EDITOR: Fascist leader to visit London

Mr. Lieberman, that great supporter of freedom (for Jews) and ethnic cleansing (for Palestinians) is about to honour London with a visit. He plans to raise funds for the JNF. My own view is that the JNF is deluded if they think this nightclub bouncer will raise funds for them, but JNF knows best, of course. It seems that JNF is trying to raise funds for ethnic cleansing – I cannot think of another reason for choosing Lieberman.

Mr. Liberman has been providing excellent material for the new section of this website: Mad Israelis, and will no doubt continue to provide much material in the future, at least until the ICC catches up with him.

We should all welcome him to the capital, of course.

Israeli politician who advocates ‘transfer’ of Arabs due in London: Jewish Chronicle

By Shelly Paz, May 30, 2008
One of Israel’s most controversial politicians, former deputy prime minister Avigdor Lieberman, has been invited to London next month by Keren Kayemet L’Yisrael and the Israel Business Club, in an attempt to spark  debate that will assist fundraising.
“Many of the members of the Israeli and the Jewish community in London, who are likely to donate money, do actually agree with Lieberman’s opinions,” said Dubi Bergman, KKL’s representative in London.

Avigdor Lieberman: visit planned to spark political debate
The comments of the Russian-born Knesset member, now head of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, such as his idea to transfer to the Palestinian territories Israeli Arabs who do not feel a connection with Israel, to give them a “loyalty test”, and a remark about Arab MKs being “collaborators”, have turned him into a controversial figure.
But Mr Bergman said: “The goal of this visit is to bring influential Israeli and British people together and to let Mr Lieberman tell them about Israel’s political and security condition today and the solutions as he sees them.
“We hope his visit will bring a fruitful debate. It’s easy to bring someone that everyone agrees with. Personally, I would like to bring [Arab MK] Ahmed Tibi here some day.
“I don’t agree with his opinions, but I enjoy listening to him.”
Mr Lieberman is due in London for a three-day visit between June 19 and 22. Malka Leon, director of the IBC in London, said: “We try to bring a variety of Israeli figures to speak. This way we can hear the extreme right- and left-wing politicians, academics, artists and opinion-makers.
“In the past, we hosted in London [Defence Minister] Ehud Barak, Prof Uzi Arad from the Interdisciplinary Centre in Herzliya, [former Education Minister, MK] Limor Livnat, and more than a decade ago we had a representative of the PLO in London.”
Mr Lieberman openly declares that yielding territories for peace has failed.
He resigned from Ariel Sharon’s government before the Gaza disengagement in 2005, and opposes the suggestion that Israel might give the Golan Heights to the Syrians in exchange for peace. Instead, he strongly backs the idea of exchanging settled territories in an attempt to reach regional peace.
A few months after the second Lebanon war, Mr Lieberman and his party joined Ehud Olmert’s government, explaining at the time that the IDF and the Israeli government needed to be strengthened by political unity.
But this January, he pulled Yisrael Beiteinu, the fourth-largest party in the Knesset, from the government. This time he objected to preliminary negotiations with the Palestinians on the core issues of Jerusalem, the “right of return” and the permanent borders of Israel and a Palestinian state.

EDITOR: Israel will investigate itself…

No, this is not the satirical page, unfortunately.

IDF appoints team to conduct internal probe of Gaza flotilla raid: Haaretz

General (res.) Giora Eiland charged with heading investigation into lessons and failures of raid; Netanyahu to announce separate state panel of inquiry.

The Israel Defense Forces announced on Monday that it would conduct an internal military investigation into the Israel Navy’s deadly raid of a humanitarian aid convoy bound for the Gaza Strip.

IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi has appointed General [res.] Giora Eiland to head the investigative team. The team has been charged with studying the failures and lessons of the commando raid on a Turkish-flagged ship last week that left nine activists dead and several people wounded.

Eiland and his team will consider internal navy testimonies already gathered in the week since the raid and will open a series of fresh investigations as well. They are due to report their findings to the General Staff by July 4.

Ashkenazi decided to appoint an investigative team due to the “great importance with which the IDF views a comprehensive clarification of the facts related to its operational activities,” the army said in a statement.

Hours before the IDF’s announcement, Haaretz learned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had decided to appoint a state panel of inquiry to investigate the Israel Navy raid.

A senior source in Jerusalem said the panel would comprise top justices experienced in matters of international and marine law. Two international justices – at least one of them American – would be invited to participate as observers, said the source.

