Israel to World: "Suck It."

christian zionism isn't incompatible with anti-semitism, even. oh, it's all so confusing

I don't think everybody is treated equally under Israeli law...? Jewish right of return, Jewish National Fund, fucked up marriage laws etc.

yeah i don't think there is total and absolute equality and that's bad, but it doesn't deserve a lol whut answer. though imperfect, a little like the US through almost its entire history (is there legal equality in arizona?). israel isn't an apartheid state. i get the one state solution as an ideal, kind of, but there's no logical/historical basis for the borders of said single state that makes it more just than a two-state solution. do kind of wonder what the nature of the one-state state would be, too.

Maybe we need Third Wave Zionism.

Many xposts @gbx - not sure how much help I can be as Law of the Sea isn't really my thing, and I'm unaware of (i) where the incident actually took place (it does appear from the maps to be a long way from the coast) and (ii) what the legal basis is for the blockade of Gaza at all (I assume that Israel claims jurisdiction over Gazan waters in some occupation-type way). Also, my book's a little bit old. However, I'm guessing I'm probably the best-qualified here to have a stab:

* PIRACY/SELF-DEFENCE

- the boarding certainly wasn't piracy, because piracy is a private vessel attacking other vessels for private ends. This was a state act. The vessel was a private boat, however, not a warship - so any right of self-defence should be understood in the normal personal way, rather than thinking about one country fighting off an attack by another. Did the commandos pose a threat to the people on the boat such as would justify their attacking them? We don't know, frankly, and I haven't watched the videos to find out. In any case it's difficult to know how to analyse that, because we don't know what law they'd be defending themselves under - it's probably Turkish law because it's a Turkish boat, but it might be Israeli law depending on where it was. In any case, the question should be something like: at the time of boarding, were the people on the boat in physical danger such as would justify attacking the boarding soldiers with metal bars as a means of making that danger stop?

* JURISDICTION

- generally speaking, the high seas are free and a state needs jurisdiction in order to board a vessel. It could get this in a very few ways, e.g.
: the vessel flies its flag (I think Turkey in this case)
: the vessel is committing an offence over which the state has jurisdiction (e.g. piracy or the slave trade, but also a few relatively trivial things like illegal broadcasting)

- the territorial sea is the strip of sea along the coast, usually up to twelve miles (don't know much Israel claims) over which the state does exercise jurisdiction. Generally speaking, a merchant ship (I think this means all non-warships) has right of innocent passage through the territorial sea of any state - but it ceases to be innocent passage if it partakes in certain activities, breach of customs being one of those, in which case it's no longer innocent. The state can board to investigate e.g. a crime disturbing peace and good order, which I presume Israel considers blockade-busting to be.

NON-CONCLUSION

So (with all the above caveats) if this was in Israel's waters, Israel would probably have the right to board and interdict the vessel. If it was on the high seas, they probably wouldn't - however, I have some difficulty in believing that e.g. the US wouldn't intercept a drugs boat that's lying thirteen miles off Miami, so perhaps there's some obvious principle that I'm not aware of.

Israel isn't an apartheid state.

It discriminates between its citizens according to their race and religion - and awards different privileges and imposes different obligations in light of such discrimination, and by force of law. So yes, it is an apartheid state now.

I thought of something else: Israel could also assert self-defence to intercept the vessel if it believed it was carrying a threat e.g. previous interceptions of arms shipments. This would be a state-type self-defence and so not exactly like the one I set out for the people on the boat, though they're pretty similar concepts. One hears of other countries intercepting and diverting ships from time to time for terrorism-related reasons or whatever - this is presumably the rationale in those cases too.

It discriminates between its citizens according to their race and religion - and awards different privileges and imposes different obligations in light of such discrimination, and by force of law. So yes, it is an apartheid state now.

― sonofstan, Tuesday, June 1, 2010 11:15 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

said it was imperfect, and therefore open to criticism by the US in particular with its long history of racial equality, but i guess im objecting to the implied south african comparison which is, how you say, disproportionate.

Usually people use the "apartheid" canard to refer to Israel's treatment of Gaza and the West Bank. This doesn't work because Gazans and West Bankers are not second-class citizens of an apartheid state, but rather residents of an occupied territory (not that this is better, just making a distinction).

If you leave aside the occupied territories, you can't really equate Israel's treatment of its Arab citizens with Apartheid South Africa. However flawed and unequal Israel may be, you didn't have integrated areas like Jaffo in Johannesburg. You didn't have black members of South African parliament. You didn't have substantial numbers of black students going to top South African universities. Etc.

