The Risk Professional: Israel goes too far but the world is a toothless tiger

Israel commits murder on an almost daily basis. It illegally occupies the best land in the Palestinian Territories. It controls much of the water supply. It maintains a blockade of all air transport into the Palestinian territories. It prevents the delivery of medical and other essential supplies including building materials to put back together the results of its air strikes and ground attacks. It forces Palestinians to live in compounds and to go through extensive "security checks" when travelling within the Palestinian Territories. It kills those it deems hostile to Israel wherever they are in the world.

And so far, it has done all of these things with barely a whisper from most of the world's governments and - except for a resolution, which it ignores, condemning "extra-judicial killings" - i.e. execution without trial - the UN has largely let Israel do what it wants with impunity.

But this week's attacks on an aid convoy in international waters has at last produced international outrage. The United Nations has issued statements of hitherto unseen harshness.

At an emergency Security Council session on 31 May, Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs Oscar Fernandez-Taranco said that “bloodshed would have been avoided if repeated calls on Israel to end the counterproductive and unacceptable blockade of Gaza had been heeded.”

He spotlighted “the scale of unmet needs of Gaza’s civilian population,” underlining that “the blockade is unacceptable and counterproductive and must end.”

Yesterday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon condemned the violence in a second statement in two days.

And whilst the UN has carefully avoided the use of the word "piracy," it has used terms that define piracy: the Council issued a presidential statement in which it condemned the acts that led to deaths aboard the aid ships, calling for a “prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation." The 15-member body said that it “deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries resulting from the use of force during the Israeli military operation in international waters against the convoy sailing to Gaza.

Or, if not piracy, then the use of the term "Israeli military operation in international waters" hints at a more worrying definition - that the attack was an act of war on foreign flagged ships.

But Governments are wading in independently. Turkey, Lebanon and Malaysia have all complained that their citizens have been detained illegally and demanded their release. Israel will ignore them: after all, they are countries with large Muslim populations and Israel demonstrates only contempt towards their views.

But India is also complaining: it's media is awash with articles expressing outrage - and that doesn't happen if the Government is not at least tacitly behind it.

In Canada, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers has issued a strongly worded condemnation of the attacks, pointing out that they were much more than arrests of ships: the Israeli forces involved were brutal, killing, maiming and injuring dozens of people on board the ships.

But it is the Australian government that has implied the strongest criticism saying that Australians were taken in international waters, forced into Israeli waters and then coerced into signing statements saying they had infringed Israel's territory.

Words such as "kidnapped" come to mind. And, having seen others beaten to death or otherwise seriously harmed, few would refuse to sign whatever the Israeli forced put in front of them.

But, and here's the rub: Israel has done outrageous acts many times in the past. It simply ignores criticism.

The UN and other governments may snarl and snap but until they take real and serious action, there is no indication that Israel will change its policies including murder, piracy, and kidnapping.

There is already a system in place for that to happen: all it takes is for countries to sign up to the Arab League boycott of Israel. That will isolate Israel and force the USA to declare its hand : does it support the illegal actions of what is rapidly coming to represent the kind of behaviour that in others the USA declares indicators of a rogue state or does it, at last, bring it to heel.

There is, however, little chance of that happening and the USA, through its "Anti Boycott Office" will try to undermine the actions of any country that does impose sanctions in Israel by the simple expedient of fining its companies or banning them from the US market: it already does that for a number of companies that it considers have acted against the commercial interests of Israel.