Israel attacks aid flotilla PDF Print E-mail
Tuesday, 01 June 2010 11:27

In the early afternoon of Monday the 31st of July (New Zealand time) Israeli troops attacked the first of a flotilla of ships from all around the world trying to bring aid to the beseiged people gaza, dubbed the "Freedom Flotilla". Details have been sketchy, largely due to a massive PR campaign by the Israeli state designed to obscure the truth, but a few things are known for certain. As the flotilla of aid workers, human rights and Palestinian activists as well as journalists and reporters approached Gaza, the lead ship - the Mavi Marmara - was hailed by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) troops, and when they freely admitted that they were intending to deliver 10,000 tonnes of aid to the people of Gaza they had their communications cut off and were boarded. Despite the fact that Turkish port authorities (who oversaw the loading of the Mavi Marmara) insist that there were no weapons on board, Al Jazeera journalists on the Mavi Marmara reported that the IDF troops opened fire on the passengers of the ship more or less as soon as they stepped on board.
At least 20 of the passengers are believed to be dead (though the names have yet to be released) and dozens of others were injured.
These ships were in international waters, 65 kilometers off the Gaza coast. They were flying their sovereign flags, and were not breaching any law, international or otherwise. Attacking a sovereign vessel in international waters is called piracy.

 


Sadly, while this event is shocking, it is in no way surprising. It is only the latest in a long string of unbelievably inhumane acts by the Israeli state. Ever since the massive program of ethnic cleansing begun in 1948, known throughout the Arab world as the Nakba (English translation: the Catastrophe) Israel has systematically acted to expel Palestinians from their homeland. Where direct force has failed or been deemed too abhorrent to the rest of the world to go unchallenged, instead tactics based around making life in the occupied West Bank or besieged Gaza so untenable that Palestinian people voluntarily flee have been the norm for the last 60 year.
 
The blockade of Gaza which Israel has had in place since Hamas won the democratic elections there in 2007 has taken that tactic to new and horrifying extremes. In the periods where Israel has allowed any aid at all to enter Gaza, UN estimates say that less than ¼ of the necessary food and medical supplies are getting through. It has now been over 3 years since the siege began, and Israel is giving no indications of any plans to end it any time soon. This was the situation which the Freedom Flotilla was trying to alleviate. A humanitarian intervention to one of the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet at present; a crisis which is so much worse for being intentional and with practically zero response by western governments.
 
The state of Israel, a proudly Zionist institution, considers itself a nation surrounded by enemies which would happily see it destroyed, and to some extent this is true. However, when you consider that there is not a single nation bordering on Israel which has not had thousands of it’s citizens die at the hands of the IDF, and that the Arab population of Israel is at best considered 3rd class citizens, and at worst, a pollutant which must be exterminated, this is hardly surprising. Zionism is a deeply racist ideology that has at its core the belief that the Jewish people can never live safely with the rest of the world. When your entire world view is that everyone is an enemy, attacking a ship full of unarmed civilians who are trying to help relieve a problem you created is perfectly logical. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t insane. Zionism was a dream that has proven to be a deathtrap not only for the Palestinian people on the receiving end of the bullet, but also for the Jewish people living in a constant state of fear. What has been created is a system of apartheid, almost identical to the regime that existed for so long in South Africa. Apartheid was brought down by the efforts of millions of people around the world in struggles like “the Springbok tour” here in New Zealand. We need a new movement to bring down the racist regime in Israel and it needs to start now, before the insanity of the most recent attacks are repeated and before even more Palestinian lives are lost.
 
PROTEST
Freedom for Palestine:
End the Seige of Gaza
Dunedin:
Meet at Otago Museum Reserve
12pm, Saturday June 5th
 
Auckland:
Meet outside Aotea Square
1pm, Saturday June 5th

 
 

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