The attack of the peace activists should certainly create deep
anxiety for the Israeli government. That is because behind this attack,
whether it is called a flotilla or a flytilla, is a point of view that
Israel has been trying for years to eradicate. It is the position
holding that Israel is not immune to international pressure, that it is a
Western state like any other, where public opinion influences the
government and whose central political stream, at least, welcomes the
international peace activists as an alternative to a mad policy. This
worldview genuinely believes that when Israel declares itself to be the
only democracy in the Middle East it means it, and that human rights –
including those of humans living under occupation – are an integral part
of its influential public debate.
Those “dangerous invaders,” who are always
characterized as “deluded,” just as the Israeli left was termed “loony,”
that is “crazy” or at the very least ignorant of the world in which it
lives, insist on changing a situation and policy that even superpowers
like the United States and the European Union have failed to change.
