I said in my post yesterday that this was a carefully orchestrated publicity stunt, calculated to fail, for the purpose of amassing international enmity toward Israel. There has been no other way to resolve the plight of the Palestinians under the leadership of increasingly insane Israeli leaders, so this was their last hope.
This was not a "typical" relief shipment. The number of ships was huge, it was sponsored by the government of an important Middle Eastern nation (Turkey), and the tactics were obviously planned in advance to create martyrs for the cause, in order to make the maximum impact on public opinion.
After all, what kind of morons does a group of unarmed people have to be, to counterattack a well-armed military force? Especially the Israeli military force, which has proven time and again to be as ruthless as the Nazis? Overwhelm one and throw him overboard? Grab a couple of their weapons and start shooting??? This is a GUARANTEE that a bunch of you will end up DEAD. As I said yesterday, I am positive that everyone who signed up for this trip was interviewed by the leaders and warned that there would be bloodshed.
Martyrdom is not generally an effective way to promote a cause, but in this case it worked:
- This is the number one news story all over the world.
- People who were formerly sympathetic to Israel are now angry.
- Turkey, a member of the U.N. security council, an important U.S. ally, one of the few Muslim nations that has diplomatic relations with Israel, and a voice of reason and moderation in the Islamic region, will surely sever its relations and become more supportive of Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, etc.
- Even voices within Israel are outraged. Several interviews with current and former officials have been printed that are highly critical of the way this crisis was handled. Words like "stupid" are being bandied about within Israel.
- Americans are demonstrating. My countrymen--including many American Jews who were already pissed off at Israel--are picketing the White House, demanding that Obama send an angry response to Netanyahu instead of the wimpy piece of diplomatic crap he issued.
This could reshape world politics. Israel will find itself increasingly isolated. There will be tremendous pressure on the U.S. government from its citizens to cease its knee-jerk support of Israel's military ambitions.
All that's needed now is for Pakistan to get involved in this controversy; suddenly Israel would no longer be the only involved nation with nuclear weapons.
At some point the Israeli citizens will, hopefully, wake up and realize that they and their elected officials have been spinning the country into a death spiral which is now very close to reaching its end point.
As I have asserted on several other threads, grief makes people angry, selfish and irrational, and grieving people must therefore never be allowed to make policy. The modern State of Israel was
founded in the grief over the Nazi Holocaust. It is a nation in a perpetual state of grief. All of its policies are enacted out of grief; its foundation is a litany of all of the worst instincts from the Stone Age: anger, hatred, revenge, tribalism, religion... It is a civilized country in name only, and only because the rest of us play along with the fantasy.
Perhaps the government will collapse over this and the citizens, led by the voices of outrage, will elect some more rational leaders who are motivated by more than grief and hatred.
If not, I can't imagine what's going to happen next. It will probably make my country's foolish adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan look like childish pranks in comparison. If there's a war against Israel and both Turkey and Pakistan participate, I doubt that the U.S. would actively participate.
Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt are tied too closely to U.S. interests to go to war against Israel. But that leaves a lot of other Muslim nations besides Turkey and Pakistan: Syria, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Albania, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan...
There are one billion Muslims in the world and today I'm sure every one of them supports the Palestinians.
As I said at the start, this was a very good publicity stunt, and it worked.
