EXCLUSIVE: New Video Smuggled Out from Mavi Marmara of Israel’s Deadly Assault on Gaza Aid Flotilla
In a Democracy Now! exclusive, we bring you a sneak preview of previously unseen raw footage from the Mavi Marmara that will be formally released at a press conference at the United Nations later in the day. The footage shows the mood and the activities onboard the Mavi Marmara in the time leading up to the attack, and the immediate reaction of the passengers during the attack. We are joined by filmmaker and activist Iara Lee, one of the few Americans on the Mavi Marmara ship. Her equipment was confiscated, but she managed to smuggle out an hour’s worth of footage. [includes rush transcript]. This includes very disturbing images, and is another prooof, if proof was needed, of the brutality of Israel and its armed forces.

Democracy Now Video including smuggled images of the massacre

U.S. sources: Turkey vote against Iran sanctions – a slap in the face: Haaretz

State Department spokesman: It will be up to Turkey and Brazil to explain rationale for voting against 4th round of UN sanctions.
Sources close to the American administration told Haaretz on Thursday that the U.S. viewed Turkey’s vote against United Nations Iran sanctions as a slap in the face, in light of the efforts put forth by U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration to enlist global support for the sanctions.

Israel and the United States on Wednesday hailed a UN Security Council vote to impose a fourth round of sanctions on a defiant Iran, which immediately vowed to continue with its nuclear program. Turkey and Brazil were the only votes against the sanctions, while Lebanon abstained.

The 15-nation council passed a resolution that was the product of five months of talks between the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia. With 12 votes in favor, it received the least support of the four Iran sanctions resolutions adopted since 2006.

U.S. State Department Spokesman Philip Crowley said Wednesday following the vote that “we think coming out of the UN Security Council today is a very strong statement. It was not unanimous. Obviously, it will be up to Turkey and Brazil to explain their votes and their rationale.”

“Clearly, we’ve had disagreements over specific tactics, but we will continue to work with Turkey, Brazil and other countries as we go through implementation of 1929,” Crowley added, referring to Security Council resolution 1929 which increases the cost to Iran’s leadership of their continued defiance of the international community, and aims to persuade Iran that it is in its interest to peacefully resolve concerns about its nuclear program.

Abbas say faith in two-state solution ‘eroding’: BBC

Page last updated at 18:49 GMT, Thursday, 10 June 2010 19:49 UK
Mr Abbas is holding talks with senior US figures during his visit
Lack of progress in the Mid-East peace process is “beginning to erode” faith that a two-state solution is possible, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said.

Mr Abbas also told a Washington think-tank that the Palestinians’ main demand was to end the blockade of Gaza.

Israel is under strong international pressure following a deadly raid on ships trying to break the blockade.
Mr Abbas has been on a visit to Washington which has included talks with President Barack Obama.
“I would like to express some concern that the situation is extremely difficult,” Mr Abbas told the Brookings Institution.
“The hope for a two-state solution, Palestine… living side-by-side in peace with the state of Israel, this concept is starting to erode and I fear that the world is starting to distrust that we are able to reach this solution.”

‘End blockade’
Mr Abbas described Israel’s “attack” on the aid convoy in international waters as “unlawful, unacceptable”.
“Our main demand is how to end the blockade on Gaza and I believe the entire world stands with us,” he said.
The Israeli raid has sparked wordwide protests
Mr Abbas is due to hold more talks with senior US officials on Thursday, including White House National Security Adviser James Jones.

On Friday he is due to meet US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before returning to the Middle East.
After Wednesday’s meeting at the White House, Mr Obama said the situation in Gaza was “unsustainable” and promised $400m (£274m) in new aid for the territory.

But he urged both Israel and the Palestinians to make concessions and return to stalled peace talks.
“Not only is the status quo with respect to Gaza unsustainable, but the status quo with respect to the Middle East is unsustainable,” he said.
“It is time for us to go ahead, move forward on a two-state solution.”
Israel says its blockade of Gaza is needed to deter attacks by militants from the Hamas movement, which runs the territory.

Nine activists died when Israeli commandos stormed a Turkish passenger ship which was part of an aid flotilla heading for Gaza on 31 May.
In another development on Thursday, the Palestinian Authority postponed local elections due to be held in the West Bank next month.
No reason was given for the decision, made during a cabinet meeting in Ramallah.
Hamas had already said it would boycott the vote.

Spain seeks EU backing on plan to lift Israeli blockade of Gaza: The Guardian

EU scrambles for policy response after international outrage over Mavi Marmara
Spain is drawing up new proposals for lifting Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip as the EU scrambles to forge an effective policy following international outrage over the killing of nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists in a “freedom flotilla”.

Miguel Moratinos, the Spanish foreign minister, is to present Madrid’s ideas to EU colleagues next Monday amid signs of disagreement between member states and demands for tougher action.

The US, Britain and the EU have all called the blockade “unsustainable”. But Britain is warning of exaggerated expectations of what can be achieved. “I don’t think the British government is talking about lifting the blockade,” said the Foreign Office minister for the Middle East, Alistair Burt. “Everything is done with relatively small incremental steps. Almost any change is potentially a change for the better.”