In addition to investigating the circumstances surrounding the Israel Navy’s seizure of the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, the committee will also be charged with looking into the legality of Israel’s closure of the Gaza Strip and its naval blockade.

Netanyahu’s forum of top seven ministers decided to create the internal investigative panel on Monday, after days of deliberation. An official announcement on the matter was awaiting approval from the attorney general – to ensure that there were no conflicts of interest among the potential members of the committee – as well as a green light from President Barack Obama’s administration.

The forum of seven ruled in its decision that the panel would not be allowed to interrogate soldiers or officers who took part in the commando raid, which left nine Turkish activists dead and several people wounded. It was not yet clear whether senior Israel Defense Forces officials – including IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and Israel Navy Commader Eliezer “Chiney” Marom – would be investigated by the panel.

The ministers’ decision comes on the heels of a United Nations proposal to establish an international committee comprising representatives of Israel, the U.S. and Turkey to investigate the incident.

Despite growing international pressure, Netanyahu had balked at the proposal, claiming Israel has the right to investigate itself.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Knesset on Monday, in response to a no-confidence motion submitted by the opposition with regard to the raid, that Israel would examine ways to minimize friction in enforcing its blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza.

“We intend to achieve an investigation of the events,” Barak said, without giving details about the format of the probe.

He did say that the state panel would serve in addition to the separate military investigation, and that it would seek to establish whether Israel’s four-year blockade of Gaza and its raid “met with the standards of international law”.

“We will draw lessons at the political level [and] in the security establishment,” Barak said. “Since the event we have heard and read mountains of talk and questions and without a doubt in the coming months we shall discuss lessons … perhaps additional ways to achieve the same goals of the blockade, by reducing as far as possible the potential for friction.”

Instead of another ignored report: Haaretz

It would be best to make the flotilla saga a turning point in Israel’s policy governing the Gaza blockade and the continued occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
By Akiva Eldar
In the same week the diplomatic tsunami caused by the fatal raid of the Mavi Marmara left those trying to steer Israel’s ship of state high and dry, two leaders of other countries, one in the Far East and one in the West, both resigned their posts.

In Germany, Horst Koehler stepped down as president, penalizing himself for saying that German military deployments abroad serve the country’s economic interests. And Yukio Hatoyama resigned as prime minister of Japan after breaking a promise to move an American military base off the island of Okinawa.

In Israel, meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are evading responsibility for the disastrous thinking that led to the flotilla raid, and using their purported faith in the commandos who carried it out as a way of keeping that disastrous thinking under wraps.

Netanyahu and Barak are right: There is no need for an inquiry. It’s clear that their risk-reward assessment was faulty, since Netanyahu was getting ready to head to the White House as the commandos were firing on the passengers of the aid ship.

No political or military official who was involved in the decision to mount a forcible takeover of the ships says that any option was considered other than the vessels either being captured or reaching the Gaza port.

Two dozen cabinet members – who are collectively responsible for the crisis – say they first heard about the incident on the radio.

Not only is it unnecessary to appoint an inquiry committee to examine the problematic takeover of the Mavi Marmara, but doing so is likely to detract attention from the far-reaching strategic ramifications of the Gaza blockade and its implementation.

Syrian President Bashar Assad wasn’t exaggerating when he described the flotilla as a turning point in the Arab-Israeli conflict, by which he presumably meant that the incident dragged the Israeli government into the losing sphere of ethics and human rights.

In this assymetric struggle between the occupier and the occupied, military supremacy not only fails to ensure victory, but easily becomes a hindrance.

In the absence of a genuine peace process, the flotilla saga caused the moderate Arab center, led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to lose what momentum it had. Now the momentum is with the radical Islamists on the fringes, led by Iran.

There’s no need to bother a retired judge just so he can rule that the decision-makers should have been aware of the race for Middle East supremacy.

And there’s nothing that any expert in maritime law has to say that will prevent the Arab-speaking public from pressuring Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to open the Rafah crossing.

We don’t need an inquiry committee to know that the blockade keeping cilantro and cement out of Gaza has turned Tehran’s deniers of the Jewish genocide and Ankara’s deniers of the Armenian genocide into standard-bearers for assistance to the unfortunate children of Gaza.

At the same time, Hamas is laughing all the way from the smuggling tunnels to the bank. The blockade has transformed Hamas, which the United States and Europe classify as a terror organization, into a victim of Israeli aggression.

You don’t have to be an expert on the Middle East to realize that every day in which Israel drags its feet on peace talks with the Palestinians bolsters Hamas’ position in Gaza. All you had to do was see Iran’s ally to Israel’s north licking its lips in pleasure in order to realize the price of the standstill on the Syrian track.

Even the best of Israel’s friends in the world have a hard time understanding the Netanyahu-Barak government, not to mention justifying its actions. Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a foreign policy think tank in Washington, wrote in an article last week that “the depth of America’s moral commitment does not justify or excuse actions by an Israeli government that unnecessarily make Israel a strategic liability when it should remain an asset.”

Cordesman, who previously served as director of intelligence assessment in the Pentagon, also said America’s commitment to Israel “does not mean that the United States should extend support to an Israeli government when that government fails to credibly pursue peace with its neighbors.”

Instead of just shoving one more report in the drawer, it would be best to make the flotilla saga a turning point in Israel’s policy governing the Gaza blockade and the continued occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Floating along in the direction we’ve been going will just get us into hot water.

Zoabi: “Israel’s ‘house of democracy’ is turning into a house of racism and incitement”: IOA

Haneen Zoabi press release – 7 June 2010
[Haneen Zoabi] stated that the Knesset committee has taken decisions in retaliation against her, and virtually every Knesset Member is calling for more extreme measures, including calls for her dismissal from the Knesset, to revoke her citizenship, to expel her from the country, and imprisonment. Thus, these MKs consider the committee’s decisions to be just a first step of more punitive measures to come. “Our response will be to defy them. We will continue on our path of upholding human values and human rights, calling for equality, justice and the end of occupation and racism despite all their incitement and threats.”

Press Release The National Democratic Assembly MK Haneen Zoabi – Parliamentary Office 7 June 2010
Knesset House Committee voted to revoke the parliamentary rights of MK Haneen Zoabi
Zoabi: “Israel’s ‘house of democracy’ is turning into a house of racism and incitement”
On Monday, 7 June 2010, the Knesset House Committee voted by a seven-to-one majority to revoke the parliamentary rights of (MK) Haneen Zoabi. The vote came in the wake of her participation in the “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” which aimed to break the siege on the Gaza Strip imposed by Israel since 2007. The Committee decision still needs to be approved by the Knesset plenum. Arab parties collectively decided to boycott the Committee session in protest of the attack and the escalating levels of incitement that MK Zoabi and Arab MKs in general have faced.
In addition to demands for her to be brought to account as a “terrorist” and for her party, the National Democratic Assembly (Balad), to be outlawed, the incitement against MK Zoabi sank even lower than the depths it reached in the Knesset session held last Wednesday. During today’s session a female MK resorted to abusive language so obscene that the chair of session Yaron Levin demanded that it be deleted from the official record. The incitement also descended into personal attacks against Zoabi and targeted her as a woman.
The committee recommended that Zoabi should be stripped of three rights usually enjoyed by members of the Israeli Knesset. First, she should be prevented from travelling in case she is on her way “to commit an offence”. Second, her diplomatic passport should be
revoked, and, third, she should no longer be entitled to legal expenses from the Knesset in case she is put on trial.
The session was held in the Knesset and headed by Yariv Levin (Likud). He quoted statements made by MK Zoabi about the Freedom Flotilla and what she described as the “oppressive siege on the Gaza Strip”. He also raised remarks she had made about Israel’s nuclear capabilities, referring to her statement that Israel must not be allowed to remain the sole nuclear power in the Middle East. Levin also described political positions adopted by Zoabi that he claimed posed a threat to the State of Israel: he showed clips from her interviews with journalists and with Arab satellite channels in which she rejected the Jewish nature of the state, called for a state of all its citizens, demanded an end to the occupation, and called for Israeli war crimes to be exposed and for those responsible to be held to account. These political positions, granted by freedom of speech in a normal democractic environment, let alone to an MK, were viewed by head of the committee and the majority of its members as crimes that justifiy stripping Zoabi of her rights as an MK.
Yoel Hasson of Kadima said that “Haneen Zoabi has crossed the line. The goal of Haneen Zoabi was to tarnish Israel’s image in the international community.” Nissim Cohen railed against Zoabi, stating that in a war there are those who support it and that “there were terrorists aboard the ship and Zoabi must be held accountable as a terrorist.”
Following the session, MK Haneen Zoabi stated that “Israel still denies its responsibility towards the killing of civilians on the Mavi Marmara, its responsibility for the starvation of the people of Gaza, and the international outrage caused by its actions. Unable to deal with this, it chose to regard me as a scape goat”. She added that “the session occurred within an atmosphere of violent incitement in which the MKs have incited the Israeli public to use violence” against her.
MK Zoabi stated that “Israel, following the international reaction to its bloody attack on humanitarian flotilla, is embarrassed and confused. Unable to deal with the shock and anger of the international community, I have become their punching bag.”
Zoabi added that “there is no democracy in Israel, we are operating within the margins of democracy, and even this narrow margin Israel is trying to eliminate. Israel is trying to portray this as ‘Arabs versus Jews’; however I don’t represent only Arabs, I also represent Jewish groups, however marginal, who are against blockade on Gaza; and in particular I represent international consensus on this issue.” She added that “Israel’s true image has been revealed — they are confused and embarrassed and want to retaliate. I have become their easy prey.”
She stated that the Knesset committee has taken decisions in retaliation against her, and virtually every Knesset Member is calling for more extreme measures, including calls for her dismissal from the Knesset, to revoke her citizenship, to expel her from the country, and imprisonment. Thus, these MKs consider the committee’s decisions to be just a first step of more punitive measures to come. “Our response will be to defy them. We will continue on our path of upholding human values and human rights, calling for equality, justice and the end of occupation and racism despite all their incitement and threats.”

