Suicide state: Haaretz
By Nehemia Shtrasler
If there is one person who someone feels that our international situation is getting worse and another who thinks we are behaving like a suicide state, they should think again.
After all, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says all the criticism over the brutal raid on the Marmara is just “international hypocrisy.” Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman says that the Turks who sent the boat are responsible for the entire affair. And even Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, Sancho Pancho to Netanyahu’s Don Quixote, says that while in the short term we will indeed be blasted with criticism in the long run the world will come to understand and justify our position.
But as the economist John Maynard Keynes pointed out 70 years ago, “The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.”
Steinitz is not affected by facts, nor by the suspension of all the infrastructure and energy projects with Turkey and the question mark now hanging over Israeli military and civilian exports to the country. He is not disturbed by the boycotts of Israel announced by various European organizations, nor by the fact that Deutsche Bank has sold its investment in Elbit Systems because of Palestinian pressure. Even Nicaragua’s severance of diplomatic relations with Israel does not bother him, nor the fact that El Al air crews have been instructed not to wear their uniforms abroad. Soon no Israeli will be able to go abroad – but that’s fine with him.
But all this is as nothing compared to the unprecedented nadir to which Israel’s status in the world has sunk – to the point of the delegitimization of the state. That is a strategic threat to Israel: The country is dependent on Western public opinion, which at the end of the day determines the governments’s actions. And if international opinion is fed up with us and sees us as a cruel occupying force that jeopardizes world peace, the road to total failure is short.
Even yesterday’s good friends consider us a burden today. Not just Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who called the flotilla raid “state terror,” but also the representatives of Brazil, Austria and Mexico who demanded that Israel lift the blockade of Gaza. And European Union Foreign Minister Catherine Ashton, and UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who criticized Israel for the “disproportionate use of force.” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not mince words either, nor President Barack Obama, who supports a credible, transparent international investigation. He doesn’t trust Netanyahu, either.
Two days ago, Netanyahu gave a hallucinatory speech to the nation on television. It was a speech of personal defense at the lowest level. He spoke of our duty to prevent the entry of weapons into Gaza, as if that were the issue here.
The issue is how it was done, the lack of planning, the self-satisfaction, the lack of intelligence information, the poor management, the fact that the price of a brutal, deadly raid was not considered, and the real danger in which the naval commandoes were placed, without being aware of the ambush that awaited them.
Netanyahu said not one word about this colossal failure. He has continued his familiar habit of trying to terrify Israel with the “Iranian port that will be built in Gaza.”
But today it is clear that if anyone who is expediting the creation of such a port, it is Netanyahu. It is his failures that are leading to a second Goldstone committee that will investigate and reach grave conclusions that are liable to end in a demand that the blockade of Gaza, including the military one, be lifted.
Netanyahu, who has said that for him security is above everything else, is doing the greatest damage to Israel’s security. In 16 months he has managed to turn a strategic ally of Israel into a bitter enemy. He himself he threw Turkey irrevocably into the arms of Iran and Syria.
Netanyahu is also endangering our security by leading to a deep rift with the country’s Arab minority and a “one state for two people” solution, which would be the end of the Zionist dream.
It is astonishing how Netanyahu has even managed to cause damage to the issue that is closest to his heart, the Iranian nuclear threat. The international isolation into which he has thrown Israel, combined with Obama’s disgust with him make it impossible for Israel to obtain international support for tighter sanctions.
The United Nations debate on the subject was postponed once again this week. Israel received another blow recently, when 189 countries (including the United States ) called for international supervision of its nuclear facilities, something that has not happened in the last 40 years.
This dangerous nadir in Israel’s international status marks the start of the countdown for Netanyahu’s government. That’s how it was in his first term (1996-99 ), too. The downhill path that time began with his success in destroying the Oslo Accords and returning to fire and guns. That turned the Clinton administration and the states of Europe against him.
We can only hope it won’t take three years this time. The danger is too great.
Norman Finkelstein & Huwaida Arraf on Israel’s Attack: Grit TV
June 2nd, 2010
On Monday, Israeli commandos boarded ships in the “Freedom Flotilla” attempting to bring humanitarian aid to residents of still-blockaded Gaza. The aggressive response by Israel turned deadly, with at least nine activists killed. The international community has reacted with shock and outrage; protests have erupted around the world outside Israeli embassies, with protesters even teargassed in Paris. Benjamin Netanyahu has canceled a long awaited meeting surrounding peace talks with President Obama and headed back to Israel to do damage control, and Turkey, from where the flotilla departed, has recalled its ambassador and issued a travel warning to its citizens.
Huwaida Arraf was on one of the ships; she joins us via phone from Ramallah, along with Norman Finkelstein, to tell us what happened to her and offer some analysis on the situation.
Gaza flotilla attack: Autopsies reveal intensity of Israeli military force: The Guardian
• Victims found with up to six gunshot wounds
• Israel ‘about to lose a friend’ warns Turkey’s US envoy
The autopsy results reveal the extent of force used by Israeli commandos aboard the Mavi Marmara (pictured). Photograph: Reuters
The autopsy results released today by the Turkish authorities after the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla reveal in chilling detail the intensity of the military force unleashed on the multinational convoy.
