What will the nations think?’

International relations is not a high-school popularity contest. For Israel, it is a matter of survival.


Michael Freund
Opinion/JPost
09 June '10

Over the last week, in the aftermath of the Gaza flotilla incident, a scenario that harks back to our distant past began playing itself out. Mustering all the atavism at their disposal, various pundits and commentators took to the airwaves and the opinion pages, wringing their hands and wracking their brains as they tried to figure out just how we can maybe, possibly, hopefully, get the world to like us again.

Tossing aside any pretense of rationally assessing the country’s strategic or national security interests, this chorus of characters instead sought to convince the public that our overriding policy consideration must be what others might say about us.

Some, such as former Meretz minister Ran Cohen, writing on Ynet, argued that the IDF needs to lift the naval blockade of Gaza, even though this would effectively allow an unrestricted flow of weapons to terrorists. Israel, Cohen asserted, simply has no choice, because otherwise “the world will end up endorsing Hamas.”

Huh?

Others, such as Ze’ev Segal of Haaretz, practically pleaded with the government to establish a high-level committee of inquiry, with international observers, to investigate the flotilla affair. After all, Segal concluded, “It should be obvious to the prime minister and his advisers that the world will not be against us if we take real action to investigate what happened.”

Yeah, sure.

I don’t know about you, but all this pitiful pandering is like something straight out of a shtetl soap opera. It is as if we have reverted back to the days when Jewish public policy was dictated first and foremost by the age-old lament: “What will the goyim think?”

INDEED, THE most extreme and shocking example of the return of this mentality was on display on Army Radio.

I could hardly believe my ears when the host of a popular late-morning program actually toyed with the idea that in terms of Israel’s image, it might have been better had the commandos, rather than the socalled “Turkish “peace activists,” been killed aboard the Gaza flotilla. Does he really think that the life of even one Jewish soldier is worth a slightly less critical headline on CNN?

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.