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."