Most people who criticize Israel's latest atrocity do so because of moral reasons. But there are some, including sharp military analysts, who say that Israel failed in the information war, and as a result, its image in the world's eyes has further deteriorated. Rightly or wrongly, Israel lost in this media blitz, according to this type of criticism. Israel's stampede of the Gaza aid ship was not immoral but stupid and immature, say the realists and moderates. And it is a valuable critique because it is correct, but it is deeply cynical of the intentions of the Free Gaza movement. It suggests that humanitarians are more interested in making Israel look bad to the international community than in getting aid to the suffering people of Gaza. I don't doubt that a good deal of Islamic extremists are rubbing their hands right about now, but this view doesn't apply to the members of global civil society that were represented in the Freedom Flotilla. Besides, Israel doesn't need to activists to make itself look bad, it manages to achieve that all by its own accord.
It's good to critique world events holistically, and read perspective from all sides: military, religious, humanitarian, whatever, but we shouldn't lose sight of the moral arguments against Israel's illegal siege of Gaza, and its clear act of murder of civilians in international waters. There is a moral high ground in this war, and no flag can be planted there, not Israel's, and not Palestine's. No flag is reserved for that sacred space, not even the UN's flag.
Robert Mackey - Israel's Aid to the Free Gaza Movement, or how to lose an Information War:
Just like most of you, I've been spending the last day just watching videos and reading spin from all sides.Here's my 50 cents on the whole mess. And it is a mess, a mess of Israel's making. Recently, I read Ben MacIntyre's new book Operation Mincemeat, the story of how the British used a dead body to fool the Germans as part of a great deception plan--to convince Hitler that the Allies would land in Greece and Sardinia, not Sicily, in 1943. What has this to do with what happened this weekend?Easy. We live in an information-centric world, and just as Hitler fell for the trick of Operation Mincemeat, the Israeli government fell for the bait provided--instead of allowing in needed humanitarian supplies into Gaza, they boarded a flotilla of Turkish-flagged vessels in international waters, killing at least nine and leaving dozens wounded. And gave a real victory to those who--for whatever reason (humanitarian, political, religious, whatever)--want the suffering in Gaza to end, and dealt Israel a informational defeat as great as that of the Germans in 1943. Continued. . .
The Israeli raid on a flotilla bound for Gaza was worse than a crime, it was a blunder. None of the extenuating qualifications raised by its defenders matters—that the death toll was lower than on an average day in Lahore or Mosul; or that the relief ship carried (in addition to an Irish Nobel laureate, a Holocaust survivor, and a best-selling Swedish novelist) a lot of Turkish Islamists who were ready for a fight; or that Hamas is at least as much to blame for the suffering in Gaza as Israel. The point-counterpoint in blogs and U.N. deliberations misses the realm where the meaning of this raid is playing out. The purpose of the convoy was not primarily to bring aid to desperate Gazans, but to call attention to the Israeli blockade and turn world opinion overwhelmingly against it—as Greta Berlin, a leader of the Free Gaza Movement, made clear before the ships set sail. By this standard, the incident could not have gone better. Continued. . .