British officials stress the importance of Israel improving access conditions for 1.5m Palestinians by publishing a blacklist of banned goods and not simply stating which ones are permitted. “That would be a fundamental shift which would enormously benefit Gaza,” said one.

Israel has rejected a French idea that EU forces would check the cargoes of ships heading for Gaza to ensure they are not carrying goods Israel would consider a security risk. Bernard Kouchner, France’s foreign minister, called the response from Jerusalem “rather negative”. Spain, chairing the EU’s rotating presidency, will be expected to work with Lady Ashton, the union’s foreign policy chief, diplomats said. Another idea is the revival of the EU Border Assistance Mission at the Rafah crossing point into Egypt. Its operations were suspended in 2007 after the takeover of Gaza by the Islamist movement Hamas, shunned by Israel and the west.

“We are seeing a sense of disarray with several voices speaking at the same time,” said Clara O’Donnell of the Centre for European Reform. “But even if the EU is keen to help, the Israelis do not consider it reliable enough. There is not much Europe can do until the Americans move.”

But Lord Patten, Britain’s former EU external affairs commissioner, today urges the EU to demand an immediate end to the blockade, open dialogue with Hamas, and not let the US monopolise policy.

“Today’s miserable and brutal stand-off in the Middle East requires new political initiatives,” he writes in the Guardian. “The EU is Israel’s biggest trade partner and the largest provider of development assistance to Palestine yet it has been content to play a largely very quiet third fiddle to the US. It is true that the US has the primary external role in the region, and that any peace settlement will require Israel’s willing agreement. But none of this justifies the EU’s present nervous self-effacement. This policy gives Israel carte blanche. It makes Europe complicit in outrageous and illegal acts.” Patten calls for the UN to be tasked with preventing weapons entering Gaza while the EU should take the initiative with Turkey and the Arab League to re-establish a national unity government of Fatah and Hamas for the West Bank and Gaza. Britain says it has no plans to end its ban, backed by the Quartet, on contact with Hamas.

Witchhunt for an Israeli MP:JKCook.net

Officials Try to Strip Haneen Zoubi of Citizenship
By JONATHAN COOK
Counterpunch
June 8, 2010

An Israeli parliamentary committee recommended stripping an Arab MP of her privileges yesterday in a move to prepare the ground for putting her on trial for participating last week in the Gaza-bound aid flotilla attacked by Israeli commandos.

Haneen Zoubi, who has become a national hate figure since challenging Israel’s account of the confrontation, said yesterday she was facing “a witch-hunt”.

The interior minister, Eli Yishai, has submitted a request for her citizenship to be revoked, and a bill — labelled the “Zoubi Law” — is being considered that would allow a serving MP to be expelled for “inciting” against the state.

Ms Zoubi has been provided with a bodyguard after receiving a spate of death threats. A popular Facebook page in Hebrew is calling for her execution and an online petition for her expulsion from the parliament has attracted tens of thousands of supporters.

Last week, in unprecedented scenes as she tried to address parliament, Ms Zoubi was heckled into silence by Jewish legislators shouting out “terrorist” and “traitor”. Guards only narrowly prevented a far-right parliamentarian from attacking her.

Yesterday’s hearing of the parliament’s house committee was originally intended to consider revoking the immunity of six Arab MPs, including Ms Zoubi, who travelled to Libya in April. All the Arab MPs boycotted the meeting.

However, the committee chairman, Yariv Levin, of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, switched the focus to Ms Zoubi’s involvement in the flotilla.

Legal advisers said the MP was still being investigated for attempting to enter a closed military area and violence against the commandos. After she disembarked from the Mavi Marmara in Ashdod last week, Ms Zoubi said she had been questioned by police about possessing a weapon.

The committee approved by a majority of 7-1 stripping her of parliamentary privileges that take away her diplomatic passport, reportedly to prevent her fleeing the country, and withdraw help with litigation fees. Parliament must approve the decision.

Mr Levin accused Ms Zoubi of betraying the country and said she must be put on trial. “What Zoubi did crossed the line and even in a democracy there must be red lines. Whoever sails to Hamas is a supporter of terror,” he said.

Ms Zoubi responded: “They conducted a kangaroo court against me. They have called on the public to harm me.”

An editorial in the liberal Haaretz newspaper warned yesterday that an atmosphere of “dangerous incitement” was developing against Israel’s Palestinian minority, a fifth of the population. Two other Arab MPs, Ahmed Tibi and Taleb al Sana, revealed that they too had received death threats.

In addition to the removal of Ms Zoubi’s privileges, she is also facing the revocation of her citizenship. The measure has been used only twice before in Israel’s history — both times against Palestinian citizens accused of terrorism.

Last week, Mr Yishai wrote to the attorney general asking for the go-ahead, saying Ms Zoubi had “headed a group of terrorists” and was “undoubtedly aware of the activists’ preparations for the attack against IDF troops. This is a premeditated act of treason.”

