A fully pre-meditated international crime of genocide has been taking place during the last 62 years in the heart of the Arab World. The victims are the Palestinian people especially those in the Gaza Strip. The assassin is the worst ever terrorist group deceptively called the Israeli Defense Forces under the leadership of the theocratically most racist "god’s chosen" deceitfully self-proclaimed "democratic Jewish-only" Israel. Israel had been created, financed, armed, and politically protected by, mainly, British and American rapture-vision-obsessed Talmudist power elites consisting of profit-seeking financiers and military-industrial complex.
In December 2008 this Israeli Terrorist Forces added another war crime to its long list of war crimes against the Palestinians since 1948. One more time the international political community had become an accomplice to one more Israeli war crime either by being a passive silent witness or by becoming an active participant and protector of Israeli war criminals. One more international war crime had been perpetrated against the Palestinians. It is an international crime since multi political regimes; Israeli, American, European and even Arab governments, had joined in this crime that is STILL GOING ON up to this very minute.
For almost the last three years Israel had subjected Gaza to an illegal economic siege, which in itself constitutes a crime against humanity. Israel had, and still is, preventing the entry into Gaza of vital life sustaining products such as food stuff, fuel, medicine and needed medical equipment, water purification equipment and many building materials. This is a genocidal crime using hunger and thirst as weapons.
Starting late December of 2008 and for continuous 22 days Israeli terrorist army had perpetrated a genocidal war crime against Gaza Palestinians. The Israeli army, known to be the fourth powerful army in the world, attacked unarmed civilian Palestinians of Gaza comprising mostly of children, women, and old people. There was no regular army in Gaza to face the well equipped, well trained to murder Israeli army. Only few male civilians, who took it on themselves to carry the light arms they could obtain to resist the Israeli war criminals in order to protect their own families.
The Israeli military radio station announced that half of the Israeli air force had conducted 2500 air sorties dropping a total of 1,000,000 KG of explosives on the civilian families of Gaza. This is not counting the shells fired by the artillery and tanks. They had used high precision GPS-guided bombs to destroy vital locations such as the UN food warehouse and schools, government buildings, hospitals and medical clinics, religious buildings and civilian institutions.
From his observation of the video taped explosions in Gaza, the British weapons expert Dy Williams concluded that the Israeli army had used DIME bombs to guarantee murder of victims, Phosphorous bombs producing 900 centigrade degrees of heat, and DU bombs producing 5,000 centigrade degrees of heat, that is equal to the heat of the sun surface.
The Israeli soldiers, themselves, had admitted and boasted to "Breaking The Silence" organization of committing war crimes in Gaza. These included, among many, the deliberate murder of civilians including women and children, using civilians as human shields, shelling homes after hording groups of civilians inside, destroying and vandalizing properties and civilian homes, and writing hate and racial graffiti on walls.
Israeli criminal leaders were not satisfied with mere destruction of Gaza infrastructures, contaminating agricultural land and water, and murdering some 1500 Palestinians. They had carefully chosen the most lethal weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that will cause the death of Palestinians, who survived the attack, and the death of their future born generations. Besides their devastating environmental contamination effects the Israeli bombs were found to have long lasting reproductive toxic, carcinogenic, genotoxic, fetotoxic and pathogenic effects on humans.
A study titled "Craters Gaza 2006/09 and respectively WP Bomb Gaza 2009" published on www.newweapons.org was done by Prof. Mario Barbieri CNR, Rome, Prof. Maurizio Barbieri, University of Rome, and Prof. Paola Manduca, University of Genova. They analyzed dirt samples from four bomb craters in Gaza, and residual components of spent Israeli bombs. Their analyses found unusual concentrations of Molybdenum (male sperm toxicant), copper, nickel, cadmium and Mercury (carcinogenics), Tungsten (genotoxic and fetotoxic), Zinc and Manganese (carcinogenic and fetotoxic) Aluminium (fetotoxic and pathogen affecting nervous system and kidneys), and Cobalt (DNA repair inhibitor and mutagenic).
Even now, after a year of the Israeli barbaric war crimes against Gaza, the Israeli air force bombards life vital centers, while the Israeli army use bulldozers to raze fertile farm lands, destroy crops, and shoot farmers. The Israeli attack boats have become worse than the Somali pirates. They attack and sink Palestinian fishing boats. They fire at, kidnap, and confiscate international humanitarian aid materials loaded on boats of "Free Gaza" organizations.
In a blatant violating of all international laws and a disdain to all humanitarian appeals the terrorist Israeli state had severely tightened its military siege against the Gaza Strip after the end of its last onslaught in January 2009. Palestinians in Gaza are living without clean drinking water, bare minimum food, without electricity, and without the necessary medical supplies. This is a real holocaust. A holocaust is the premeditated plan to exterminate masses of people (such as the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza), whether through gassing, incendiary phosphorous, DU and WMD bombs, hunger and thirst, or any other means leading to mass death.
Instead of coming to the aid of Palestinians the UN reverted to its old tactic of blaming the Palestinian victims and Ban KI-moon requesting a permanent cease fire. In its meeting the UN had totally ignored the Palestinian elected Hamas government; a major part of this conflict. Rather it listened to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who humiliatingly begged the UN for help, promising to do "everything" to secure peace. In an indirect way he blamed Hamas government and did not even criticize Israel’s aggression.
The UNSC issued Resolution 1860 that ignored realities of Israeli genocide of Palestinians, exonerated the Israeli terrorists, blamed the Palestinian victims (as usual) and equated them with the Israeli terrorist army. It stressed the urgency of and called for an immediate durable ceasefire leading to full withdrawal of Israeli forces. It called for efforts to prevent alleged illicit trafficking of arms into Gaza (but not the sale of arms to Israel). Thus denying the Palestinians any means of defending their lives against terrorist Israel. It misrepresented the conflict as a humanitarian crisis by calling the international community to provide humanitarian aid to alleviate the suffering of Gazans. This is not a humanitarian crisis; an Israeli occupation. It is a political conflict with grave humanitarian consequences. This is a genocidal holocaust of 1.5 Palestinians through thirst, starvation and use of WMD. THIS IS BLATANT NAKED WAR CRIMES.
Ban Ki-moon was sent to visit Gaza after the Israeli onslaught. He cared only to check the bombed UN warehouse and schools but not the civilian sufferings. He cared more about buildings than humans. He later expressed his "pleasure" that Israeli leaders had agreed to meet with UN representatives to discuss precautions that further "accidentalbombing" of UN facilities could be avoided. Thus meeting with Israeli war criminals has become a UN pleasure. He stated, further, that he would close any investigation into Israel’s war crimes.
Whatever Israel bombs and destroys Western donors volunteer to pay for. These donor countries pledged $4.5 Billion for Gaza reconstruction on the condition that such money is paid to Abbas’ Palestinian Authority and not Hamas. After a whole year of the onslaught, Gaza Palestinians had never received one cent of that money, and no reconstruction had even started. Most of the money had gone into the private pockets of Abbas’ gang and to his security forces.
After the failure of Israeli siege of Gaza and its onslaught on the Strip to destroy the democratically elected Hamas government The Western countries stepped in to produce harsher measures. In February 2009 experts from nine Western countries (US, UK, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Norway) met in Copenhagen to discuss ways of combating alleged weapons smuggling into Gaza. Their main concentration was to use Egypt as a land front to further tighten the siege against Gaza, specifically to target the underground tunnels Gazans use to smuggle in food stuff, goods, and fuel. They also decided to send NATO warships into the Mediterranean, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf to intercept alleged weapon smuggling from Iran to Gaza.
At the end of January 2009 French President Nicolas Sarkozy sent a frigate with helicopters to the waters off Gaza to combat arms smuggling into Palestinian territories. He ordered his Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner to coordinate closely with the US and EU to come up with more effective ways to fight arms smuggling on land and sea. Sarkozy said: "We have pledged to help Israel and Egypt with all the technical, military, naval and diplomatic ways to help end the smuggling of weapons into Gaza."
British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, issued an order to deploy the British Navy to the region to help fight weapons smuggling. "We’ll send Royal Navy to help fight weapon smuggling" He stated courageously. Latest British scandal came this month when its Foreign Office Minister Ivan Lewis said that UK is urgently looking into reforming its laws to protect Israeli war criminals, such as Tzibi Levni, from being arrested.
Germany sent end of January border police exports and equipment to detect and destroy tunnels in Gaza Strip. German Deputy Interior Minister, August Hanning, claimed that Egypt had requested the detection equipment and the technical skills.
The newly elected American President at the time Barak Obama had also sent American vessels into the region to board all suspected vessels of smuggling weapons. He also had asked the Gulf States, especially Saudi Arabia, to help combat arms smuggling. The US had sent surveillance cameras and underground sound sensors to Egypt to be installed on the border with Gaza. Recently the US Army Corps of Engineers had constructed treated steel plates and is helping Egypt install them as an underground wall on the Gaza border to prevent tunnel digging.
While denying Palestinians acquire any arms for self defense the US and EU member states are major arms exporters to Israel. According to figures from Brussels the European Union member states authorized the export of €200 million in arms exports to Israel in 2007, with France far and away the Israel's biggest European weapons supplier. According to the EU's 2008 report on arms export licenses, published in December for the 2007 calendar year and consolidating the accounts that member states must annually submit, 18 member states authorized a total of 1,018 such licenses to Israel worth €199,409,348.
The US is the largest arms exporter to Israel. Successive American Administration had sold Israel the latest and most technologically and most devastating weapons. According to Amnesty International the US had provided Israel with $8.3 Billion worth or weapons between 2004 and 2007. In 2002 the US granted Israel $21 Billion worth in military aid. Israel’s 2006 war against Lebanon and its 2008/09 war against Gaza were carried using American weapons. Still Obama’s administration had delivered late last January 14,000 tons of weapons to Israel delivered by the German cargo ship, Wehr Elbe, to Israeli port of Ashdod. Recently, peace prize winner, President Obama has signed off $2.775 Billion in further defense aid for Israel, a part of the $30 Billion over 10 years. Last Monday 12/21 Obama has approved a defense spending bill that includes $2.2 Million in funds for Israel’s missile defense program, more than double what was approved last year. All this while American economy is collapsing, housing crisis is exacerbating, and unemployment rate is rising. It seems for Obama administration the Israeli citizen is more important than the American tax payer. Also refer to my article "Arming Terrorist Israel".
