Israel has said that the Freedom Flotilla, a maritime convoy carrying 10,000 tons of much-needed aid for the destitute population of Gaza and around 750 international activists protesting Israel’s siege of the territory, is “a provocation intended to delegitimize Israel.” If that were a just characterization, then the Flotilla would be unnessecary; it seems that Israel is doing a great job of delegitimizing itself.

On Monday, May 31st 2010, at around 4 o’clock in the morning, in international waters some 40 miles off the Israeli coast, elite IDF troops stormed the ships of the Flotilla and took the lives of 10-20 international peace activists. Israel says that the activists attacked its soldiers with iron bars and knives and attempted to snatch firearms from the soldiers, and that the troops fired in self-defense.

Even if Israel’s claim is true — which, we must remember, might or might not be the case — and a handful of civilian activists on board the aid ship resisted the troops boarding their vessels, can that be a justification to open fire on board the ship? Was there no other solution?

Quite apart from the option of retreating and disabling the ship’s rudder, opening fire was an extreme overreaction. Even Israeli soldiers who are not destined for combat roles receive martial arts training for circumstances such as the one that occured on board the MV Mavi Marmara; the troops who boarded the ship were not secretaries and supply offcers; they were Marine commandos of Shayetet 13 (S’13), one of the most elite units in the Israeli military. S’13 candidates undergo incredibly grueling and advanced training in marine, land, and airborne warfare, making them (according to Israel) one of the best Special Forces units in the world. Surely they could defend themselves against a bunch of angry peaceniks without firing their guns.

The Israeli military has become accustomed to responding disproportionately. From last year’s brutal assault on Gaza, to the enormous destruction and death it inflicted on Lebanon in 2006, to the ongoing cruel siege of Gaza, and even back to the 1967 war, deterrence through the use of overwhelming force is an established Israeli doctrine. The increasing use of this doctrine on civilian rather than military targets shows the moral condition of that country, and the short and selective memory of Zionist Jews.

It seems that Israel somehow cannot stop mimicking and repeating the crimes committed against Jews in our long history of persecution and displacement. Through the siege of Gaza Israel has created a grand-scale copy of the WWII European Ghettos, complete with a destroyed infrastructure and a starving population. Its attack on the Freedom Flotilla — which was trying to protest and break that siege — mirrors one of the most important foundational stories of the Israeli State: the story of Exodus 1947, a ship that carried more than 4,500 Holocaust survivors from France to British Mandate Palestine. Like the Israelis, the British Navy stopped the ship from reaching the shore and unloading its desparate cargo. Despite fierce resistance by the four and a half thousand men, women, and children on board, only three people were killed when the British took over the ship.

The price Israel pays for its sins is that is that by sinning it sows the seeds of its own destruction. Every time it commits a fresh atrocity it loses friends and gains enemies. Every time it maims, starves, displaces, and kills, it destroys what shred of legitimacy it might once have had as a haven for the tattered remains of European Jewry. By its brutality and cruelty it has already destroyed the goodwill and remorse felt by the world towards the Jews after World War II.

For those of us who are Jews, Israel has not made the world a safer place. For all of us who are human, Israel is a moral abomination that must be stopped.

Now is the time to protest not only the pain and death that was inflicted upon international activists last night, but also the death and pain that has been inflicted with an increasing intensity upon the Palestinians for the last 80 years. Now is the time to isolate Israel and boycott Israel’s goods and sports teams, and to condemn and prosecute its leaders — but also to welcome its dissidents and scientists, and to reach out to its people, who are beleaguered not by the Palestinians but by the insanity of Zionism. Together, we might just be able to bring an end to this tragic chapter in the History of the world.

Correction: In the original post I wrote that there were almost a thousand refugees on Exodus 1947; in fact there were 4,515 refugees on board the ship. I also wrote that no-one was killed. Three people were in fact killed during the takeover.