COMMENT The anatomy of power looks disturbingly similar, whether it is displayed in Malaysia or in the international waters off the beleaguered coast of Gaza.

Malaysia has a duty to condemn Israel’s serial history of committing crimes against humanity and of putting itself above international law.

NONE This latest atrocity, the killing of pro-Palestinian activists on a convoy of ships bearing humanitarian aid to Gaza, has been called a “bloody massacre” by Turkey’s Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan.

Bloody massacres are nothing new in Israel’s recent past. Israel has repeatedly invaded its neighbours Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, killing defenceless civilians. Israel has rained bombs and missiles on Syria and Lebanon. Israel’s ill-starred 1982 invasion of Lebanon led to the slaughter of thousands of Palestinian women, men and children in refugee camps, including the infamous butchery at Sabra and Shatila.

Our Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak has been cautious about condemning Israel’s latest contravention of international law, although the aid convoy was boarded by Israeli soldiers in international waters, 60km off the Gaza shore. A dozen Malaysian volunteers were among the 600 activists on board from Arab, European and Asian nations.

Passengers, including Arab-Israeli member of parliament Haneen Zuabi, have told the press the Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition without provocation from helicopters hovering over the ships.

NONE The eyewitnesses disputed Israel’s claims that the soldiers had fired in response to attacks by activists armed with knives and clubs and pistols grabbed from the soldiers.

This form of lawlessness and contempt for the universal rules of human conduct is common to authoritarian regimes the world over. Israel prides itself on being a democracy. But democracy encompasses far more than regular, free elections; it also requires the rule of law and respect for human rights.

Israel’s democracy imposes a form of apartheid, segregating its Jewish and Arab populations. It does not recognise freedom of expression or of assembly or employment for its Arab minority, who form 20 percent of its population.

This is despite the fact that its founding Declaration of Independence in 1948 insisted that the Jewish state would “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens irrespective of religion, race or sex”.

NONE Malaysia has seen examples of such lawless behaviour too. Former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad had threatened a “shoot on sight” policy against Vietnamese boat people adrift at sea, when he was deputy premier in 1979.

Mahathir and other Malaysian PMs have consistently shown themselves to be liberal, but only in the use of the Internal Security Act and other arms of the security apparatus to stifle dissent.

Any nation that practises institutionalised discrimination, like Israel, must pass and enforce laws that contradict the concept of natural justice. Ethnocentric ruling elites are forced to bare their teeth when confronted with the intrinsic contradictions of their political structure.

Mass arrests, intimidation, censorship, police brutality and propaganda in place of education, are inevitable components of the support services necessary to preserve any form of apartheid.

Attacking in ‘self-defence’

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea states that a vessel must be allowed passage unless it is suspected of transporting weapons or weapons of mass destruction or contraband.

Israel argues that its soldiers boarded the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ because it suspected the ships to be carrying weapons, “terrorists” and contraband.

Under the UN Convention, any force used in stopping ships must be ‘necessary and proportionate’.  Israeli forces say they were attacked and shot at, and then acted in self-defence. Israel alleges that the soldiers discovered knives, “bats” and other weapons, and that passengers had “links” to terrorist organisations such as Al-Qaeda.

Enforcement and military officials all over the world appear addicted to false claims that they were attacked first, using weapons that they discovered after opening fire. These claims remind Malaysians of local assaults in the name of ‘self-defence’.

azlan Malaysians recall the insistence of Selangor police chief Khalid Abu Bakar that Aminulrasyid Amzah, 15, shot to death in a car chase in April, had tried to ram policemen and had a parang (machete) in the car boot. These allegations were contradicted by an eyewitness and by the dead boy’s family.

A police force or army can only be reined in by a government that is accountable; one that respects human rights and the rule of law. Without such constraints, the police and armed forces will behave in the callous, violent fashion ingrained in most armed policemen and soldiers.

Crimes against humanity, from Gaza to the Democratic Republic of Congo, from Bangkok to Bogota, should never be attributed solely to the armed combatants. The responsibility lies mainly on the shoulders of the politicians behind these armed men, who have let them loose against civilian populations.

Covering up crimes

These same politicians resort to the crudest propaganda to provide a fig leaf for national shame.

Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak told the BBC: “We are not living in Western Europe. We would love to have neighbours like you have on the British Isles or other Western European countries.

“Unfortunately, we are living in a tough neighbourhood. In this tough neighbourhood, you cannot just act according to the rules as if you had a neighbour like Switzerland or Belgium.”

Israel’s attempts at covering up the killings, employing relativism and sophistry, will gain momentum in days to come. Its politicians began the first two days with tight control of information, keeping the detained pro-Palestinian activists away from the media, and releasing information in small drips, so that they could prepare their spin.

If all else fails, their propaganda machine will attack critics as ‘anti-Semitic’, as usual.

NONE Malaysia’s governing elite employs similar tactics of censorship, blacking out unfavourable news coverage and massaging the horrific stories in our midst - stories of rape of Penan schoolgirls in Sarawak and of deaths from untreated infections among undocumented migrants, for instance.

Unfortunately for the censors and their political masters, information in the age of the Internet is as hard to pin down and contain as free-flowing water. Most sordid details will come to light.

Malaysians can learn a great deal from Israel’s behaviour and these unjust killings off the shore of Gaza. We can learn to reject such high-handed behaviour in our own midst, and call for justice for Palestinians too.

The suffering of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, and in neighbouring countries like Lebanon and Jordan, are unlikely to end in the near future.

But the diplomatic stink raised by this “bloody massacre” may spur the rest of the world (Egypt and Turkey included) to attempt to ease Israel’s cruel blockade of Gaza.

KERUAH USIT is a human rights activist who also writes a weekly column, ‘Antidote’, in Malaysiakini .