• From: The Australian
• June 05, 2010 12:00AM

FIVE days after Israel’s raid on Gaza-bound Turkish ships, two inescapable, but contradictory conclusions can be drawn. The first is that its blockade against Gaza is unsustainable. The second is that the blockade cannot be lifted – at least while the Hamas leadership in Gaza is committed to Israel’s destruction and has friends in Tehran ready to supply the arsenal.

Kevin Rudd’s solution to the conundrum on Tuesday was : “When it comes to a blockade against Gaza, preventing the supply of humanitarian aid, such a blockade should be removed.” Yes, Prime Minister. And then what? Compassionate Australians share Mr Rudd’s concern for the suffering of 1.3 million people behind closed borders on the Gaza Strip. But Hamas runs a rigid, ugly regime and its Islamist allies are a major threat to world peace.

From the time the flotilla’s leaders refused Israel’s offer to transfer the goods to Gaza, it was clear that the so-called humanitarian mission was a sham. The real objectives were to delegitimise Israel in the eyes of the world and break the blockade. But this is not feasible given the current state of play. A vessel intercepted by Israel last year was carrying 200 tonnes of Iranian arms bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The boats raided on Monday were run by the IHH, a relief organisation that ironically, was banned in Turkey after the 1999 earthquake for being fundamentalist, secretive and buying semi-automatic weapons from terror groups. In the 2001 Seattle trial of Ahmed Ressam, the would-be Millennium bomber, French counter-terrorism magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere testified that IHH had played an “important role” in Ressam’s plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Day 2000.

By week’s end the flotilla’s dubious supporters were also unmasked. The ABC’s Lateline, possibly in a misguided attempt to balance Monday night’s interview with Israel’s plausible Australian-born spokesman Mark Regev, sought an account of the Israeli operation from German politician and Palestinian activist Annette Groth, who was aboard one of the boats.

Groth is a member of the far-left Der Linke party, dominated by old East German socialists and dedicated to the downfall of capitalism. She made the unsubstantiated claim that Israel had doctored video evidence. But it is not Hamas’s morally confused shipmates who are the real threat to peace but their Iranian backers, whose nuclear ambitions are clear and whose President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wants Israel “wiped off the map”.

Israel’s military did the nation no favours with its clumsy operation. As in the July 2006 war in northern Israel and southern Lebanon, started by Hezbollah, heavily backed by Iran, it was the Israel’s military’s PR skills, not its fighting strength, that was found wanting. This is an unconventional war that is not all about military might. In order to weaken Iran’s pernicious influence, it is in Israel’s interests to pursue diplomatic ties more vigorously with Turkey, despite recent setbacks, and with also Syria, especially if Syrian can be persuaded to abandon its long-term alliance with Iran.

International outrage over the nine deaths on the flotilla is understandable. But the rest of the world must face reality. Middle East peace cannot be achieved while the Iranian threat, both its trafficking arms to terrorists and, most alarmingly, its growing nuclear strength, remains potent.