EU and US don’t mind breaking their own laws for the sake of arming terrorist Israel. Under Criterion 2 of the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports, Member States are supposed to "deny an export license if there is a clear risk that the proposed export might be used for internal repression, or be used in the commission of serious violations of international humanitarian laws". Israel is proved to commit both offenses.
The US breaks three of its own arms export laws; US Arms Export Control Act (P.L. 80-829), Foreign Assistance Act (P.L. 97-195), and the Leahy Law (Foreign Ops Appropriation Act).
With such extraordinary consorted international efforts and the use of such amassed technical and military powers one would imagine that Israel, EU and US are fighting a war against a great global enemy not impoverished and starved civilians trying to survive on a small and narrow war-scorched strip of land. The reality is that this international power is fighting the resisting spirit of these people against colonial occupation. They are afraid that such spirit may spread over and impede their own occupation in the region. To destroy this spirit these Western governments are willing to unconditionally support terrorist Israel financially, militarily and politically, on the expense of their citizens tax payers despite their own economic crises and joblessness.
The worst accomplices in this international crime are the Arab governmental regimes, who are supposed to protect their Palestinian brothers from such a holocaust. Rather than united in one nation, one government, one military, and one economy Arab leaders had, instead, asserted the division of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Thus they keep themselves weak and vulnerable to foreign occupation, interference and control that can be overtly and covertly seen in almost every Arab state. The Arab League is just a tool to keep the leaders in a chaotic disagreement unable to make any national decision. For the last 61 years they have watched Palestinian land gradually gobbled by the Zionist occupation and had not taken any significant action to free Palestine. Rather they spend their Billion oil money in buying obsolete weapons to rust in the desert. Finally they stopped financing Palestine freedom fighters and surrendered the penniless Palestinian Authority to the merciless manipulation of the pro-Israeli Western donor countries. While some had completely withdrawn from the Arab/Israeli conflict, others like Jordanian and Egyptian regimes had actively contributed to the suppression of all forms of Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation.
During the Israeli 22 days onslaught on Gaza Arab leaders kept coming up with unreasonable excuses for not convening an urgent summit meeting. When they finally did meet, they, as usual, agreed to disagree on how to deal with the Israeli aggression. They finally begged the UN to interfere. Such delay gave Israelis longer time to murder more Palestinians and destroy more homes.
The Arab League, later on, issued a resolution calling for breaking Israel’s siege of Gaza, yet they donated money to Abbas’ security forces, controlled by American general Dayton, to oppose the democratically elected Hamas government. Instead of feeding the starving Palestinians in Gaza the League is spending $50 Million to protect the lives of endangered marine turtles on 8000 square meters coast land off Al-Arish in Egypt. What a humanitarian gesture!
Like all colonial puppet local regimes, the present Palestinian Authority, under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas and his thugs, had hijacked the Palestinian leadership and offered Palestine and its people on the Israeli alter to glorify a genocidal god and his chosen people. My previous articles ( here and here) discuss the betrayal of the present Palestinian Authority. This betrayal was recently exposed by Israeli audio and video recording of these so-called Palestinian leaders urging the Israelis to attack Gaza to finish off the elected Hamas government regardless of any Palestinian casualties. Abbas and his PA had also tried to muffle Goldstone’s Report about Israel’s crime.
Besides crushing dissidents and any form of pro-Palestinian solidarity, Jordan has become a training campground for Abbas’ security forces under the supervision of the American General Keith Dayton. Dayton had established a twin sister of the American School of Assassins to suppress Palestinian resistance. It was reported that about four thousands trainees of this School were ready to enter and control Gaza after the anticipated destruction of Hamas government.
Besides suppressing and robbing its own citizens for the last 28 years, Hosni Mubarak’s Egyptian regime has played the most active role, second to Israel, in opposing elected Palestinian government and in the destruction of Gaza and starving its people. To ease Mubarak’s conscious for participating in such genocide of his Arab brothers his regime is paid a handsome $2 Billion in the form of American Aid.
Mubarak’s regime has committed crimes against humanity by fully participating in the Israeli siege against Gaza. Rather than helping the next door homeless and hungry Arab brothers of Gaza Strip the Mubarak’s regime preferred to send, last May, an airplane full with humanitarian aid to Sri Lanka on the opposite side of the globe. This regime was a stubborn obstacle in the face of every international solidarity movement and organizations, who tried to break the siege against Gaza. The regime blocked the entry of thousands of tons of badly needed food aid to Gaza; letting them rot in the desert heat, and finally burn them as spoiled food. Under the deceptive banner of "fighting arms smuggling into Gaza" it erected the most sophisticated surveillance equipment to detect and prevent life-sustaining materials delivered to Gaza through tunnels.
This month, December 2009, Egyptian Mubarak’s regime, with the help of American Army Corps Engineers, is building an underground steel wall to block tunnel digging, and is running underground pipes to flood the existing tunnels with sea waters.
Egyptian regime has opposed the elected Hamas Palestinian leadership and sided with the Western puppet Abbas, whose presidency has expired. It has sabotaged all reconciliation attempts between the two Palestinian factions by imposing harsh conditions against Hamas government and altering the text of agreements before signature.
The Egyptian policy towards their Palestinian brothers in Gaza, many of whom carry Egyptian citizenship, was reflected in the confession of its Foreign Minister, Ahmad Aboul-Gheti, in 11th of November 2008 when he stated that Egypt was closing Rafah Crossing with Gaza to punish a Palestinian faction (Hamas). Opening the Crossing, in his opinion, constitutes recognition of Hamas’ legitimacy.
Unlike the silence over the Holocaust during WWII conscientious citizens of these same international criminal governments are actively mobilized to act against terrorist Israel and the genocidal policies of their governments. Through Breaking Gaza Siege Campaigns many of them, such as Viva Palestina and The Hope convoys, are delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza. They have also organized boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns to boycott companies that sustain Israeli occupation on Palestine such as Motorola and Caterpillar, as well as academic and cultural boycott of all Israeli academic and cultural institutions, all of them are supported by the Israeli government. The effects of these campaigns had penetrated the blindly pro-Zionist American congress, where on December 18th Representatives Jim McDermott and Keith Ellison are seeking signature on a "Dear Colleague" letter to President Obama criticizing Israel’s siege of Gaza. Representatives Jim Moran and Bob Inglis are also seeking signatures on another "Dear Colleague" letter to Secretary of State Clinton urging her to pressure Israeli government to end the ban on student travel from Gaza to the West Bank.
This week protests are organized in major countries around the world in US, UK, France, Turkey, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, Poland, Denmark, Greece, Jordan, and occupied Palestine (Israel), commemorating the first anniversary of the Israeli onslaught against Gaza.
Under the Principle of Universal Jurisdiction we are witnessing Western courts issuing arrest warrants against Israeli leaders (Tzibi Livni) and army generals (former military chief Moshe Yaalon and General Doron Almog) for committing war crimes. International lawyers are filing for more arrest warrants against more Israeli war criminals. Soon Israeli leaders will be chased across the globe as war criminals the same way Israel had chased German Nazis as war criminals.
115 countries of the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) have called on the UN Security Council to hold Israel responsible for atrocities committed in Gaza during its offensive.
NAM Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz asked the Security Council on Wednesday to "seriously consider and act upon the recommendations" of the UN Fact Finding Mission headed by Richard Goldstone.
The move comes while the US Administration was planning to stall efforts by the countries to condemn Israel.
Washington says the war crime charges in the Goldstone report, should be dealt with in the Human Rights Council, not the Security Council.
The Security Council decided to review the issue in its Wednesday meeting despite the US pressure. However, the attempts by Washington to stall the process has sparkled outrage by right groups.
"That President Obama is receiving the Noble Peace prize after his failure to speak out during the Gaza war, and after his administration's protection of a state that has committed war crimes, is an abomination," Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, told Inter Press Service.
"Sadly, its conduct at the Human Rights Council [in Geneva] where it called the Goldstone report deeply flawed shows that it will again do all in its power to try and bury any investigation of Israel for war crimes," he added.
Ratner warned that such moves would embolden Israel to continue its atrocities.
The failure to refer the Gaza matter to the ICC (International Criminal Court) undercuts any claim that the law is applied equally to Israel and the Palestinians.
A day before the UN Human Rights Council convenes to debate on a UN report accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza, Tel Aviv threatens to scrap peace talks with Palestinians unless the damning report is dropped.
The threat came Wednesday as the report was being discussed at the UN Security Council (UNSC)'s regular monthly meeting on the Middle East.
During the UNSC meeting, Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki urged the 15-member body to adopt the report, compiled by a fact-finding mission headed by South African judge and international prosecutor Richard Goldstone.
The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) will hold a special session to debate the issue on Thursday. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called the foreign ministers of France, Britain, Spain and Norway on Wednesday and asked them not to back the Gaza report.
The Geneva-based body was initially set to vote on the report last week, but it was delayed until March 2010, after the Palestinian Authority withdrew its support for the report.
Having faced an unprecedented wave of condemnation and accusations of treason over his controversial decision, Acting Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas made a U-turn and called for a special session of the UN Human Rights Council to vote on the report in order to save his image.
Different Palestinian factions, including Hamas, had accused Abbas of betraying the victims of the three-week war by bowing to pressure from the US and Israel. Both Israeli and US officials dismissed the report as biased.
If adopted, the UN Human Rights Council could refer the report to the UN Security Council. The UNSC can call for the prosecution of senior Israeli officials in the International Criminal Court, if Tel Aviv fails to launch its own investigations into the Gaza war under international scrutiny.
