Israelis shrug off outrage over Gaza flotilla
Updated on 02 June 2010
Israelis sympathise with those trapped at Gaza, they just don't understand how to change it. Sara Miller, online editor of Israeli newspaper Haaretz, writes for Channel 4 News.
In Israel today, there is only one topic. Did we do it right?
Should we have done it at all? What do people think of us now? Do we even care?
The military operation to prevent six ships from reaching the Gaza shore, and its bloody finale, is the latest hot topic in a country that is dominated by hot topics.
There is a sense that the army walked right into this one.
Gideon Levy of Haaretz, like other Israeli commentators, saw this coming on Sunday, although without its ultimately tragic conclusion.
But there is, as well, the feeling that Israel could not back down from such provocation. This stubbornness has served Israel well in its 62 years of life, but is perhaps proving to be its Achilles heel.
There is also a sense that, lose-lose situation or not, Israel played it by the book; it had announced its intention to stop the convoy reaching its destination, and even said it would transfer the aid to Gaza by land.
Both warning and offer were disregarded. The violence that erupted once naval commandos landed on the boat is seen as the fault of the people aboard, who claimed to be peaceniks, but were waiting for the soldiers with iron bars, knives and firebombs.
Read Lindsey Hilsum's blog
- What does the raid mean for US-Israel relations?
More from on the Gaza flotilla raid from Channel 4 News
- Gaza flotilla attack: international outrage
- Gaza flotilla raid: injured Briton named
- Israel sent 'wrong' men says expert
- Israel raid on Gaza aid ships: list of Britons aboard
Of course there are many Israelis who are dismayed.
Nine people died, they say, and that could easily have been avoided had Israel used a little of the intelligence of which it is so proud.
They see the increasing isolation of their once inspirational nation and its own proportionately spiraling intransigence as proof that the world must intervene, and help Israel out of the morass.
How bad does it have to be, they demand, before someone does something?
There is a Reuters image published today that perfectly reflects how Israelis live: newlyweds, posing for their wedding photos, gaze into each other's eyes against a romantic seashore backdrop, apparently unaware that the boat in the distance is the center of yet another diplomatic debacle for Israel.
The conflict is always here, but life goes on.
The world should know that Israelis do feel sympathy for les miserables of Gaza, trapped between militant rulers who will not renounce their desire to see Israel gone, and the strident rightists currently sitting in ministerial chairs in Jerusalem.
But Israelis also remember their own Gilad Shalit, captive for four years in Gaza, and their communities plagued by rockets and mortars from a territory they left half a decade ago.
They understand the situation, just not how to change it.
Any Israeli action spurs the same responses on the ground around the world: the burning of the Israeli flag, protests outside Israeli embassies, automatic identification with the Palestinians (there was graffiti reading "Bristol for Palestine" on a wall behind an interviewee on Sky News this afternoon), and comparisons to the Nazis.
This is nothing new, and certainly does not impact on the Israeli psyche in any great way.
The official international responses have been cautious, albeit justifiably quick to condemn the loss of life.
Barack Obama - whose conciliatory meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu (but that's another story) was abandoned due to the Israeli prime minister's unexpected return to Jerusalem - called for an inquiry but did not condemn the raid.
And over here, that's what counts. As long as America understands, most Israelis believe, it matters little what the rest of the world thinks.
The government may feel differently, however, particularly as it just recovering from the expulsion of two diplomats from Britain and Australia (but that's another story too).
Israelis say they are used to feeling like global pariahs, are used to feeling the world is against them.
The reactions of the members of the international community - most with their own dirty great black marks - will do little to change that.
In the words of one Israeli, go ask the Turkish government, so eager to denounce its once close ally as a terrorist state, how many Kurds it killed on Monday.
Sara Miller is the editor of Haaretz.com, the online English edition of Israel's Haaretz Newspaper
