Members of the Hartman Institute’s Engaging Israel Project have been in the media lately analyzing and commenting on the fallout from Israel’s interdiction of the Turkish flotilla to Gaza.
In an article in the Christian Science Monitor titled, " Why Israel Ignores Global Criticism of Flotilla Raid ," Hartman Institute Fellow Yossi Klein Halevi analyzed Israelis’ reaction to the global criticism:
When the world confuses a jihadist lynch mob for peace activists, Israelis nod their head and say, ‘We recognize this as a Jewish moment,’ " says Yossi Klein Halevi, a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish research and education facility in Jerusalem.
Almost every Israeli, regardless of the way they feel about the operation, knows that this [flotilla raid] is not a moral failing of Israel," says Mr. Klein Halevi. "And yet Israelis see the world entering a spasm of moral outrage that we don’t see being expressed over Darfur." He adds that Israelis angrily reject world opinion as inherently biased.
In the article’s closing, Klein Halevi said the 1990s, after the Oslo accords, was a period in which Israel was willing to take risks for peace and that Israel does care about global approval:
"This idea either that we don’t care about being pariahs or we revel in it is a misreading of the Israeli psyche… it goes against a key Zionist motif which is restoring the Jewish people to the community of nations," he says.
However, he said that when Israelis "sense they are being unfairly judged, and being held to a standard no country is being held to" they "freeze up."
In his latest blog for the Jerusalem Post, "The Left’s fiasco flotilla: Betraying Zionism and liberalism," Hartman Institute Fellow and Engaging Israel member Prof. Gil Troy wrote:
"There is, of course, much to criticize in Israel’s actions. However, amid all the righteous indignation targeting Israel, will any leftists criticize the Turkish jihadists who masked their violent intentions by blustering about human rights and humanitarian aid? Who will defend Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals? Who can cry for the people of Gaza AND the tattered teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., who would have despised having his non-violent philosophy hijacked by these goons?"
Read Prof. Troy’s full article here .
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