Orna Kohn, a lawyer with Adalah, a legal centre for the country’s Palestinian minority, said Mr Yishai’s move was “uncharted legal territory” that could leave Ms Zoubi stateless, in violation of international law. “There is simply no precedent for revoking the citizenship of an MP,” she said.

After Ms Zoubi’s release last week, she said she had seen three passengers shot in the head by soldiers, and two more left to bleed to death. According to autopsies conducted in Turkey, five of the nine dead passengers were shot in the head, and many of the lethal shots were fired from close range.

During her address to the parliament last week, Ms Zoubi called for an international investigation and demanded to know why Israel had not published photographs and video footage it confiscated from passengers that related to the nine dead and dozens of wounded.

After the session, she said: “It was so hostile in the chamber that, had MPs been allowed to carry guns, I am sure someone would have shot me.”

Israel has been swept by rightwing demonstrations in support of the raid on the flotilla over the past few days.

A Hebrew Facebook page “Execute MP Haneen Zoubi” features a cartoon image of the MP with crosshairs on her forehead as the figure waves a Palestinian flag with a bloody Star of David at its centre.

Ms Zoubi said she had been surprised to learn that the armed bodyguard — normally reserved for government ministers and the head of state — was supposed to remain with her even inside the parliament chamber. “What does that say about the threat posed by my fellow MPs?”

Four other leaders of Israel’s Palestinian community who were on the ships are being investigated by police. After the mass release of detainees last week, they were freed to house arrest but are banned from leaving the country.

At his remand hearing, Sheik Raed Salah, a leader of Israel’s Islamic Movement, said of the flotilla episode: “The soldiers tried to kill me. They fired in the direction of someone else they thought was me.”

Rumours circulating widely that Sheikh Salah had been killed in the commando raid eight days ago were not denied by Israeli officials and only ended when his family identified that a body brought to an Israeli hospital was not his.

Jeremy Bowen attacks BBC Trust for Gaza ruling: BBC

Middle East editor defends his reporting on Israel after BBC Trust finds him guilty of inaccuracies
BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen Photograph: Murdo Macleod
Jeremy Bowen has attacked the BBC Trust ruling that found him guilty of inaccuracies in a report about Israel last year.

The BBC’s Middle East editor, speaking at the University of Westminster, where he was presented with the Charles Wheeler award for an outstanding contribution to broadcast journalism, said: “As Middle East editor for the BBC, I’m under pressure from lobbyists. I am recognised by my peers as also being able to stick to my guns.

“Last year the BBC Trust, wrongly in my view, found me guilty of some inaccuracies, because of [complaints from] a campaign group in the USA, and in this country, who are the enemies of impartiality. They got through to the BBC Trust. I was found guilty.”

He said that the process of being attacked from all sides continued relentlessly. He said that following a recent piece, on the Israeli raid on the aid convoy sailing to Gaza, he had received an email from John Pilger saying: “I was a weasel, a disgrace to journalism – because I was trying to report impartially.

“On the other hand, I had a very nasty email from someone in north London, who said I was rabidly antisemitic, and people I loved would soon kill me. I am encouraged by irritating everyone.”

Bowen, who has worked for the BBC for 26 years and was advised by Wheeler to stick with reporting rather than moving to presenting, said the state of journalism at the BBC was “not great”.

“The BBC is in a very introspective time in its development. There is a loss of confidence,” he said. To laughter, he added: “We have to do strange things, compulsory training courses,” a reference to the editorial standards course overseen by the BBC’s College of Journalism, which all programme-makers had to undertake after a series of lapses.

Bowen said, however, that there was fantastic talent at all levels within the organisation, and proper news coverage was as important as ever.

“I am glad to be part of the mainstream media. Charles Wheeler knew that telling the truth can mean putting a few people’s noses out of joint.”

The trust’s censure last year centred on two Bowen stories, a January 2008 report for Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent to describe the history of the Israeli settlement Har Homa, near Jerusalem, in the 1960s; and a 2007 BBC website story, How 1967 defined the Middle East, about the legacy of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The BBC trustee who oversaw the process, Richard Tait, steps down this summer, one of nine out of 12 trustees whose appointments expire this year.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

MKs offer response to PA boycott: Haaretz

Knesset members submit bill that would see money owed to Palestinians handed over to Israelis hurt by settlement boycott
Will Palestinian soon pay price for boycott? A new bill submitted by 25 Knesset members Wednesday would see money slated for transfer to the Palestinian Authority used to compensate Israelis hurt by the PA’s settlement boycott.
The bill was initiated by the Land of Israel lobby in the Knesset and was endorsed by members of various factions, including Kadima party whip Dalia Itzik and Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tsachi Hanegbi.
According to the bill, Israeli citizens must not initiate, encourage, or aid a boycott against the State of Israel. Anyone who violates the order will be forced to pay compensation to those undermined by the embargo.

