My 2011 Gaza flotilla tweet: a clarification

The imperative for all of us who care about politics is not merely to have sound ideas, but to convey them soundly. Few meet either standard well, and that is simply the human condition. Yet the burden on me to that end is immeasurably more than that upon the average person: I write for a living, I communicate professionally and, debatably, I have some effect on policy and politics in my sphere. So when I fail, it tends to be noisily.

A sterling example came on 25 June 2011, when I posted this on Twitter:

"Dear IDF: If you end up shooting any Americans on the new Gaza flotilla – well, most Americans are cool with that. Including me."

I realise that this statement left a sizable number of people appalled that I, by their reading, urged the Israeli Defense Force to shoot Americans participating in the second incarnation of the Gaza flotilla.

I urged no such thing. I intended no such thing. But sufficient numbers believe I did, and in cases of widespread misapprehension of meaning, the fault always lies with the writer.

The Gaza flotilla of 2011 was a follow-up to the first one in 2010, in which a collection of activists sought to run the Israeli maritime blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Though their proclaimed intent was merely to facilitate movement of consumer goods by sea, those goods already circulate, albeit imperfectly, through Gaza's land borders with Israel and Egypt. The primary outcome would have been the opening of Gaza's port to the commerce of war: Hamas would have been able to resume uninspected seaborne shipments of arms and ammunition from Iran and elsewhere. (The most famous incident in this vein, the Karine A affair of 2002, was merely one of many.)

In this light, the Gaza flotillas sought to render aid to a known terrorist group – and, in my view, its participants were morally complicit in that. Moreover, in these circumstances, Israel was within its rights to prevent the breach of its blockade and to defend itself by force, if necessary, in so doing.

This wasn't simply my interpretation. Two days before my tweet, on 23 June, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the following in a press conference at the department of state:

"[W]e do not believe that the flotilla is a necessary or useful effort to try to assist the people of Gaza … [W]e think that it's not helpful for there to be flotillas that try to provoke actions by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves."

This was interpreted by pro-Palestinian activist Ali Abunimah as "seem[ing] to lay the ground – indeed almost provide a green light – for an Israeli military attack" on the Gaza flotilla, and he was likely correct. The unmistakable corollary of Secretary Clinton's statement was that any American citizens participating in the flotilla were on their own, and that the United States government would not intervene if they placed themselves in harm's way. In a letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder five days later, Texas Governor Rick Perry, then on the cusp of his presidential candidacy, went a step further, and urged that Americans participating in the flotilla be actively prosecuted.

If there is a definition of "mainstream" in America's partisan political life, it probably looks something like a position held from the highest levels of the Obama administration to the Office of the Governor of Texas. It is also worth noting that Americans historically take a dim view of their fellow citizens who render aid to their country's enemies – among whom most Americans would count Islamist terror groups like Hamas. The Obama administration's targeted killing policy has itself extended to US citizens allied with terrorists, as in Yemen.

So what I intended to convey, then, was exactly what Hillary Clinton, Rick Perry, and the broad sweep of American opinion historically affirms: that US citizens on the Gaza flotilla of 2011 were responsible for their own fate, and that Americans utterly out of sympathy with their de facto assistance to a terror group would not be moved if the worst befell them.

That is what I intended. It is not what I accomplished.

In the ensuing Twitter back-and-forth with multiple outraged interlocutors, I focused on defending the rational integrity of my case – without pausing to consider that it was badly marred by its lack of rhetorical integrity. In succeeding, to my mind, in the sphere of argument, I missed the point: which is to succeed in the sphere of communication. Winning a process victory means little if no one else is convinced. My approach was tailor-made for the Romney campaign, perhaps, but not for the real world.

Instead, the widespread impression has arisen that I actively urged the IDF to shoot Americans, that I welcomed their death, or that I hoped for that outcome. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I own that I am combative, aggressive, and direct, yes: often intentionally so. I have also lived a life that has attempted, if imperfectly, to render service to my fellow citizens, including by military service and participation in humanitarian aid projects. Above all, I have worked for policies and a society that I believe gives the most hope to the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized: a society of liberty, in the classical liberal sense, that now goes by the name of conservatism.

None of this is to claim I've lived a life of especial virtue. I haven't. But it is to affirm that any reading of my tweet of 25 June 2011 that holds that I applauded, encouraged, or welcomed the death of fellow human beings, is wrong, and out of step with my life and record.

Any such reading is also my fault.

I do not apologize for my views or my ideology. We must walk in the light we are given as best we may. But for giving the impression that I welcome killing, I do apologize. I was quick, intemperate, and too clever-by-half. I failed as a writer. And that is not the fault of my readers, but of myself.