^^ these analogies are never going to get very far so long as half the people we're concerned with exist in a non-category somewhere between citizens and refugees and occupied foreigners. (for instance, right now, mayne, I actually don't have any idea which category you are placing people in; you are not considering gaza-strip residents "citizens," right?)

never mind, xpost

said it was imperfect, and therefore open to criticism by the US in particular with its long history of racial equality, but i guess im objecting to the implied south african comparison which is, how you say, disproportionate.

oh ffs

pretty sure that was some sarcasm there gbx

to Israel's credit, there is no "3/5ths of a person" clause in their Constitution, and citizens are all supposed to be equal under the law. Aside from the other (fairly minor) things I already noted tho, the fact that Israeli gov't claims political dominion over a whole bunch of non-citizens is where the real mistreatment comes into play.

no shit

just unproductive high horsey sneering imo. "hey American you literally cannot criticize ppl for acting like disgusting savages because yr country did slavery and w/e" = bullshit and unproductive

I mean whatever it was probably just a bit of fun

xps

xpost - the sarcasm is the annoying part! by that logic we should just all have slaves, since nobody has quite the right history to take the moral high ground about it.

(by the way, the thing that frustrates me about discussing South Africa analogies is that a lot of responses would seem to imply that South Africa would have been morally improved by not considering non-white people real citizens in the first place, which strikes me as ... an odd stance)

Amateurist, you know more about this than I do, so I'm asking: is it possible that part of the problem is that the broad part of Zionism -- the idea of a home state -- is a lot closer to settled, so a lot of uses of the word now cluster around things that are more extreme? Like in terms of people's ideologies, these days we pretty often hear "Zionism" brought up in, say, discussions of settlers who feel they have a moral right to land beyond existing lines. I.e., we keep attaching Zionism to hot disputes about expansion and land, and not to less-controversial things like the existence of the state itself.

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Tuesday, June 1, 2010 4:44 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

like suzy said i think a lot of people do now use "zionist" to characterize the people pushing for an expansion of israeli territory into the west bank etc. but that's not what the arab states meant when they pushed through the "zionism = racism" statement in the UN. and it's certainly not what many palestinians and other arabs mean when they chant about zionists/jews (militants rarely use the term "israelis" because that term refers to a state which they feel is illegitimate). it's an ahistorical use of the word which i'm inclined to disagree with, if only because the opprobrium it invokes is then made to cover (mixed metaphor?) the whole history of zionism. which isn't free of its own crimes or even, i think, moral incoherence.

but yeah in a way the word is not practically useful because it centers around a DESIRE to see a jewish state. now there IS a jewish state, so it's less a question of whether it has a right to exist and more a question of, how does a tactically superior state actor deal with a neighboring state actor that wishes them harm? does it deal with it in a way that emiserates the population of that neighboring state--something it clearly has the capability of doing? that seems to be a misguided choice, both ethically (obv) and practically.

i think some of the posts above speak about gaza as if it weren't a state. it's not a very functional state, partly due to israel and partly due to hamas, but it does have an elected government. whether gaza constitutes its own state or part of a broader palestinian state that's presently divided is one of the weirder questions in this whole situation. in a way it's starting to resemble the whole taiwan/PRC situation where at least of the 1980s both sides claimed to be the legit rulers of "china" while neither, practically, governed the full territory they conceived of as "china."

honestly you look at a place like gaza that seems condemned to misery and you've gotta wonder if a one-state solution isn't the only answer for them. that said, you look at the militancy in gaza, the way so many of its children are basically raised to dehumanize the israeli enemy, and you wonder if a one-state solution is possible in the next 70 years.

ok i'm done, sorry.

Amateurist that smells off to me, like some colonial divide and rule propaganda.

I mean I dunno an awful lot about middle east politics but are you saying they only have themselves to blame? Chicken and egg and all that but wtf?

no. not in the slightest. you're reading into my comments stuff that simply isn't there.

i'm just saying it's a weird situation where the palestinian authority claims to be the rightful state actor for the palestinian state which encompasses west bank and gaza. and hamas claims the same. except that the PA has no practical control in gaza and hamas has little authority in the west bank.

this situation arguably complicates things for all parties involved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatah-Hamas_conflict

i mean, it's a mess:

Ismail Haniyeh (Arabic: إسماعيل هنية‎ Ismaʻīl Haniyya; sometimes transliterated as Ismail Haniya or Ismail Haniyah) ( Arabic pronunciation (help·info)) ; (born January 29, 1963) is a senior political leader of Hamas and one of two disputed Prime Ministers of the Palestinian National Authority, the matter being under political and legal dispute. He became Prime Minister after the legislative elections of 2006 which Hamas won. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah-Hamas conflict, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continues to exercise prime ministerial authority in the Gaza Strip.[1] The Palestinian Legislative Council also continues to recognise his authority.