As to individuals who are not citizens or residents of Israel, their right to enter the country will be deprived for at least 10 years should they be involved in a boycott. Another measure would ban foreign entities or anyone on their behalf from engaging in any actions using Israeli bank accounts, Israeli stocks, or Israeli land.
The bill’s initiators say the move aims to “protect the State of Israel in general and its citizens in particular against academic, economic, and other boycotts.”
Addressing the Palestinian boycott, MK Itzik said: “The Palestinians are causing harm with this attitude…issues of this type should be resolve at the negotiating table.”

Helen Thomas, veteran reporter: why she had to resign: The Guardian

Her fierce questions shocked White House staff; Castro refused to answer her. And now veteran reporter Helen Thomas has had to quit.
Chris McGreal
Wednesday 9 June 2010
Fidel Castro was once asked to define the difference between democracy in Cuba and the United States. “I don’t have to answer questions from Helen Thomas,” the old revolutionary replied.

The grand dame of the White House press corps, who outlasted nine American presidential administrations – and Castro’s rule – was finally forced to halt her determined, often opinion-laden questioning and into retirement this week over comments on the issue closest to her heart, the Middle East.

There were no fond farewells for the 89-year-old reporter remembered as a trailblazer for women in journalism but also as a grumpy old contrarian. Her front-row seat in the White House briefing room, in recent years uniquely tagged with her own name rather than that of an organisation, was left empty.

Reporters who variously described Thomas as cranky, stubborn and opinionated said they weren’t surprised she’d finally overstepped the mark when she told a rabbi that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Poland and Germany. But the torrent of anger and criticism was tempered by Thomas’ lofty status.

By the time of her resignation she had clocked up many firsts: first female officer of the National Press Club and first female president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. She worked as a White House reporter for far longer than any other – for half a century. She was probably also the first White House correspondent to have a birthday cake delivered by a president, when Barack Obama arrived bearing cup cakes (they share a birthday).

Thomas joined United Press International in 1943 when it was still a major force in American journalism. She was 23 and had not long left Detroit, where she grew up to Lebanese immigrant parents. Her first job for UPI was reporting on women’s issues. She wrote a celebrity column then moved to cover the justice department, FBI and other federal agencies.

She was assigned to cover then President-elect John F Kennedy in late 1960 and so began a reputation for relentless questioning that exasperated American leaders. Kennedy said of her: “Helen would be a nice girl if she’d ever get rid of that pad and pencil.”

It was a sentiment echoed down the decades. “Isn’t there a war somewhere we could send her to?” Colin Powell, the former US secretary of state, once asked.

Thomas’s determined questioning and forthright reporting chipped away at what had long been an all-male and all-white club of reporters that was often regarded as far too cosy with the officials they were writing about, and still is. For many years she was frequently the only woman in the room.

In a photograph of White House correspondents questioning President Lyndon Johnson, Thomas is the only female face. She was also the only female print reporter among the journalists accompanying President Richard Nixon on his historic visit to China in 1972. Barbara Walters was there as part of the NBC television news team.

She became one of the instantly recognised faces on television at presidential press conferences. She was so well known that she played herself in two films, Dave and The American President.

Thomas quit UPI in 2000 after it was bought by the Moonie leader, Reverend Sun Myung Moon. She called the purchase “a bridge too far”. She had worked for the agency for 57 years, nearly half of them as UPI’s White House bureau chief. That might have been the end of her career. She said she had planned to “hang up my daily news spurs” at the time. But she was approached by Hearst newspapers with an offer to become a columnist.

“I gratefully said, why not? After all those years of telling it like it is, now I can tell it how I want it to be. To put another point on it, I get to wake up every morning and say, ‘Who am I mad at today?'” she wrote in her memoir Thanks For The Memories, Mr President. Many of her colleagues were surprised to hear that she regarded herself as having held back until then.

But first there was the question of her seat in the front row of the White House briefing room. Technically it should have gone to someone from one of the major news organisations. But Sam Donaldson, the boisterous former White House correspondent for ABC news, said she kept it because no one could imagine asking her to move to the back of the room. That marked another first for Thomas – an opinion columnist in a reporter’s seat in the White House briefing room. Her colleagues noticed an even more strident and opinionated tone to her questioning.

President George Bush had just taken power in a disputed election. In the coming years, Thomas made no secret of her opposition to the war in Iraq, offering a determined line of questioning that some of her colleagues appeared to shy away from in the post 9/11 atmosphere in America.

In 2002, she asked a question that few others at the White House would have dared: “Does the president think that the Palestinians have a right to resist 35 years of brutal military occupation and suppression?”

Her questions were sometimes deemed to be so laden with hostile opinion that one of Bush’s press secretaries, Ari Fleischer, once said: “We will temporarily suspend the Q&A portion of today’s briefing to bring you this advocacy minute.”

But she has not been averse to giving liberal presidents a hard time too. Scott Wilson, White House correspondent for the Washington Post, said Thomas did not go easy on Obama. “She did have a knack for trying to hold this administration accountable, particularly for its Middle East policy. She asked the question about which countries in the Middle East have nuclear weapons,” he said “They couldn’t not take her seriously. Her questions demanded an answer.”

