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Tuesday, July 05, 2011

The ISM and Mahmoud Abbas agree: Stunts are meant to undermine Israel itself

Here is a video of Adam Shapiro, of the ISM and Free Gaza movement, speaking at Rutgers last year. In his speech he says explicitly that the flotilla is a tactic in a larger war there the goal is to undermine Israel altogether, where he wants to change the conflict from Israel versus the Palestinian Arabs into Israel versus the world -to internationalize the conflict:


Funny, because here was what Mahmoud Abbas said in the New York Times last month:

Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.
Shapiro puts the flotilla as just one tactic among many: protests within Israel, protests against the security fence, BDS and so forth. It is a stunt meant purely to pressure and delegitimize Israel.

Similarly, Abbas is saying that going to the UN is a stunt that is also meant to internationalize the conflict, to place the entire world against Israel. He says it a bit more cleverly but it is the same thing.

(h/t Akiva and CHA)