The Promise, directed by Peter Kosminsky

Via cpgb-ml.org

Written and directed by Peter Kosminsky for Channel 4, The Promise is a four-part drama series that tells the story of the creation of the state of Israel in Palestine, 1948. Set mainly in Haifa, events are seen through the eyes of two British protagonists – Len, a sergeant in the British army of occupation in 1947/48, and his granddaughter Erin, who visits Israel 60 years later during her gap year at the invitation of a friend.

Reading her grandfather Len’s diary six decades after the events it describes, 18-year-old Erin learns about some of the momentous events that led to the Palestinian Nakba (‘catastrophe’) at the same time as her travels in modern-day Israel/Palestine are opening her eyes to the legacy of that time.
Originally inspired by the letter of a Mandate-era British soldier, the drama has been meticulously researched. Seventy former servicemen contributed their stories in order to give a detailed picture of the way ordinary British soldiers in Palestine lived and thought during the years immediately preceding the partition and ethnic cleansing of the country.

There are excellent performances throughout the seven-and-a-half hour drama, particularly from the two leads, Christian Cooke and Claire Foy, and the authentic atmosphere is immeasurably boosted by an excellent supporting cast of Palestinian and Israeli actors and by being shot on location in Israel itself.

We see the enormous sympathy that most soldiers initially had for the jews following the atrocities of World War Two, and we see how the zionists played on that sympathy to foster support for a jewish state in Palestine.

Setting up social clubs in which ordinary soldiers mixed with jewish girls was one tool used by the zionists to great effect – both as a means of spreading sympathy for zionism and also as a way to gather information on the movements of British forces. Len’s love affair with a jewish girl who turns out to be a militant Irgun fighter is one of many relationships that is shown to help zionist paramilitaries in their mission to speed up the process of ejecting the British army from Palestine.

Len’s ultimate disillusionment with both his lover, who he sees taking part in the massacre of unarmed Palestinian villagers, as well as with his British army superiors, who seem unconcerned with the imminent slaughter of Palestinian Arabs about to take place, leads him to desert, fighting briefly on the side of the largely unarmed Palestinians who are being killed and driven out of their homes under the noses of the departing British forces.

The depiction of modern-day Israel is similarly well drawn. We see the jarring contrast between the first-world lifestyle of those in westernised Israeli cities, complete with designer shopping malls and hedonistic nightlife, and the Palestinians living in the run-down Arabic towns and villages under occupation. The sadistic and all-embracing nature of the occupation on the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank, and the apartheid nature of the state of Israel for those Palestinians who remain within Israel’s borders are both shown.

The militarisation of what initially appears to be a very pleasant society is clearly revealed as Erin gradually comes to realise that every Israeli she meets is or has been in the army. Indeed, it transpires that the apparently ‘liberal’ father of the family she’s staying with was formerly a general. He is keen to present Israel as a democracy and to brush over the fascistic nature of its military state, but his liberalism doesn’t extend to accepting a Palestinian as a guest in his own home, or to wishing to spare his children from the brutalising experience of playing their part in the occupation.

As a drama, The Promise works well, in particular in relation to the 1947/48 characters. The love story between Len and Clara, her ultimate betrayal, Len’s friendship with local Palestinian Mohammed’s family and his overriding sense of failure when he is unable to save their young son Hassan from a zionist sniper are all movingly and convincingly portrayed.

Erin is a less likable but equally convincing character, and viewers are drawn into her quest to hunt down the family that her grandfather befriended. Her journey across Palestine, from Haifa to Nablus to Gaza, gives an insight into the still ongoing process of colonisation and expropriation as she comes face to face with those who now live in the homes that formerly belonged to Mohammed and his relations.

As a piece of history, The Promise is less satisfying. The drawback of Kosminsky’s style of research – ie, based solely on asking people about their experiences – makes for a wealth of interesting detail, but does little to explain the real historical context or forces at work.

Thus, the ‘background’ to the creation of the state of Israel is given as the Nazi holocaust – and while this may well have been the subjective experience of many people who lived through the events, one does not have to look that far to find that it is in fact a piece of imperial myth-making – as well as being one of the main planks of zionist self-justification.

Jewish immigration into Palestine became British imperial policy as far back as the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which stated that “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object …”

This policy can be explained not by a desire to give jews a ‘homeland’ where they could be free from persecution, but by the desire to implant a population that would help them maintain control of the middle-eastern oil that had just then become central to the military and industrial workings of the British empire. As British colonial governor Sir Ronald Storrs wrote of the zionist project: “It will form for England a little loyal jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism.”

Before the Nazi holocaust, zionism was a marginal ideology amongst jews worldwide, despite the persecution many jewish communities suffered all over Europe. Indeed, the very idea that jewish people constitute a ‘nation’ is one that progressives have always disputed, and working-class jews in the early decades of the 20th century were much more likely to be drawn to socialism and communism than to zionism.

Peter Kosminsky’s own background is a reflection of this. His father, a second-generation immigrant from Romania to Britain, worked as a tailor in London and is described by his son as a communist. Kosminsky himself, despite identifying with his jewish cultural background, had never been to Israel before shooting The Promise, and felt no particular affinity for the country when he was there.

The suffering of the jews during the Nazi rampage was used as a justification for bringing the zionist project to fulfilment, but why it was that the jews should be ‘compensated’ for their sufferings in Europe by being given Palestinian land was quietly glossed over. The local population were either dismissed as ‘Arabs’ who could be easily moved to some other Arab country, or their existence was denied altogether, as epitomised by the widely-used phrase “A land without people for a people without land.”

The father of modern zionism, Theodore Herzl, was himself under no illusion about what kind of mission he was on. In his 1896 work The Jewish State, he wrote: “For Europe we shall serve there as part of the fortified wall against Asia, and function as the vanguard of civilisation against the barbarians. As a neutral state we shall keep our ties with all the European nations, who will guarantee our existence there.”

That is, that in return for being allowed to establish Israel in Palestine, the zionists would promise to serve imperialist interests in the region.

And that is precisely what Israel has done and continues to do – and precisely why its armed forces have been given imperialist protection (first by Britain, then by the US with British support) as they have massacred, bombed, invaded, occupied, ethnically cleansed and generally broken every rule of international and humanitarian law for six long decades.

By showing the situation only as it appears through the eyes of a lowly sergeant, the series neatly sidesteps the question of Britain’s long-term role and motivation in Palestine and the wider Middle East, leaving a general impression of an army that was playing the ‘difficult’ role of policeman between two opposing sides – the same impression that was carefully fostered in official British propaganda at the time, and the same story British imperialists have used to cover many of their manoeuvrings before and since, from India to Ireland and Iraq.