Mostly they didn’t get one, but that was no less frustrating for those on the receiving end. “What’s the difference between your foreign policy and Bush’s?” she asked the presidential press secretary, Robert Gibbs.

A fortnight ago she challenged the president over what is increasingly known as “Obama’s war”. “When are you going to get out of Afghanistan?” she asked. “Why are we continuing to kill and die there? What is the real excuse? And don’t give us this Bushism, ‘If we don’t go there, they’ll all come here’.”

She was no less forthright in offering her opinion on the recent Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla, calling it a “deliberate massacre and international crime”. The New York Times said in its story about her resignation that two sets of rules applied to reporters covering the president: “those for the regular White House correspondents, and those for Helen Thomas.”

But an alternative view might be that Thomas was a courageous voice in an often craven White House press corps.

Even if White House correspondents sometimes grew exasperated with her, some said they respected her pedigree and generally put her shortcomings down to age. She grew so frail that other reporters had to help her walk from her desk to her chair in the briefing room, and she would sometimes fall asleep. She appeared less and less at the daily briefings.

Perhaps the best evidence that Thomas had lost touch was her failure to understand the consequences of saying that Israel’s Jews should go back to Poland and Germany to a rabbi with a video camera at a White House event to mark Jewish heritage month. It is possible that given her Lebanese background, that is what she has thought all along. But she should not have been surprised at the storm of protest.

Donaldson, who describes Thomas as a friend, said that while he would not defend her comments they probably reflect the views of many people of Arab descent. He then called her a “pioneer” for women. “No one can take that away from Helen,” he said

Israel’s media blackout, doctored Flotilla recording condemned: The Electronic Intifada

Mel Frykberg, 8 June 2010
RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank (IPS) – Although Israel successfully controlled news of its deadly commando raid on the Freedom Flotilla during the first crucial 48 hours of media coverage, emerging evidence from witnesses and survivors is challenging the Israeli government’s version of events.

These include claims of medical treatment being withheld; beatings and abuse of passengers who never resisted; the Israeli military doctoring audio and selectively editing videos.

Furthermore, allegations of a possible shoot-to-kill policy, amidst autopsies revealing repeated gun shots to the heads of the victims, are also part of an emerging pattern.

One of the first targets of Israeli commandos raiding the Flotilla was the international media. Photographers were attacked, and journalists had their video, audio and other communications equipment confiscated. The equipment has still not been returned.

“It was clear that Israel wanted to control the media coverage of the situation from the very beginning,” Huwaida Arraf, the Free Gaza Movement’s chairwoman, told IPS.

Approximately 60 journalists from around the globe were on board the Flotilla. They were amongst the last to be released by the Israelis.

Israeli authorities denied other media access to the imprisoned journalists and activists during the entire period they were incarcerated. Reporters were also prevented from speaking to the Flotilla activists when they were deported from Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International airport.

The Israeli army imposed a media blackout on the wounded being interviewed in Israeli hospitals, with soldiers stationed in hospital wards to enforce the ban. Journalists trying to enter Gaza to cover the raid were turned back by the Israeli authorities at the Erez crossing.

Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has denounced Israel’s editing and distribution of footage it confiscated from foreign journalists aboard the Flotilla.

CPJ refers to claims by the Foreign Press Association (FPA) in Israel that the military “is selectively using footage to bolster its claims that commandos opened fire only after being attacked.”

In another incident, the Israeli military had to clarify and correct another audio tape it released to the media after questions were raised as to its authenticity.

In the audio one of the “activists” on board the Flotilla allegedly tells the Israelis, amongst other things, to “go back to Auschwitz” in what appears to be a fake accent from the United States’ deep south. The “activist” is also heard telling the Israelis: “We are helping Arabs go against the US Don’t forget 9/11 guys.”

The Israeli army also claimed that the voice of Arraf was recorded on the Mavi Marmara, the boat where the activists were shot dead. However, she was on a different boat, the Challenger 1.

“There were no Americans from the south on the Flotilla. Furthermore, the only people to communicate with the Israelis other than myself were the captains,” Arraf told IPS.

“One of them was British, two were Greek, two Turkish and one Algerian and they acted in a very professional manner. I was near the VHF radio during the entire period of communication with the [Israeli army] and none of those alleged slurs were made,” added Arraf.

However, despite the Israeli military’s retraction/correction, discrepancies remain even in the edited Israeli military audio which was released five days after the original one. The alleged slurs about Auschwitz and 9/11 remain.

Although it was inevitable that contradictory evidence would emerge following the arrival of hundreds of the released activists in Istanbul, Athens and other European capitals, the first dramatic events are no longer the main headlines of the major media outlets and network corporations.

And this was probably what the Israelis relied on as they went on the diplomatic offensive.

Nevertheless, the raid and its ramifications are not going away. Postmortems carried out by the Turks reveal that a number of the dead had numerous shots to the head in addition to other parts of the body. Thirty shots were used to kill nine people.

The Israeli military has a “confirm kill” policy where even after a person (who is considered a danger to the life of a soldier or other Israelis) is neutralized by several bullets, a final shot is fired into the head at close range to “confirm the kill.”

