This May, Israel handed its most vocal detractors an unexpected present, gift-wrapped and served on a silver platter. On May 31, Israeli soldiers stormed the decks of the Mavi Marmara, a ship carrying humanitarian aid and 60 activists who hoped to deliver their cargo to the Gazan people isolated by Israel's ongoing two-year naval blockade of Gaza. In the ensuing clash, nine passengers were killed, and Israel's credibility as a liberal, modern democracy was shattered. Although video footage shows passengers beating Israeli soldiers with pipes as the soldiers boarded the ship, the news that captured the world's attention was the deaths of nine unarmed activists at the hands of Israeli soldiers. Exactly what happened on the Mavi Marmara will probably never be known, but the incident has become an excuse to demonize Israel by recasting the Israel-Palestinian conflict as battle between a brutal Israeli occupier and a helpless minority population.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is infamous for its length, ferocity and complexity. Despite its high profile, however, it has rarely been an issue that provoked mainstream Americans to take sides. Amid claims, counter-claims, suicide bombings and overwhelming military retaliation, it has been hard to sort out who exactly is the bad guy in Israel. In the absence of a strong narrative with an obvious aggressor and a pitiable victim, Americans have been far more likely to stand back and scratch their heads, puzzled by the intractable conflict.
With the raid on the Mavi Marmara, however, Israel has finally presented the world a bad guy. Its fiercest critics have seized the opportunity to portray the incident as business as usual for Israel, and the overt brutality of the raid lends credence to the narrative these detractors have been peddling for decades. In this newly popular view of the conflict, Israel is an outlaw state of North Korean ilk, with a nuclear arsenal it will not admit to having and a military it relishes deploying in defiance of international opinion. It is also portrayed as a virulently racist nation intent on pursuing Apartheid-style policies against helpless, oppressed Palestinians.
With the bad guy and the oppressed population identified, all sense of moral ambiguity has been removed. Protests have commenced with righteous indignation. Since the Mavi Marmara tragedy, this protest movement has coalesced around blockade-running efforts. An American group calling itself US Boat to Gaza is trying to raise $370,000 to launch another ship loaded with supplies and activists. The group's website calls on Hollywood celebrities such as Uma Thurman to support Palestine with generous donations. The Free Palestine Movement is thus quickly taking on the characteristics of the celebrity cause du jour.
As successfully as hard-line critics of Israel have used the Mavi Marmara to shift the narrative, however, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not and never will be a cause like AIDS or African genocide, with a black-and-white morality that lends itself to slogans and benefit concerts. With AIDS, genocide and other causes popular among celebrities, the enemy is clear, the fight is a moral imperative and the solution is to throw money and influence in the proper directions.
Simplifying one of the world's most complex land disputes into one of these straightforward dramas is certainly good PR for those who claim the mantle of the victim. To someone with no context for the Mavi Marmara deaths, Israel probably does look like a cruel, oppressive state deserving international censure. This single tragedy, however, does little to represent the reality of life in modern-day Israel, and it ignores thousands of actions some good, some inhumane that have been committed by both sides. One must not forget that Gaza's democratically elected government, Hamas, has called for the destruction of the Jewish state and that prior to Israel's blockade of Gaza, Hamas routinely fired rockets into southern Israel, killing innocent Israeli citizens.
There are no simple answers in Israel, and very few simple facts. Using a tragedy like the Mavi Marmara to define good and evil in the conflict, however, is unhelpful at best, and dangerous at worst. Solutions for Israel are frustratingly elusive, but one thing is for sure the last thing Israelis and Palestinians need right now is for American celebrities to hold a Free Palestine fundraiser.