This missing of the big picture from the early story cannot but have its knock-on effect into the present-day narrative. Like her grandfather, Erin is shown as a disinterested bystander caught up in events outside her control – one who has divided sympathies and is frustrated by the injustices she sees, but who ultimately has no real connection with the events being played out before her.

The racism of Israeli society is an anathema to Erin’s sensibilities and we are invited to sympathise with her frustration, but she seems profoundly oblivious to the fact that she herself expects to – and does – remain largely immune when she challenges Israeli soldiers. Her outspoken ‘bravery’ comes easily, since she never has any thought that she might seriously suffer for it as a Palestinian would. Nor does she ever seem to wonder why this should be so.

Of course, those from the West and Israel who truly take the stand of the Palestinian people (such as Rachel Corrie) can’t necessarily expect to receive such kid glove treatment, and have even paid with their lives, but Erin herself clearly has no idea of any of this. The overriding impression that is left from the various scenes where Erin flies to the defence of Palestinians is that the Palestinian people themselves are objects of pity or charity in need of ‘rescuing’ by more forceful/clued-up outsiders.

The idea that Israel’s racist, colonialist society still serves British imperialism – that it continues to be fostered, supported and given financial, military and diplomatic support in order that British oil monopolies can carry on dominating and plundering the region – is never explored. And nor, therefore, is the connection between the privileged life that Erin unthinkingly takes to be her own birthright and the oppression of those whom she is rightly angered at seeing the Israelis mistreating.

Petty-bourgeois pacifism permeates Erin’s thought processes and directs the audience’s sympathies too. The acts of the occupying army and those of a ‘suicide bomber’ are equally to be condemned, and the myth that present-day acts of demolition and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians are ‘reprisals’ for such acts of ‘terrorism’ is left unchallenged.

The Palestinians are overwhelmingly depicted as victims with whom we can and should sympathise – so long as they don’t take it into their heads to fight back. The only member of the resistance with whom we are invited to sympathise is a former soldier who has renounced violence as ‘futile’. Despite having seen the massive Israeli armoury ranged against them, Erin’s main concern when she sneaks through a tunnel into Gaza is that the people she is travelling with might be carrying weapons into the Strip!

Despite these weaknesses, however, The Promise is a rare and brave attempt to show at least a part of the reality of a situation that has been so far ignored by British mainstream dramatists. Kosminsky has produced a thought-provoking and intelligent drama that will no doubt inspire many to look again at their prejudices regarding Palestine and Israel, having been given some small insights into a history of Palestinian dispossession and oppression of which most British people are still quite unaware.

It remains for a truly anti-imperialist director to show the story of Palestine in its full context, with the Palestinians and their resistance (rather than the Israelis and their myths) in centre stage.

No informed viewer could fail to have been disgusted by the blatant bias shown by presenter Jane Corbin. The amount of airtime and credence given to Israeli lies throughout was shameful. Throughout the programme, we were constantly asked to identify with the Israeli soldiers, whose lies about the peace activists on board the flotilla were repeated over and over again, without any serious questioning.

Apparently, while the majority of world opinion is finally turning away from supporting this pariah apartheid state, while consumers, trade unions, investors, academics, musicians and artists are boycotting Israel, the BBC thinks it’s the corporation’s job to help the war criminals cover up their crimes.

This blog has previously reported the personal testimonies of people who were on board the Mavi Marmara. The torture and barbarity they were subjected to was unjustified and unjustifiable (to re-use a Cameron quote). The stories put out by Israeli soldiers and generals in their defence are total fabrications.

Just one point puts it all in perspective: if Israel hadn’t been intending to kill unarmed civilians, why did they send their deadliest fighting force, equipped with live ammunition, to stop the flotilla in the middle of the night? Surely Israel has plenty of police trained in opposing civil disobedience-type actions? The flotilla was heading away from Israel at the time of the attack, trying to avoid a night-time confrontation. It posed no threat to Israel, and if it had, there are many ways to stop boats without attacking all those on board.

Even more to the point: the UN calls the blockade and the occupation unlawful. Under international law Israel has no right to stop aid ships that are bound for Gaza. Moreover, they stopped the ships in international waters, which no nation has the right to do. And given that they did that, any defence the people on the ship put up was perfectly justified under international law. It comes to something when a BBC reporter nods sympathetically as an international pirate complains that he came under attack, when he was the one who forcefully boarded a ship in international waters while shooting live ammo!

The Israelis stole all the camera and video footage taken by those on board the flotilla, as well as their personal possessions. (Some people even found that soldiers had used their credit cards when they got home.) Anything the Israeli army is now releasing has clearly been selected and edited by them to back up whatever specious arguments they want to make.

The fact that the Panorama programme made no serious mention of most of these basic facts; no mention of the illegal blockade; no mention of the illegal occupation; no mention of the ethnic cleansing, bombing, executions, house demolitions and many other crimes committed by Israel, and which explain the background to the flotilla’s mission, but instead chose to give the majority of airtime to Israelis keen to present those on the flotilla as crazy muslim terrorists and the attack as a ‘slightly misjudged’ but perfectly acceptable and even normal ‘operation’, tells its own story about the role of the BBC and its alleged ‘values’ and ‘impartiality’.

Similarly outrageous was the Beeb’s keenness to emphasise the ‘Islamist’ aspect of the flotilla, and of the Turkish government, following the racist Israeli logic that the merest hint of ‘muslim’ involvement is enough to justify their barbarity or to negate the concern that people in Turkey (as in most other parts of the world) feel for the plight of the Palestinian people.

The repeated slanders against humanitarian aid organisation IHH volunteers as ‘terrorists’ is another example of this. No mention was made in the programme of the charity’s UN-recognised status, or of its many projects building wells in Africa or feeding refugees in Pakistan; of its orphan-sponsoring programmes all over the world, or its clinics in Haiti.

The unspoken conclusion that was being pushed onto British viewers was that those on board the flotilla were ‘muslims’, in which case, we needn’t take their concerns seriously or mind much if they got killed! (An easy bit of racism to peddle in the light of the routine covering up and normalising of massacres against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Media workers should be ashamed to be associated with this kind of programme, which has more in common with Goebbels than with honest journalism.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign is calling on people to complain about the programme. When you’ve done that and got their standard brush-off response, follow it up with further action. Please do everything you can to bring the broadcasters to account and let them know that they do not speak for decent British people!

A prominent US military strategist has joined a growing body of opinion in US ruling circles that is moving away from uncritical support for Israel. He says that the Netanyahu government has maintained a “pattern of conduct” that has pushed the balance toward Israel being more of a liability than an asset.

By Chris McGreal via the Guardian

There are questions that rarely get asked in Washington. For years, the mantra that America’s intimate alliance with Israel was as good for the US as it was the Jewish state went largely unchallenged by politicians aware of the cost of anything but unwavering support.

But swirling in the background when Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, arrives in Washington tomorrow to patch up relations with the White House will be a question rarely voiced until recently: is Israel ‑ or, at the very least, its current government ‑ endangering US security and American troops?

Netanyahu would prefer to be seen as an indispensable ally in confronting Islamist terror. But his insistence on building Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem, which is causing a deep rift with Washington, is seen as evidence of a lack of serious interest in the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. That in turn is seen as fuelling hostility towards the US in other parts of the Middle East and beyond, because America is perceived as Israel’s shield.

In recent months Barack Obama has said that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a “vital national security interest of the United States”. His vice-president, Joe Biden, has confronted Netanyahu in private and told the Israeli leader that Israel’s policies are endangering US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senior figures in the American military, including General David Petraeus who has commanded US forces in both wars, have identified Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian land as an obstacle to resolving those conflicts.

More recently, Israel’s assault on ships attempting to break the Gaza blockade has compromised relations with Turkey, an important American strategic ally.

A former director of intelligence assessment for the US defence secretary, last month caused waves with a paper called Israel as a Strategic Liability? In it, Anthony Cordesman, who has written extensively on the Middle East, noted a shift in thinking at the White House, the US state department and, perhaps crucially, the Pentagon over the impact of Washington’s long-unquestioning support for Israeli policies even those that have undermined the prospects for peace with the Palestinians.

He wrote that the US will not abandon Israel because it has a moral commitment to ensure the continued survival of the Jewish state. “At the same time, the depth of America’s moral commitment does not justify or excuse actions by an Israeli government that unnecessarily make Israel a strategic liability when it should remain an asset. It does not mean that the United States should extend support to an Israeli government when that government fails to credibly pursue peace with its neighbours.

“It is time Israel realised that it has obligations to the United States, as well as the United States to Israel, and that it become far more careful about the extent to which it test the limits of US patience and exploits the support of American Jews.”

Cordesman told the Guardian that the Netanyahu government has maintained a “pattern of conduct” that has pushed the balance toward Israel being more of a liability than an asset.

“This Israeli government pushed the margin too far,” he said. “Gaza was one case in point, the issue of construction in Jerusalem, the lack of willingness to react in ways that serve Israel’s interests as well as ours in moving forward to at least pursue a peace process more actively.”

It was a point made forcefully by Biden to Netanyahu in March after the Israelis humiliated the American during a visit to Jerusalem by announcing the construction of 1,600 more Jewish homes in the city’s occupied east.

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that at a meeting between the two men, Biden angrily accused Israel’s prime minister of jeopardising US soldiers by continuing to tighten the Jewish state’s grip on Jerusalem.

“This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace,” Biden told Netanyahu.

Obama’s chief political adviser, David Axelrod, said the settlement construction plans “seemed calculated to undermine” efforts to get fresh peace talks off the ground and that “it is important for our own security that we move forward and resolve this very difficult issue”.

Netanyahu sought to head off the issue when he spoke to pro-Israeli lobbyists in Washington earlier this year. “For decades, Israel served as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism. Today it is helping America stem the tide of militant Islam. Israel shares with America everything we know about fighting a new kind of enemy,” he said. “We share intelligence. We co-operate in countless other ways that I am not at liberty to divulge. This co-operation is important for Israel and is helping save American lives.”

But that argument is less persuasive to the Americans now. Last month, Israel’s ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, said the Jewish state had suffered a “tectonic rift” with America. “There is no crisis in Israel-US relations because in a crisis there are ups and downs,” he told Israeli diplomats in Jerusalem. “Relations are in the state of a tectonic rift in which continents are drifting apart.”

Oren said that assessments of Israeli policy at the White House have moved away from the historic and ideological underpinnings of earlier administrations in favour of a cold calculation.

Cordesman said it is too early to tell whether Netanyahu has fully grasped that while there will be no change in the fundamental security guarantees the US gives Israel, “the days of the blank cheque are over”.

He added: “I think it is clear there is more thought on how to deal with Gaza, how to deal with the underlying humanitarian issues, less creating kinds of pressures which frankly, from the viewpoint of an outside observer, have tended to push Hamas not toward an accommodation but toward a harder line while creating of all things an extremist challenge to Hamas. But until you see the end result, some comments and some token actions don’t tell you there’s been a significant shift.”

Protest against Israel's attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in Derry, 31 May 2010

By Gerry Adams via An Phoblacht

You may recall my meeting with Caoimhe Butterly of the Free Gaza Movement. On 17 May 17, I dedicated my blog to the story of the MV Rachel Corrie and the flotilla to the Gaza Strip. I’m glad I did.

But I never imagined what would happen to it.

I was on my way to an early-morning event in Tir Éoghan when the car radio broadcast the awful news of the death and destruction visited upon the mercy mission by the Israeli government.

There is no justification for the military actions of the Israeli government against the humanitarian flotilla. The Gaza Freedom Flotilla was a humanitarian mission carrying 10,000 tonnes of aid to the besieged Gaza Strip.

For four years the Israeli government has illegally imprisoned over one and a half million men, women, and children in the most horrendous of conditions.

These people have been denied many of the basic necessities of life, including the essential construction equipment and materials that would allow Gazans to rebuild their shattered infrastructure.

Last year’s devastating assault by the Israeli army on the Gaza Strip caused enormous damage: 1,400 people were killed and many more grievously wounded; 3,500 homes were destroyed; 28,000 homes damaged; 800 industries were damaged or destroyed; 10 schools were destroyed and 204 were damaged; 57 kilometres of roads were destroyed.

In April 2009, I visited the Gaza Strip. I saw for myself the conditions there. I spoke to UN officials as well as representatives of political and community organisations and aid groups.

No amount of PR words by the Israeli government can take away from the humanitarian crisis which its actions are directly responsible for.

The flotilla organisers had repeatedly declared their peaceful intent. In the full glare of the international media, the flotilla was engaged in bringing in humanitarian supplies. I believe it is this which the Israeli government resented most because it exposed the lie that they were allowing sufficient aid into the region.