Critics have questioned how individuals, who allegedly constituted threats to the life of the commandos, and would therefore be fighting and moving around, remained still long enough to receive so many shots to the head at close range.

Activists further accuse the Israelis of denying the dying and seriously wounded medical attention despite their desperate pleas for help. Other activists were forcibly prevented from going to the aid of the injured.

Survivors, reportedly, have also disputed Israeli claims that their soldiers used live ammunition only after they were attacked by some of the activists who fought back and managed to wound several of the soldiers. They claim the soldiers began shooting before they were attacked as well as after those who fought back had been neutralized.

Further, Israeli claims that the commandos only used violence against activists who attacked them have also been disputed. A number of activists have claimed they were beaten up in jail and at Ben Gurion when they were being deported.

This IPS correspondent was physically threatened and verbally abused by Israeli police when she witnessed, and took pictures of, several frightened and cuffed activists being frog-marched away from the airport’s departure lounge.

Paul Larudee, a 64-year-old activist from the US and a diabetic, had to be hospitalized after he was beaten repeatedly on different occasions by the navy seals. Kenneth O’Keefe, an Irish-American and former marine, was hospitalized in Tel Aviv after he too was beaten by security officials at the airport.

O’Keefe wanted to fight his deportation but was advised by his lawyer to leave the country for his own safety.

Noam Chomsky: The Real Threat Aboard the Freedom Flotilla: In These Times

Posted by admin on Jun 9th, 2010 and filed under FEATURED COMMENTARIES, Gaza, Noam Chomsky. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
By Noam Chomsky, In These Times – 8 June 2010
http://inthesetimes.org/article/6064/the_real_threat_aboard_the_freedom_flotilla/
Israel’s violent attack on the Freedom Flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza shocked the world.
Hijacking boats in international waters and killing passengers is, of course, a serious crime.
But the crime is nothing new. For decades, Israel has been hijacking boats between Cyprus and Lebanon and killing or kidnapping passengers, sometimes holding them hostage in Israeli prisons.
Israel assumes that it can commit such crimes with impunity because the United States tolerates them and Europe generally follows the U.S.’s lead.
As the editors of The Guardian rightly observed on June 1, “If an armed group of Somali pirates had yesterday boarded six vessels on the high seas, killing at least 10 passengers and injuring many more, a NATO task force would today be heading for the Somali coast.” In this case, the NATO treaty obligates its members to come to the aid of a fellow NATO country—Turkey—attacked on the high seas.
Israel’s pretext for the attack was that the Freedom Flotilla was bringing materials that Hamas could use for bunkers to fire rockets into Israel.
The pretext isn’t credible. Israel can easily end the threat of rockets by peaceful means.
The background is important. Hamas was designated a major terrorist threat when it won a free election in January 2006. The U.S. and Israel sharply escalated their punishment of Palestinians, now for the crime of voting the wrong way.
The siege of Gaza, including a naval blockade, was a result. The siege intensified sharply in June 2007 after a civil war left Hamas in control of the territory.
What is commonly described as a Hamas military coup was in fact incited by the U.S. and Israel, in a crude attempt to overturn the elections that had brought Hamas to power.
That has been public knowledge at least since April 2008, when David Rose reported in Vanity Fair that George W. Bush, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Elliott Abrams, “backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.”
Hamas terror included launching rockets into nearby Israeli towns—criminal, without a doubt, though only a minute fraction of routine U.S.-Israeli crimes in Gaza.
In June 2008, Israel and Hamas reached a cease-fire agreement. The Israeli government formally acknowledges that until Israel broke the agreement on Nov. 4 of that year, invading Gaza and killing half a dozen Hamas activists, Hamas did not fire a single rocket.
Hamas offered to renew the cease-fire. The Israeli cabinet considered the offer and rejected it, preferring to launch its murderous invasion of Gaza on Dec.27.
Like other states, Israel has the right of self-defense. But did Israel have the right to use force in Gaza in the name of self-defense? International law, including the U.N. Charter, is unambiguous: A nation has such a right only if it has exhausted peaceful means. In this case such means were not even tried, although—or perhaps because—there was every reason to suppose that they would succeed.
Thus the invasion was sheer criminal aggression, and the same is true of Israel’s resorting to force against the flotilla.
The siege is savage, designed to keep the caged animals barely alive so as to fend off international protest, but hardly more than that. It is the latest stage of longstanding Israeli plans, backed by the U.S., to separate Gaza from the West Bank.
The Israeli journalist Amira Hass, a leading specialist on Gaza, outlines the history of the process of separation: “The restrictions on Palestinian movement that Israel introduced in January 1991 reversed a process that had been initiated in June 1967.
“Back then, and for the first time since 1948, a large portion of the Palestinian people again lived in the open territory of a single country — to be sure, one that was occupied, but was nevertheless whole. …”
Hass concludes: “The total separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank is one of the greatest achievements of Israeli politics, whose overarching objective is to prevent a solution based on international decisions and understandings and instead dictate an arrangement based on Israel’s military superiority.”
The Freedom Flotilla defied that policy and so it must be crushed.
A framework for settling the Arab-Israeli conflict has existed since 1976, when the regional Arab States introduced a Security Council resolution calling for a two-state settlement on the international border, including all the security guarantees of U.N. Resolution 242, adopted after the June War in 1967.
The essential principles are supported by virtually the entire world, including the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic States (including Iran) and relevant non-state actors, including Hamas.
But the U.S. and Israel have led the rejection of such a settlement for three decades, with one crucial and highly informative exception. In President Bill Clinton’s last month in office, January 2001, he initiated Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Taba, Egypt, that almost reached an agreement, participants announced, before Israel terminated the negotiations.
Today, the cruel legacy of a failed peace lives on.
International law cannot be enforced against powerful states, except by their own citizens. That is always a difficult task, particularly when articulate opinion declares crime to be legitimate, either explicitly or by tacit adoption of a criminal framework—which is more insidious, because it renders the crimes invisible

