As the tv networks here give unlimited airtime to its apologists, the message rolls out that Israel is permitted every illegal act in the lexicon of international law, from acts of violence against a civilian population (the people of Gaza, starved under permanent blockade) to piracy on the high seas and the lethal attacks by Israeli commandos on the relief flotilla. The guiding purpose in this tsunami of drivel is that the viewers should be brainwashed into thinking Israel somehow has the right and the duty to act at will as the mad-dog of the planet.
Israel regrets… But no! Israel doesn’t regret. It preens and boasts and demands approval – which it duly gets from its prime sponsor, the United States government, and most of the press. As former US senator Jim Abourezk remarked on this site last week "It's very much like the bully who, after punching someone smaller in the jaw, requires the victim to apologize for getting his face in the way of the bully's fist."
Two points need stressing. Some of the critical commentary suggests that Israel’s murderous onslaught on the Mavi Marmara represents a qualitative escalation in that nation’s brazen criminality. Scarcely. Brazen criminality coincided with the establishment of the state in 1948. Only last week I reminded CounterPunchers of the lethal onslaught on the USS Liberty in 1967 which killed 34 and wounded 173.
The attack on the Mavi Marmara was carefully planned. As Max Blumenthal reports on his website,
