I've been wanting to write something about the flotilla since it happened last week, but I wasn't sure what to say. It's not that I had no opinions on the topic--I was immediately saddened not only by the incident and the consequential deaths, but also by the overwhelmingly negative coverage Israel received in the aftershock.
It's not "cool" or "liberal" to like Israel right now. It seems that people are always looking for new reasons to hate Israel. They take the facts and manipulate them to reflect poorly on Israel, so they can root for the underdog and sleep better at night. But that's not what I want to write about.
I seriously doubt that the Israeli soldiers took the first shot, and I don't believe they became violent until they legitimately feared for their own safety. If you don't buy them not being flesh-hungry serial killers, then look at it rationally. Israel's not stupid. Massacring a bunch of peaceful humanitarians would be in no one's best interest.
I could regurgitate a bunch of news articles to back up my beliefs, but I'm not going to do that either.
The point I want to make I didn't realize until this weekend, when my boyfriend was lying in bed next to me on Saturday morning. We both had our computers open, and he was G-chatting with his best friend of 10 years who moved to Israel after college to join the army.
That's when I realized it wasn't Israel vs. the humanitarians. They were soldiers, they are people. Some of them might've been like Jeff's friend, who went to a Big Ten school in the U.S. before moving to defend the place they felt most at home. Most of them probably lived in Israel their whole lives.
But the media didn't portray them as people. They portrayed them as an entire country massacring a bunch of peace activists. In the media, the Israeli soldiers, in this incident and every other one people use to explain why Israel is evil, are not people. They are an entity, an ideal, a machine. They are easier to hate.
The truth is, I can tell you what I think happened, but I can't tell you what actually happened. I wasn't there. Maybe these particular Israeli soldiers actually were evil, and maybe they killed the activists for no reason. But I really, really doubt it.
But even if that were true, that would make the soldiers wrong, not the country, not Israel. If that were the case, it would not represent the standard in the Israeli army, which has peacefully intercepted and DELIVERED aid from ships to Gaza numerous times in the past. It would be a few bad apples. Not a bad country.
If it came out that the activists were actually violent anti-Semites, no one would dare suggest all Palestinian activists were evil and violent.
What happened was tragic, but regardless of what really happened, it's not a reason to hate. We should mourn for the individuals who died, not for a principle completely disconnected from the incident.
Photo: Jeff snapped this photo at the Pro-Palestinian flotilla protest at the White House on June 1. The man in this photo is carrying a Hizbollah flag, which is an Iranian backed terrorist group. Jeff asks, "Is this what peace looks like to the Palestinian movement?"
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