It has been fascinating to watch the international response to Israel’s pirate attack on the humanitarian flotilla headed to Gaza.   Not only has the international response, characterized by near universal condemnation of Israeli military action been noteworthy, but also the response within Israel.

The Israelis may have underestimated the willingness of most of the world to speak up on this issue.  This should come as no surprise.  Over the forty plus years of the Occupation of Palestinian territories, the Israelis have been able to get away with repeated violations of international law, and have had no price to pay for it.  Why, then, should they have expected anything different when they enforced their blockade of Gaza and carried out the killings?

Whether it was the fact that Turkish citizens (and one US citizen)  were killed, and Israel’s long-time ally—Turkey—found itself insulted, or whether it was the fact that everyone in the world knew that there was no military equipment in the flotilla, something seemed to snap in the international community.  In this sense, we have to wonder whether we are witnessing the equivalent of the Birmingham demonstrations  carried out by Civil Rights activists in 1963 that resulted in brutal repression, all of which was captured on television.  The outrage from across the USA was critical in reshaping discussions regarding both civil rights and the nature of Jim Crow segregation.

The world seemed to have stood at silent attention for a moment after the revelations concerning the attack on the flotilla.  That silence then broke and country after country—not to mention the social movements within various countries—joined in calling for an independent investigation of the killings as well as an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

The response of the world to the flotilla murders also mirrored another aspect of the response to Birmingham:  Jewish Israeli public opinion overwhelmingly seemed to identify nothing wrong with the attack. A common view was that Israel is being treated as a pariah state.  In the context of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, white opponents of equality and justice regularly reacted in anger when they were criticized by anyone outside of the South.  In fact, a siege mentality prevailed, and with it a sort of neo-Confederate mentality of ‘us’ against the world.  This was illustrated by the placement of the battle flag of the Confederate States of America on the flags of several Southern states.

The rightward shift in Israel, witnessed over the last several years, has brought with it an adamant arrogance in the face of growing international concerns regarding the denial of human rights for the Palestinian people.  The official Israeli response to the murders should not come as a surprise, but rather should bring with it disgust on the part of all those who support justice for the Palestinians.  This response stands as evidence that very little can be expected from the current Israeli regime in terms of sincere compromises until and unless they receive very significant pressure.

With the Israeli killings of participants in a humanitarian mission has come renewed discussion of, and interest in, the Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions Movement as a means to put the pressure on the Israelis to end the Occupation and afford full human rights, including but not limited to the right to self-determination, to the Palestinian people.   For the Black Freedom Movement and its struggles against Jim Crow segregation, it was not one action that tipped the scales, but it was a protracted struggle combined with a public demonstration of the utter brutality of the enemy that forced the hand of the Federal government to advance the deconstruction of the US version of apartheid.

One cannot assume that the brutal murders on the high seas of humanitarian allies of the Palestinian people will lead to an immediate end to the Israeli Occupation.  Yet each demonstration of their flagrant dismissal of international law and precedent leads greater numbers of reasonable people to one conclusion: Israel must be isolated and compelled to end its own apartheid oppression of the Palestinians.  The time for excuses and suggestions of extenuating circumstances simply do not pass the straight face test, let alone the test of international law.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum and co-author of, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice   (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.