Like they don’t already have enough problems.
Greece, the country that is ever revered as the cradle of democracy, philosophy and pretty much the entirety of Western civilization (no oxymoron jokes, please), is having a tough year. A recent economic near-collapse, European bailout, the difficult passage of a raft of unpopular austerity measures and, of course, angry demonstrations, protests and bloody riots in the streets have tested the country’s fortitude. The fact that the world is still forcing its high school kids to read Plato’s “Republic” can hardly be of any solace right now.
Now Greece finds itself squarely in the middle of yet another unwanted international crisis as the home base for the flotilla that has launched a thousand accusations and recriminations, but so far, no actual ships.
The organizers of the group of eight ships now docked in Greek waters, which are carrying hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists from several countries, including dozens of Americans (among them, the novelist Alice Walker), announced plans to sail to Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid in defiance of Israel’s naval blockade there. As of today, they have not. (Two more ships withdrew because of damage, reportedly the work of saboteurs. Last year, nine Turkish activists were killed by Israeli forces on a similar mission.) After weeks of an international public relations war involving misinformation, condemnations, ominous warnings, video hoaxes, nautical sabotage and more, Greece announced on Friday that is was prohibiting the boats from sailing. The Coast Guard was forced into action when an American vessel called The Audacity of Hope left the harbor without permission and had to be turned back. A protest organizer complained that Greece was not within its rights to stop private ships from sailing.
Scott Sayare of The Times reported the latest on Friday, and quoted one activist, who described the situation this way: “It’s like they’ve moved the blockade from Gaza to Greece.”
So with events, for the moment, at a standstill, and poor Greece saddled with another, albeit less ominous problem, we may take a moment to ask essential questions: Is it a “freedom” flotilla, a “peace” flotilla or, as some have called it, a “provocation” flotilla? Who has been telling the truth? And, what is all this really about?
To be honest, no amount of time spent in the blogosphere this week could definitively answer those questions, but the commentary surrounding the events, in its very wild inconsistency, at least gives an inkling of the positions staked out.
At the crux: the pro-Israeli position that the flotilla is engaged in an act of provocation, even aggression, not humanitarian aid, versus the pro-Palestinian position that the blockade is unjustified, if not illegal, and represents a brutal suppression and denial of basic goods to residents of Gaza, to be partly and symbolically addressed by their mission.
At The Daily Beast, Dan Ephron put the situation in the perspective of the age-old message war between the two parties. “In trying to understand the brewing confrontation this time,” he wrote, “it’s helpful to keep one thing in mind: The cargo that activists hope to deliver to Gaza in the coming days is beside the point. Palestinians don’t necessarily need it and Israel is not threatened by it.” He continued:
Like with so many other issues Israeli-Palestinian related, these actions are mainly to score points in the public relations battle. The activists are hoping to put a spotlight on the Gaza blockade by provoking another confrontation on the high seas. Israel wants to deflect attention from the siege policy by depicting the organizers as terrorists and their campaign as a mission to help arm Hamas. In recent days, Israel appears to have pressed even its vaunted spy agencies into the service of obstructing the other side. Flotilla organizers say someone sabotaged two of their ships currently docked in Greece.
For both sides, the uproar created by events like the flotilla operation tend to cloud the more germane issues.
At his blog on Wednesday, Max Blumenthal took the Israeli military to task for what he said went beyond public relations into the realm of pure misinformation, for ascribing violent intent to the activists, then broadcasting it:
Despite an apparent lack of evidence, the army’s disinformation found its way into top Israeli newspapers through a select group of military correspondents including the Jerusalem Post’s Yaakov Katz. Katz reported that flotilla passengers planned to kill Israeli soldiers and that they were bringing “bags of sulfur” to attack the soldiers. … Yedioth Aharanot’s Hanan Greenberg also reported, “IDF fears flotilla activists will try to kill Israeli soldiers.” And Haaretz hyped the claim in Hebrew.