Oh, Well - False Alarm -- Interpol didn't do squat
Two days ago I got this in my inbox with two links, one to a deceptive two line summary from a news gathering site and another to an Iranian press release that didn't include the arrest warrant claim. I assumed the former was simply an update of the Iranian news story.
Naturally, I was ecstatic and all too eager to believe it.
Well, the bad news is that Interpol hasn't done squat- in fact, they deny even reviewing a request from Iranian authorities.
The good news is - look how many people's eyes lit up at the prospect!
Just goes to show how unpopular these global criminals have become.
And anyway, there's nothing wrong with a little wishful thinking every now and then.
It keeps the spirit high!
Dream on anti-zionists! Some day, we'll awake to find ziostan gone!
"Yippie! Interpol issues arrest warrants for 15 top israeli officials"
Take that, you zionist fiends! You can kiss your impunity goodbye!
Finally, the world sees israelis for what they really are -- war criminals extraordinaire.
Interpol issues arrest warrants for 15 Israelis01 Mar 2009 The International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO) has issued a circular calling for the arrest of 15 top Israeli officials over war crimes.
* * *
At a news briefing on Sunday, Tehran's Public Prosecutor,Saeed Mortazavi, said that Iran had referred the case to the International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO or Interpol), drawing on the organization's charter and Israel's violation of the Geneva Conventions. "Governments of 180 countries have received the information necessary for identifying the suspects," he said.
In a Monday statement, Iran's judiciary said that it has asked Interpol to issue an international Red Notice security alert for the 15 Israeli officials who were involved in the 23-day Israeli offensive on Gaza.
The statement added that the judiciary was also looking into complaints made against 100 other Israelis, with top military and government posts.
In December 2008, Iran's judicial body announced a decision to set up a court to investigate complaints, made by wounded Gazans against Israel and delivered to Iran by the Palestinian envoy. The judiciary said that it would be ready to try the implicated Israeli officials in absentia.
"In the current week, we have completed our investigation of about 15 individuals who were among those criminals," IRIB, Iran's State Television, quoted Mortazavi as saying. "Based on our investigation and according to article 2 of the Interpol charter, we asked Interpol to arrest these suspects."
Mortazavi said the charges included war crimes, invasion, occupation, genocide and crimes against humanity. The Iranian prosecutor was referring to Israeli strikes that started on December 27 on the densely populated Palestinian coastal territory and did not end until it had claimed the lives of more than 1,330 Gazans, mostly civilians.
Many international NGOs and human rights organizations, Palestinians wounded in the Gaza onslaught, more than 5,700 Iranian lawyers and attorneys in the Iranian Bar Association along with a large number of medics were also among those who filed complaints against Tel Aviv, Mortazavi added.
The list of Israeli war criminals includes:
Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
Defense Minister Ehud Barak
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni
Chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi
Commander in Chief of the Israeli Air Force Ido Nehoshtan
Commander of the Gaza war -- Operation Cast Lead -- Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant
Head of Military Intelligence Directorate Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin
Commander of Battalion 13 in the Golani Brigade Lt. Col. Oren Cohen
Deputy to the Givati Brigade Col. Ron Ashrov
Commander of the Israel Paratroopers' Brigade in Gaza Col. Hertzi Halevy
Commander of 401st Armored Corps Brigade convoy Col. Yigal Slovik
Commander of the 101st Battalion in the Paratrooper Brigade Lt. Col. Avi Blot
Lt. Col. Yoav Mordechai, who served as a commander of the Golani infantry brigade's 13th Battalion in Gaza
Givati squad commander Col. Tomer Tsiter
Brigade commander in Battalion 51 Col. Avi Peled MRS/MJ/SME/MMA
Zionists wanted a safe-haven to turn to when the shit hits the fan - well, now they're going to need it...
A South African Jew will investigate the War Crimes of Israeli Jews
Yes, an Argentine Nazi hunter is just what the dead, the dying, the maimed and homeless of Gaza need. Yes, it will be a fair and just hearing, that I see in my crystal balls.
"A Jewish South African with close ties to Israel will head a U.N. inquiry into war crimes during Israel's recent war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Richard Goldstone, a trustee of Hebrew University, will head the commission appointed Friday by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council.
Israel did not say whether it will cooperate; it has in the past ignored other UNHRC probes, noting the body's tendency to single out Israel for criticism while ignoring other major violators.
Goldstone, who headed war crimes prosecutions in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, said he would investigate alleged war crimes by both sides.
"It's in the interest of the victims," Goldstone said in Geneva, where the UNHRC is headquartered. "It brings acknowledgment of what happened to them. It can assist the healing process."
He said his Jewishness and ties to Israel were added values. "I've taken a deep interest in what happens in Israel," he said. "I'm associated with organizations that have worked in Israel. And I believe I can approach the daunting task that I have accepted in an evenhanded and impartial manner.""
Goldstone is at least decent enough to pronounce himself shocked at the audacity of his own appointment.
Another member is Christine Chinkin, of Matrix Chambers, a group which also includes Cherie Blair, whose husband's pockets still jingle with all those shekels from the Dan David Foundation.
Another is Irish Army Col. Desmond Travers, associated with the Institute for International Criminal Investigations (note the Goldberg quote), part of the Human Rights Industrial Complex (HRIC) centered in The Hague, where the International Criminal Court recently outed itself as a covert JIZ operation with its indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
And finally Pakistani lawyer Hina Jilani, who has been involved in the investigation of human rights abuses in Darfur as a member of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur (and is also connected to the Institute for International Criminal Investigations: it is quite a cozy group), needless to say part of the wider JIZ initiative to have Britain and the United States attack Sudan for the crime of being a Muslim country that doesn't like Israel.
That White Phosphorous Israel used against Gazan civilians? Just that "light unto the world" using WP to well, light up Gaza, that's all, no crime here.
LONDON, (PIC)-- Majed Al-Zeer, the director general of the Palestinian return center, has revealed that the international campaign to end the siege on Gaza has started preparing a new aid flotilla to Gaza Strip that would sail within six weeks.
Zeer said in a press release on Monday on the sidelines of a massive demonstration in London protesting the Israeli attack on the freedom Flotilla that left dozens killed and wounded that the protestors wanted the world to know what the Israelis had done against unarmed solidarity activists.
He added that contacts are underway with European governments over the incident, adding that the international alliance would continue to expose the Israeli aggression before the entire world.
Thousands of Palestinians, Muslims, and foreigners had gathered in front of the British government premises in London to protest the Israeli bloody attack on the flotilla ships at international waters.
Participants hoisted Palestinian flags and placards denouncing the Israeli aggression.
Under strict media blackout imposed by Israel on the number of casualties during the Israeli attack against the Freedom Flotilla, Israeli sources reported that 19 activists were killed in the attack and dozens were wounded.
Among the wounded were Sheikh Raed Salah head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, who suffered serious wounds, and head of the Lebanese delegation, Hani Suleiman, in addition to the Captain of the “Marmara” Turkish Ship, and a Turkish Legislator.
The attack started after the army violently boarded the Turkish ship and opened fire at the passengers before hundreds of soldiers attacked all ships at once and occupied them.
The ships were in International waters 20 miles away from Gaza waters. Israel claimed that its soldiers were attacked with knives and batons, and that one of the activists managed to snatch the weapon of one of the soldiers. It also claimed fifteen soldiers were wounded.
The Greek captain of the 800 Ship suffered serious wounds and was moved to an Israeli hospital for treatment. Reports revealed that he is demanding to be moved to his country.
The Israeli army and police declared high alert in all Arab cities fearing massive protests against the attack and against the shooting of Sheikh Raed Salah.
Israel is also weighing the possibility of closing the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in front of Muslim worshipers.
Israel is still not allowing the media to enter the make-shift prison in Ashdod where the activists are currently held, and towed the ships to its ports.
The number of casualties could be more than announced due to the ongoing Israeli media blackout.
Meanwhile, Qatar called on the Arab League to convene in order to discuss the Israel attack against the nonviolent activists.
European Union Foreign Policy Chief, Catherine Ashton, demanded an investigation into the deadly Israeli attack and expressed solidarity with the victims and their families.
She added that the EU rejects the Israeli siege on Gaza and added that this siege leads to escalation.
Turkey said that what happened cannot be repaired and will have a lasting impact on its relation with Israel especially since the vast majority of the slain activists are Turkish.
Hundreds of residents gathered in front of the Turkish embassy on Ankara, chanted slogans against Israel, demanded the government to cut its ties with Israel and carry practical measures against it.
Several leftist groups, and human rights groups, in Greece called for protests in front of the Israeli embassy in the country.
Turkey, Jordan, Greece, Spain, Egypt, Jordan, and Sweden summoned the Israeli ambassadors. South African also denounced the Israeli attack.
Israeli daily, Haaretz, reported that Turkey had officially recalled its ambassador to Israel.
The Al Jazeera reported that one of the ships is now in Ashdod port, while other ships are still approaching, and added that dozens of fundamentalist Israeli gathered in the area cheering for the Israeli attack and even distributed sweets to “celebrate the attack and the killing of the activists”.
Israel said it will not provide any information regarding the attack and the exact number of casualties until it brings all ships to the port and until its finalizes its statement.
Al Jazeera said that the bodies of several activists were transferred to an Israeli hospital in Haifa, and that one of the slain activists was shot by a live round in his head.
It in first response the White House said it was “sorry for the casualties” who fell in the attack.
White House spokesperson, William Burton, said that “the U.S deeply regrets the casualties” and that it is still “trying to understand all surrounding circumstances”.
The families of those on the Gaza aid flotilla that was attacked by Israeli soldiers early Monday morning have rushed to the building of the Humanitarian Aid Foundation in the hopes of receiving good news about their loved ones. Some are relieved to see their relatives alive after the operation, although others are preparing for the worst. The wait has been particularly anxious, especially since no contact has been established with those on board.