Not by cement alone: Haaretz

The flotilla, like its predecessors and the ones still to come, serves the Israeli goal, which is to complete the process of separating the Gaza Strip from the West Bank.
By Amira Hass
The achievement of the failed flotilla to Gaza – mainly, it must be conceded, by its dead – is that the demand is being heard from everywhere that Israel halt its policy of siege. The government of Israel was not willing to listen to the desperate supplications of John Ging, the head of UNRWA in Gaza. Now it must heed French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But unknowingly, this flotilla, like its predecessors and the ones still to come, serves the Israeli goal, which is to complete the process of separating the Gaza Strip from the West Bank. The process, it will be said here for the millionth time, started in 1991 and not after the rise of Hamas rule. It’s purpose was to thwart the two-state solution, which the world understood at that time as based on all of Gaza and the West Bank, and the link between them.

Since the method of sailing to Gaza started about two years ago, none of its initiators purported to meet the need for this or that product. Israel is attempting by signs and wonders to prove there is no hunger in Gaza. The initiators are actually thinking about hunger of a different kind: a very human hunger for a direct link to the world, to freedom of movement of people, not just goods. The seaborne method was later switched to overland breaches to the Strip via Rafah, to Egypt’s displeasure and Israel’s joy.

Israel brought the closure to grotesque and petty proportions, attracting attention with its prohibition on macaroni and permission for cinnamon, the counting of calories and delaying cement even for a sewage treatment plant. Israel expanded the closure to the extent of prohibiting Gazans from working, creating, manufacturing and earning a living, with the declared goal of bringing down Hamas. But it achieved the opposite. That rule only grew stronger, proving its resourcefulness, its ability to suppress internal opposition and engender support by international activists who are ideologically opposed to its methods and philosophy. The siege strengthened Hamas to such an extent that Palestinian conspiracy theorists are convinced this was Israel’s intention from the outset.

Most Israelis, who have given up on real information, find it difficult to absorb that some people in the world are shocked at the existence of a huge prison whose warden is the Jewish state. But those who are shocked have become partners in the pressure campaign – supported, if not instigated by Hamas – against Egypt to unilaterally open the Rafah crossing, as if it is the occupier and not Israel.

And what serves the goal of separating Gaza from the West Bank better than forgetting the sealed the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel, and focusing on Rafah and cement? Unintentionally, the runners of the maritime and media blockade focused attention on aspects that do not undermine the essence of Israel’s closure of Gaza. And that essence is denying the right and thwarting the will of Gazans to be an active, permanent and natural part of Palestinian society.

Long before Israel prohibited the entry of cement into the Strip, it prohibited Gazans from studying in the West Bank. While it still permitted guavas to be exported from Khan Yunis to Jordan, it forbade Gazans to enter the West Bank even via the Allenby Bridge or to meet relatives and friends. Step by step, Israel developed draconian restrictions on Palestinians’ freedom of movement, until it declared every Gazan in the West Bank, now and especially in the future, an illegal alien and an infiltrator. These are the essential prohibitions that must be breached. These are the prohibitions about whose existence Erdogan and U.S. President Barack Obama must be taught, and their abolition demanded.

Arab states: Israel nuclear danger reinforced by its aggression: Haaretz

Arab states target Israel at UN nuclear debate, urge Israel to join global anti-nuclear arms pact NPT.

Arab nations backed by Iran urged Israel to join a global anti-nuclear arms pact at a rare and divisive United Nations atomic watchdog debate a day after new sanctions were passed against Tehran.
Israel, presumed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear weapons arsenal, condemned the push at the International Atomic Energy Agency meeting on Thursday as being fuelled by countries which question Israel’s existence.
Western countries warned that honing in on Israel could jeopardize broader steps aimed at banning weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.

“What the region needs is to come together in a cooperative, consensual way,” Washington’s envoy Glyn Davies said. “This is not going to happen if the parties of the region engage in name-calling, if they wag fingers at each other.”

It was the first time the IAEA’s policy-making board tackled the topic since 1991, coinciding with wider scrutiny of Israel after its raid on a Gaza-bound aid convoy and a UN conference which put its nuclear policy in the spotlight.

