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PauldoMemberBlockade of Gaza rational and legal
WASHINGTON – The world is outraged at Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey denounces its illegality, inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usual U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in. The Obama administration dithers.
But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel – a declaration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilian territory. Yet having pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets.
In World War II, with full international legality, the United States blockaded Germany and Japan. And during the October 1962 missile crisis, we blockaded (“quarantined”) Cuba. Yet Israel is accused of international criminality for doing precisely what President John F. Kennedy did: impose a naval blockade to prevent a hostile state from acquiring lethal weaponry.
Oh, but weren't the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel's offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza – as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.
Get the Chicago Tribune delivered to your home for only $1 a week >>Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel's inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas.
Israel has already twice intercepted weapons-laden ships from Iran destined for Hezbollah and Gaza. What country would allow that?
But even more important, why did Israel even have to resort to blockade? Because, blockade is Israel's fallback as the world systematically delegitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself – forward and active defense.
(1) Forward defense: As a small, densely populated country surrounded by hostile states, Israel had, for its first half-century, adopted forward defense – fighting wars on enemy territory (such as the Sinai and Golan Heights) rather than its own. Where possible (Sinai, for example) Israel has traded territory for peace. But where peace offers were refused, Israel retained the territory as a protective buffer zone. Thus Israel retained a small strip of southern Lebanon to protect the villages of northern Israel. And it took many losses in Gaza, rather than expose Israeli border towns to Palestinian terror attacks.
But under overwhelming outside pressure, Israel gave it up. The Israelis were told the occupations were not just illegal but at the root of the anti-Israel insurgencies – and therefore withdrawal, by removing the cause, would bring peace.
Land for peace. Remember? Well, during the past decade, Israel gave the land – evacuating South Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. What did it get? An intensification of belligerency, heavy militarization of the enemy side, multiple kidnappings, cross-border attacks and, from Gaza, years of unrelenting rocket attack.
(2) Active defense: Israel then had to switch to active defense – military action to disrupt, dismantle and defeat (to borrow President Barack Obama's description of our campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaida) the newly armed terrorist mini-states established in southern Lebanon and Gaza after Israel withdrew.
The result? The Lebanon war of 2006 and Gaza operation of 2008-2009. They were met with yet another avalanche of opprobrium and calumny by the same international community that had demanded the land-for-peace Israeli withdrawals in the first place.
(3) Passive defense: Without forward or active defense, Israel is left with but the most passive and benign of all defenses – a blockade to simply prevent enemy rearmament. Yet, as we speak, this too is headed for international delegitimation.
But, if none of these are permissible, what's left? Nothing. The point of this relentless campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense.
The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million – that number again – hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists – Iranian in particular – openly prepare a more final solution.
Washington Post Writers Group
Charles Krauthammer is a syndicated columnist based in Washington.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0607-krauthammer-20100607,0,595547.column
Nameless OneParticipantCharles Krauthammer? Hahaha…
HARDKORNATEMemberIs this guy directly on Isreali payroll or did the editor merely edit out the other side?
PauldoMemberIs this guy directly on Isreali payroll or did the editor merely edit out the other side?
Sure I'll admit the guy is a little bit biased but I agree with him for the most part. The problem is obviously Hamas controlled Gaza. I'd be pissed if rockets were being fired in my neighborhood.
These “truther” idiots who have now taken up the Save Gaza movement. I don't know how they can be fooled into supporting Gaza in any way. It's like they just brush aside the years of history leading up to the present and form their opinions only on what they see now. I can't imagine the atrocities if Israel was ever defeated by the Palestinians.
aktifMemberCharles Krauthammer? Hahaha…
BEARJEW!!!
cosmicvibrationsMemberMy thoughts exactly, Nate.
zensphereMemberIt may be rational and legal, but that does not make it moral.
I'm not saying that Hamas is faultless, far from it – but there is an injustice here, imo.
When states wage war on civilians whose crime is simply trying to live life in the home of their ancestry, isn't that immoral?
I realize that this is a complex and nuanced issue, and that I'm far from well-informed, but it still grieves me to see such violence and hatred (on both sides).
Nameless OneParticipantWhen states wage war on civilians whose crime is simply trying to live life in the home of their ancestry, isn't that immoral?
Dare I point out the obvious…
zensphereMember^What, that the US was founded on such genocide? Or that this is a common occurrence? Or that Hamas is doing the same to Irsaelis?
HARDKORNATEMemberI'd like to add that choosing to stay in Gaza is fucking retarded. The people who stay are getting what they can expect to get. It's just as stupid as living in a crack stack. Self fulfilling prophecies and shit…
Nameless OneParticipant^What, that the US was founded on such genocide? Or that this is a common occurrence? Or that Hamas is doing the same to Irsaelis?
Or that Israel is the ancestral home of the Israeli people?
I'm just pointing out that the “they were there first” argument doesn't hold a lot of weight. It is genuinely weird that the modern state of Israel came to exist at all… but now it's here, and I don't think firing rockets off is really going to help matters.
Gandhi was on to something that the Palestinians haven't figured out as of yet…
zensphereMemberGot ya.
And agreed about non-violent direct action, although its success seems to be predicated on the responsiveness of the public conscience…
Nameless OneParticipantRight, but imagine this debate going on without the ability of anyone to say that Israel is merely defending itself. That was the power of non-violent civil disobedience in the context of the fight for Indian independence–one side was clearly not on higher moral ground. The Israel-Palestine conflict is so muddy. You have to really look into the entire history of it–particularly the various assaults on Israel's integrity in the aftermath of its formation–to really understand the paranoid protectionism that rules their politics these days.
I'm no Israeli apologist but I have read enough about the subject to disagree with facile arguments about “apartheid” and what-not… it's far more complicated than that.
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