Each of the nine victims on the Mavi Marmara in international waters off the coast of Israel in the early hours of Monday morning was shot at least once and some five or six times with 9mm rounds.
The results also reveal how close the fighting was. Dr Haluk Ince, chair of Turkey’s council of forensic medicine (ATK), said: “Approximately 20cm away was the closest. In only one case was there only one entrance wound. The other eight have multiple entrance wounds. [The man killed by a single shot] was shot just in the middle of the forehead with a distant shot.”
The details emerged as Turkey warned that it may reconsider its diplomatic ties with Israel unless it receives an apology.
The deputy prime minister, Bulent Arinc, warned: “We may plan to reduce our relations with Israel to a minimum.”
Namid Tan, the ambassador to Washington, warned that Israel was “about to lose [a] friend”. He repeated calls for an independent investigation of the raid and end its blockade against Gaza.
Asked if Turkey might break off relations, he said: “We don’t want this to go to that point.” But he added: “The government might be forced to take such an action.”
Speaking at the funeral of the youngest activist, prime minister Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of betraying its religion. “You killed 19-year-old Furkan Dogan brutally. Which faith, which holy book can be an excuse for killing him?” he asked.
According to the scientists at the ATK, Dogan, who held US and Turkish citizenship was shot five times – from close range in the right side of his nose, in the back of the head, in the back and twice in the left leg.
The oldest victim was 60-year-old Ibrahim Bilgen, a Turkish politician, engineer and activist who was married with six children. He had been shot once in the right temple, once in the right side of his chest, once in the back and once in the hip.
Cetin Topcuotlu, a 54-year old former Taekwondo champion who worked as a coach for the Turkish national team, was shot three times – once in the back of his head, once in his hip and once in his belly. His wife, Cigden, who was with him on the Mavi Marmara said at his funeral on Thursday she would take part in further flotillas to Gaza with her son.
The detail of the wounds came as yet more survivors returned to the UK and gave their account of the attacks.
In a hastily arranged press conference in central Londonshortly after his Turkish airlines plane touched down at Heathrow, Ismail Patel, the 47-year-old chairman of the Friends of al-Aqsa, condemned what he called “the cold-blooded murder and killing of our colleagues”. He said: “These deaths were avoidable and I lay the blame squarely with the Israelis.”
Israel has previously said its troops had been left with no choice after they came under attack from activists armed with knives and iron bars when they were dropped by helicopter on to the ship.
Patel claimed that as soon as the Israeli Defence Force helicopter appeared above the Mavi Marmara, “it started using immediately live ammunition” without any warning being issued.
After the first victim fell the white flag was raised, he said, but Israeli forces continued firing. “I think the Israeli soldiers were shooting to kill because most of the people who died were shot in the top part of their bodies,” he said. He believed that later victims were injured in their legs after a “tactical move” by the commandos to wound rather then kill.
Alex Harrison, a Free Gaza activist who was on the smaller Challenger yacht, which was crewed mainly by women, said the Israelis used rubber bullets, sound bombs and tasers against them.
“Two women were hooded, they had their eyes taped,” she said, describing how the yacht was quickly overwhelmed. “We stood and tried to obstruct the armed, masked men and maintained no other defence and still they used violence.”
Harrison, 32, from Islington, north London, also witnessed the Mavi Marmara being stormed from above by helicopter and said the Israelis started firing before their troops touched down on the boat.
“I have seen some selective footage that the Israelis have chosen to put out suggesting that we responded with violence,” she said. “You must remember that these are unarmed civilians on their own boat in the middle of the Mediterranean. People picked up what they could to defend themselves against armed, masked commandos who were shooting.”
The violence was “initiated by the Israelis on a massive scale,” she said, adding she was pleased her colleagues on the Rachel Corrie, an Irish vessel, were continuing to Gaza this weekend.
“I am thrilled they are going,” she said. “They know exactly what risks they face. They are doing what our government’s haven’t and I thank them.”
Both Harrison and Patel criticised the British authorities for failing to provide sufficient consular assistance while the activists were detained in an Israeli prison in Beersheva.
Patel said he was not visited by anyone from the British mission and Harrison said the consul told her that Israeli officials had prevented him visiting captured Britons.
“I did see the British consul,” Harrison said. “He told me that he had sitting outside the prison all day … asking for access and not been given it. I see that as an insult from Israel to the British, that they were denying the British consul the right that citizens have. I also see it as a sign that the British don’t have the strength to stand up to Israel.”
Foreign Secretary William Hague confirmed that a total of 34 of the activists on the aid flotilla were British, with all but two of them having been sent to Turkey by the Israeli authorities.
In Gaza City, the de facto Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, told crowds of worshippers at Friday prayers that Israel’s blockade was in its final stages.
“Now not only Gazans speak of the blockade, but also the [UN] security council and the international community. Everyone is demanding the siege be lifted.”