Mad Israelis Section

The contributors to this section are marked in red, just to warn readers that they are on a nutter article…

EDITOR: New contributor to this section, but by no way is he a new face on Israeli Nutterdom. Mr. Segal is a man of simple ideas, and even simpler solutions. The problem is not that Israel kills many people all the time – the problem is that people know about it… and he has a solution!

Shut down al-Jazeera: YNet

Only a nation with zero will to survive issues press cards to its enemies
Hagai Segal
Published:     06.07.10, 00:46
The Gaza-bound flotilla was eventually stopped, yet the al-Jazeera warship continues to sail as usual. The network’s photos from the battle scene at sea again made it first to satellite dishes worldwide. As usual, the images were accompanied by a soundtrack of lies, incitement, and hatred for Israel.

Our government pledged to apply all the lessons it learned in the Marmara raid ahead of future flotillas, yet one lesson can be applied at this time already: Kick al-Jazeera out of Israel. Shut down their offices here tomorrow morning and confiscate their equipment. Of course, also revoke their reporters’ and photographers’ press cards.

The attorney general will find the proper clause that would allow us to undertake such move. He may even designate the network as a terrorist organization. After all, al-Jazeera assists Hamas to a much greater extent than all the organization’s television and radio stations combined. Would we allow Hamas to maintain official studios here?

The Olmert government already took a decision in the past to boycott al-Jazeera, but it did not find the courage to truly boycott it. The Qatar-based network continues to broadcast from here, while sinking us in waves of venom.

Hornets’ nest
Every time the network turns on a camera or a microphone in this country, tens of millions of viewers worldwide get another proof that Israel lost its desire to live. Only a nation with zero will to survive issues press cards to its enemies. The time has come to prove to everyone that we choose life after all.

International media organizations will raise a hue and cry and argue that the move is tantamount to silencing divergent opinions, etc. etc. Yet this will be no more than hypocritical nonsense that we shall somehow have to tolerate.

Indeed, shutting down al-Jazeera’s broadcasts from Israel will undermine the freedom of expression to the same extent that shutting down a brothel undermines one freedom to make a living.
As far as it applies to Israel, al-Jazeera is not a media outlet; rather, it is a hornets’ nest. How long will we wait before we dispatch a police team over there with a closure order?

EDITOR: Another new contributor to Mad Israelis is making her debut…

You are our children: YNet

People known as ‘IDF troops’ are our children, the sum of our hopes, dreams
Merav Batito
Published:     06.03.10, 18:45
It was my child who was grabbed by his legs and thrown off the upper deck of the ship; who was brutally beaten up; who had a stun grenade hurled at him; who was stabbed in the stomach; who had his arm broken.

It was my child who was stunned to discover that the peace activists, the cool youngsters on board the ship – the ones who must be wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt and listening to Bob Marley music – are in fact a bunch of wolves posing as little red riding hood.

It was my child who was willing to put himself through demanding physical training starting in 10th grade already in order to become a Navy commando; who was as happy as can be when he completed a course that only few manage to survive through. It is my child who arrives home on Fridays just to hug and kiss me because I remembered to make the schnitzel he loves so much.

