1.
Linda Grant has a piece here in which she compares the Gaza flotilla with the Exodus. If I understand it correctly, its main point is that legality or justifiability of the conduct of Britain and Israel in each case is largely irrelevant, what really matters is the broader public perception of what occurred and the images on which that perception is based.
2.
The images produced by events like those arising from events on the Mavi Marmara and the emotions aroused by them are indeed of real political importance. Who could deny that? However, that doesn’t take away from the duty of those interested in these questions to continue to argue, think and question the truthfulness of the images that are served up to them. No doubt there are many who now perceive the Mavi Marmara as being a sort of Palestinian Exodus but the absurdity of that comparison, in terms of the personal history and motives of those of those aboard the two vessels and the contemporary political and historical context, is very great. Those who joyously leap to make it (I don’t mean Grant) reveal either their ignorance or a thirst to psychologize Israelis as being condemned to act out their own earlier sufferings on the Palestinians. We are used to hearing Israelis compared to Nazis, now we may enjoy the novelty of seeing them compared with the soldiers of the British Empire.
3.
Close to the end of the piece Grant writes,
Perhaps, like the Exodus in 1947, the Gaza aid flotilla will be the tipping point in the long agony of the Palestinian people, when wavering public opinion finally turns decisively against Israel and the whole Zionist project of a national home for the Jews.
The bulk of politically aware liberal and progressive opinion in most Western countries, apart from the United States, is already clearly against Israel and it has been for a considerable time. The deaths on the Mavi Marmara are likely to energize these people and probably attract some of the previously indifferent to their ranks. However, though among the broader public, those who take little active interest in politics or international affairs, the deaths on the Mavi Marmara will have undoubtedly have some negative effect, there won’t be any decisive turning against Israel because, quite naturally, they were never turned in its favor in the first place, any more than they are in favor of or against Paraguay.
Another point to bear in mind is that the Zionist project of a national home for the Jews has, in spite of its innumerable errors and lacunae, reached a level of development and robustness sufficient for its future and security to depend to a much greater degree on itself than the opinions of third parties. Of course that brings risks of its own but the fact that about half of the world’s Jews are no more dependent on the good will of others for the continued exercise of their sovereignty than, say, the people of Morocco is something that all those in favor of the self determination of peoples should be happy about.
I’ve never read such utter twaddle as that written by Linda Grant (well, actually I have, quite a lot of it this week), someone whose opinion and writing I previously had some respect for.
All that was missing was “As a Jew”.
Linda Grant should stick to writing about cloths, shoes and fashion. I have never sensed any depth or genuine sophistication of thought in her. This analogy that she is making is utterly gratuitous and appears to be another attempt along a line of Jewish-Palestinian analogies intended to create a sort of equivalence between the two histories. I call it Holocaust-envy on the part of the Palestinians and their more obscene advocates. Thus Israel killing 1,200 Gazans in a war to prevent qassam attacks is a Holocaust, Rachel Corrie is Anne Frank, the blockade on the Gaza strip is a Warsaw ghetto or a downright concentration camp, and now, thanks to Linda, the Mavi Marmara is Exodus 47. It hardly matter what rationale she gives for the analogy. The rationale will be dumped and the analogy will remain in perpetuity.