The images of armed commandos dropping from helicopters on to unarmed ships, and then opening fire and killing aid workers engaged in a humanitarian effort, has again exposed the aggressive and intransigence attitude of the Israeli government.

The decision to storm the ships is par for the course for a government that feels itself immune from international law and sanction.

It also breaks international law by the blockade and siege of Gaza.

It breaks international law in building a separation wall that scars the landscape of Palestine and which denies Palestinian families access to each other, to jobs, to their land and to water.

It breaks international law in occupying Palestinian land.

It breaks international law by building illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian land.

It breaks international law by expelling families from their homes.

It has done all of this for many years and with little adequate response from the international community.

Israeli actions must be condemned by all governments and political leaders who believe in democracy, peace, security and the standing of international law.

The Irish government also needs to use its influence to persuade the EU to discontinue its preferential trade agreement with Israel.

As evidence of the outrage felt by citizens, the Irish government should also expel the Israeli ambassador.

It is also vital that the Palestinian organisations now agree a government of national unity. Differences should be set aside in the national interest of the Palestinian people and a joint political position agreed between Fatah, Hamas and the many other political groups.

George Galloway and Kevin Ovendon address Viva Palestina convoy members held up in Jordan by Egyptian intransigence, Christmas Day 2009

“There can be no peace between truth and falsehood … there can only be eternal struggle between them.” Padraig Pearce’s words uttered on the eve of the first world war ring true today following the massacre aboard the Mavi Marmara at the end of last month.

Via Morning Star

The desperate attempts by the Israeli government and its supporters to blame the victims of terror for what is an act of state terrorism are sickening and depraved. But they show little sign of success.

None but the dwindling hard core of Israel apologists is taken in by a propaganda campaign which fast unravelled even as it began. The testimony of the survivors is coming out now thick and fast.

But you really need to know only one thing – on the one hand nine lie dead and scores more wounded. On the other are a couple of roughed-up Israeli soldiers. That says it all.

Under all the great legal, moral and religious codes, the victims facing brutality from elite assassination forces had the right to defend themselves with their bare hands and with whatever was to hand.

Indeed that’s what passengers aboard a ship bound for Palestine in 1947 did. It was carrying displaced persons from war-torn Europe and was boarded by British soldiers.

The passengers resisted. Three were killed. One had his head stoved in by a British rifle butt.

The British government claimed extremists on board had provoked the deaths. World opinion did not buy it and nor did the leaders of the zionist movement.

The ship was called the Exodus. It was carrying Jewish refugees and the episode became a cornerstone of the foundation myth of the state of Israel.

The attack on the Mavi Marmara represents another sort of turning point – and it has the potential to become decisive.

The Palestine solidarity movement has been shrouded in the miasma of defeat that has settled on the Middle East and sedimented in the minds of many activists for far too long. But in the wake of this massacre it is finally lifting and we can begin to see a way forward through the thinning fog.

Some may say it is scandalous that the daily humiliations and oppression of the Palestinians in besieged Gaza, the occupied West Bank and in refugee camps have not generated the breadth of response that this atrocity against their supporters has.

But analogous events in other struggles have helped to focus world attention on the primary victims of colonial and racial oppression.

When two Jewish civil rights volunteers from New York were murdered alongside a black activist in Mississippi in June 1964 the result was to deepen and radicalise the movement for black equality and liberation in the US. The anniversary of the lynching is today.

For the Palestine solidarity movement the Mavi Marmara massacre is another Sharpeville or Soweto – two of the great milestones in the struggle against apartheid.

It is the Sharpville and Soweto of the solidarity movement, but not for the Palestinians themselves. They have endured more, and more massive, massacres for 62 years – from Deir Yassin, through Black September and Sabra and Shatila to the Gaza invasion of 18 months ago.

It is the accumulation of those crimes and Israel’s increasingly egregious refusal to abide by the norms the ‘international community’ says it upholds that has laid the basis for turning the reaction to the Mavi Marmara into a decisive advance in the struggle.

Israel is facing growing pressure. In 2006 it lost politically and militarily in its war on Lebanon. The attack on Gaza in the winter of 2008/9 brought unprecedented condemnation and numbers onto the streets in cities around the world.

The forging of passports for use in the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai earlier this year left many people in Britain, Australia, Ireland and Germany who had not previously been sympathetic to the Palestinians wondering why their governments were sponsoring this piratical state.

In the US larger numbers of people than ever are asking why, at a time of economic austerity, the White House and Congress vote through billions of dollars of subvention to Israel every year. The US authorities were paying for the very bullets that Israel’s commandos fired five times into Furkan Dogan, a 19-year-old US citizen aboard the Mavi Marmara.

US General David Petraeus recently told a committee on Capitol Hill that he thought Israel had become a strategic liability for the US.

While there remain powerful overlapping interests between US and Israeli imperialist strategies in the Middle East, their interests are not identical. And the geopolitical map is changing.

Tel Aviv would do well to remember the dictum of Britain’s arch-imperialist prime minister Lord Palmerston – Britain, or any great power, “has no eternal friends and no eternal enemies, just eternal interests”.

Turkey’s renewed role in the near and Middle East is one of the clearest indications of the dilemmas facing Israel and the US.

Historically Turkey has been a key US ally – it was the stationing of US missiles there that provoked the Cuba missile crisis at the height of the cold war.

But its government is now reflecting pressures for a realignment. Seven years ago the Turkish parliament refused to allow the country’s military bases to be used in the invasion of Iraq, a decision that had a profound impact on the course of the war by preventing a US invasion from the north and thus creating a wider space for the insurgency to develop.

Last week Turkey voted alongside Brazil at the UN security council against fresh sanctions on Iran. And Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan clashed with Israel’s Ehud Olmert over the Gaza massacre at a glitzy Davos shindig last year.

Sections of the Turkish capitalist class want the state to provide a more independent role, bridging economic relations between the Middle East and Europe, while the military-security apparatus remains locked in an old alliance with Israel and the US.

These conflicting pressures on the Turkish government put paid to the idea that it had somehow planned to stage the massacre on the flotilla as a provocation to Israel.

The flotilla was clearly a civil society initiative in solidarity with the people of Gaza, coming mainly from the Islamically inspired welfare and humanitarian organisation the IHH, which created mass, popular calls on the Turkish government to act, which it did.

So Israel and the US are now embarking on a concerted attempt to unwind this process by propagandising against the IHH and seeking to isolate the elements of Turkish society which stand most strongly with the Palestinian cause.

The solidarity movement needs to launch a well-thought-out response if it is to catch this changing tide. As the anti-war movement in Britain has done over the defence of muslim communities under attack following 11 September 2001, we need to stand in solidarity with the Turkish movement and reject all attempts to claim that Islamic civil and political organisations such as the IHH and the parliamentary Islamist parties in Turkey are in any sense cyphers for al-Qaida.

The movement must become permeable to new forces, especially embracing the young muslims who took to the streets over Gaza and again over the Mavi Marmara massacre.

The success of the three Viva Palestina humanitarian convoys to Gaza in the last 18 months testifies to success of that approach.

The forces that can be won to active engagement in the solidarity movement are now very wide indeed. A recent survey analysed by Peter Beinart in the New York Review of Books found an increasing disconnect between young, liberal jewish people and zionist organisations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which seek to speak in the name of all jews.

Younger people were much more likely to be critical of Israel and to hold it to universal standards of behaviour rather than churning out apologias.

The initiatives by land and sea to break the blockade on Gaza and end the siege are critical for two reasons.

First, Gaza is at the cutting edge both of the solidarity movement and of the attempts by Israel and its backers to defeat the Palestinian resistance by destroying the wing that Palestinians invested most hope in at the free elections held four years ago – Hamas.

The apartheid wall, the occupation of the West Bank and the ethnic cleansing of east Jerusalem are monstrous injustices, but the key to resolving them is to end the Gaza blockade, thus helping to create conditions in which the Palestinian movement can overcome disabling divisions and exert far greater political pressure.

Second, the convoys and flotillas provide high-profile and direct challenges to both Israel and to those other states that help to enforce the siege.

Behind those who have travelled on them stand many thousands who have raised money and tens of thousands who offered support in other ways.

There are now international efforts under way to ensure that the land and sea missions are better co-ordinated, bigger and with more countries taking part.

Viva Palestina has initiated an international land convoy, in conjunction with a large sea mission, leaving in September of this year just after Ramadan.

The aim is not to loosen the bars around Gaza – which Israel and Egypt under the pressure of the flotilla fallout are already doing – but to end the siege entirely, allowing commercial and economic relations between Gaza and the rest of the world, which it needs to develop freely.

Coordinating these next steps will be a theme of discussion at the Summer University of Palestine taking place in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley from 25 July to 1 August.

It is attracting internationally acclaimed experts and speakers on Palestine and is receiving registrations from around the world.

But although all movements require activists, this cannot be a movement only of activists – it must become a more general movement of people for whom Palestine has become the international symbol of the fight against injustice.

The struggle against apartheid provides valuable lessons. It combined direct action against racist South Africa and its interests with mass mobilisations – demonstrations, cultural events and so on – and a range of activities aimed at isolating the regime through sanctions, boycotts and divestment.

Each one reinforced the other and was accompanied by clear refutations of apartheid propaganda.

Such initiatives are needed now, simultaneously at different levels. One element is a co-ordinated and targeted consumer boycott. Few people in the mid-1980s knew the full connections between British capital and apartheid South Africa.

However millions knew not to buy Outspan fruit or bank at Barclays. Some went further in picketing supermarkets or occupying Barclays branches. A similar focused call which could be popularised as the cutting edge of a wider boycott would be helpful today.

Respect Party leader Salma Yaqoob last year managed to get cross-party support on Birmingham City Council – the largest local authority in Europe – to move towards a boycott of Israel.

Following the recent local government elections there will be other councillors who can move, or be moved, in the same direction.

The cancellation of gigs in Israel by a number of bands following the flotilla attack led to cultural figures and commentators in Israel voicing fears that the radicalising policies of Binyamin Netanyahu were leading to the country becoming a pariah state.

Trade unions in Britain and in many other countries now have extensive policies aimed at boycotting at least some contacts with and products from Israel.

The TUC congress in September may well see successful moves to harden that position. In 1985 a 21-year-old Dublin shopworker called Mary Manning read just such a union policy circular and told a customer that she could not check-out her grapefruit because it was on the apartheid boycott list.

She was sacked, but the strike by her and 10 workmates for a year that resulted became an international cause celebre for wider solidarity.

If the general consumer boycott, mass initiatives and trade-union policies are popularised they are likely to intersect with more people like Mary Manning today.

Dockers in Durban and Sweden have already refused to unload Israeli ships. And dockers and their supporters in Oakland, California, did the same yesterday.

All these strands make up a movement that has the capacity to alter policy in the West and contribute to political processes in the Middle East to help end the suffering of the Palestinians. This will require serious strategic and tactical coordination as well as drawing in fresh forces.

Ending the siege of Gaza is an obtainable victory and an important step forward in the wider and longer struggle for a free Palestine. The eternal struggle will end only when justice prevails and freedom is won.

Five activists who caused £180,000 damage to an arms factory were acquitted after they argued they were seeking to prevent Israeli war crimes.

This is an important victory – and a vindication of all those arguing in favour of a sustained campaign of non-cooperation with British, US and Israeli war crimes. Interesting to note the judge’s direction to the jury – clearly the pressure of public anger over Gaza is having its effect on the state.

Israeli soldiers invading Gaza in January 2009

Story below via the Guardian.

Five activists who caused £180,000 damage to an arms factory were acquitted after they argued they were seeking to prevent Israeli war crimes.

The five were jubilant after a jury found them not guilty of conspiring to cause criminal damage to the factory on the outskirts of Brighton.

The five admitted they had broken in and sabotaged the factory, but argued they were legally justified in doing so.

They believed that EDO MBM, the firm that owns the factory, was breaking export regulations by manufacturing and selling to the Israelis military equipment which would be used in the occupied territories. They wanted to slow down the manufacture of these components, and impede what they believed were war crimes being committed by Israel against the Palestinians.

After being acquitted, one of them, Robert Nicholls, told the Guardian: “I’m joyful really, at being a free man. The action was impulsive really, we just wanted to do something that would make a real difference to the people of Palestine.”

Another, Ornella Saibene, said: “I’ve felt very peaceful all the way through the trial because I’m proud of what I’ve done. It was the right thing to do.”

They are the latest group of peace and climate-change activists to successfully use the “lawful excuse” defence – committing an offence to prevent a more serious crime – as a tactic in their campaigns. The acquitted are Nicholls, 52, Tom Woodhead, 25, Harvey Tadman, 44, Ornella Saibene, 50, all from Bristol, and Simon Levin, 35, from Brighton. They had decided to act last January after three weeks of Israeli military manoeuvres against Gaza in which many Palestinians were killed. According to a UN investigation by former South African judge Richard Goldstone, Israel committed war crimes by deliberately attacking civilians during the offensive known as Operation Cast Lead.