As Aynur Akdeniz saw the first videos showing the attacks of Israel on the Gaza aid flotilla, she said she immediately switched off the TV to prevent her two children from seeing it. Her husband Mehmet Ali Akdeniz, 34, was on the ship.
After watching the news of an early morning Israeli army operation that killed as many as 19 people on a flotilla bringing aid to the Gaza Strip, Akdeniz rushed to the Humanitarian Aid Foundation, or İHH’s, building in Istanbul’s Fatih district.
The İHH was the main organizer of the aid shipments and its crisis management center, located at the top floor of the building, was bustling all day. Families rushed to the İHH building in the early hours of the morning and the press conference room was filled with crying families who watched developments on a television in the room.
Akdeniz said she was planning to travel to Gaza together with her husband, but they decided not to because of the young age of their children.
“My son is 4 years old and my daughter is 6. They packed 300 lollipops for their father to take to Palestinian children in Gaza,” she said through tears.
Although her children have still not comprehended the unfolding events, they are also worried, Akdeniz said.
“They are asking about their father and they are worried even though I didn’t let them see the attack videos on TV,” she said.
Like the other families gathered at the İHH building trying to obtain news from their relatives on the ship, Akdeniz said she was shocked by the attacks and that she was worried and crying.
“I did not expect that much cruelty. My husband even did not have a pocket knife on him,” she said. “It was a strict rule for all of them not to have anything that might be used as a weapon. But Israel was afraid of a few civilian people.”
Akdeniz said she heard from friends that they saw a man who looked like her husband and that he was alive after the attacks.
Of the nearly 600 people on the Mavi Marmara ship, roughly 400 were Turkish citizens, according to İHH Vice Director Yavuz Dede, who said the passengers included men, women, and an 18-month-old baby.
Sümeyye Sena Tezcan, a 15-year-old high school student whose mother, Demet Tezcan, was on the ship, said she was relieved when she saw her mother in images on TV. “She was running during the attacks and was helping wounded people.”
Tezcan said her younger sister gave her baby doll to her mother and told her to give it to children in Gaza.
When her mother left home on May 24 for Antalya in preparation for boarding the ship at the Mediterranean port, Sümeyye Sena Tezcan said it was an ordinary day for the family. The mother was excited about the trip and was looking forward to seeing Gaza for the first time when the family last saw her at the İHH building, according to the daughter.
“She told us to take care of each other before leaving. We were afraid, we were worried, but never expected something horrible like this could happen,” she said.
Preparing for bad news
But while some families rejoiced at the apparent safety of their loved ones, many others were much worried about the fate of their loved ones.
Selma Erkal, whose brother Şahin İbrahim Güleryüz, 42, was on the ship, came immediately to the İHH building as soon as she saw the videos on TV.
She said she saw her brother in the videos on TV. “He had fainted, his head fallen on his chest, and there were people trying to help him,” said Erkal, who believed her brother had been wounded.
“We wanted to believe that he is only wounded, but he could also be dead. He has two sons and we did not tell his wife what we saw. We wouldn’t know what to say,” said Erkal, who was waiting at İHH in hope of good news.
Like others, Erkal said she was expecting a response from Israel, although not one so fatal. “I did not expect such a wild intervention. They were all unarmed people carrying humanitarian aid.”
Hatice Çorluk, whose son Fevzi Çorluk, 24, was on the ship, said she had expected the Israeli army’s response.
Struggling to speak due to her anguish, Çorluk said Turkey had abandoned those onboard.
Neslihan Üstündağ, Fevzi Çorluk’s sister, said those on the ship had called for help many times during the night before the attack occurred. “But Turkey did not do anything. It could have sent a ship to help them.”
The members of the Çorluk family said they had been crying all day and that they simply wanted to receive good news about their loved one’s condition.
Hayrünnisa Abdurrahman, a mother of four, said she was afraid her husband, Abdülahad Abdurrahman, 40, could be dead.
“He is a man who cannot stand injustice. I fear that he might have intervened during the attacks to save people from Israeli soldiers,” she said through tears. Abdurrahman has four children.
Before leaving home, Abdurrahman told his wife that the journey could be potentially fatal and asked for her blessing.
When he boarded the vessel, he had no possessions that could be construed as a weapon except a sewing needle with which to repair any tears to his pants, she said.
The government of Turkey recalled its ambassador to Israel Monday, and a number of countries issued strong condemnations of the Israeli attack on humanitarian aid ships that left 19 people dead, according to the latest count. Greece, Sweden, France, Austria, Spain, China and Russia all condemned the Israeli attack and summoned the Israeli ambassadors in their respective countries to provide an explanation of Israel's actions.
items considered 'security risk' to Israel include dolls and crayons
The response from the US government was more guarded, with the White House spokesman ironically using the same words that the Israeli Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi used in response to the attack, “We deeply regret the loss of life”, leading some to speculate that the White House was coached by Israel on what to say in response to the attack.
The British government reiterated its previous statements that the Gaza aid flotilla should not have tried to enter Gaza without Israeli permission, but said that Israel was out of line in attacking the ship with violence in international waters.
A number of international dignitaries and parliament members from various countries have pointed out that The Israeli attack and abduction of 700 civilians from around the world has violated the following article of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea: Article 87(a) provides for "freedom of navigation."
Article 88: "The high seas shall be reserved for peaceful purposes."
Article 89: "No state may validly purport to subject any part of the high seas to its sovereignty."
Article 90: "Every State, whether coastal or land-locked, has the right to sail ships flying its flag on the high seas."
The Israeli government made a statement on the attack, but the statement included claims that were proven to be false by video footage, including a false claim that the aid workers attacked the invading soldiers – Israel's own video footage that they claimed showed 'weapons' showed only marbles which were part of the aid shipment meant for the children of Gaza.
I am outraged at Israel's latest criminal act. I mourn with my fellow Free Gaza travelers, the lives that have been lost by Israel's needless, senseless act against unarmed humanitarian activists. But I'm even more outraged that once again, Israel's actions have been aided and abetted by a U.S. political class that has become corrupted beyond belief due to its reliance on Zionist finance and penetration by Zionist zealots for whom no U.S. weapons system is too much for the Israeli war machine, and the silence of the world's onlookers whose hearts have grown cold with indifference.
I recently visited the offices of IHH, the Turkish humanitarian organization that sponsored one of the Freedom Flotilla boats, and that was targeted by the Israelis for its murderous rampage. Reports are still coming in as to the full extent of the senseless Israeli violence. Of course, I expect Israel's apologists in the press and in the United States government to shift into high gear to support Israel's lying machine. Take note of their names. The 12,000 internet squatters/written word grenade throwers, hired by the Israeli Foreign Ministry to defend Israel and attack peace activists online, are already busy spreading their orchestrated disinformation in cyberspace. Be very careful what you read and believe from special interest press and the internet. You could be reading one of Israel's hired hacks. As a news diversion from what Israel has just done, I suspect that we can also expect to see a lot of historical footage of war's atrocities on television: today is Memorial Day in the United States, a day long ago set aside to remember the sacrifices of U.S. war dead.
I encouraged and supported U.S.S. Liberty veteran Joe Meadors's participation in the Freedom Flotilla. Unfortunately, the fate of the U.S.S. Liberty innocents on the high seas, while in international waters, has now been visited upon the participants in the Freedom Flotilla, in large measure because of the Congressional- and Presidential-level cover-up of the 1967 Israeli attack on that U.S. surveillance ship. Combined with the failure of just about every other effort to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, and crimes against the peace. Belgium and Spain changed their domestic laws of universal jurisdiction after Israeli appeals to do so. The entire musical chairs gang of rotating Israeli leadership are war criminals. During my imprisonment in Israel for attempting to take crayons to the children of Gaza, I called Israel a failed state. If Israel is threatened by unarmed, humanitarian activists to the point of massacring them, then Israel is a failed state. Israel is a failed nuclear state.
Obama's most recent granting of an additional $205 million for Israeli "missile defense" is unconscionable, when in the same week, reports revealed for the first time, Israel's offer of nuclear weapons to apartheid South Africa. Just last week, a paper bearing the signature of former Israeli Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, was released by South Africa, revealing that in 1975, Israel could offer South Africa nuclear weapons "in three sizes." South Africa's then-Minister of Defense, P.W. Botha, was South Africa's signatory to the letter. This information would make the entire Obama Administration look sadly farcical as it points an accusing finger at Iran, except that U.S. obeisance to the Israeli bloodthirst is deadly serious. With deadly outcomes.
Earlier this month, Israel was granted admission to the Organization of Economic and Community Development (OECD), a direct affront to ongoing Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) efforts across the world. Once again, Israel has thumbed its nose at the global community--with bloody results--because it can.
I am proud to serve on the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Palestine. Its next sitting will be in London, where we will examine corporate complicity in Israel's crimes against Palestine. The Tribunal will sit from November 5 - 7. Please put this on your calendar. We all must do what we can, where we are to end wars against the people at home and wars against human rights abroad.
Finally, a friend just sent a message to me saying that the Israelis had lost their minds. Sadly, based on the past, the Israelis could very well conclude that they can do anything--imprison me for trying to take love to the children of Gaza and kill humanitarian activists trying to do the same--because they know, in the end, they'll get away with it. Instead, I would suggest that we are the ones who have lost our minds, our souls, our spirits, and our human dignity if we allow the Israelis to get away with murder--again--and we do nothing.
I am calling on the people of the United States to change course now.
On this Memorial Day 2010, I am stunned and outraged beyond belief while mourning the dead of the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza.
- Cynthia McKinney is a former United States Representative and the 2008 Green Party nominee for President of the United States. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
If you think about it, Israel's calculated murder of peace activists on a mission to break the siege of Gaza makes perfect sense. A lot of observers were baffled that Netanyahu’s government inflated the importance of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla which was delivering vital humanitarian aid to the largest concentration camp in the world but had the secondary mission of publicizing the brutal and illegal siege of Gaza. To casual observers, it seemed like Israel’s belligerent posture was amplifying the international media attention given to the flotilla. It seemed so counter- productive for the Israelis to hand the peace activists what amounted to a nuclear powered bull horn.
