Israel’s ‘mad dog’ diplomacy doesn’t make it more secure

• Jonathan Cook, The National
• Last Updated: June 02. 2010 12:32AM UAE / June 1. 2010 8:32PM GMT

Moshe Dayan, Israel’s most celebrated general, famously outlined the strategy that he believed would keep Israel’s enemies at bay: “Israel must be a like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.”

Until now, most observers had assumed Dayan was referring to Israel’s military and possibly its nuclear strategy, explaining in his blunt fashion the country’s well-known doctrine of deterrence. But the Israeli commando attack on Monday on the Gaza-bound flotilla, in which several crew members and international solidarity activists were killed and dozens wounded as they tried to break Israel’s blockade of the enclave, proves that this is now a diplomatic strategy too. Israel is feeling cornered on every front it considers important – and like Dayan’s “mad dog”, it is likely to strike out in unpredictable ways.

Domestically, Israeli human rights activists have regrouped after the Zionist left’s dissolution in the wake of the outbreak of the second intifada. Now they are presenting clear-eyed – and extremely ugly – assessments of the occupation that are grabbing headlines around the world. The leadership of Israel’s large Arab minority has started questioning the legitimacy of the Jewish state in ways that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.

Regionally, Hizbollah has progressively eroded Israel’s deterrence doctrine. It forced the Israeli army to exit south Lebanon in 2000 after a two-decade occupation; it stood firm in the face of both aerial bombardment and a ground invasion during the 2006 war; and now it is reported to have accumulated an even larger arsenal of rockets than it had four years ago.

And nearly 18 months on from its attack on Gaza, Israel’s standing is at an all-time low. Boycott campaigns are gaining traction, support for Israel from European governments has set them in opposition to the sentiment at home, and traditional allies such as Turkey cannot hide their anger.

In the US, Israel’s most resolute ally, young American Jews are starting to question their unthinking loyalty to the Jewish state. Blogs and new kinds of Jewish groups are bypassing their elders and the American media, widening the scope of debate about Israel. Israel has responded to these “threats” by characterising them all as falling within its ever-expanding definition of “support for terrorism”.

It was therefore hardly surprising that the first reaction from the Israeli government to the fact that its commandos had opened fire on civilians in the flotilla of aid ships was to accuse the solidarity activists of being armed.

Similarly, Danny Ayalon, the deputy foreign minister, accused the organisers of having “connections to international terrorism”, including al Qaeda. Turkey, which assisted the flotilla, had already been widely accused in Israel of supporting Hamas and trying to topple the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

Palestinians are familiar with such tactics. Gaza’s entire population of 1.5 million is now regularly presented in the Israeli media in collective terms, as supporters of terror – for having voted in Hamas – and therefore legitimate targets for Israeli “retaliation”.

Even the largely docile Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has rapidly been tarred with the same brush for its belated campaign to boycott the settlements and their products. The leaders of Israel’s Palestinian citizens are being cast in the role of abettors of terror. The minority is still reeling from the latest assault: the arrest and torture of two community leaders charged with spying for Hizbollah. In its wake, new laws are being drafted to require that the Israeli Arabs prove their “loyalty” or have their citizenship revoked.

When news emerged that Sheikh Raed Salah, a leader of Israel’s Islamic Movement in the North who was in the flotilla, had been gravely wounded, Israeli explanations were depressingly predictable. Commandos had been forced to return fire after shots came from his cabin, officials said.

Israel’s Jewish human rights community is also under attack to a degree never before seen. Their leaders are now presented as traitors, and new legislation is designed to make their work much harder. The few brave souls in the Israeli media who try to hold the system to account have been given a warning shot as the investigative journalist for Haaretz, Uri Blau, is threatened with trial on espionage charges if he returns to Israel.

Israel’s treatment of those on-board the flotilla has demonstrated that the net against human rights activism is being cast much wider, to encompass the international community. Foreigners, even high-profile figures such as Noam Chomsky, are now refused entry to Israel and the occupied territories. Many foreign human rights workers face severe restrictions on their movement and efforts to deport them or ban their organisations.

The epitome of this process was Israel’s reception of the UN report last year into the attack on Gaza by Richard Goldstone. A respected judge and war crimes expert, he suggested that Israel had committed war crimes during its three-week operation. Justice Goldstone has faced savage personal attacks ever since.

But more significantly, Israel’s supporters have characterised the Goldstone report and the growing legal campaigns against Israel as examples of “lawfare”, implying that those who uphold international law are waging a new kind of war of attrition on behalf of terror groups like Hamas and Hizbollah.

These trends are likely only to deepen in the coming months and years. The mad dog is baring his teeth, and it is high time the international community decided how to deal with him.

Jonathan Cook is The National’s correspondent in Nazareth and the author of Disappearing Palestine