Wow: Leslie Gelb at the Daily Beast says Israel was right to storm the ship in international waters. And I’m told that AIPAC is circulating Gelb’s article! He’s the Council on Foreign Relations eminence who doesn’t believe in the Israel lobby, who wrote a dispositive review on the subject for the NYTimes when Walt and Mearsheimer published their book.
His two-wrongs-make-it-right argument:
Well, where was all that international outrage and demand for explanations and retribution when the North Koreans sunk a South Korean ship? Where was it when the Gazans attacked Israel? Where, when Afghan men flogged their women for not wearing veils?
Matt Duss tweets it: Shorter Les Gelb: "Bull Connor had every right to turn the dogs and fire hoses on those ‘demonstrators.’"
Here’s a real person writing, Israeli David Grossman in the Guardian:
Above all, this insane operation shows how far Israel has declined. There is no need to overstate this claim. Anyone with eyes to see understands and feels it. Already there are those here who seek to spin the natural and justified sense of Israeli guilt into a strident assertion that the whole world is to blame. Our shame, however, will be harder to live with.