The only excuse that Netanyahu and Lieberman could make for their seemingly irrational obsession with the supply ships was that the peace activists on board where delegitimizing Israel. The Israelis couldn’t make the usual ‘security’ arguments about terrorist threats - not with so many unarmed European Parliamentarians and peace activists on board. So they dreamed up a new category of criminals nobody has ever heard of before - de-legitimizers. There are millions of decent people who abhor Zionism and view Israel as a racist state. Israel and her supporters can argue with that, but since when has delegitimizing Israel been a capital crime that justified piracy on the high seas?
The flotilla was in international waters when it was assaulted - seventy miles from its destination. It was a pre-dawn raid and, in an operation of this sort, the darkness elevated the risk of inflicting unnecessary casualties. Quite a few journalists were on board and the dark offered the Israelis a veil to ward off any cameras that could clearly document that the violence was premeditated.
The overwhelming evidence suggests that this Israeli raid was planned, perfectly timed and achieved its desired objective - to scuttle a scheduled meeting with Obama. What else would explain the hurry? Was there a clock ticking away? The answer to that question is yes. Only a few precious hours remained for Netanyahu to weasel his way out of an appointment at the White House. That might help explain the smug self-satisfied look on Netanyahu’s face when he announced the cancelation of the visit.
The scheduled meeting at the White House was no ordinary tete-a-tete. It was a carefully orchestrated event. A week earlier, Obama had dispatched Rohm Emanuel to Jerusalem to butter up Netanyahu. According to news reports, Israel's prime minister was given "unequivocal assurances" from the US President that an accord agreeing to talks on a nuclear weapons-free Mideast would not endanger the Jewish state. The assurances included a significant upgrade of Israel's strategic and deterrent capabilities and a promise that no UN resolutions would be adopted that would hurt Israel’s ‘vital interests.’ One has to presume that Obama’s promises included blanket amnesty for last year’s war crimes in Gaza. As a bonus, Netanyahu stopped in Europe to pick up membership in the OEDC - making Israel the only wealthy country in the world to get lavish American aid.
Of course, Obama and the Europeans expected a little reciprocity and a more flexible Israeli posture in the proximity talks with the Palestinians. It was Netanyahu’s turn to give a little. There was talk in the press of a love fest where a ‘new and improved’ Netanyahu would make an appearance and be willing to make a few hard choices to end the interminable conflict. The Israeli Prime Minister who opposed Camp David, the Oslo agreement and the withdrawal from Gaza was under pressure to deliver the goods.
Sabotaging peace initiatives is something the Israelis excel at and Netanyahu is a skilled practitioner of obstructionism. Lest we forget, he secured the position of Prime Minister by putting together the most right wing coalition in Israeli history. He leads a government that is made up of pro-settler parties and outright expultionists. Freezing settlements or withdrawing from the West Bank or making any kinds of concessions on East Jerusalem would unravel his government.
Netanyahu didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. There was a strategic imperative to create a crisis to justify cancelling the meeting with Obama. Murdering the peace activists on the high seas was a high risk maneuver and it came at a well calibrated cost. Let’s first dispel the rumor that Israel is or has ever been concerned with its international reputation. Notice that it was Netanyahu who cancelled the White House appointment. Why the rush to get back to Israel? Was there any better way to do a little damage control than by making a few concessions in Washington in front of the fawning lenses of pro-Israeli CNN cameras? But the White House was the last place the Israeli Prime Minister wanted to be. And if all it took was piracy and murder on the high seas, it was a price Netanyahu was willing to pay.
Israel’s has a well established record of planning and executing premeditated atrocities. They’ve shot Libyan passenger planes out of the sky and carpet bombed Gaza, South Lebanon and Beirut. One can go down the list of infamous massacres from Sabra and Shatilla to Jenin to Deir El Yassin, Qibya and a hundred other places where they’ve slaughtered innocents. Aside from the attack on the Liberty, the only thing that distinguishes this latest war crime is that the victims were not Palestinians or Arabs. With the assistance of the Jewish Lobby and their well-placed partisans at FOX noise and CNnothing, Israel always manages to wipe the incriminatory blood stains off its garments and make a miraculous recovery as the perpetual victim.
Anybody with half a brain should be able to figure out that this most recent Israeli atrocity was premeditated. Netanyahu will pay a price and there will be a price to pay but it will be paid in short term currency. Obama might or might not figure out that he gave away the store and walked away empty handed but with mid-term elections on the horizon, he’ll still shield Israeli leaders from accountability for their war crimes. Relationships with Turkey will be strained and a few European foreign ministers will fume. The United States had no problem figuring out how to react to piracy with the Achille Lauro, but all they can muster up in response to this latest act of Israeli state terrorism is a benign statement of ‘concern.’ Washington might even work up the courage to ask the Israelis to conduct an inquiry. Israel will be ostracized for a few weeks but Netanyahu will have accomplished his goal by derailing yet another peace initiative and winning additional time to continue building settlements and dispossess the Palestinians of their native soil.
- Ahmed Amr, the former editor of NileMedia.com, is the author of “The Sheep and The Guardians - Diary of a SEC Sanctioned Swindle.” He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
The Turkish aid vessel Mavi Marmara (Blue Marmara) was in international waters when it was attacked by Israeli ships and helicopter-borne soldiers on Monday morning. According to the Israeli government spokesmen, it was the Israeli soldiers who were themselves attacked, with knives, axes and guns, but it was 16 people on board who were killed, according to the estimates of the dead and wounded being made by midday. In fact, as film taken from the Mavi Marmara showed, it was the Israelis who attacked, swarming on the deck and wounding the captain as they took the ship over. The passengers were not armed. They were all checked before they boarded the ship in Istanbul and Antalya and none were carrying weapons. According to a Turkish customs official in Antalya: 'Forty-two passengers boarded in Istanbul and 504 passengers got on the ship here. We spotted no weapons and there is no such record in our logs. We did not notice anything suspicious about the Mavi Marmara. Had our officers had any suspicions they would have reported it'.
In short, when the Israeli Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, said that arms were found on the ship he was lying. Even more hysterically, reaching even deeper into the barrel of falsehood, he accused the passengers of having links to Al Qaida and other 'terrorist' organisations. But there were no 'terrorists' on the Mavi Marmara, there was no live fire from the ship and there was no 'lynch mob' waiting for the soldiers, as the Jerusalem Post claimed. It was the Israelis who attacked. Heavily armed ‘soldiers’ swarmed on to the deck of the Mavi Marmara from naval vessels or were lowered on to it by helicopter. They began shooting straight away, terrorising the passengers as intended. If some of the attackers (three or four) were hurt it was because some passengers dared to defend themselves against armed assault. One soldier is reported to have been wounded by a passenger who grabbed his gun and turned it on his assailant but no passengers were carrying arms when they boarded the Mavi Marmara. The hundreds of people on board the ship are now on Israeli soil, having been kidnapped on the high seas. No doubt Israel will confiscate mobile phones and cameras, but it cannot hold these people for long and when they are free to tell their stories we will have a clearer idea of what happened on the Mavi Marmara.
Many of the dead were Turkish peace activists and in the coming days Turkey's reaction to this attack on a ship flying the Turkish flag will be critical. Certainly nothing much can be expected from the US and European governments in defence of their citizens. In Ankara, however, the government issued a statement saying that the attack on a ship flying the Turkish flag may well have caused 'irreversible damage' to relations between the two countries. The relationship between the two countries has been deteriorating for years, reaching a low point several months ago when the last ambassador was summoned to the Foreign Ministry simply to be humiliated. For Turkey this might be the final straw. Why would it want to have any kind of relationship with a state that kills Turkish citizens? Thousands of Turks demonstrated in Istanbul's Taksim Square on Monday afternoon. Basically Turks have had enough of Israel. They were shocked by Israel's onslaught on Gaza in 2008 and stung by the humiliation of their ambassador and they will want very strong action from their government following this latest outrage.
To those who do not follow Middle Eastern history and politics Israel suddenly seems out of control. But it has been out of control for the six decades. It has never been in control. It has been allowed to run wild year after year. It is the embodiment of a rogue state. There is no country surrounding Israel that has not suffered a high civilian death at the hands of the Israeli 'defence' forces. Tens of thousands have died in Lebanon. Multiple thousands have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank. The killing of Arab civilians has been so normalised in Israel that individual deaths are scarcely mentioned. Israel will kill foreigners who get in its way but this slaughter of foreigners on the high seas is a new benchmark. This is a state that offers no hope for its own future and at this stage seems beyond redemption.
- Jeremy Salt is associate professor in Middle Eastern History and Politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. Previously, he taught at Bosporus University in Istanbul and the University of Melbourne in the Departments of Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science. Professor Salt has written many articles on Middle East issues, particularly Palestine, and was a journalist for The Age newspaper when he lived in Melbourne. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
Israel created deep discomfort in the West after Mossad agents used fake European passports to assassinate senior Hamas member Mahmoud El-Mabhouh earlier this year in Dubai.
And today, Israel committed a massacre in international waters when its navy commandos stormed the Gaza-bound aid ships and killed at least 19 unarmed activists. 700 Arab and European activists were on board the boats with ten thousand tons of aids and supplies for the besieged Gazans.
"We are Italian, Irish, Canadian, Greek, Tunisian, German, Australian, American, English, Scottish, Danish, Israeli, and Palestinian. We are of all ages and backgrounds. We have years of experience volunteering in Gaza and the West Bank at the invitation of Palestinians. But now, because of the increasing stranglehold of Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine, many of us find it almost impossible to enter Gaza, and an increasing number have been refused entry to Israel and the West Bank as well.
We want to break the siege of Gaza. We want to raise international awareness about the prison-like closure of the Gaza Strip and pressure the international community to review its sanctions policy and end its support for continued Israeli occupation. We want to uphold Palestine's right to welcome internationals as visitors, human rights observers, humanitarian aid workers, journalists, or otherwise.