Today, the army’s story was exposed as disinformation. First, Yedioth Aharonot military correspondent Alex Fishman reported, “There is no information that there is going to be a group of radicals on board that will form a hard core of violent resistance against IDF soliders. Nor is there any clear information about live weapons that will be on board the ships.” Then, a group of Israeli government ministers accused the army of “media spin” and “public relations hysteria” for claiming the flotilla passengers planned to attack soldiers with chemical weapons. … Unfortunately, many reporters still accept the army’s claims on trust, while others do not even bother to investigate.
(Perhaps the most bizarre misinformation incident was this video hoax, reported on by The Lede’s Robert Mackey, in which an Israeli actor claims to be a gay activist who was banned from the flotilla.)
Juan Cole at Informed Comment drew a connection between the flotilla activists and the civil rights movement in the United States:
The US State Department shamefully fully supports the blockade and the collective punishment, and is threatening US citizens who participate in the attempt to break the siege of Gaza’s children (40% of residents are children). The Israeli Right wing portrays the blockade as a measure against the Hamas Party, which won the 2006 elections for the Palestine Authority. But blockading 1.5 million civilian noncombatants to get out a few thousand party activists and militiamen is illegal, especially for the Occupying Power (which Israel is, since it controls Gaza’s air and water and prevents Palestinians from entering a wide swathe of their own land). …
Since the blockade is both illegal and evil, and since the world Establishment, including the US government, is enabling it, it is only natural that upstanding Americans and members of other nations want to challenge it. It should be remembered that the Civil Rights movement in the United States was mostly illegal and its activists were frequently jailed, beaten, bitten by police dogs, and sometimes shot down by law enforcement.
It’s not inconceivable that Cole may have gotten an inkling of that connection after reading Alice Walker’s explanation on CNN last week of why she decided to join the action:
Alongside this image of brave followers of Gandhi there is for me an awareness of paying off a debt to the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the South in our time of need. I am especially indebted to Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who heard our calls for help – our government then as now glacially slow in providing protection to non-violent protestors-and came to stand with us.
They got as far as the truncheons and bullets of a few “good ol’ boys” of Neshoba County, Mississippi and were beaten and shot to death along with James Cheney, a young black man of formidable courage who died with them. So, even though our boat will be called The Audacity of Hope, it will fly the Goodman, Cheney, Schwerner flag in my own heart.
That prompted a direct response from Howard Jacobson, also at CNN: “Human beings are seldom more dangerous than when they are sentimentally overcome by the goodness of their own intentions. That Alice Walker believes it is right to join the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza I do not have the slightest doubt. But beyond associating her decision with Gandhi, Martin Luther King and very nearly, when she talks about the preciousness of children, Jesus Christ, she fails to give a single convincing reason for it.”
How to make it all better? The counterintuitive solution of the week goes to Roi Ben-Yehuda, for his post, “Conflict Resolution Commandos: A Response to the Flotilla,” in which he imagines real life soldiers of peace:
As scholars of conflict resolution, we believe that such situations call for constructive adaptation on the part of those involved. To that end we propose the IDF take initiative and create the first ever Conflict Resolution Commando unit.
Imagine back in 2010 if instead of masked men with guns, trained for intense warfare at sea, boarding a ship in the dead of night, the IDF had dispatched an elite unit of conflict resolution specialists. Could the tragedy at sea been averted? Could it be that new tools must be designed to maximize the possibility of non-destructive outcome to occur? Could it be that a fundamental reframing to many situations could be offered by people willing to die for a cause but not willing to kill for it?
Interesting thought. But it’s not exactly the Hoplite phalanx.
Desertpeace 
Aiman said,
July 2, 2011 at 20:20
Well, the last paragraph sums it up all: the writer(s) suggests conflict resolution specialists to be sent to discuss with Freedom Flotilla 2 over what they want, what they want to achieve by this flotilla and why they are doing it…etc… This is not the crux here. If you want to discuss or negotiate a resolution you should be aiming at the siege of Gaza itself not the flotilla. You should form conflict resolution teams to look at ways of ending the siege and giving the people of Palestine – all of Palestine – their freedom. I believe the suggestion above by the author(s), despite all its proposed good intent, can be called “a twisted logic in conflict resolution”.
Fran SA said,
July 3, 2011 at 15:04
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes !
beware of Greeks even if they are bearing gifts