Rogue State

You can be sure that this term -- which the US has long used to designate countries like Iran and North Korea -- is deserved by Israel today. Is there any other country around the world that calls itself a state and is under the responsibility of acting within the limits of international law and universally valid moral values, but which attacks a humanitarian aid convoy traveling in international waters with heavy weaponry and indiscriminately opens fire on civilians? Is there any similar immoral, unlawful and inhuman action directly conducted by Iran, which the Israeli lobby puppets call a “rogue state”? I personally do not remember North Korea undertaking similar violence, although it has been isolated from the international system for decades.

Of course, I am not trying to say that the Iranian or North Korean regimes are innocent or clean-handed. What I am trying to say is that this latest violent attack by Israel on about 600 humanitarian aid volunteers from 33 countries and of different religions, languages and ethnicities -- a clear act of piracy/banditry and an open violation of international law committed in international waters -- is unique in its ferocity. With its latest attack, Israel perpetrated a violence so great that no state or country around the world will or can excuse it.

The best designation Israel -- which sees itself as above or beyond the reach of international norms, conventions and laws and acts impudently and arrogantly as if it were a privileged member of the international community because of the unconditional support of the US -- deserves is now “rogue/vagabond state.” With a government lacking common sense and moderation at the helm, this state poses a colossal threat to world peace and stability. It is high time for the international community to raise it voice against Israel, a bandit state governed by a mentality that is capable of all sorts of insanity. Isn’t it time that Israel -- a country that does not accept any outside law and fails to comply with the simplest forms of human and moral values by attacking civilian and unarmed people including women, children and the elderly -- receives its due treatment from the international community?

Israel’s relentless aggression may be analyzed exhaustively in terms of international relations and regional balances of power. But before doing such a thing, Israel’s policies and actions -- which I can find no word other than terrorism to describe -- must be assessed from a moral perspective and condemned by the collective conscience of humanity. Consider a state that used terror as a primary tool for its establishment, via such organizations as Urgun and Haganah. Imagine that this state, founded upon terror, has categorically violated international rules and laws for 62 years. Further suppose that it is associated with wars, massacres, occupations, blood and tears. And add to this that with its expansionist policies it has pursued with dreams of a promised land, it has promised nothing but bloodshed, tears and sorrow not only to the people of the region but also to its own people. And that it has allocated considerable resources to armaments and weapons technology to convert its state, organized in the form of a bloody army, into a machine of war and death. And that it neither knows nor accepts any moral or legal rule in using this machine. Then tell me, for God’s sake, who else would you call a “rogue state”?

The reason we raise our voices so loudly today is that this is the first time we have directly experienced Israeli terrorism. But is the evil Israel committed restricted to attacking a civilian humanitarian aid convoy and slaughtering unarmed, innocent people? Is the cruelty that it has been imposing on Palestinians in their own homeland since 1948 less severe? Is the civilian carnage it perpetrated in Lebanon, which it occupies at will, more legal? Are the Sabra, Shatila and Qana massacres more humane? Is the all-out attack against Ramallah in 2002 or the inhumane embargo on Gaza that has been ongoing since 2006 more moral? If we are not supposed to call such a state -- which offers nothing but bloodshed and tears to its own citizens, its region and its environment -- a rogue state, who else will we call as such? Given the irrational and immoral aggressiveness of this state, which we can conclude is overwhelmed by a culture or mood of total insanity, what else should we talk of aside from the 150-200 nuclear warheads which this state owns and whose target we can never be sure about?

This state may be so furious as to attack the civilian humanitarian aid volunteers from 33 countries who rush to help 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza who have been trying to survive the poverty and sorrow inflicted on them by Israel for about three-and-a-half years, but it can be sure that it has launched itself headway into the greatest trouble in its issue-laden history. My expectation from the Turkish government and other countries is that they will fully apply the “law of retaliation” adopted by Israel against the banditry of this country. Of course, this does not include responding to Israel’s actions in kind by using unlawful or immoral violence as Israel would do. But this does not preclude us from retaliating via legal and moral methods.