We have not and will not ask for Israel’s permission. It is our intent to overcome this brutal siege through civil resistance and non-violent direct action, and establish a permanent sea lane between Gaza and the rest of the world."
This is the motto and aim of the Free Gaza Movement which has sent the "Freedom Flotilla" of six ships to bring humanitarian aid to the Gaza strip only to be forcefully stopped by Israeli occupation forces.
Israel was quick to allege that the activists on-board the ships are ‘militants and extremists.’ "The flotilla of ships on its way to Gaza was an armada of hate and violence," charged Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon at a press conference on Monday morning. "It was a premeditated and outrageous provocation" and its organizers had ties to global Jihad, al Qaida and Hamas,” continued Ayalon.
Israel and Ayalon’s terrorists are in the eyes of the world prominent passengers including European MPs, authors, journalists, religious figures like former Greek-Catholic archbishop of Jerusalem, Monsignor Hilarion Capucci, leader of Islamic movement's northern branch in the occupied territories Sheikh Raed Salah who has been very seriously injured in the Israeli attack.
Among the volunteers whom Israel consider terrorists and extremists are
· Annekarijn de Jong (29),Weesp, Holland. A Dutch PhD researcher at the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), department of Anthropology. Her research interest are popular protest, human rights and for her fieldwork research she spent 16 months in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including occupied East-Jerusalem and Besieged Gaza.
· Inge Neefs (26), Ghent, Belgium. She studied educational sciences and holds a masters degree in anthropology. Recently, she spent three months in the West Bank as an activist supporting the "non-violent resistance" of Palestinians against Israel's military occupation.
· Hedy Epstein (86); St. Louis, Missouri, USA. She worked for the American government, first with the U.S. Civil Censorship Division and then as a research analyst at the Nuremberg trial.
· Katherine Elliott Sheetz (63), Mass., USA. She is a Registered Nurse with a master's degree in sustainable development. She has worked on human rights, health and food security, most often in Haiti.
· Caoimhe Butterly 31. She’s an Irish human rights activist & the Free Gaza Movement's Gaza coordinator. Caoimhe lived in the Jenin refugee camp for a year in 2002 before being shot by Israeli occupation soldiers, then deported. She has worked with human rights organizations, social movements, NGOs, prisoner rights campaigns and as a volunteer on ambulance services during the massacres in Gaza in December and January, and was a witness to war crimes and white phosphorous attacks, Caoimhe went to Gaza on the second trip in October 2008, then stayed as one of the two Free Gaza coordinators there.
· Denis Halliday, 69, (Ireland). He was the UN Assistant Secretary-General from Humanitarian Programme in Iraq to support the Iraqi people struggling1994-98. Halliday served UNDP from 1964-94 in Iran, New York, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, Samoa, New York again and finally as head of the UNDP Regional Office in Thailand.
· Mark Daly 37, Kerry, Ireland. He is an Irish Senator and a member of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Seanad Spokesman on Overseas Development, the Deputy Government Spokesman on Innovation, and the Coordinator for the National Forum on Europe.
· Shane Dillon (36), Dublin, Ireland. He is an Irish Seafarer. He has served as Chief Officer on Irish and British merchant ships, and is now based in Dublin.
· Fiachra O Luain 28, Carndonagh, Ireland. He is an Irish Peace Activist. Fiachra was an independent candidate in the 2009 European election. He hopes to help build new consensus in Europe and the Americas about the gravity of the situation in Gaza.
· Alex Harrison (32), London, UK. She is a solidarity worker living between London and the Middle East. She lived and worked in Balata, Nablus in the West Bank during the intifada. When she tried to visit family in Palestine in 2006 and 2008, the Israeli authorities denied her entry. She is determined to return to Palestine and plans to work do long-term human rights monitoring in Gaza.
· Ewa Jasiewicz (31), London, UK, Poland. She is an experienced journalist, community and union organizer, and solidarity worker. Her articles have appeared in The Independent, The Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique, Red Pepper, and Z Net, among others. She worked with the ISM in Palestine, and with Voices in the Wilderness in Iraq.
· Lubna Masarwa (32) is a Palestinian activist. She works as a community organizer for Al Quds University focusing on educational rights for the thousands of Palestinian children in East Jerusalem who have no schools. She also works with the community of East Jerusalem in their struggle against the Israeli government’s policy of ethnic cleansing Palestinian families through home demolitions and forced displacement.
· Huwaida Arraf (33), Ramallah, Palestine / Washington D.C. / Detroit. She is a Palestinian with American citizenship. She graduated from the American University Washington College of Law, where she focused her studies on international human rights and humanitarian law. In 2001 Huwaida co-founded the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
· Annette Groth 56, Berlin, Germany. She is a member of Parliament in the German Bundestag and Human Rights Policy Spokeswoman for the LEFT Party Parliamentary Group. She serves on the Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid Committee, as well on the Economic Cooperation and Development Committee.
· Inge D.M. Höger 59, Herford, Germany. She is a member of Parliament in the German Bundestag, serving on the Defence and Health Committees. She is the political spokesperson for the LEFT party.
· Matthias Jochheim 61, Frankfurt, Germany. He is a physician and psychotherapist. He is Deputy chair of IPPNW Germany, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War .
· Norman Paech 72, Hamburg, Germany. He is a LEFT Member of Parliament in Germany's Bundestag, as well as Professor of Public Law at the University of Economics and Political Science (HWP) in Hamburg.
· Mairead Maguire 66 Belfast, Ireland. She is a Nobel Peace Laureate (l976) and Co-founder of Peace People, Northern Ireland. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace and a nonviolent solution to the Ethnic/political conflict in Northern Ireland. Mairead has travelled many times to the occupied territories of Palestine to support the nonviolent peoples’ movement for Human Rights, International Law, and Self Determination of the Palestinian people. Maguire was shot with a plastic bullet whilst participating with Palestinians/Israelis/Internationals in a peaceful protest March to the Wall in Bilin, in April, 2007. She was on Board ‘Spirit’ when Israel hijacked the Boat in International Waters, taking all 2l humanitarian passengers to "Israel", where they were arrested, detained for a week in an Israeli prison and then deported.
Those and many other Nobel Prize-awarded activists were onboard the flotilla who came from several countries to stand with the Gazans and express solidarity with the besieged people. They are not terrorists, they are not extremists, they are not militants, they are people who denounce tyranny, Israel’s tyranny.
As I write these words, around Sunday’s midnight, 30 May, 2010, some of the most noble men and women under the sun are sailing toward Gaza in rough seas in a gesture of hope and selfless love that is meant to say to the people of Gaza “You are not alone.”
Needless to say, these brave men and women, these known and unknown soldiers deserve our utmost admiration and appreciation. They are acting on behalf of humanity, a humanity that has nearly succumbed to callous apathy and criminal indifference toward its weak and its poor.
After all, Gaza today is very much like Ghetto Warsaw of 1943. The comparison might raise some eyebrows here and there, but the truth, in case people still care about it, is that Gazans are completely dependent on the good will of the peoples of the world for their very survival.
If they approach the wall of death on the Israeli side, they are summarily killed by indifferent bullets fired by an Israeli soldier who is likely to have been taught in his neighborhood synagogue or local yeshiva (Talmudic School) that non-Jews are virtual animals whose lives have no sanctity whatsoever.
And if they seek life westward, e.g. through the tunnels, they are gassed or killed by the criminal hands of a depraved regime that has demonstrated more skills in groveling, like a meek dog, before Zionism than in providing bread to its own citizens.
In the meanwhile, Israeli leaders are threatening to violently confront the messengers of love and good will who have come from distant lands to show solidarity with the people of Gaza who have been thoroughly savaged by the very people who have the Chutzpa to claim themselves as “a light upon the nations” when in reality they have demonstrated ad nauseam that they are actually an abomination, a cancer upon the world.
In short, we are talking about a showdown between the forces of evil and darkness, represented by the goons of Judeo-Nazism, people like Benyamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman, and, on the other hand, the forces of hope, love, peace and justice, which these sublime human beings represent.
Well, from experience, we realize that the Nazis of our time in Tel Aviv are capable of embarking on the worst scenario.
Indeed, a state that is capable of raining White Phosphorus on the heads of Gaza children can’t be expected to act gracefully toward messengers of peace carrying milk powder to the blockaded children of the coastal enclave.
In the final analysis, we are talking about a breed of evil-minded people who would consider a smile on the face of a Gaza child a security threat?
Israeli leaders have been spreading disinformation and dark propaganda around the freedom flotilla. Lieberman, the manifestly fascist foreign minister of the Zionist regime has been claiming that the Freedom Flotilla is besmirching Israel’s image as if that image needed any further besmirching after the virtual genocide in Gaza 18 months ago.
Other Zionist thugs have had the audacity to call the great men and women of this mission “terrorists.”
Well, Never minds. These are the same Zionist thugs who have been calling their victims similar epithets because the Palestinians are refusing to disappear and are still fighting for their freedom from Zio-Nazism despite the passage of more than six decades of oppression and criminality.
The Zionist Kriegsmarine may very well gang up on the civilian ships transferring relief materials to the besieged people of Gaza. One even can’t rule out the possibility that some activists might get hurt.
In the final analysis, violence, coercion and cruelty are the natural trademarks of Zionism. This is the way they think they can feel virile and manly…by starving and killing children and posing for a photograph right beside the kill.!!
None the less, this is already going to be a losing battle for the nefarious state. Exposing the cruel, or more correctly the Nazi nature of Israel, will be a victory for the forces of freedom and humanity and a definitive defeat for the forces of cruelty and hate.
The Freedom Flotilla is really dividing the world according to its moral conscience. There are those who would rise up in solidarity with the people of Gaza, irrespective of any political ramifications that they might have to incur consequently. Turkey and a few other countries represent this camp par excellance. To its people and leadership, we say a big thank you.
And then there are those who are watching, waiting to see how this episode will unfold. These are the morally-confused, people who are blind in this world and will be blind in the hereafter.