“Israel continues to defy the international community through its continued refusal to accede to the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT),” Sudan’s envoy Mahmoud El-Amin told the 35-nation meeting in Vienna on behalf of Arab states.

“The Israeli nuclear danger is reinforced by [its] aggressive policies towards Arab countries,” he said.

By shunning the 40-year-old NPT Israel has not had to reject atomic arms or allow the IAEA to probe all of its nuclear sites. India, Pakistan and North Korea are also outside the NPT.

Signatories of the pact – nearly all of the world’s nations – last month called for a conference in 2012 to discuss banning weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. If realized, the zone could ultimately force Israel to join the treaty.

Iran, angered by a fourth round of UN sanctions passed against it on Wednesday over its nuclear program seized on the debate to accuse the West of “double standards” and discrimination.

Iran rejects Western allegations it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, arguing that its nuclear program has only peaceful aims.

“There is only one potential threat to the security of the region…which is the nuclear weapons capability of Israel,” Iranian ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh said.

He said the West’s reluctance to discuss Israel while pressuring Iran was “very worrisome” because it protected those outside the NPT and could provoke members to withdraw from it. He said Iran had no intention of doing this as of now.

Iran is seen by Western nations as an NPT renegade and bomb risk for hiding sensitive nuclear activity. They say Israel is not comparable because it is not in the NPT while Iran is. Many developing nations say that this is precisely the problem.

The IAEA debate on “Israeli nuclear capabilities” was on the agenda at the behest of Arab nations who want watchdog chief Yukiya Amano to help implement an IAEA resolution urging Israel to enter the NPT and put its sites under agency oversight.

Amano said he would report on his progress in September.

Mad Israelis section

EDITOR: This new contributor to the MI section, is also not a new face in Israel, Apart from being somewhat unhinged, he is also supporting ethnic cleansing, so he must be very sane…

Our survival is at stake: YNet

Without siege, Gaza to turn into Iranian base armed with long-range missiles
Published:     06.08.10, 18:32
In order to ensure our survival, we must not lift the blockade imposed on one of the most radical entities – Hamas; any other way, given the weapons that will come into the Strip, Israel will face existential danger.

It’s no secret that the blockade isn’t perfect. However, it is most certainly not a baseless caprice. It aims to prevent the Gaza Strip and a terror organization that declared war on Israel from equipping themselves with long-range weapons and building an Iranian base in southern Israel. The siege prevents the establishment of an entity that aims to complete the Iranian mission to attack Israel with long-range missiles from the south as well.
If we take Lebanon as an example, the naval blockade imposed on it was successful, yet the land blockade was trampled upon, while shredding Resolution 1701. At this time, tens of thousands of missiles are deployed in Lebanese territory. Is this the situation in the Gaza Strip? Is anyone willing to take such gamble?

If we lift the naval blockade around the Strip, we would not be able to demand that Egypt continue to prevent the transfer of heavy weapons from its territory. This is not only an immediate security concern, but also a question of our national future. Our presence in areas that are not monitored or demilitarized is necessary. Without a military presence and direct Israeli control, we’ll be hit with missiles.

We will have to deal with this issue in Judea and Samaria as well, in a situation of a future agreement. Hence, this is the kind of test that will see every missile smuggled from Iran via other states in the region arriving at our doorstep should we fail. It is a test of our ability to enforce effective demilitarization agreements.

We must show endurance
The blockade has nothing to do with Gaza’s humanitarian situation. The latest flotilla proved there was no such crisis. Every offer to transfer the goods on board the ships to Gaza was rejected out of hand, because the sail was an attempt by violent thugs to exploit quite a few innocent people in order to create a provocation.

However, as is always the case, the voices that emerge after a crisis or tension tell us that the wise thing to do is to yield. I wish this was true. In Lebanon, Gaza, and even in Judea and Samaria, we encountered cynic and hostile exploitation when we adopted this move, before Operation Cast Lead. Yet as we know today, there are tens of thousands of missiles in Lebanon, while in Samaria quiet prevails. The blockade and our cooperation with Egypt in the south keep Gaza a little less dangerous than Lebanon.

Hence, we must not get scared by the apocalyptic scenarios and threats surrounding us and fall apart. We must maintain the right perspective: Thus far, no state severed its ties with Israel. Meanwhile, the Arabs in Israel and in Judea and Samaria did not realize the horrific scenarios we were frightened with.

The blockade is part of an overall arsenal of means adopted by the State vis-à-vis the Gaza enemy, and for the sake of our survival. We saw enemies that realized over time – via our endurance and steadfastness – that the prices one pays for harming Israel aren’t worthwhile.
Hamas is one of the most radical and unrestrained entities out there. After all, we left Gaza, and its residents could have selected a different path. As long as it’s the path of war, they shall get war. Now, we must prove that we possess endurance. We already possess the existential justification to continue the blockade as long as it’s needed.

Effie Eitam is an IDF brigadier general (res.) and a former minister on behalf of National Religious Party