FLOTILLA FLASHBACK AND THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC PERCEPTION

From June 4, 2010

I couldn't help but notice that this weekend's Gaza Flotilla incident bore some striking similarities to events that occurred in the very same waters some 63 years ago.  Events  that when recalled, beg the question of why the Israelis could not and did not handle this matter more delicately?

In 1947, while Palestine was still under the mandate of the British, emigration of Jewish World War 2 Displaced Persons, many of whom were Concentration Camp survivors was largely forbidden. The British struggled to formulate a strategy that would not anger their Arab allies in the region who feared the demographic shift created by the swelling number of Jews, while accommodating the desires of Jewish refugees to settle in Palestine.

Jewish organizations devised a plan that had a dual purpose; a) to attempt to surreptitiously smuggle refugees into Palestine, and, equally as important, b) to publicize and highlight the British policies in hopes of swaying world opinion and forcing the them to allow Jews to freely immigrate to Palestine.  They called the plan Aliyah Bet.  The British reacted by imposing a naval blockade.

More than a hundred ships attempted to run the blockade and many were interdicted by the Royal Navy.  Over a thousand refugees drowned while trying to enter Palestine and only a few thousand successfully eluded the blockade and reached the shores of Palestine.  Tens of thousands of refugees were captured and interred in detention camps or forcibly repatriated to British controlled areas of war ravaged Europe.  My father and uncle were on one of these ships, and after being intercepted near the port of Haifa were taken to and held at a British detention facility on the Island of Cyprus for several months.

One the most famous of these ships was known as the SS Exodus.  Its attempt to run the blockade ended badly as well, and ultimately helped cause the British to re think their policies.  The Exodus was intercepted by the Royal Navy in international waters, and reasoning that the British did not have the authority to do so, the crew refused to stop and resisted being boarded.  British warships made physical contact with the Exodus and commandos stormed the boat.  In the ensuing clash, 2 Jewish refugees from the war, and an American aid worker were killed, and dozens of others were beaten or wounded.   The ship was badly damaged and had to be towed to port where the refugees were transferred to another vessel and deported back to France, its original point of embarkation.

The embargo held, but the result was that world opinion began to tilt in favor of the Jews.  Less than one month after the Exodus incident, the UN issued their recommendation for a partition of Palestine, and the creation of independent Arab and a Jewish states within it's boarders with Jerusalem under UN protection.

The UN decision and a sustained resistance to the occupation by Jewish nationalists would hasten Britain's termination of the Palestinian Mandate and lead to the creation of the nation of Israel, but the organizers of the Aliyah Bet must be credited with accelerating the pace of events.

It is in this light that I would like to reflect on the Gaza Flotilla incident.  But first, let me offer some caveats.  First, I am firmly in the peace camp.  I feel strongly about the right of the Palestinians to a sovereign nation of their own as well as staunchly support the right of Israel to exist in peace, but I agree with those who say that the flotilla's aim was provocation and not simply delivering aid to the Palestinians of Gaza.  I also refuse to condone violence under any circumstance, and this includes both the activists on the Marmara, the Palestinians as well as the IDF commandos that stormed the boat. 

But, the question that I've been going over and over in my mind is this;  If, as many politicians and analysts have claimed, the flotilla aimed only to provoke a confrontation, why did the Israelis not recognize this and instead hand the Palestinians an apparent public relations victory like this?

Could they not have learned from the British failures of 1947?

It seems clear that the Flotilla had purposes nearly identical to those of the Exodus; a) delivering aid to Gazans, and b) publicizing and highlighting Israeli policies they oppose in hopes of swaying world opinion and forcing a break in the blockade.  Given that, why didn't Israel adopt a less aggressive posture?  Surely a standoff with no internationally televised loss of life would have been a more acceptable outcome.

Let me be clear, I believe that Israeli intelligence knew without doubt that there were no weapons of any consequence on those vessels.  In addition to close cooperation with the decidedly anti-Islamist Turkish military, I venture that Mossad activity around this hugely publicized mission was very high.  Just as Israeli intelligence knew about the weapons aboard the Iranian vessel Karine A, which was intercepted and seized using overwhelming force far from the shores of Gaza, I think that the manner in which the Israelis boarded the vessels of the flotilla indicated that they knew that there was not a significant military threat.  But I think they didn't expect the activists to act they way they did.

And the fact that in the 3 days since the event, the only "cache" of weapons produced by the IDF as justification for their raid consisted primarily of a few sticks, knives and sling-shots - deadly weapons to be sure, but really only a threat if one were planning to rumble against the Sharks or the Jets and not the best trained and equipped army in the Middle-East.  How much damage could those weapons really do to Israelis living outside of the Gaza Strip? I am certain that Israelis living in proximity to the Gaza boarder would prefer sling shot fire to Quassam attacks.

The Exodus episode is relevant to several key points of contention regarding the Gaza flotilla incident.  Even if one agrees with Israel's position that the blockade is legitimate and justified in light of on-going attempts by terror groups to smuggle arms into Gaza, why then would Israel interdict the vessel in international waters where they do not have the cover of maritime law?    If the people aboard the Exodus justified their resistance by claiming that they were boarded illegally in international waters, should it not stand to reason that those aboard the Marmara were also justified?

And what if the Israelis had allowed the vessel to dock in Gaza and shown a willingness to moderate their positions?  Could the sight of cheering Gazans be worse than the images of dead and wounded activists?  Would it not have been easier for Israel to portray their actions as compassionate rather than scrambling to portray the activists as having tenuous connections to 'global terror networks'?

Instead, the actions of the Israelis have allowed the Palestinians to direct the narrative focusing on their victimization at the hands of the brutal Israeli oppressors, where previously every Quassam fired from within Gaza by extremists that landed in schoolyards inside Israel painted decent Palestinians as terrorists.  Neither portrayal is entirely accurate nor are they the image the respective parties want to foster.

The incident has also had the deleterious effect of hardening the resolve of the activists who have already launched more efforts to break the embargo, engendered antipathy among sympathetic nations, dissuaded her nominal allies like Egypt from assisting in stopping the flow of arms into Gaza, and encouraged her enemies to use violent rhetoric and threaten retaliation.

So, I return to my original question;  If the Israeli government knew what the intentions of the activists were, why the hell did they play right into their hands?

I don't wish for this post to be a forum to bash either side of this very complicated and heartbreaking situation.  I've already mentioned my wishes for a peaceful resolution to the years of strife and bloodshed.  I think the only solution is through dialogue and understanding, something that too many on both sides are not eager to engage in.  And I think that when supporters of Israel examine what has just happened, they should recall Aliyah Bet and the Exodus to avoid a repeat of this most unfortunate of episodes.