How the Flotilla Helps Hamas
Chrisopher Hitchens, in a July 4 piece on Slate linked to on Tuesday by J.J. Goldberg, almost got it almost right.
“It seems safe and fair to say that the flotilla and its leadership work in reasonably close harmony with Hamas, which constitutes the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood,” he wrote.
It’s unclear if Hitchens, by “in reasonably close harmony,” meant to suggest that the flotilla activists are in actual collaboration with the Islamist organization that governs Gaza, or just that they are self-consciously in sympathy with it. Whichever it is, the claim is large, and unsubstantiated. Worse, it distracts from a more important truth.
Whether those aboard the flotilla are working with, or have had any communication with Hamas, doesn’t matter. Whether they believe in Hamas’s Islamist ideology and declared mission to destroy Israel, doesn’t matter. Either way, their actions support Hamas.
As Ethan Bronner pointed out in the July 2 New York Times, and as has been proclaimed loudly and often by Israeli government officials, the flotilla is not really a humanitarian mission, as it is not bringing Gaza any supplies that it actually needs. Even if it were, it could bring them in over land, including through the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt.
Rather, the flotilla serves a different, specifically political end. It is an effort to defy Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, and its message is that Palestinians — not Israel — should control coastal access to the territory. That sounds well and good, and there is little doubt that the lives of many Palestinians would be improved were it the case. The problem is, which Palestinians would do the controlling? The beleaguered citizens of Gaza whom the flotilla supposedly supports? Or Hamas, who rules them?
Of course, it is the latter that ultimately wields power. And with Hamas-controlled sea access comes weapons smuggling and further chapters in the organization’s war against Israel. Alice Walker and co. may not think they are supporting Hamas’s call for the destruction of Israel or endorsing its vile ideology, but that is what their actions imply, regardless of their intent. No wonder that Israel takes umbrage.
The entire discussion may be moot if the flotilla is never going to get to Gaza anyway. But in the moral morass of Middle Eastern politics, the flotilla is a particularly glaring example of slippery thinking, with its participants sliding down on the wrong side.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO