame dozens of miles away from that Mediterranean nightmare, and squarely on the shoulders of Defense Minister Ehud Barak and the senior naval leadership. Ignoring the idiotic and counterproductive blockade on Gaza that led to the Turkish aid flotilla, the underlying cause of this catastrophe was poor strategy, plain and simple. If decision-makers truly expected a peaceful endeavor, they would’ve quelled the resistance with water cannons (an extremely common tactic in such situations) or tear gas canisters. To deploy – in the middle of the night, no less – elite Flotilla 13 commandos, dressed in black with masks and rifles, was at best stupid and at worst homicidal.
So tonight, when Barak and his lackeys fall asleep, I hope they do so with a heavy heart. After all, the blood of far too many dead and injured are now on their hands. And judging by the massive protests worldwide, it’s only going to get worse.
Sam Melamed is a Masa participant, participating in Career Israel, one of Masa Israel’s 160 programs.
Mavi Marmara and Productive Conversation
by Ben Sales
The Twitterizing of the news has reached a crisis point in the Israeli-Palestinian forum. For a long time, the Jewish community in the US has viewed the conflict in black-and-white: The elders have decided that Jewish solidarity necessitates categorical defense of Israel, and they treat any deviation from the institutional line as a threat. There is no gray area.
In that atmosphere, every opinion column from the New York Times to the Jerusalem Post becomes combative: in our latest “Gaza Flotilla Crisis,” the IDF is either ruthless or blameless; the Netanyahu government is either a confederacy of dunces or a band of courageous defenders; the crew of the Mavi Marara was either completely hostile or completely docile.
The stream of tweets, retweets, Facebook links, comments and “likes” exacerbates this problem, and any nuance or insight that survived in the opinion columns disappears in arguments contained in 140 characters. There are no more questions, only answers; no longer do we seek to understand what happened; we seek only to defend our position and our ideology.
I don’t know what happened off the coast of Gaza. I think it’s terrible that ten to twenty people died but I’m not sure whether to think that the IDF fired on innocent peace workers or that the army was acting in self-defense against violent instigators, as per the YouTube videos and Israeli government reports. Given the plethora of information that has invaded my inbox and Facebook news feed over the past 36 hours, I could make either case.
Instead, I’ve tried to follow the debates swirling around me: I’ve read or skimmed several news and opinion articles and scrolled down countless comment threads on news sites and Facebook. What I see is disconcerting. People are more interested in blaming, attacking and defending than they are in figuring out what happened and in listening to each other. We’re regurgitating the same points five times over, one tweet at a time. Instead of trying to figure out how to prevent more deaths like these, we’re busy delegitimizing one side or the other.
So I’m scared. I’m scared that we won’t get anywhere in these so-called debates that are really internet shouting matches. I’m scared that this will happen time and again, that more people will die and more buildings will burn, more people will starve and suffer and all we’ll be concerned with is who was right and who was wrong. But are the IDF’s defenders complacent with this happening time and again? Are Israel’s critics satisfied with their righteous indignation?
I have no solutions and I am at a loss for what to think or say. The only thing I think I know is that the way we’re talking now doesn’t work. I’m tired of stating positions and disproving my intellectual adversaries. How intellectual is it, really, to think that you have all the answers? Maybe if I were to read more about this incident I would have more concrete things to say, but I doubt it. I’ll probably become more frustrated, not because I have too little information but because the information I have doesn’t tell me anything I want to know.
I think it’s great that we’re all engaged in this debate, but I don’t think it has to be a debate. To disagree is much easier than to find common ground, and it’s much more tempting to stake out a position than it is to swallow your pride and compromise. In the end, however, what unites us will prove stronger than the divisions we create.
We get it, Daniel Gordis
As for “being on the defensive,” you “will be on the defensive” only because you totally don’t get it… No, David, you really don’t have to defend Israel. No one’s asking you to. We know that it’s too late to expect many Americans like you to assume we’re right before you assume we’re wrong. As we look out at Jews across the world, we’re just assessing who gets Jewish history, and who’s so thoroughly intellectually assimilated that they’re actually embarrassed that that Jews don’t have to continue to be victims.
I hope you find this post, Rabbi Gordis, because you’re 100 percent off base.
We get it, Rabbi Gordis. We understand Jewish history. We live Jewish values, even if we’re in America. And if you’re going to be serious about calling Israel “the Jewish state,” as its declaration of independence does, then you must respect our opinion even though we disagree with you–because we’re Jews too. Are you, who stresses unity and peoplehood, really too distant from us to recognize that our criticism of Israel is a reflection of our Judaism, just as your views are a reflection of yours? Your intolerance toward our viewpoints certainly negates the Jewish value of democratic dialogue, the foundation of the rabbinic tradition.
And don’t tell us you’re not asking us to defend the Jewish state. We don’t need you to ask us. We wantto, because the people of Israel are our brothers, their cities are our cities and their holy sites have also been our holy sites for thousands of years. So we want to be able to look Israel’s detractors in the eye and say that they’re wrong, that the Jewish state, our state, is a light unto the nations, an exemplar of dignity, peace and tolerance, of humanitarianism and the values on which we were raised. We can’t do that now. Now we have to equivocate, apologize and explain because we see people dying and people suffering at the hands of the Jewish army, our army, if not on the Mavi Marmara then in Gaza and the West Bank.
And don’t tell us that we want to be victims. No. We just don’t want our state to victimize others. Maybe your Jewish history pre-1948 is one defined by victimhood, Rabbi Gordis, but ours is not. Our Jewish history is one of ideas, of diversity, of songs and foods, of contribution to society, of promoting freedom, tolerance and peace. And yes, we were attacked. Yes. we were killed and almost exterminated. But we rose up, each time, not because of our guns but because we are a moral people that leads a moral collective existence.
Perhaps you see yourself fighting a constant war against the goyim. Perhaps you see that as the defining motif of the Jewish story. In that case it is you who is on the defensive, not us. We will fight when we need to fight, but we will not assume that we always need to fight. For us, guns will be a last resort, not a first choice.
Perhaps guns were a last resort for the Israeli boys on the Mavi Marmara. Most of us don’t know. But as we struggle through this situation, as surely as you are struggling through it, remember that it’s all the same struggle. Remember that though we may disagree, our disagreements are honest and well-intentioned. Remember that when we argue, it is an argument for the sake of heaven.
We get it, Rabbi Gordis. It’s just that you might not get us.