In his summing up, Judge George Bathurst-Norman suggested to the jury that “you may well think that hell on earth would not be an understatement of what the Gazans suffered in that time”.

The judge highlighted the testimony by Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, that “all democratic paths had been exhausted” before the activists embarked on their action.

Hove crown court heard the activists had broken into the factory in the night. They had video-taped interviews beforehand outlining their intention to cause damage and, in the words of prosecutor Stephen Shay, “smash-up” the factory.

These statements were posted on the Indymedia website shortly after they were arrested. Dexter Dias, barrister for one of the defendants, accused Paul Hills, EDO MBM’s managing director, of lying in the witness box when he said his company did not supply components which were being used by the Israeli military. The jury is considering its verdict on two other defendants, Elijah Smith, 42, and Chris Osmond, 29 of Brighton.

Watch videos from this meeting on YouTube

Many important facts emerged clearly from the speakers’ testimonies:

• That there were no weapons on board the boats. This was well known to the Israelis, as it had been repeatedly stated by the organisers and the Turkish port authorities before the boats sailed. Volunteers saw Israeli soldiers staging the ‘finding’ of a pistol that was clearly Israeli army issue in a passenger’s bag for the benefit of a cameraman who was with them.
• That the soldiers were firing live rounds at the ship before they boarded. The first deaths occurred, and wounded people were being treated, before any boots had hit the deck. Moreover, many volunteers had wounds in their feet, as a result of being struck by bullets fired from above.
• That the attack wasn’t expected at that time. The ships had changed course to avoid a night-time confrontation, moving farther away from Israeli waters, and volunteers were sleeping or praying when the assault started. Many came up to try to defend the ship in their pyjamas.
• That the raiding commandos treated every passenger on board the ship as an ‘enemy combatant’, making no distinction of age, gender, occupation etc. Women and elderly people were beaten; a baby was forced to witness brutal torture of one volunteer; journalists were treated as if they were criminals or terrorists.
• That Israel did everything it could to stop evidence of its crimes getting out. Some of those killed were executed with shots to the head while trying to film or take photos of the attack. The raiders did their best to jam all broadcasting signals before the boats were boarded, and only didn’t succeed because one channel had been kept secret. During the attack, one of the helicopters tried to ram the satellite dish. Photo and video equipment, sim and memory cards etc were all stolen.
• That the commandos were shooting to kill, and that they wanted to inflict serious casualties on the flotilla. Live fire continued after the white flag had been waved, and also after announcements of surrender in Hebrew and English had been made over the ship’s tannoy. Several people who died could have been saved by timely treatment that was denied to them. Instead of evacuating the wounded, the commandos refused them vital help. Others who survived may well find they are affected for life by bad treatment – refused even stretchers when ordered to move, so that volunteers had to carry them on blankets.
• That Israel’s brutal, dehumanising treatment of Palestinians extends to those who support the Palestinian struggle against occupation. After the ships had been taken, many volunteers were beaten. At least one was used as a human shield. All were tortured, humiliated, denied access to food, water, medicines, washing facilities, toilets or clean clothes. Even after two days in prison, wounded prisoners were still wearing the same blood-stained clothes they left the ships in. Those with wounded legs and feet were forced to hop without crutches or wheelchairs to the waiting planes; their comrades were beaten for trying to help them to walk. A Turkish volunteer who had watched her husband die was forced to leave his body and thrown in jail with no consideration for her grief; she was later forced to identify him from a picture of his two-day-old bloated corpse.
• That those on the smaller boats were also treated with overwhelming violence, although no live ammunition was used against them. People trying to defend their boats with only linked arms were attacked with tasers, stun guns, electric shock probes, sound bombs, tear gas and more. They too were bound, beaten and humiliated after their boats were captured.
• That Britain is as complicit in the treatment of these prisoners as it is in all Israel’s other crimes. The British consul quickly became notorious for being the most sycophantic towards the Israelis and the least interested in the welfare of British prisoners. Many British volunteers never even saw him. Those who didn’t all had names or an appearance that might indicate that they were muslim.
• That the Turkish government stepped in where the British failed to do. It was the Turkish volunteers and government who took responsibility for making sure that the British volunteers were safely evacuated, providing transport and refusing to leave them behind. In Turkey, British volunteers were treated as heroes, and given clothes, money, counselling, medical attention, accommodation and flights home.
• That if Israel hoped to deter these and future volunteers from trying to break the blockade on Gaza, their plan has seriously backfired. All those who spoke reiterated their determination to return as soon as possible. Viva Palestina’s George Galloway announced that the biggest convoy yet would be leaving overland on 16 September, at the same time as a flotilla of 62 ships (one for every year of the occupation) will be building up in the Mediterranean. These two convoys will be aiming to arrive simultaneously in Gaza in early October. PSC’s Sarah Colborne sent a message to the meeting asking everyone there to mobilise in memory not only of the flotilla dead, but of all those who have died over the years for a free Palestine. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign announced its intention to support the forthcoming flotilla and convoy, and to work with Viva Palestina, Free Gaza, Stop the War and muslim organisations to build a really broad, mass solidarity movement for Palestine in Britain.
• That Israel is not going to be allowed to forget about the crimes it committed against the flotilla, any more than it is going to be allowed to continue with the siege and occupation unhindered. The IHH (the Turkish aid organisation that chartered the Mavi Marmara) have begun a massive evidence-gathering operation, with a view to taking out criminal proceedings in the Turkish and other courts. Meanwhile, the Emir of Qatar has offered to pay the legal expenses of every volunteer willing to take up a case against Israel, anywhere in the world. In the court of public opinion, these cases will be bound to inflict more heavy blows on Israel’s shrinking support-base. Moreover, pressure for an international inquiry (as opposed to an Israeli whitewash) is also going to keep on growing. George Galloway called on all activists to keep up this pressure and declared that “we will set up our own if we have to”.
• That as well as joining convoys and flotillas, there is a huge job of work to be done in building awareness and solidarity with the Palestinian people in our communities. As Alex Harrison of the Free Gaza Movement pointed out, what is happening in Gaza is not a natural disaster; the problem is not one of ‘aid’ but of human rights, freedoms and dignity, of self-determination as opposed to colonial oppression.
• That this massacre may well prove to be the watershed moment in the fight against Israeli apartheid, as the Sharpeville massacre was for South African apartheid. George Galloway pointed out the need to urgently seize the opportunity presented by the sudden rise in public awareness to force our complicit governments into taking action against Israel.

