Moshe Dayan, Israel’s most celebrated general, famously outlined
the strategy that he believed would keep Israel’s enemies at bay: “Israel must
be a like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.”
Until now, most observers had assumed Dayan was referring to
Israel’s military and possibly its nuclear strategy, explaining in his blunt
fashion the country’s well-known doctrine of deterrence.
But the Israeli commando attack on Monday on the Gaza-bound
flotilla, in which several crew members and international solidarity activists
were killed and dozens wounded as they tried to break Israel’s blockade of the
enclave, proves that this is now a diplomatic strategy too. Israel is feeling
cornered on every front it considers important – and like Dayan’s “mad dog”, it
is likely to strike out in unpredictable ways.
Domestically, Israeli human rights activists have regrouped after
the Zionist left’s dissolution in the wake of the outbreak of the second
intifada. Now they are presenting clear-eyed – and extremely ugly – assessments
of the occupation that are grabbing headlines around the world. The leadership
of Israel’s large Arab minority has started questioning the legitimacy of the
Jewish state in ways that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.
Regionally, Hizbollah has progressively eroded Israel’s
deterrence doctrine. It forced the Israeli army to exit south Lebanon in 2000
after a two-decade occupation; it stood firm in the face of both aerial
bombardment and a ground invasion during the 2006 war; and now it is reported to
have accumulated an even larger arsenal of rockets than it had four years ago.
And nearly 18 months on from its attack on Gaza, Israel’s
standing is at an all-time low. Boycott campaigns are gaining traction, support
for Israel from European governments has set them in opposition to the sentiment
at home, and traditional allies such as Turkey cannot hide their anger.
In the US, Israel’s most resolute ally, young American Jews are
starting to question their unthinking loyalty to the Jewish state. Blogs and new
kinds of Jewish groups are bypassing their elders and the American media,
widening the scope of debate about Israel.
Israel has responded to these “threats” by characterising them
all as falling within its ever-expanding definition of “support for terrorism”.
It was therefore hardly surprising that the first reaction from
the Israeli government to the fact that its commandos had opened fire on
civilians in the flotilla of aid ships was to accuse the solidarity activists of
being armed.
Similarly, Danny Ayalon, the deputy foreign minister, accused the
organisers of having “connections to international terrorism”, including al
Qaeda. Turkey, which assisted the flotilla, had already been widely accused in
Israel of supporting Hamas and trying to topple the Israeli prime minister
Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
Palestinians are familiar with such tactics. Gaza’s entire
population of 1.5 million is now regularly presented in the Israeli media in
collective terms, as supporters of terror – for having voted in Hamas – and
therefore legitimate targets for Israeli “retaliation”. Even the largely docile
Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has rapidly been tarred with the same
brush for its belated campaign to boycott the settlements and their products.
The leaders of Israel’s Palestinian citizens are being cast in
the role of abettors of terror. The minority is still reeling from the latest
assault: the arrest and torture of two community leaders charged with spying for
Hizbollah. In its wake, new laws are being drafted to require that the Israeli
Arabs prove their “loyalty” or have their citizenship revoked.
When false rumours briefly circulated on Monday that Sheikh Raed
Salah, a leader of Israel’s Islamic Movement who was in the flotilla, had been
gravely wounded, Israeli officials offered a depressingly predictable, and
unfounded, response: commandoes had shot him after they came under fire from his
cabin.
Israel’s Jewish human rights community is also under attack to a
degree never before seen. Their leaders are now presented as traitors, and new
legislation is designed to make their work much harder. The few brave souls in
the Israeli media who try to hold the system to account have been given a
warning shot as the investigative journalist for Haaretz, Uri Blau, is
threatened with trial on espionage charges if he returns to Israel.
Israel’s treatment of those on-board the flotilla has
demonstrated that the net against human rights activism is being cast much
wider, to encompass the international community. Foreigners, even high-profile
figures such as Noam Chomsky, are now refused entry to Israel and the occupied
territories. Many foreign human rights workers face severe restrictions on their
movement and efforts to deport them or ban their organisations.
The epitome of this process was Israel’s reception of the UN
report last year into the attack on Gaza by Richard Goldstone. A respected judge
and war crimes expert, he suggested that Israel had committed war crimes during
its three-week operation. Justice Goldstone has faced savage personal attacks
ever since.
But more significantly, Israel’s supporters have characterised
the Goldstone report and the growing legal campaigns against Israel as examples
of “lawfare”, implying that those who uphold international law are waging a new
kind of war of attrition on behalf of terror groups like Hamas and Hizbollah.
These trends are likely only to deepen in the coming months and
years. The mad dog is baring his teeth, and it is high time the international
community decided how to deal with him.
Jonathan Cook is The National’s correspondent in Nazareth and the
author of Disappearing Palestine
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