This is not the behavior of a state that trusts itself and its ability to survive. It is not the behavior of a strong state that feels it can protect its borders, like other countries do. A state that enjoys confidence in all of these ways does not have its soldiers drop from aircraft onto the decks of ships in the middle of the sea, and kill passengers. A state that trusts itself is not scared by the passage of food and construction supplies to the border of a besieged neighbor. A state that is self-confident does not fight its enemies by starving and impoverishing them, and depriving them of the minimum means of existence. Israel says that it has been around for more than 60 years. However, in its wars with the Palestinians and the Arabs, it always behaves like an idiotic teenager who lashes out in all directions. Like a state searching for the legitimacy of its birth, and does not believe that it has attained it. The Arabs might have decided that Israel can survive in this region. And it might be that they have offered an initiative that would allow Israel to live in the region like a normal state, with normal relations with its neighbors, after meeting the conditions required by peace, and that states looking for a peaceful cover for their existence and survival carry out. However, the experience with Israel has proven that it is not one of these states. It is a state that lives with a complex over its unnatural establishment, or incestuous birth. No one is aware of this, and no one suffers from an inferiority complex except this child born in a false, or leased womb. Israel is aware that its birth is suspect, and that no plastic surgery can erase the memory of the moment it came into being, at the expense of another people. In their collective subconscious, Israelis live with this fact. They might not learn the history of the establishment of their state in their schools, but every day they face the constant question about their right to survival. Instead of searching for an answer to this, which would reduce the weight of this historical complex, Israel resorts to prolonging the occupation, and weapons of murder, and barbaric killing, to frighten its enemies and try to prolong its life. At the height of this barbaric killing, Israel only establishes higher and tougher walls of hatred around it. As with Pavlov's dog, Israel always repeats the same action, and error. Its enemies drag it into the trap of a confrontation, and it responds with more forceful and violent death and destruction. The murder it commits turns into a condemnation of Israel, and weapons that boost the strength of its enemies. Hizbullah kidnaps soldiers of Israel and the Jewish state destroys Lebanon. The result? Hizbullah becomes the strongest group, with control over the decision to confront Israel, in Lebanon. Rockets are fired from Gaza, and the Israeli army destroys Gaza. The entire world sympathizes with the besieged people of Gaza. The blockade becomes a political weapon in the hands of Hamas, which considers Israel an existential threat, and gives the movement more than any political program can. Turkish ships, for domestic reasons, carry food and supplies to the shores of Gaza. Israeli soldiers land on the passengers and kill some of them, and hold others. The entire world condemns Israel and supports the passengers of the ships. The question arises: which is more of a danger to Israel? Letting the ships go where they want, or confronting them in insane fashion that Israel did, and face the repercussions in the face of international criticism? The Israeli novelist Amos Oz, in an article he wrote to comment on the confrontation with the Freedom Flotilla, said, “For several decades now we have been able to wield force ourselves. Yet this power has, again and again, intoxicated us. Again and again we imagine that we can solve every problem we encounter with force.” He concludes: “Every attempt to use force not as a preventative, not in self-defense, but instead as a means of smashing problems and squashing ideas, will lead to more disasters – just like the one we brought on ourselves in international waters, opposite Gaza's shores.” There is another way to survive and see normal relations established between Israel and its neighbors. Are the Israelis aware of this, or are they wagering on the methods of Netanyahu and Lieberman, as the only way to protect their existence in this region?
