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Put flotilla behind us

Op-ed: Indicting Knesset Member Zoabi over flotilla affair would serve no purpose

After the State made every possible error – strategic and tactical, diplomatic and military – in the flotilla affair, would it not be best to leave this incident behind us as soon as possible?

 

It appears even our police officials realized this and recommended that the Israeli nationals involved in the affair not be indicted. The attorney general, with great wisdom, decided to put an end to the affair as result of what was described, gently, as “evidentiary and legal difficulties.” Or in other words, my friends, the State has no case.

 

After all, the Palmer Committee appointed by the United Nations to look into the flotilla affair already ruled that Israel utilized exaggerated force in taking over the Marmara. At the same time, the Committee also ruled that the Gaza Strip blockade – which flotilla members aimed to breach – was completely legal.

 

The report also asserted that Israel should pay compensation to families of the dead, yet criticism was also leveled at Turkey for not doing enough to stop the flotilla, whose aims were violent to begin with.

 

We know we’re right 

Beyond these conclusions – which Ankara rejected with contempt, by the way – what aim exactly would the ongoing preoccupation with this case serve? After all, the ties with Turkey would not be restored as long as the Zionist fan and lover of humanity Erdogan is in power, while on our end we have the peace-loving diplomats Netanyahu and Lieberman.

 

And what precisely is the option offered to us by champions of the Right who were enraged last week? Being dragged into a complex, foolish legal battle against Hanin Zoabi, who – as annoying as she is – is an Israeli Knesset member, and also against a bunch of other “peace loving” citizens? And all that trouble in order to win the case in four or five years, after a series of appeals that would drive us mad, only so we can inflate our chest and say: “We told you so”?

 

You told us what? That in this story we are the good guys? We already know this without the legal entanglement. After all, the overwhelming majority of Israel’s citizens, including myself, believe that Israel’s principled position on the flotilla affair was right and is still right.

 

However - and this is the truly important question, which will apparently not be clarified at court – if we conducted ourselves so appropriately, how did we get entangled in this fiasco?

 

 


פרסום ראשון: 12.25.11, 18:09
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