Thanks, I guess Im still wondering if Israel likes to help keep it this way- to keep the land grab going and the people divided?

Which begs the question, where does the illegal appropriation of Palestininan land by Israel fit into your scheme as a driver for this internal political division, obstacle to the creation of a viable Palestinian State, dehumanisation of Israelis and so on?

land grab lol

yes, use 'apartheid' instead

it doesnt beg the question, it raises the qeustion

"you wonder if a one-state solution is possible in the next 70 years."

ppl said same about Northern Ireland 30 years ago. A US prez who didn't cater to Zionist maniacs would be a nice start.

finally, some nuanced political opinions itt

It doesn't do anything to a question. For all of Israel's faults, and the moral bankruptcy of allowing radical Orthodoxy to settle throughout the West Bank, I'm not sure how you can characterize Israel as land grabbing after they evicted 25 settlements and nine thousand residents from Gaza + the West Bank in 2005. Or do you consider that a smokescreen for the super secret land grabbing they were doing in the background?

Which begs the question, where does the illegal appropriation of Palestininan land by Israel fit into your scheme as a driver for this internal political division, obstacle to the creation of a viable Palestinian State, dehumanisation of Israelis and so on?

― kiwi, Tuesday, June 1, 2010 8:55 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark

talk about begging the question!

i mean i think you know the answer to your own question. it hasn't helped. it's really bad. and it's continued more or less under every administration no matter their official policy on new settlements. israel has not appropriated land in gaza as far as i know, but i don't know how relevant that is.

haven't settlements continued though--new ones, i mean? it seems that israel is forever talking out of both sides of their mouth on this issue.

No new settlement building in a bit, I believe. There was that whole natural expansion of current settlements debate thing.

by request:

http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2010/06/carnage-cruise.html

Thank god, Dennis Perrin is here to solve the conflict.

Btw, amateurist: http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20100601/pl_usnw/DC13636

No new settlements since the beginning of 2010. So way more recent than I thought, but still completely halted.

by whose request????

too bad he muddled a decent post with this statement

Numerous poor brown people butchered in the defense of humanity.

I'm glad I read that Perrin piece for the insight into Israel's propensity to destroy themselves in a mad rage of suicide. Btw, Perrin means literal suicide. Not like political suicide. He thinks Israel is gonna blow itself up because the tide is turning against them. Like that time in the Yom Kippur war when they were losing and so blew themselves up. Man, that was short-sighted of them.

is he referencing masada?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masada#The_Roman_siege

which raises the question: what does john zorn have to say about all this?

you could even say it begs the question

hey, i actually used that phrase correctly upthread, unlike 99% of the times people use that phrase.

so 9000 land grabbers down... just 400,000 to go!

dude I think there are more israelis than that

anyway, don't you mean that Britain illegally land grabbed? since the Israelis got the land legally. well, then there was that war when Israel got attacked and took more land, so i guess that's also land grabbing. anyway, what's your point? should all the Jews move back to their ancestral home of Lower East Side?

Mordy, that's nice news you linked, but let's not exaggerate or anything with that "completely halted":

"Prime Minister Netanyahu has fulfilled his promise of last November to impose a ten-month moratorium on new construction in the West Bank," said AJC Executive Director David Harris. "Let's remember that Israel's bold decision to freeze new construction was an unprecedented good-faith gesture intended to move the Palestinian Authority to resume direct negotiations, yet, despite the Israeli action, President Abbas has still refused to return."

I mean, not trying to be glib or argumentative, but the "good-faith gesture" of a temporary moratorium on something even Israel's staunch allies consider a gigantic problem is like ... I dunno what that's like.

two issues. One is new settlements and one is freezing settlement building in actual settlements afaik. i could be wrong tho.

The Israeli government moratorium, however, does allow for completion of about 3,000 housing units in existing communities that were started before November 26, 2009.

wouldn't any palestinian 'good-faith gesture' also be something that most of us would agree should be something they should be doing anyway?