The Gaza Flotilla Seen From Morocco

As in much of the world the intercepted Gaza-bound "Peace Flotilla" has also been in the news in Morocco the past few days.

The first time I heard about the event, I didn't really understand what was going on. As I was leaving the cafe in the morning, one of the waiters approached me and started talking to me quickly. All I could understand was the word "Israel". He kept motioning towards the TV, where Al-Jazeera news plays non-stop except when soccer games are on. He didn't seem happy, but that's about all I could gather.

Only when I returned home and read the news online did I realize what had happened. Israel had boarded a ship in international waters and killed a number of activists who were trying to break Israel's blockade of Gaza in order to deliver humanitarian supplies. The following coverage of the event from sources on three continents has been interesting.

Some American sources are reflexively pro-Israel to an extreme, and some American and European coverage was quite balanced. I suppose it goes without saying that Arab media is reflexively pro-Palestine. However, the coverage by Al-Jazeera has been in general quite good. They had reporters aboard the flotilla and were able to give a perspective other news organizations couldn't. Of course, on the other hand, they were also confused about the legality of boarding a ship trying to break a blockade in international waters.

Naturally, people who only view one source of media are convinced everyone else is misled. When I spoke with the same waiter a few days later, I explained that I didn't understand what he was referring to when we first spoke, but that since I had read much about the subject. His first question was a suspicious one: "But from American news?" I told him I read a little from a number of sources and he seemed slightly more satisfied.

The general perception here tends to be that American (and to a lesser extent European) media is controlled by Jews and gives a biased picture of the Middle East. Without getting into conspiracy theories, I will concede that, for whatever reason, you are much more likely to see scenes of Palestinian suffering in the Arab media than you are in the United States. And the lack of such stark imagery does have its effect. Most Americans in their support of the much persecuted Jews fail to realize the plight of the Palestinians.

In one of my classes, we were studying passive modal statements ("...should be done...", "...must be established...") So I asked my students to propose what should be done in response to Israel's raid. The responses were tepid at best. My Moroccan students, like much of the Arab world, are disgusted with the impotence of Arab governments and world deliberative bodies to do anything to relieve the suffering of Palestinians. So while they had a very strong moral outrage at the events, their answers lacked an earnest belief that anything they proposed could actually happen.

As is usual, I just let them speak, correcting their grammar errors. But at the end one student asked me what I thought. I hesitated at first, but then I explained my view. I pointed out that I thought Israel's response was disproportionate and politically counter-productive, but that the activists had attacked the Israeli soldiers--they were not Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.'s by any stretch of the imagination. I also tried to draw attention to the issue of the blockade itself. If you admit that Israel has a right to keep Hamas from getting any sort of building materials because they can be used for purposes of war, then Israel clearly can stop boats. That's what a blockade is all about. However, if the blockade is unjust (and it does keep an awful lot of things out of Gaza that Palestinians could use for non-military purposes), then breaking the blockade is morally permissible and then we can start talking about the way it should be done. My students didn't seem to agree. They were pretty sure anything the Israeli military did was unequivocally wrong. Eventually I had to just cut off the discussion and move on to a boring grammar exercise.

This event had personal ramifications for some Moroccans. One of the teachers at the center had a brother-in-law aboard another ship of the flotilla. A handful of other Moroccans were on board and were received back in Morocco later in the week with a hero's welcome.

On Thursday, a noisy march a few streets away disrupted my night class. The only other time I had heard such a din was after soccer games. I asked my students what was up and they told me it was a march in support of the Palestinians. I nodded my head and continued my regularly planned lesson.