Arab flotillas versus Jewish flotillas

Flotilla frenzy is at a peak. The Israeli army is leaking reports of ships loaded with sulphur and god knows what else.  Ehud “Mad Dog” Barak and our plank of a chief of staff labelled the flotilla a “provocation,” as if that was the first cousin of a pogrom.

Of course it’s a fucking provocation. To provoke is to incite, anger or irritate and that’s exactly what the organizers of the flotilla want to do. To provoke the world into remembering Gaza. Because what Israel wants is for the world to forget it. As if Israel never indulged in provocation itself.

I was thinking of all this stuff this morning, while taking my constitutional with my dog, the inimitable Shoko. In a vain effort to lose some weight before the summer, I have begun dragging the poor hound on walks to the beach. And this morning we happened upon the strange, vaguely nautical construction overlooking the beach at the end of Bograshov Street. It has walkways and planks and chains and pieces of concrete jutting into the air which are meant to resemble the prows of ships.

According to the signs all around, the place is a monument to what in Hebrew is known as the Ha’apala, the covert and illegal immigration of Jews to Palestine before, during and immediately after World War II. The British mandatory authorities had set a low quota of Jewish immigration in their White Paper of 1939, and declared a sea blockade on Palestine. The yishuv, of course, was determined to break the blockade and bring in the immigrants illegally. The most famous of those illegal voyages was that of the ship named Exodus.

There are, of course, differences between the Ha’apala and the flotillas of today. For one thing, the ships of the Forties were transporting homeless people, victims of the Nazis mostly, while the passengers of today are human rights activists. But, when it comes down to it, they both set out to break blockades declared by the sovereign rulers of the day (though Britain was operating under a League of Nations mandate, while Israel’s right to blockade Gaza is barely recognized by any country, except Israel.)

Israel is experienced and highly skilled at maintaining double standards. It reminds me of the Israeli complaints, before and during the so-called Cast Lead invasion of Gaza, that Hamas was deliberately and cynically hiding itself amongst the civilian population. As it happens, one block from my apartment in central Tel Aviv, there’s a plaque on a building that served as a Hagana officer’s training school before 1948. And about five minutes walk from my home, there’s a plaque on an apartment building that once served as Hagana headquarters. In fact, the whole bloody area, which was residential before 1948 and remains residential today, is full of plaques commemorating military facilities hidden amongst the civilian population. We’re proud of it when Jews do it.

Likewise the breaking of the sea blockade. It’s a proud part of Israeli history, commemorated in a very odd garden-cum-monument on the seashore. Which does not mean that it’s OK when the Arabs and their pinko supporters in the West do the same thing. Fucking anti-semites.

Even from the zionist point of view, the flotilla should be a non-event. So what if a couple of hundred Arab lovers land in Gaza? No-one actually believes that the ships are carrying weapons (despite the fulminations of the military spokesman) and Israel has demonstrated its ability to stop weapons ships when it needs to. So, they’ll land in Israel and then they’ll be fucked trying to get out.

But Israelis can’t think straight anymore. Theyve spent so much effort trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the world that they’ve confused themselves. They are no longer able to differentiate between a strategic threat and a nuisance.

More’s the pity.