Video of the motion being proposed is above, and full text of the wording that was passed unanimously is below. From CPGB-ML party congress on Saturday 5 June.

Gaza Freedom Flotilla

This congress notes with outrage the massacre of an as-yet-unknown number of peaceful aid volunteers aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla on 31 May 2010. In an act of piracy that violated international law and the Geneva conventions, as well as all norms of human decency, Israel sent hundreds of fully-armed commandos in a night-time raid to hijack ships that were travelling in international waters and posed no threat whatsoever to Israel’s security.

Congress notes that although the number “nine” has been much publicised as the total of slain victims in this atrocity, many volunteers are still unaccounted for, and organisers believe that the death toll may in fact be closer to 20.

Congress also notes with sadness that it took international peace activists to be killed in large numbers to bring the siege on Gaza into the western media spotlight and make it a high-profile issue on the world political stage, in a way that the deaths of 1,417 Palestinians in the Gaza massacre last year failed to do.

This congress believes that, far from constituting the “provocation” that Israeli zionist politicians have described them as, the volunteers were in fact responding to calls from within the UN itself that, since Israel was not being brought to book for its crimes against Palestine, nor the siege of Gaza being lifted through official channels, then efforts must be made by non-governmental organisations to break the blockade and uphold international law.

This congress further believes that, while this particular aid mission may have been stopped, Israel has utterly failed in its attempt to thereby crush the rising international solidarity movement, but has, on the contrary, only helped it to grow and become more determined. Not only are more ships already being bought and filled, but activists and organisations from all over the world are stepping forward to man them. Far from making itself more secure, Israel’s rabid actions have only succeeded in bringing the day of its own demise closer.

This congress applauds the initiative of Viva Palestina and Free Gaza, who, by land and by sea, have been working to bring the siege to public attention, and who have brought together an international coalition of organisations and activists to further that aim, most notably IHH of Turkey, which made by far the largest contribution to the Freedom Flotilla.

Congress sends a red salute to all those brave volunteers who put themselves in the firing line on every one of the siege-busting missions, and especially to the slain heroes of the Freedom Flotilla, whose names will be recorded in the roll of honour as martyrs not only for Palestine, but for the entire working and oppressed masses of the world in their struggle against imperialist domination. They are the true embodiment of proletarian internationalism.

Congress also welcomes the response of the government of Turkey, which has finally shown the way to other states by offering a naval escort to the next aid ships that sail to Gaza.

This congress resolves to take up the cause of the flotilla martyrs by redoubling its efforts in support of Palestine. We call on all our members to become active in the Palestine solidarity movement: to join PSC and raise awareness of the issue in workplaces, schools, colleges and unions.

This congress calls on the British government and people to demand:

– the immediate release of all those volunteers still held prisoner by Israel;
- the severing of all diplomatic, financial and military ties between Britain and Israel;
- the complete boycott of Israeli goods and institutions;
- an end to British media complicity in Israel’s war crimes;
- an international tribunal to try Israel’s leaders for war crimes committed during the siege and bombardment of Gaza, as well as against the Freedom Flotilla;
- an end to the siege of Gaza;
- freedom for Palestine.

In its desperation to maintain the strangulating blockade on Gaza, Israel’s violent response to a peaceful humanitarian aid mission has instead brought the end of its criminal siege within sight.

Of course, the real trouble for Israel was that it was damned either way. Despite nearly four years of suffocating blockade and daily murder, the Palestinians have not overthrown their elected Hamas leadership in Gaza; a leadership that stands for resistance rather than submission to zionist brutality. Instead, bearing incredible privations with dignity and fortitude, they have held their society together on a shoe-string, shamed Israel and its backers in the court of world public opinion and galvanised the sympathy and solidarity of the world’s people.

As more and more former friends of Israel have fallen away, the chorus calling for an end to the siege has been daily growing, especially since the horrific bombardment of Gaza a year and a half ago.

Allowing the boats to pass would have meant essentially admitting that the siege on Gaza had definitely failed and that the sea was indeed, as humanitarian activists have long pointed out, not Israel’s to control. A regular sea channel into Gaza allowing supplies to come in and out and trade links to be rekindled would drive a final nail into the coffin of Israel’s strangulation policy.

Welcoming the solidarity initiative, Hamas leader Ismail Radwan declared that “The occupation’s threat to prevent the Freedom Flotilla from arriving in the besieged Gaza Strip is zionist piracy and a violation of international law … The occupation is concerned about these ships … because they grant legitimacy to engagement with the Palestinian government and confirm that the attempts to isolate Hamas have failed.” (Cited in ‘Hamas accuses Israel of zionist piracy’, 27 May 2010)

And as Jamal Elshayyal pointed out in a blog entry for Al Jazeera, “if this fleet of humanitarians does reach its destination, it could very well set a precedent for others to challenge Israel’s illegal occupation, and the next thing you know Israel’s navy could be confronted by an armada of charities and humanitarian organisations.

“Furthermore, were the Freedom Flotilla to dock in Gaza, Arab governments would be severely embarrassed. After all, if a few hundred people can break the siege and help rebuild Gaza, why can’t some of the wealthiest nations and largest armies?” (‘Israel’s navy will have its work cut out’, 22 May 2010)

This was echoed in Israeli daily paper Yediot Aharonot, which pointed out that “If this flotilla gets through, the way will be open and the closure of the crossings will be meaningless.” (Cited in ‘As aid flotilla approaches Gaza’s shores, Israel takes extraordinary steps to prevent it reaching its destination’, 28 May 2010)

Quite so. But not allowing the boats to pass meant finding some way to stop them that would be acceptable to Israel’s paymasters in Washington. However, perhaps after the ‘Operation Cast Lead’ massacre was allowed to go so completely unpunished, despite arousing the horror of the world’s people and being condemned as a war crime by pro-zionist UN investigator Richard Goldstone, Israel’s leaders have become so used to assuming that the US and Britain will back them whatever, that they have lost their grip on the fact that ultimately, even those governments have to be able to sell their support to a sizeable section of their domestic populations.

The nineteenth century British prime minister Lord Palmerston famously pointed out that ‘Nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests,’ and this dictum sums up imperialist policy in a nutshell. The zionists have for so long been protected and sheltered behind their masters’ voluminous skirts, they have stopped imagining that they might ever be left to fend for themselves.

