RePortersNoteBook.com: Tikun Olam : Israel to Release All Gaza Flotilla Activists

Jun 1, 2010

Tikun Olam : Israel to Release All Gaza Flotilla Activists

Israel to Release All Gaza Flotilla Activists

SRAEL TO RELEASE ALL GAZA FLOTILLA ACTIVISTS

In growing recognition of the public relations disaster it faces on the world stage for its massacre aboard the Turkish aid ship attempting the break the Gaza blockade, Israel's prime minister announced that all 700 would be immediately released. It appears that continuing to detain them made Israel's predicament even more untenable than it would otherwise be. I'm also guessing that this was done under some fierce pressure from the U.S. Bibi Netanyahu is not the politician who gives in of his own free will on these sorts of matters. Malleable is not his middle name.

But what really caught my eye is that passengers who allegedly assaulted the IDF with knives, clubs and guns would also be released. Frankly, this makes me doubt the IDF version of this story even more than I did before. Israel is going to allow Muslims who stabbed and seriously injured their own soldiers off scot free? It simply beggars belief. I'm not making any definitive judgements as to what happened and who assaulted whom and in what order. But I'm smelling something and it's not very pleasant.

This still does not absolve Israel from its responsibilities to release the names of the dead and injured and their bodies to next of kin; along with any autopsy results.

Some extraordinary responses both good and bad from American Jewish leaders and intellectuals. Peter Beinart, fresh from his attack on the Israel lobby in the pages of the NY Review of Books, has penned another slashing piece denouncing Israel for its policy of siege in Gaza. It's worth a look even though Beinart's liberal Zionism does curdle for me in a few passages.