When Flimsy Trust is Broken: A Letter to Israel

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edited and polished by Eli Moselle

Thursday, 17 Jun 2010 | 19:40:11
Israel's Acts and Arrogance Impede Efforts to Bring Peace

Israeli Navy commandos stormed a Turkish flotilla last week (30/5), killing upwards of 9 passengers on a boat destined for Gaza with 10,000 tonnes of aid, sparking international condemnation and a diplomatic crisis. The tragedy is not just of 9 lost lives, but also of the damage to efforts to bring about peace in the region.

Israel-Palestine relations extend to many aspects of our modern politics; they represent the sharpest edges of two knives used by apparently opposite trends in the world to hurt each other. The discord is ageless, with both the Old Testament and Qur’an suggesting the land of Canaan belongs to one side or the other; the arbitrary, illogical basis for horrid wars throughout history.

At this point, the Israel-Palestine conflict has come to perfectly represent the complete degradation of politics.

People have had enough with pointless polemics; ‘liberalism versus communism,’ USSR and the United States, United States and North Korea, United States and the Middle East, and so on. Now, with the Israel-Palestine conflict, the cosmetic barriers being raised to differentiate Jew and Muslim – as if they really are that different – are simply a source of renewed disappointment.

Politics has strayed from its fundamental purpose, which is to promote peace and welbeing. The politics we behold in Israel-Palestine relations, which caricature international relations more broadly, is of greed, arrogance, and self-justification. In sum, these politics have only one basis – distrust of the ‘other’.

Meanwhile, we all dream of a peaceful world and put our trust in leaders who claim to know how to administer a government. It is trust which serves as the bond between government and society, and between governments and the international society.

At a time when collective unity is crucial to resolve global issues, the distrust between nations that is catalyzed by the Israel-Palestine conflict sets the canvas for international relations; a painting made with brushstrokes of suspicion and animosity. Such distrust is easily seen at international summits, the Copenhagen climate talks being a most clear example.

The argument here is that the enormous disappointment of the vast majority with their leaders in Copenhagen, an apparently ‘separate issue,’ is directly connected to distrust spawning from such conflicts as in Israel-Palestine. That conflict is simply toxic to international relations, and with the last incident against the Turkish flotilla, Israel has broken whatever semblance of flimsy trust existed of their integrity.

People can now only point their fingers to Israel as the culprit, whose exceedingly defensive manner ironically conveys nothing but an absolute expression of guilt. Even at the most objective level, what is happening in and to Gaza is a sin; Israel will have to bear it.

There may have been a time when Israel could justify its position to such allies as the United States, keeping its sins mostly unknown to the world, but it is over; a prototypic case of a snake biting the hands that feed it. With the latest attack, we see that not only does Israel resolutely fail to help people living in Gaza, it in fact intends that Gaza receive no help from others, destroying agents of aid in international waters.

8 out of 10 Gazans depend on foreign aid to survive. The World Food Program states that a minimum of 400 trucks a day into Gaza is required to meet basic nutritional needs, yet an average of 171 trucks of supplies enters Gaza per week.

We all sympathize with you for the holocaust, Israel. We do.

But we live in a dialectical world, one thing often giving rise to its opposite: if Israel acts as it has in the last several years, continuing to flagrantly abuse international laws and norms, and defecating on fundamental ideas of common decency, the cruel irony is that it comes ever-closer to becoming the contemporary Nazi that it claims to so despise. Cosmetic appearances aside, the purely objective self-justified evil underlying Israel’s current repertoire is palpable.

Mahatma Gandhi famously said that “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” Israel may be blinded by its explicitly-stated eye-for-two-eye ‘disproportionate response’ policy with Gaza, but history books will see this conflict as clearly as they did the Nazi-perpretrated holocaust. The idea that history repeats itself will be more than vindicated.

Stop, Israel. Stop.

Although you have reached the last and final minute for action, there is still time to stop; still time to save face. This is an international conflict between elites, borne on the sweaty, bloodied backs of dead and dying paupers.

The world needs trust more than ever, and Israel, you bear that responsibility by being placed in such a strategic zone. Your actions indicate exclusive thinking about Israeli people only: but take a moment to really think for your people; what good has adversarial imposition brought to your people? Since 1947, we see the same destructive response to the same issues, an endless repetition with the expectation of somehow achieving a different result; the clinical definition of insanity.

If you really care about doing the best for your people, Israel, the diplomatic route is one of humility.

Think for one second how ridiculous it sounds when you say that Israeli soldiers were attacked when ordered to board a civilian ship in international waters; that ‘resisting passengers attacked without provocation’. I would not be the first to say that this is like a carjacker complaining to a policeman that the driver hit him with a crowbar under the seat. How could one possibly expect a violated innocent to acquiesce peacefully?

Israel dreams of peace, but constructs it upon a foundation of war and militarism; a twisted dialectical nightmare.

To Israel, I say this.

If you dream of peace, then stop. That you committed an attack is one thing, but to defensively deny the mistake is another. The world may pardon your mistakes, absent such arrogance. The international community needs you. Now more than ever. Come back to us. Come back to us, and compassion may be extended to the lost boy in the living parable of the prodigal son.

Harjo Winoto is a final year law student, researcher on competition law, and writer on various social issues. He can be reached at harjo_winoto@hotmail.com.