And then there is the whoring western world and its numerous puppets, including the US government, and some European states, such as Germany and Italy and probably the government of France as well, which are reluctant to force Israel to lift the sanctions on Gaza for totally unjustifiable reasons.
As to the Jewish people, apart from a small minority which deserves admiration, they seem to prefer to worship the Golden Calf rather than obey Moses an Aaron.
I am saying this because supporting Israel right or wrong is an act of paganism and idolatry.
True, Israel is tormenting the people of Gaza, indeed most Palestinians. This may make you happy. It might please you as it may make you powerful and important.
But Israel is also killing your humanity, by making you insensitive to her crimes against another people, the helpless Palestinians. How many times did your Bible exhort you to refrain from tormenting the “stranger” amongst you because you yourselves were “strangers” in the Land of the Pharaoh?
This is why you should wake up before it is too late.
Khalid Amayreh is a journalist living in Palestine. He obtained his MA in journalism from the University of Southern Illinois in 1983. Since the 1990s, Mr. Amayreh has been working and writing for several news outlets among which is Aljazeera.net, Al-Ahram Weekly, Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), and Middle East International. He can be reached through politics.indepth@iolteam.com.
This time, the Israeli war machine may have gone too far for international public opinion to stomach. In the early hours of 31 May, before daybreak, Israeli commandos stormed the international civilian aid convoy heading for Gaza. Between 20-24 volunteers on board have been killed and at least 50 injured, according to various reports, but the number of casualties has risen rapidly from the initial reports of two dead. The final death toll could be greater.
The actions by Israeli forces have been condemned by governments around the world. European governments, including those of Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Norway and Sweden have summoned their respective Israeli envoys over the incident. Turkish prime minister Recep Erdogan is reported to have cut short a trip to South America and his country is said to have recalled its ambassador to Israel in protest.
In a tired-sounding script, Israeli government spokespeople claimed that its forces were acting in self-defence after they were attacked by aid workers wielding knives when they boarded the main ship – a Turkish vessel – in the six-ship convoy. One Israeli commando was stabbed, Israeli TV reported.
Within minutes of the interception, Israeli forces blacked out all communications from the flotilla, which is carrying 700 civilians from 50 countries, including Britain, Ireland, Turkey and the US. The aid convoy – dubbed the Gaza Freedom Flotilla – had a high-profile assembly in Turkey last week before departing from Cyprus for the Palestinian coast on Sunday. Backed by several governments, including that of Turkey, and counting among its numbers at least four European MPs, a Nobel laureate and journalists from various news media, the aid convoy had declared itself to be a civilian, humanitarian relief operation.
The flotilla was attempting to ferry some 10,000 tonnes of aid material, ranging from medicines, building materials to school equipment, for the 1.5 million Gazans who have been besieged by Israeli military for three years, ever since they democratically elected the Hamas government. After the Israeli onslaught on Gaza during December 2008 and January 2009, in which more than 1,400 people – mainly civilians – were killed, the Palestinian territory remains a disaster zone, with its population living under tents and having to resort to smuggling vital materials via underground tunnels, which the Israeli air force frequently bombard. The Gazans’ only other lifeline is via tunnels into Egypt on their southwestern border, but these, too, are routinely attacked by Egyptian forces.
The Israeli government had denounced the Freedom Flotilla as “provocative” even before it departed and warned that it would be intercepted – despite the fact that the convoy had declared that it would be entering Palestine from international waters in the Mediterranean, well away from Israeli territory.
While the Israeli naval interception was clearly well planned, its accompanying blackout of communications was evidently not swift enough, failing to prevent Turkish satellite TV footage broadcasting for several minutes what was taking place. Those images relayed by international media nail the lie in the Israeli version of events. (Whether the US media do so will be telling.)
Taken from different angles on various positions of the vessel, the TV images show the following:
The convoy was intercepted at around 5am local time, some 150 kilometers (90 miles) off the coast of Gaza in international waters.
Israeli commandos are seen hauling themselves on to the aid ship. The commandos were armed with assault rifles and handguns, wearing helmets and full body armor. It appears that the passengers and crew are unaware of the intrusion. The Israeli personnel were able to assemble without any opposition; they seemed casual in their movements, then raising their guns in assault mode, covering each other with pointed weapons before filing off to their intended target area on the ship. Other images show an Israeli military helicopter hovering over the convoy and high-speed marine dinghies approaching.
Chaotic scenes ensue. Aid workers are seen lying on decks wounded with what appear to be gunshots. Some of the injured – all clearly civilian in appearance – are lying motionless and unconscious, presumably dead. Other aid workers are shown trying to assist the wounded. One woman is seen carrying a blood-soaked stretcher amid the mayhem.
Some of the footage shows a melee of aid workers scuffling with Israeli commandos. None of the civilians are shown to be carrying knives.
Of course, there is hardly anything new here – Israeli forces using disproportionate violence, killing civilians with impunity. But on this occasion, the murderous incident is not in some poor ghetto in the Gaza Strip hidden from the full view of the world. Up to now, Israeli disinformation could afford just enough wriggle room to sow doubts over such events. The cynical phrases of “terror suspects” and “self defense” parroted by the western mainstream media served to give the Israeli government and its backers in Washington a degree of political cover for otherwise heinous conduct.
Hence, the United Nations’ Goldstone report on human rights violations by Israel during the Gaza offensive could be rebuffed by Tel Aviv and Washington because Israel was responding “in self defense to rocket attacks”. The crushing to death of American peace activist Rachel Corrie in 2003 by an Israeli military bulldozer was “a tragic accident”. The assassination of Mahmoud al Mabhoub by Mossad agents in a Dubai hotel in January of this year could be brazened out because, well, the victim was an official of Hamas – the government of Gaza whom the Israelis and the Americans refuse to legitimize and treat as “terrorists”.
Nevertheless, all of these crimes – in addition to the warmongering towards Iran over trumped allegations of nuclear ambitions from the only state in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons and possess them illegally – has seen the political and moral position of Israel and its US patron gradually diminish to the point of contempt in the eyes of the world.
In attacking the Freedom Flotilla, Israel and the US are now in danger of losing whatever shred of credibility or pretense they may have had with regard to the roots of conflict in the Middle East.
What the world has witnessed is an outrageous act of sea piracy bordering on an act of war that transgresses the diplomatic rights of 50 countries and the premeditated, cold-blooded murder of civilians.
At the same time that world powers are demanding a tough response to the alleged attack by North Korea on a South Korean warship in which 46 seamen died, public opinion will likewise see the appropriate demand for the same legal standard applied to Israel.
The US government stands to be severely exposed by this latest, most glaring crime against humanity. No mealy-mouthed US censure of its client will placate world anger that is inevitably pushing governments, especially the increasingly critical governments of the non-aligned movement, including Turkey and Brazil, to apply international law on the US-Israeli war machine.
Washington is so bound up by mendacious contradictions in its support for the Israeli war machine while at the same time posturing for international standards to be imposed on others such as Iran and North Korea – this latest outrage by its favorite criminal client will surely impose a diplomatic maneuver on Washington that even the great escape artist Houdini could not defy.
Finian Cunningham is a journalist and musician www.myspace.com/finiancunninghammusic
Israel cannot live without creating crises. Tel Aviv's strategy is to respond to a crisis by creating another one. This policy helps the Zionist regime to buy time by cashing in on the new crisis, and forget the previous one or seek to tackle it with the help of its allies.
Attacking the aid flotilla for Gaza is part of the same strategy. Israel knows well that if the boats make it into Gaza, the next convoys will be on the way, shattering Israel's hope of maintaining a full blockade on 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. Killing is the first option considered by the Israeli regime and army to settle an issue. Israel is no stranger to murder, even before it was founded. Over 60 years on since the Zionist regime proclaimed its establishment, not even one day has passed without news of an individual or individuals being killed by Israeli forces.
The Israeli raid on the Gaza peace convoy is not justifiable, whatsoever. To justify the brutal attack, however, certain Western media and governments announced, as usual, that Israeli troops had opened fire in self-defense. This comes as the authority in charge of Israeli prisons had already said it was preparing to take peace activists into custody, just in case. Israeli official circles had even announced earlier that the Israeli regime itself would take charge of delivering the international aid supplies to Gaza, and that the boats crewed by peace activists had no right to enter Gaza port. To avoid any operational problems, Israel once again bombarded Gaza's already-demolished airport. Everything had been pre-planned for killing.
The attack on the Gaza aid flotilla comes at a time when the wind is blowing against Israel. A few days ago when the Israeli premier was in Canada, participants at the NPT Review Conference unanimously issued a document, calling on Israel to open up its nuclear facilities to IAEA inspectors and sign up to the NPT.
The Obama administration frowned upon the idea of singling out Israel, and US officials announced they would not allow the next NPT conference in two years time to put Israel on the agenda. However, Netanyahu should not forget that the White House nonetheless gave the thumbs up to the NPT statement.
Maybe the US wants to use the document to ratchet up pressure on Iran to engage with the P5+1, but many believe the document has been in Iran's favor, given the fact that the US-backed plan on new UN sanctions against Iran has been a nonstarter. Brazil, Turkey and Lebanon, which currently hold seats on the UN Security Council, have announced they will not vote for the new sanctions resolution.
The document and calls on Israel to join the NPT will always be there. To tackle the crisis and eliminate the possibility of "nuclear ambiguity" melting away, Israel selected the same option that a notorious murderer would chose: professional killing. Armed-to-the-teeth Israeli soldiers raided the aid convoy and opened fire on the peace activists who were resisting arrest.
"Israel's right to self-defense" is a phrase also regurgitated by former US administrations when referring to the massacre of Palestinians at the hands of Israeli troops. It is embellished with "the need for self-restraint" rhetoric, and that's all. European governments also roundly condemn the attack, without specifying any punishment for the perpetrators. The new crisis coupled with reactions from Turkey as well as other Muslim and Arab nations together with Tel Aviv's response will, for a long time, deflect attention from the Israeli nuclear question and George Mitchell's new trip to the Middle East.
