He'll try to keep the conversation focused on the one question that dominates Israeli political life: Weren't the Israelis merely doing what they had to do to stop the next Holocaust? And, perhaps, even to save Western civilization against "radical Islamic forces," according to an analysis published hours after the attack by a prominent Israeli academic in one of his nation's most popular newspapers. That will be a common response among many Jews, especially in Israel, but some here in the US, too.
Uri Avnery, the grand old man of the Israeli peace movement, summed it up most incisively, as usual, in a recent column titled "Hallelujah, the World is Against Us!" In recent years, he wrote, as Jews have escaped persecution and gained power, "a sense of unease, of disorientation, set in." Many Jews "felt that something was out of order, that the well-known road signs were not working anymore.... That's frightening," and it makes many Jews suspicious. So, "without being conscious of it," many Jews "do what we can to be hated again, to feel at home, on familiar ground.... We shall not rest until the world is anti-Semitic again, and we know how to behave. As the jolly song goes: 'The entire world is against us, but what the hell.'"
If Obama, and the world, focus only on "all the facts and circumstances" about who did what during that tragic dawn at sea, it will give Israeli leaders another excuse to lead their people in singing their jolly song, perpetuating their cherished images of victimization. The more criticism they receive, the more most Israelis will be convinced that the worlds really is against them. And the more excuse that will give them to resist serious negotiations for peace.
This is not to deny the need for a full investigation. But it's vital to put even the worst events in broader perspective. The US government has supported so many evils of the Israeli occupation and blockade because the Israeli PR machine has been so successful. It has managed to get the US mass media, most of the US public and, very possibly, their president to believe that the whole world just might be against Israel, that any Israeli violence might very well be justified self-defense against another Holocaust.
If Obama really wants to be the president who brings peace to the Middle East, he has to take a much broader view. When he asks Netanyahu for "all the facts and circumstances," he must ask the big, crucial questions: By what right does Israel maintain its blockade of Gaza at all costs, despite all the human suffering it brings? By what right does Israel maintain its occupation of and settlements on the West Bank at all costs? Why does Israel resist the peace settlement that the rest of the world sees as fair and just? Why does Israel persist in such self-defeating policies, keeping its own people as well as its Palestinian neighbors locked in a vicious cycle of insecurity?
Even those who want to focus on the one terrible incident of violence at sea should be asking not who started the fighting, but by what right did the Israeli Navy steam into international waters and unilaterally declare a "naval blockade"? (Strangely, the Israeli PR machine put out video of that declaration, as if it somehow justified all the killing to come.) It's all part of the same pattern: Israel making unilateral decisions that put intolerable restrictions on Palestinians' lives.
That's what the flotilla to Gaza was trying to shine a light on. Now, the light has grown much brighter, though it is encased in the dark shadow of mourning. But if we let it become a narrow pencil light, illuminating only the events of a few tragic hours, we will miss the larger picture at which the Obama administration should be looking: the injustices perpetuated by Israel over many tragic decades.
Those of us who want to see a just peace and a truly independent viable Palestinian state should do whatever we can to break through the fallacious stereotype of Israel as the eternal victim. If that image is discredited - if it no longer frames discussion of the Middle East conflict here in the US - the Obama administration can begin to explore new options for US policy.
Every time we persuade a friend, a neighbor, a relative, a co-worker to see Israel as a dominating power, not an endangered victim, we take a step closer to a just peace in the Middle East. That can be the most fitting memorial for the victims of Israeli bullets, who wanted only to bring humanitarian relief to Gaza.
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