Bonnie Margulis, a rabbi in Wisconsin, is on J Street’s rabbinic "cabinet." Well here she attacks John Nichols for writing that the people on the flotilla were humanitarian activists.
[Dennis] Kucinich mischaracterizes the people on the flotilla as being humanitarian activists, when, in reality, their sponsoring organization in Turkey is supported by Hamas, which the United States recognizes as a terrorist organization.
The fact that five out of the six ships that Israel commandeered surrendered peacefully shows that Israel’s intentions were to interdict and direct the ships to safe Israeli ports. Using knives, pipes and sticks, the sixth boat’s passengers attacked the soldiers who were attempting peacefully to commandeer the boat. They were not the “innocent civilians” that Kucinich calls them.
Here is Nichols piece. The back-and-forth is in Cap Times, a progressive paper in Madison. This is what has happened to many progressive Zionists, they are being dragged by their identification with a militant state into insensitivity and nuttiness.
Look at Lawrence of Cyberia’s pictures of the men killed. Five of them are over 40 years old. The average age is 38. None is in his 20s– the bold age, the soldier’s age. I can imagine these men resisting angrily–but plotting terror, this is crazy. Steve Walt echoed Peter Beinart a week or so back and said, OK where is the line for you progressive Zionists? What won’t you defend? (Thanks to Steve Horn, young, progressive, Jewish…)
