Even If True, Netanyahu's Lies Wouldn't Excuse Israeli Piracy

The world is rightly horrified at Israel's latest atrocity--piracy in international water including killing civilians. Details can be read here.

What caught my attention is Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's attempt to justify murdering people on the Turkish boat carrying food and concrete and toys and so forth to Palestinians in Gaza who are starving because of Israel's illegal blockade--a form of collective punishment of civilians that is a war crime under the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Netanyahu, claiming that Israeli soldiers were attacked on the ship that they boarded, said:

"They were mobbed, they were clubbed, they were beaten, stabbed, there was even a report of gunfire. And our soldiers had to defend themselves."

Only anger at the crime prevents one from laughing at the absurdity of its excuse. Criminals the world over now have a new defense--the "Netanyahu defense": "Your honor, I plead 'Not Guilty' because when I broke into Mr. Jones's house to rob him he fought me so hard that I had no choice but to kill him in self defense."

The fact of the matter, of course, is that the people on the ship, not the Israeli soldier pirates, were the ones acting in self-defense. In particular, the people on the ship had every right to, as Netanyahu put it, mob, club, beat, stab and shoot the soldiers. Every right.

In fact, all the soldiers in the Israeli military who follow their orders are engaged in a decades-long violent ethnic cleansing (i.e. removal) of non-Jews from what is now Israel. Most of the people living in Gaza, for example, are refugees or the descendants of refugees who were driven at gun-point out of their homes and villages inside Israel. The entire Israeli military deserves to be mobbed, clubbed, beaten, stabbed and shot, until it stops committing the crime of ethnic cleansing.

I don't know if Mr. Netanyahu's claim is correct or not, but if it is, then the people on the ship deserve, in addition to three cheers for their solidarity with Palestinians, three more cheers for mobbing, clubbing, beating, stabbing and shooting those Israeli soldiers. It's just too bad that they were outgunned.

But with world outrage growing against Israel's ethnic cleansing, and its barbarity in carrying it out, it may not be too long before the Israeli soldiers find themselves outgunned. That will be the day!

In the meantime, beware of those who pretend to be outraged at Israel's latest atrocity but who, like the Boston Globe, support the ethnic cleansing that the atrocities enforce. These people say that the way to end such atrocities is to have a peace based on a "two state solution." Such a "solution" means that Israel will remain a "Jewish state" based on ethnic cleansing, specifically the refusal to let the Palestinian refugees return to their homes and villages inside Israel. The refugees will be told that their reservation or Bantustan in the small remaining part of Palestine that is not called "Israel" is a "state," and somehow calling it a "state" is supposed to make the ethnic cleansing OK.

This "reasoning" gives the criminals of the world yet another defense--the "Peace is the solution" defense: "Your honor, I plead 'Not Guilty' because after I broke into Mr. Jones's house and claimed it as my own and threw Mr. Jones onto the street, I told him that all I want is for us to live peaceably now. But Mr. Jones is an extremist who doesn't want peace; he even denies my right to own his house. Such people only understand force, your honor, which is why I had to use the violence that I am accused of using."

As horrible as the recent Israeli piracy was, let us not forget that the worst atrocity is the ethnic cleansing, not the crimes Israel does to enforce it.