Israel is in hot water. Imposing an official blackout on the footage of the Israeli attack on the peace convoy won't be of any help to the Zionist regime. The waters off Gaza have time and again been mixed with Palestinians' blood.
Nevertheless, Israel needs to bend over backwards to cleanse the Gaza waters of non-Palestinian blood.
Israel, embarrassed by its naval forces’ bloody interception of Gaza-bound ships carrying humanitarian relief materials for besieged Gazans, has been spreading disinformation and outright lies to justify the ostensible massacre.
Dozens of people were either killed or injured when special Israeli naval units stormed and opened fire on a Turkish ship around dawn Monday.
The Gaza Freedom Flotila were carrying hundreds of peace activists from more than 50 nationalities, opposed to Israel’s Nazi-like siege of the Gaza Strip.
The manifestly criminal attack on the civilian ship is already generating angry reactions around the world, with dozens of countries denouncing the attack as constituting “criminal piracy.”
A spokesman of the Turkish government warned that Israel would have to face consequences of its criminal act.
Greece, many of whose nationals took were taking part in the Freedom Flotilla, has suspended an aerial exercise with the Israeli air-force.
Meanwhile, Israeli officials have resorted to spreading lies and disinformation in order to save its image following the criminal assault on the Gaza Flotilla freedom.
One Zionist official, Dany Ayalon, claimed that the flotilla was “an armada of hate and violence,” a claim rejected and denied by one of the flotilla organizers, Huweida Arraf, as “obscene and pornographic lies.”
Ayalon accused the organizers of having “connections to international terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Al-Qaida.”
He called the convoy a “violent and provocative attempt to break the blockade on Gaza .”
Ayalon, who has been described as “a psychotic case,” claimed that stashes of weapons were aboard the ships.”
The Israeli media, acting as mouthpieces for the Israeli government, spoke of “clashes” on board the Turkish vessel.
The Israeli foreign ministry said it was launching a public relation campaign aimed at limiting the political and public relations damage following the bloody incident.
Another Israeli official, War Minister Ehud Barak, also made manifestly mendacious charges, blaming the victims for their own death at the hands of Israeli forces.
Angry reactions to the flotilla massacre came from Palestinian leaders in Israel.
Knesset member Mohammed “praised” the victory of the Israeli navy over unarmed men and women carrying powder milk to besieged Gaza children.
Barakeh added: "Any government that puts itself outside international and humanitarian law will consign itself to the garbage can of history.
Talab al-Sana, another Arab Knesset member, said the flotilla massacre had "exposed the ugly face of Zionism, the violence and aggression of the government of Israel ".
Sana described the interception as an act of state terror against a humanitarian mission and called for Israel's leaders to be tried for war crimes.
"This event proves you don't have to be a German to be a Nazi," he said.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas described the Israeli attack as “a real massacre.”
Nabil Sha’aat, a Fatah official, called the attack “a war crime, a crime against humanity committed in international water.”
He blamed the silence of the international community for this “Nazi-like criminality perpetrated by this hateful, racist state.”
Shaath was speaking in Ramallah Monday afternoon during a rally in solidarity with Turkey.
Shaath said 15 of the 16 people killed aboard the Turkish ship were Turks.
It is quite astounding that Israel has been able to create over the past 12 hours a news blackout, just as it did with its attack on Gaza 18 months ago, into which our main media organisations have willingly allowed Israeli spokespeople to step in unchallenged.
How many civilians were killed in Israel’s dawn attack on the Gaza-bound flotilla of aid? We still don’t know. How many wounded? Your guess is as good as mine. Were the aid activists armed with guns? Yes, says Israel. Were they in cahoots with al-Qaeda and Hamas? Certainly, says Israel. Did the soldiers act reasonably? Of course, they faced a lynch, says Israel.
If we needed any evidence of the degree to which Western TV journalists are simply stenographers to power, the BBC, CNN and others are amply proving it. Mark Regev, Israel’s propagandist-in-chief, has the airwaves largely to himself.
The passengers on the ships, meanwhile, have been kidnapped by Israel and are unable to provide an alternative version of events. We can guess they will remain in enforced silence until Israel is sure it has set the news agenda.
So before we get swamped by Israeli hasbara let’s reiterate a few simple facts:
* Israeli soldiers invaded these ships in international waters, breaking international law, and, in killing civilians, committed a war crime. The counter-claim by Israeli commanders that their soldiers responded to an imminent “lynch” by civilians should be dismissed with the loud contempt it deserves.
* The Israeli government approved the boarding of these aid ships by an elite unit of commandoes. They were armed with automatic weapons to pacify the civilians onboard, but not with crowd dispersal equipment in case of resistance. Whatever the circumstances of the confrontation, Israel must be held responsible for sending in soldiers and recklessly endangering the lives of all the civilians onboard, including a baby and a Holocaust survivor.
* Israel has no right to control Gaza’s sea as its own territorial waters and to stop aid convoys arriving that way. In doing so, it proves that it is still in belligerent occupation of the enclave and its 1.5 million inhabitants. And if it is occupying Gaza, then under international law Israel is responsible for the welfare of the Strip’s inhabitants. Given that the blockade has put Palestinians there on a starvation diet for the past four years, Israel should long ago have been in the dock for committing a crime against humanity.
Today Israel chose to direct its deadly assault not only at Palestinians under occupation but at the international community itself.
A passenger aboard the Mavi Marmara carries a bloody stretcher.
Early this morning under the cover of darkness Israeli soldiers stormed the lead ship of the six-vessel Freedom Flotilla aid convoy in international waters and killed and injured dozens of civilians aboard. All the ships were violently seized by Israeli forces, but hours after the attack fate of the passengers aboard the other ships remained unknown.
The Mavi Marmara was carrying around 600 activists when Israeli warships flanked it from all sides as soldiers descended from helicopters onto the ship's deck. Reports from people on board the ship backed up by live video feeds broadcast on Turkish TV show that Israeli forces used live ammunition against the civilian passengers, some of whom resisted the attack with sticks and other items.
The Freedom Flotilla was organized by a coalition of groups that sought to break the Israeli-led siege on the Gaza Strip that began in 2007. Together, the flotilla carried 700 civilian activists from around 50 countries and over 10,000 tons of aid including food, medicines, medical equipment, reconstruction materials and equipment, as well as various other necessities arbitrarily banned by Israel.
As of 6:00pm Jerusalem time most media were still reporting that up to 20 people had been killed, and many more injured. However, Israel was still withholding the exact numbers and names of the dead and injured. Passengers aboard the ships who had been posting Twitter updates on the Flotilla's progress had not been heard from since before the attack and efforts to contact passengers by satellite phone were unsuccessful. The Arabic- and English-language networks of Al-Jazeera lost contact with their half dozen staff traveling with the flotilla.
News of the massacre on board the Freedom Flotilla began to emerge around dawn in the eastern Mediterranean first on the live feed from the ship, social media, Turkish television, and Al-Jazeera. Israeli media were placed under strict military censorship, and reported primarily from foreign sources. However, by the morning the Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli soldiers who boarded the flotilla in international waters were fired upon by passengers. Quoting anonymous military sources, the Jerusalem Post claimed that the flotilla passengers had set-up a "well planned lynch." ("IDF: Soldiers were met by well-planned lynch in boat raid")
This narrative of passengers "attacking" the Israeli soldiers was quickly adopted by the Associated Press and carried across mainstream media sources in the United States, including the Washington Post. ("Israeli army: More than 10 killed on Gaza flotilla")
Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon stated in a Monday morning press conference that the Israeli military was acting in "self-defense." He claimed that "At least two guns were found" and that the "incident" was still ongoing. Ayalon also claimed that the Flotilla organizers were "well-known" and were supported by and had connections to "international terrorist organizations."
It is unclear how anyone could credibly adopt an Israeli narrative of "self-defense" when Israel had carried out an unprovoked armed assault on civilian ships in international waters. Surely any right of self-defense would belong to the passengers on the ship. Nevertheless, the Freedom Flotilla organizers had clearly and loudly proclaimed their ships to be unarmed civilian vessels on a humanitarian mission.
The Israeli media strategy appeared to be to maintain censorship of the facts such as the number of dead and injured, the names of the victims and on which ships the injuries occurred, while aggressively putting out its version of events which is based on a dual strategy of implausibly claiming "self-defense" while demonizing the Freedom Flotilla passengers and intimating that they deserved what they got.
As news spread around the world, foreign governments began to react. Greece and Turkey, which had many citizens aboard the Flotilla, immediately recalled their ambassadors from Tel Aviv. Spain strongly condemned the attack. France's foreign minister Bernard Kouchner expressed "profound shock." The European Union's foreign minister Catherine Ashton called for an "enquiry."
What should be clear is this: no one can claim to be surprised by what the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights correctly termed a "hideous crime." Israel had been openly threatening a violent attack on the Flotilla for days, but complacency, complicity and inaction, specifically from Western and Arab governments once more sent the message that Israel could act with total impunity.
There is no doubt that Israel's massacre of 1,400 people, mostly civilians, in Gaza in December 2008/January 2009 was a wake up call for international civil society to begin to adopt boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel similar to those applied to apartheid-era South Africa.
Yet governments largely have remained complacent and complicit in Israel's ongoing violence and oppression against Palestinians and increasingly international humanitarian workers and solidarity activists, not only in Gaza, but throughout historic Palestine. We can only imagine that had former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni indeed been arrested for war crimes in Gaza when a judge in London issued a warrant for her arrest, had the international community begun to implement the recommendations of the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report, had there been a much firmer response to Israel's assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai, it would not have dared to act with such brazenness.
As protest and solidarity actions begin in Palestine and across the world, this is the message they must carry: enough impunity, enough complicity, enough Israeli massacres and apartheid.
By DR. ELIAS AKLEH
By BATOUL WEHBE
By Finian Cunningham
By JONATHAN COOK
