Israel misses the point and consequences of its actions in wake of flotilla outcry

Politics is never at its optimal when it reaches the "yes but whatever our side did, the other side was worse" stage.

Unfortunately, that's long been a recurring theme in the mire that is the Middle East. 

For the last two-and-a-half years, that has been a particularly cursed and complex theme, particularly in terms of the way the rest of the world has perceived events.

The undoubted horrors of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 were greeted with shock, anger and grief. But as the sheer scale of Israel's response in Gaza continued to grow — the scale of the killing, the extent of the destruction, the apparent targeting of aid workers and journalists — the moral "balance" was repeatedly challenged and rebalanced.

Defenders of the actions of the Israeli government and the Israeli Defence Force would insist that any criticism was blind to what Hamas had done.

In the past couple of weeks, there has been a new battleground of accusations and counter-accusations.

Protests outside the New York Times

Just as an Israeli investigation into the security failings of October 7 was released — and, with it, horrific reports of what happened to Israeli prisoners of Hamas — an opinion piece in the New York Times detailed equally horrific allegations about the treatment of Palestinian prisoners in the hands of Israel.

A storm of protest erupted over the New York Times piece, challenging the allegations it published. 

But as many pointed out at the time, the protests held outside the newspaper's offices in New York were also targeted at the fact the newspaper had run the story, not just the disturbing underlying allegations.

The fact that, on both sides, the allegations involved sordid accounts of gross sexual assault gave the stories a particularly horrific tone.

But as anyone who has seen pictures of Israeli hostages released from Gaza or those of Palestinian prisoners (like veteran journalist Ali al-Samoudi) knows, the maltreatment has been shocking in much more mundane ways, linked to beatings and starvation. 

And now, this week, the issue of the treatment of prisoners held by Israel has been on display after the IDF detained more than 400 members of an international flotilla seeking to take aid to Gaza.

In an age when the US has repeatedly blown up vessels off Venezuela, the legal niceties of detaining foreign citizens in international waters seems a bit petty but should always be noted.

As ANU international law expert Professor Don Rothwell notes, the IDF claims the interdiction was to enforce Israel's longstanding maritime blockade of Gaza, which in turn it says is a legitimate act of naval warfare during an armed conflict such as that of the US and Iran.

Along with many other countries, Australia now recognises Palestine as an international state, but since Israel doesn't recognise Palestine, its actions in Gaza aren't recognised as an international armed conflict between two states.

Therefore, Rothwell notes "any attempt to enforce the blockade off the coast of Cyprus has no legal basis under international law".

Rothwell points out that "for Australia, interference with the freedom of navigation has been a constant concern in the South China Sea, and more recently in the Strait of Hormuz".

"It should likewise be a cause for concern in the Mediterranean."

But freedom of navigation is one of those (rather important) arguments that's been lost in recent times.

What also seems lost, particularly in Israel, is the significance of its actions, as compared to the way its actions are seen.

National security minister sparks outrage

Far-right Israeli minister for national security Itamar Ben-Gvir released footage on Wednesday in which he is seen taunting activists from the Gaza flotilla intercepted by Israel, which immediately sparked an international outcry.

Dozens of activists can be seen being forced to kneel on the ground, face down, with their hands tied behind them, at an Ashdod port facility where they were being processed ahead of their likely deportation.

A female activist shouting "Free Palestine" is grabbed by the head and shoved to the ground by officers who drag her out of Ben-Gvir's way as he tours the facility.

Ben-Gvir is seen waving a large Israeli flag and shouting in Hebrew: "Welcome to Israel! We are in charge here!"

He is also heard urging guards at the facility "not [to] be bothered by their screams" as a woman can be heard crying out in the background.

It is not just that all this was captured on film that sparked the outrage, it is the fact that Ben-Gvir posted it himself and that, as national security minister, he is responsible for prisons.

Jaded Palestinian observers complained that it seemed the world was only interested in brutality towards prisoners when it was foreigners being treated like this, not Palestinians.

But the other disturbing aspect of this incident has been the reaction in Israeli politics.

There has been plenty of commentary in the Israeli media denouncing Ben-Gvir's actions, but the focus of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his foreign minister seemed to be on the perceptions it created rather than what had actually happened.

Netanyahu issued a rapid and rare rebuke, insisting that the way his national security minister "dealt with the activists … is not in line with Israel's values and norms", though he added that Israel has every right to prevent "Hamas terrorist supporters from entering our territorial waters and reaching Gaza".

Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Ben-Gvir had "caused harm to our state in this disgraceful display".

"You are not the face of Israel," he said in a social media post.

The domestic political front

It is now unofficial election season in Israel, with a push to dissolve the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, and go to the polls a little earlier than they are due to be held in October.

The assessment here is that this is to avoid going to the polls when they would coincide with memories of October 7, and reminders of the failings of the Israeli government and security forces that allowed that to happen.

The electioneering is now on in earnest, and the rhetoric is only going to get more extreme as the far right battles it out for an even greater say in the next parliament.

The problem though is that so much of the political debate, such as it is, is not focused on what Israel is doing — whether that is in regards to peace flotillas or Iran — as perceptions of what it is doing and how this may affect the rapidly diminishing support for Israel internationally, particularly in the United States.

For example, Naftali Bennett is a former prime minister of Israel. He recently announced he would join forces with the leader of the Opposition Yair Lapid (who also briefly served as prime minister) to jointly run in the upcoming elections to defeat Netanyahu and his Likud party.

In an Israel that has continued to move to the right, Lapid is often perceived as left-wing because he was the last prime minister to publicly support a two-state solution.

But not anymore. Bennett said at the launch of the new joint team that "we will safeguard the lands of our country and will not hand over a single centimetre to the enemy".

Bennett's lengthy response this week to the Ben-Gvir controversy this week was telling.

"This is how we will fix Israel's hasbara," he began in a post on social media.

Hasbara — the Hebrew word for "explaining" — is the complex communications operation run by Israel which extends well beyond public diplomacy to push Israel's message in the international community.

As an organisation, it now runs under the control of the prime minister's office and, since the war on Gaza, its budget is estimated to have jumped from around $15 million in 2023 to $700 million in 2026.

Much of the commentary in Israel about Ben-Gvir's actions goes to the damage he has done to the hasbara message.

"Everyone was talking today about the hasbara disaster caused by a failed minister who sold out Israel's security for likes on TikTok. And they are right," Neftali Bennett wrote.

"The Netanyahu-Ben-Gvir-Deri coalition has weakened Israel's international standing to an unprecedented low, endangering IDF soldiers abroad and arming our antisemitic enemies around the world.

"But condemnation is not enough. Instead of just talking about what not to do, it's time to talk about what to do."

Bennett went on to list what his new political force would do if it won office, including establishing "a powerful national hasbara authority", which would "set Israel's messaging strategy, coordinate between bodies, and ensure that the Israeli response is swift, unified, and professional".

That is, not change the underlying actions, just the public relations machine.

His comments seem to suggest that Israeli politics really doesn't get the point, which is that Israel probably needs to spend less time worrying about controlling the optics and more time considering the implications of its actions for its long-term international support.

Laura Tingle is the ABC's Global Affairs Editor.