But if Israel’s actions are so blatant as to make whitewashing impossible, not only Israel but also the US and British ruling classes stand exposed as war criminals before their angry populations – and if that starts to happen, the imperialists may well decide that support for Israel is no longer the most effective way to secure access to and control of the resources and markets of the Middle East.

The fact that this assault was premeditated became clear as other details emerged. Two of the boats in the flotilla, Challenger I and Challenger II, were simultaneously struck with identical steering problems when they tried to leave their anchorage near Cyprus on the evening of Friday 28 May – obviously the result of a sabotage mission (probably by divers), which Israel has now all-but admitted to.

At the same time, the government of Cyprus regrettably bowed to Israeli pressure and refused at the last moment to allow high-profile European MPs and passengers, including Hedi Epstein, a jewish holocaust survivor, to leave the island from its shores to join the flotilla. (Previous sea missions to break the siege have all left from Cyprus.)

Israeli sabotage and threats delayed the flotilla and caused it to change course several times, but ultimately failed to stop it from trying to carry out its mission. Several ships, including the Rachel Corrie, fell behind, however, so that it was actually only a six-boat convoy that the Israelis ambushed under cover of darkness. The boats were still many miles outside Israel’s ‘exclusion zone’ when the attack took place.

Meanwhile, with customary arrogance, born of 60 years of supremacist racism, and of being not only permitted, but actually assisted in wiping brown faces off the map by its backers in the US and Britain, Israel obviously thought that if only unknown muslim Turks were aboard the main ship, no-one in the West would mind much what happened to them, or question the Israeli version of events.

In their usual high-handed and trigger-happy fashion, using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, the zionists may well have hoped that clamping down hard on the flotilla would send a message to the increasingly activist solidarity movement: This is what will happen to you if you try to break the blockade! And no doubt troops schooled in the noble art of anti-civilian combat, who are famous for viewing Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular as less than dogs, saw no problem in firing first and asking questions later – just as we know they were specifically instructed to do during the Gaza massacre last year. Especially when most of those facing them would have looked very similar to the Palestinians they murder with sickening regularity in Gaza and the West Bank.

This is an exerpt. Read the full article here

Errant behaviour and repeated transgressions are not punished. For Israel, the opposite is often the case and the transgressor is rewarded while the victim is doubly punished.

Ultimately, the real surprise was that so many people were surprised, or at least purported to be.

Because it had seemed in the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead – the murderous assault on a cornered civilian population in Gaza – that Israel had long since lost its capacity to shock the international community.

But the key feature of modern Israel is that it has absorbed the chief lesson of its short history. And that lesson is simple: crime pays. Errant behaviour and repeated transgressions are not punished. For Israel, the opposite is often the case and the transgressor is rewarded while the victim is doubly punished.

After the murder of over 1,400 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip – the huge majority civilians, several hundred of them women and children – a UN investigation led by former South African judge Richard Goldstone found the Israeli military guilty of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.

But as of yet, there have been no moves to instigate legal or other proceedings against either the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) or the state of Israel. And within the international community of nations, the repercussions for Israel have been negligible to non-existent.

There is no single country that has been the subject of a greater number of UN resolutions of censure and condemnation (well over a hundred). In addition, Israel remains famously in breach of longstanding and crucial resolutions: on the Palestinians’ Right of Return to the homes they were expelled from (Resolution 194, passed 1948); on withdrawal from the Occupied Territories (Resolution 242, passed 1967); on the illegality of settlements in the Occupied Territories (Resolution 446, passed 1979).

And so the obvious lesson is learned: as the sanctions and penalties have failed to materialise, so Israel’s capacity to act with utter impunity has simply amplified and expanded.

By comparison, Saddam Hussein’s alleged and unproven breach of UN resolutions brought invasion, regime change and continued occupation.

More recently, we saw the limited fallout from Israel’s illegal use of the passports of other nations to carry out the assassination of a Hamas figure, in Dubai. There has been noise and raised voices, some diplomatic expulsions, but no penalties.

Indeed, Israel’s flouting of international laws and conventions, not to mention its endangering of the citizens of several other countries, had no impact on the members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD), which is comprised of 31 of the richest, most powerful nations on earth.

On 27-28 May, Israel was formally accepted into the organisation, along with Estonia and Slovenia. The OECD describes itself as an organisation that brings together “countries committed to democracy and the market economy …“

Obviously, the market economy scores far higher than democratic values, in the OECD entrance exam.

Within 48 hours of that accession ceremony Israeli commandos were storming a flotilla of civilian vessels carrying humanitarian aid to the blockaded citizenry of Gaza. No doubt their assault was timed to minimise potential embarrassment at the OECD. But as of yet, there have been no calls from fellow members for their expulsion.

Ten, maybe more, unarmed civilians – aid workers or activists – were killed. Murdered.

When you dispatch a heavily armed assault force onto ships in the dead of night, ships that carry humanitarian supplies and civilians and which are sailing in international waters, you must bear the full responsibility for all that follows.

The activities of a small number of Somali pirates – which generated tides of international outrage and led to the dispatch of naval vessels – never came close to the actions of Israel in this case.

If the aim was to take the ships into an Israeli port, as has been claimed, why not approach them in daylight hours, in Israeli waters? And why not ‘arm’ your troops with crowd dispersal and crowd control equipment, as opposed to automatic weapons?

It was said that the civilian death toll in the Gaza offensive was so high because Israeli commanders were anxious to minimise their military casualties, so maximum force was unleashed and Gaza became a virtual free-fire zone. It appears those in charge of the Israeli piracy policy take the same view.

Several months ago, before this latest outrage, the Israeli writer Gideon Levy lamented the state of his nation, believing that no positive change was possible in the “complacent, belligerent and condescending” Israel of today.

In the aftermath of Israel’s venture into piracy, the country’s most prominent peace group, Gush Shalom described the Nethanyahu administration as a “government of pyromaniacs that has set fire to the region”.

They went on: “Only a crazy government that has lost all restraint and all connection to reality could do something like that – consider ships carrying humanitarian aid and peace activists from around the world as an enemy and send massive military force to international waters to attack them, shoot and kill.

“This is a day of disgrace to the State of Israel, a day of anxiety in which we discover that our future was entrusted to a bunch of trigger-happy people without any responsibility.”

Over the next 24-48 hours, the crew of the MV Rachel Corrie will come into contact with Israeli forces as they seek to breach the illegal blockade of Gaza. There are five Irish crew aboard.

Their ship is named after the 23-year-old US citizen who was crushed to death by an IDF bulldozer in the Gaza Strip, as she stood in front of the vehicle to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes. No one was ever charged or held responsible for her death.