The Jihad Flotilla, although amply exposed as a piece of jihadist provocation and not a “humanitarian” mission at all, continues to be used by Palestinian jihadists and their allies to try to stoke international outrage against Israel. The threatened arrest of Ehud Barak, like the earlier threatened arrest of Tzipi Livni, is the same motion on a grand scale as the suspension of the SIOA, FDI, and Atlas Shrugs Paypal accounts is on a small scale: an attempt to criminalize a political point of view, ruling it outside the bounds of polite society.
These attempts may well succeed in the short run, as the world seems to be zooming toward another bloody round of boot-on-the-face totalitarianism, and such periods always begin with the criminalization of the loyal opposition.
In any case, the worst part of this story is that Barak found the arrest threat credible enough to cause him to cancel his trip. In other words, he found it quite possible that the Eurabian dhimmi French authorities would indeed allow him to be arrested, if not arrest him themselves.
“Israel’s Barak calls off Paris visit amid threats,” from AP, June 13:
JERUSALEM – Israel’s defense minister is canceling a planned visit to Paris amid threats by pro-Palestinian groups to have him arrested there.
Ehud Barak was to dedicate a new Israeli booth at the Eurosatory arms fair in Paris, which opens this week. But his office announced Sunday that he would stay home while Israel forms a committee to investigate its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla.
Pro-Palestinian activists had threatened to try to have charges brought against him for his role in the raid, which killed nine Turkish activists at sea.
Activists have previously tried to arrest Barak and other Israeli officials in Europe under the principle of universal jurisdiction.
That principle allows the prosecution of suspected war criminals in countries that have no direct connection with the events.
But those countries have to be willing to play along.