Sen. McCain Blames Obama's Policy On Settlements For Attack on Flotilla

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) appeared on FOX News last night to defend Israeli's illegal attack on a Turkish-flagged vessel bound for Gaza.  Amazingly, McCain blamed the incident on President Obama's opposition to the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory.

McCain: This is another step in the chain of unfortunate events beginning with President Obama's insistence that there be a freeze as a precondition for peace talks, a freeze on settlements in Jerusalem.  Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, not a settlement.

McCain, echoing the Israeli government, said that if the vessels were truly interested in delivering humanitarian aid, they could have done so by taking the boats to the Israel port of Ashdod.  Of course, that's pure fiction.  As The Economist highlighted yesterday, Israel's blockade against Gaza includes a prohibition against things such as nutmeg, goats, newspapers, canned fruit, fabric for clothing and even musical instruments.  Furthermore, Israel prohibits the importation of cement, making the task of rebuilding Gaza's war-ravaged infrastructure nearly impossible.

Worse, as the Telegraph notes, "The blockade prevents Gaza from exporting any goods, putting a crippling squeeze on the local economy."  It's the sort of result that the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's Martin Kramer advocated several months ago, when he argued that the blockade was an effective population control tool.  As Dov Weisglass, an advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it in 2006, the idea behind a blockade is to "put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger."