Last year, in the midst of the most vicious assault on Gaza since the occupation began, Seth Freedman used his (inexplicable) privileged position as a regular commentator on the Guardian’s online comment website to repeatedly apologise for the massacre and smear those who criticised it. As hundreds of civilians were slaughtered by Israeli warplanes, Freedman declared that Israel had no other choice but to use "the might of the Israeli air force" to "cut off the head of the hydra". Anyone who disagreed was simply "callous and cruel".
Despite the fact that Hamas had unilaterally adhered to a six month ceasefire that was broken by Israel, despite the fact that Hamas had agreed to a second, informal ‘lull’ just before the massacre began, despite the fact that Hamas accepts while Israel rejects a two-state solution to the conflict, and despite the fact that Hamas repeatedly offered to negotiate another ceasefire in the months and weeks before the assault, Freedman insisted that
"I struggle to see what option Israel's leaders had, other than to take the kind of action that they took this weekend".
Freedman wrote a total of six pieces during the massacre, a full four of which either defended Israel’s actions or attacked those who opposed them. It took him until January 16 – a day before Israel announced its unilateral ‘ceasefire’ – to acknowledge that opposition to the assault was "understandable, and acceptable" and to condemn the scale of the IDF’s brutality (without, needless to say, questioning Israel’s right to attack in the first place). Finally, on January 29, Freedman managed to squeeze out a single sentence expressing ‘contrition’ for his role in apologising for war crimes – in the context, unbelievably, of criticising other people for being over-zealous in defending Israel’s attack.
If Freedman’s moment of contrition appeared insincere even then, it should come as no surprise to discover that he’s at it again. In a column published today, Freedman defends Israel’s assault on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and attacks the peace activists it killed as "ultra-violent" "[c]lub-wielding" "activist aggressors" who launched a "vicious assault" on poor, innocent "boarding soldiers". It’s worth noting that Freedman does here at least recognise that the violence took place on the activists’ boat – a fact that doesn’t, however, trouble the rest of piece.
True to form, Freedman argues that the Israeli forces who aggressively hijacked a humanitarian convoy in international waters had "no choice" but to do so. To sustain this claim with respect to the Gaza massacre, Freedman ignored, as discussed above, the fact that Hamas had unilaterally adhered to a ceasefire that it had repeatedly offered to renew. To sustain the claim with respect to the attack on the flotilla, Freedman narrows his vision even further, managing, in a truly impressive feat of selective blindness, to almost entirely ignore the fact that the violence took place on the flotilla. No one, not even Freedman, has accused the activists of rappelling onto an IDF helicopter and bashing the pilot with metal pipes. And no one, not even the Israeli government, has alleged that the activists were in Israeli waters, or that they had any intention of entering them. So unless Freedman allocates to Israel the right to aggressively rappel onto and hijack any ship anywhere in the world, all his whining about the activists’ alleged attack on the soldiers once they had boarded (needless to say, Freedman regurgitates the official Israeli account of the fighting uncritically, ignoring the increasingly extensive eyewitness accounts testifying that Israeli forces fired unprovoked and continued firing even after the white flag had been raised) is so much hot air. It amounts to a complaint that the activists did not sit back and do nothing while they were aggressively attacked by a hostile military power. Diddums.
Even less convincing is his insistence that we treat Israel’s attack in isolation from its collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population. The reason why Israel attacked the flotilla was precisely in order to maintain the siege, which has been condemned almost universally as a "flagrant violation of international law" [.pdf], possibly amounting to a "crime against humanity" - except by Freedman, for whom it is merely "unpalatable and unfortunate" (contrast this language with the intensity of invective he levels against the flotilla activists, who, unlike Israel’s siege, have killed precisely no one). It is only by ignoring this that Freedman is able to argue that
"Israel made repeated efforts during recent weeks to assist the activists in their mission and avoid bloodshed"
by "repeatedly... [offering] to allow the aid in as long as the activists handed it over to the army to be inspected". This is deeply dishonest, for two reasons. First, Israel only offered to let in aid that met its regulations for what is ‘permitted’ to enter Gaza, and it is precisely those regulations that have reduced 80% of Gaza’s population to aid dependency and forced some two thirds of its population into food insecurity. Second, the flotilla’s "mission" was to break the siege, not to cooperate with it. Freedman’s argument amounts to condemning Rosa Parks for sitting down when a standing area had clearly been reserved for her. Israel has no right to dictate what goes in and out of Gaza, to decide what the population of Gaza is and isn’t entitled to, and to determine how many calories per day Palestinian children are permitted to consume. Presumably Freedman wouldn’t allocate to Iran the right to determine which items he has access to, to decide which constitute "necessities" to be grateful for and which constitute "luxuries" to be prohibited, and yet he freely grants this right to Israel over Gaza.
The rest of his piece rehearses the standard ‘liberal Zionist’ litany of rhetorical tricks - contriving a ludicrous symmetry between occupier and occupied; tossing off a brief pro forma acknowledgement that what happened was "tragic" (but, as he immediately explains, necessary and proper); claiming the Serious ‘moderate’ middle-ground by criticising two "extremes" (those opposed to collective punishment and those in favour); and so forth. Except...not quite. Reaction to Israel’s attack has been almost uniformly negative, even among ‘liberal Zionists’ – see, for instance, the responses of J Street, Americans for Peace Now, Ha’aretz and CRIF (described by Max Blumenthal as "France’s AIPAC"). Even stalwart apologist for Israel and former IDF Cpl. Jeffrey Goldberg responded to the massacre, at least initially, with more nuance than Freedman could muster. Freedman is virtually alone in his absurd defence of the killings – Cif’s resident ‘pro’-Israel "progressive" has placed himself to the right of even the EU and the US government, Israel’s two staunchest international backers.
No doubt, once the furore has died down, and the opportunity to use his position to support human rights instead of those who trample them has vanished, Freedman will again produce a cursory note of ‘contrition’ for his full-throated defence of murder. At which point he will resume his pose as a ‘moderate’, ‘critical’, ‘progressive’ supporter of Israel, until the next time Israel goes on a killing spree, when the mask will slip again.
Cross-posted at The Heathlander