Creative Resistance Shatters Israel's Image

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There cannot be any dispute that Israel’s image has been severely battered.

By Iqbal Jassat – Pretoria

The Gaza aid flotilla has come to symbolize a breathtaking type of creative resistance. Ingenious, challenging and as Israel has learnt much to its folly, devastating!

Clearly the Mavi Marmara has changed the Zionist worldview of a tiny Jewish state besieged by hostile terrorists forever. No longer is Israel able to lean on deceptive arguments of the past to justify its policies of repression and vengeful occupation.

That and the latest full-blown standoff between the family of captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, their thousands of supporters and the rightwing Netanyahu regime, is additional evidence of a public mood displaying signs of frustration, hopelessness and despair.

Ties with the Obama administration, despite desperate public attempts seeking to reassure each other that these are solid, are clearly showing signs of deep-seated divisions. Blowing hot and cold with no decisive urgency to restore ties to the Bush era, the current US government is evidently showing signs of fatigue even as having its role downgraded embarrasses it.

It not surprising therefore to read that the Chief of the Mossad told the Knesset as recently as June 2010: “For the US, we have ceased to be an asset and become a burden.”

This position is seemingly informed by recent utterances in the corridors of power in the Pentagon and Whitehouse. General David Petraeus who is now installed as the military supremo replacing the outspoken General McChrystal is reported to have said that the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is endangering the lives of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As Uri Avnery, an Israeli journalist observes, it is not only the Israeli-American relationship that has undergone a fateful change, the standing of the US itself is changing for the worse, a bad omen indeed for the future of Israeli policy.

Now, a team of senior intelligence officers at US Central Command – CENTCOM, has questioned the current policy of isolating and marginalizing Hezbollah and Hamas. Known as the “Red Team”, the report opens with a quote from former US peace negotiator Aaron David Miller’s book, The Much Too Promised Land, which notes that both Hezbollah and Hamas “have emerged as serious political players respected on the streets, in Arab capitals, and throughout the region. Destroying them was never really an option. Ignoring them may not be either.”

This is a huge blow to Israel for it repudiates the Zionist entity’s publicly stated view that the two movements are incapable of change and must be confronted with force.

Indeed, following the Gaza flotilla raid, Israeli foreign ministry official Daniel Ayalon claimed that those on board the Mavi Marmara had ties to “agents of international terror, international Islam, Hamas, al Qaeda and others”. Mark Perry quotes a senior CENTCOM officer as saying that putting Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda in the same sentence as if they are all the same, “is just stupid”!

There cannot be any dispute that Israel’s image has been severely battered. Public opinion tilted in support of justice for Palestinian people will not be swayed by the multitude of lies deliberately fabricated by Israel and its army of apologists in many capitals of the world.

- Iqbal Jassat is chairperson of the Media Review Network (MRN), an advocacy group based in Pretoria, South Africa. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: www.mediareviewnet.com.

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