[Peace-discuss] Israeli piracy

[C. G. Estabrook]

Breaking the Gaza Embargo and Israeli Piracy
by Huwaida Arraf, Noam Chomsky and Gabriel Schivone
Released: 10 May 2011

A year ago this month, Israel shocked the world when it attacked a humanitarian 
convoy on its way to Gaza in international waters, killing 9 civilians, injuring 
dozens more, and kidnapping hundreds. Today -- as Hamas and Fatah negotiate 
internal unity and Egypt moves to permanently open Gaza’s southern border, 
consequences of the Arab Spring -- the international solidarity movement musters 
an even greater flotilla of ships to challenge Israel’s illegal actions against 
the Palestinians. As anticipated, Israel promises to do everything it can to 
once again stop an organized, nonviolent force of civil society standing with 
Palestinians in their struggle for equal rights and self-determination.

Threatening to hijack boats in international waters and kill or kidnap 
passengers is, of course, a serious crime. But Israel’s threats and actual uses 
of force are nothing new. For decades, Israel has been hijacking international 
vessels throughout the Mediterranean and kidnapping or killing passengers. To 
understand the current situation involving civil resistance to Israeli policy, a 
glance at Israel’s aggressive history in international waters is in order.

In 1976, according to Knesset member Mattiyahu Peled, the Israeli Navy began to 
capture boats belonging to Lebanese Muslims -- turning them over to Lebanese 
Christian allies, who killed the owners -- in an effort to abort a movement 
towards reconciliation that had been arranged between the Palestine Liberation 
Organization (PLO) and Israel.

Then after a prisoner exchange in November 1983, a front-page story in the New 
York Times mentioned 37 Arab prisoners who had been held at the notorious Ansar 
prison camp, and who “had been seized recently by the Israeli Navy as they tried 
to make their way from Cyprus to Tripoli [Lebanon].”

In June, 1984, Israel hijacked a ferryboat operating between Cyprus and Lebanon 
five miles off the Lebanese coast with a burst of machinegun fire and forced it 
to Haifa, where nine people were removed and held, including one woman and a 
schoolboy returning from England for a holiday in Beirut. Two passengers were 
released two weeks later, while the fate of the others remained unreported.

In its report on the Israeli “interception” (more accurately, hijacking) of the 
ferryboat, the Times observes that prior to the 1982 war, “the Israeli Navy 
regularly intercepted ships bound for or leaving ports of Tyre and Sidon in the 
south and searched them for guerillas,” as usual accepting Israeli claims at 
face value. Syrian “interception” of civilian Israeli ships on a similar pretext 
might be regarded a bit differently.

On April 25, 1985, several Palestinians were kidnapped from civilian boats 
operating between Lebanon and Cyprus and sent to secret destinations in Israel, 
a fact that became public knowledge (in Israel) when one was interviewed on 
Israeli television, leading to an appeal to the High Court of Justice for 
information; presumably there were others, unknown.

In late-July 1985, Israeli gunboats attacked a Honduran-registered cargo ship a 
mile from the port of Sidon, delivering cement according to its Greek captain, 
setting it ablaze with 30 shells and wounding civilians in subsequent shore 
bombardment when militiamen returned the fire. The mainstream press did not even 
bother to report that the following day Israeli gunboats sank a fishing boat and 
damaged three others, while a Sidon parliamentarian called on the UN to end 
U.S.-backed Israeli “piracy.”

It is considered Israel’s prerogative to carry out hijacking of ships and 
kidnappings, at will -- with the approval of opinion in the United States -- 
whatever the facts may be.

When a popular nonviolent uprising by Palestinians in the occupied territories 
began in December 1987, Israel responded with harsh violence, mass beatings and 
deportations. After Israel ignored a January 1988 United Nations Security 
Council resolution calling on the state to “ensure the safe and immediate 
return” of deportees, the PLO organized a Ship of Return for 130 deportees to 
sail from Cyprus to Israel. More than five hundred international supporters and 
journalists also intended to sail -- including Israelis who risked arrest for 
boarding the ship.

Menacing reactions to the ship plans by Israeli heads of state were reported and 
passed without comment by the major media. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir called 
the planned voyage “a declaration of war” -- remarking the ship would be 
carrying “murderers (and) terrorists” -- while Defense Minister Rabin added that 
Israel was “compelled not to let [the organizers] achieve their purpose, and we 
will do that in whatever ways we find.”

Following Israel’s vows to prevent the voyage, the ship was bombed in port 
before sailing. After the explosion, the Times quoted an Israeli Transport 
Ministry official who remarked that, should another ship attempt to sail against 
Israel’s will, “its fate will be the same.”

The next attempt came twenty years later, in August 2008. This time it was the 
newly formed Free Gaza Movement, a group of international Palestinian solidarity 
activists, who decided to gather ships to violate Israel’s criminal siege of 
Gaza, imposed after Hamas was democratically elected in January 2006. Shortly 
before the ships sailed, leading Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported on 
discussions of defense officials who concluded that “allowing the ships to reach 
the Gaza Coastline could create a dangerous precedent.”

Despite Israel’s threats to stop the voyage, two small fishing boats, “Free 
Gaza” and “Liberty,” successfully reached the Gaza coast, becoming the first 
vessels to reach Gazan shores in over 41 years. The Free Gaza movement would 
organize four more successful sea voyages to Gaza over the next four months. 
During and in the months following Israel’s massive 22-day assault on Gaza in 
December-January 2008-09, which killed more than 1400 people, Israeli naval 
forces violently thwarted three Free Gaza vessels, culminating with Israel’s 
massacre of civilians aboard the Gaza Freedom flotilla last May.

Israel has arrested, beaten, gassed, tortured, deported and killed 
internationals -- essentially a taste of the measures it inflicts daily against 
the Palestinians. But nothing has succeeded in deterring the international 
solidarity movement from resisting Israel’s violence and aggression, and 
nonviolently supporting the Palestinian freedom struggle. Despite the impunity 
with which Israel operates, thanks to firm U.S. support and participation, civil 
resistance to Israel’s actions continues to grow exponentially.

International law looks good on paper, but its enforcement requires political 
will. As the Civil Rights and other social change movements in the United States 
and elsewhere have shown, citizen action is an important part of creating 
political will, limited only by the choice to act. People acting together in the 
name of freedom, human rights, and democracy, can constitute a powerful force 
that even the most oppressive regimes cannot withstand.

The success of the next flotilla -- and all those to follow -- will largely 
depend on the will and choice of the international community to resist 
U.S.-backed Israeli crimes in the occupied territories and on the sea -- and to 
stand with Palestinians until the death and the suffering ends and a lasting and 
honorable peace is achieved.


Huwaida Arraf is the Chair of the Free Gaza Movement and a passenger on Flotilla 
2. Noam Chomsky is on the Board of Advisors of the Free Gaza Movement and an 
Institute Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute 
of Technology. Gabriel Schivone is a passenger on Flotilla 2, an Arizona 
coordinator of Jewish Voice for Peace, and a member of Students for Justice in 
Palestine.

Copyright ©2011 Huwaida Arraf, Noam Chomsky and Gabriel Schivone -- distributed 
by Agence Global