It was my child who found himself attacked with bats and stun grenades, after he was equipped with a paintball gun and was told a thousand times to be gentle with the peace sailors, lest everything get out of control and the whole world will rise up against us.

It was my child, the one I gave birth to, educated, and sent to the IDF, who truly felt this is an important national mission, and that he should be doing everything in order not to disappoint his commanders, his friends, his army chief, his defense minister, and his mother.

Just like an unexpected slap to the face of a passerby at a dark alley came this recognition. Just like the first rain after a year of drought. These people we got used to referring to as “IDF soldiers” are our children. We gave birth to them in our image, and they’re us.

They are the sum of all our hopes, aspirations, and dreams. This is exactly what we wanted, this is what we prayed for, and they are the people who made us so proud.

I think this is quite enough, but please feel free to enjoy the madness in full, by using the link above.

The last contributor for today is Mr. Assaf Wohl, who writes most poetically.

Thank you, 1st sergeant A.: YNet

Assaf Wohl writes to our Navy Seals, who bear Jewish history’s burden on their shoulders
Assaf Wohl
Published:     06.01.10, 23:49
Dear First Sergeant A.

You’ve become famous, my brother. I know you didn’t want to. You prefer the dark waters of the night. Yet suddenly we can see you on every self-respecting news channel – CNN, BBC, NBC.

There you are, quickly gliding down to the deck of the vessel. The audience at home watches with concern. Not all of us get the chance to jump off a helicopter in the middle of the night straight into an ocean of hatred and the knives held by bloodthirsty “peace activists.”

I know that at such moments, there is only one thing that truly scares you: Your mother finding out who you hang out with at night. Perhaps this is why your face is covered. Nonetheless, you show no hesitation and glide down. I think you may be doing it not only because your friends need you on that deck, or because of the heavy weight of the equipment you’re carrying. You may dismiss my words with a smile, but I believe another force pulled you down.

It’s a rather heavy burden, First Sergeant A. The burden of the Jewish people. It sounds bombastic, right? “History” and “ideals” are bad words in the post-Israeli discourse. Even to me it sounds a little schmaltzy. Our precious elites, which at this time engage in constant self-flagellation, managed to entrench within us the weakness of spirit and a sense of cynicism.

However, this burden exists. Perhaps it managed to find its way to your shoulders back when you were born. You are a citizen of the Jewish State, First Sergeant A., and your medical profile makes you fit to be a combat soldier. Hence, you have been destined to glide down from helicopters at late hours of night and take the spiting of the whole enlightened world. This world also expects you not to respond, even when someone fires at you.

I think this is quite enough, but there is more where this came from – please feel free to enjoy the madness in full, by using the link above.

And the best part – a report by the excellent Max Blumenthal on Israeli madness, with a clip to illustrate it:

Pro-IDF, Anti-Turkish Rally in Tel Aviv (or a Glimpse Into Collective Israeli Derangement): Max Blumenthal

June 7, 2010

On June 1, 2010, thousands of Israelis gathered spontaneously in front of the Turkish Embassy in Tel Aviv to demonstrate in support of the Israeli Naval commando unit that killed nine passengers on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish-backed boat from the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Egged on by the Israeli government and media, the demonstrators lashed out at Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for his support of the Marmara, accusing him and passengers on the ship of terrorist ties. Besides with the massacre of Turkish aid workers, the spectacle of massive Israeli protests against Turkey threatens to permanently rupture Israel’s ties to its closest Muslim ally and further isolate the country on the world stage.

The rally provided a clear window into the mentality of many Israelis after the raid. International condemnation has deepened the public’s siege mentality, leading many demonstrators to claim that anti-Semitism best explained the world’s motives. The belief that the Mavi Marmara was a terrorist ship with support from an assortment of Islamic evildoers including Al Qaida was nearly unanimous, and was offered by rally participants as an excuse for their killing. Many viewed the incident out in the shadow of the Holocaust, convinced that Marmara passengers had shouted at the commandos, “Go back to Auschwitz!”

Such convictions were understandable in light of the aggressive propaganda campaign the Israeli Defense Forces and Israeli Foreign Ministry have waged in the wake of the flotilla raid. The IDF has claimed that it discovered 40 “Al Qaeda mercenaries” on the Mavi Marmara and blasted out an audio clip purporting to show flotilla passengers proclaiming to the IDF, “Go back to Auschwitz!” Even though the IDF retracted its claim about Al Qaida operatives and was forced to concede that its “Auschwitz” audio clip was doctored, Israeli and American media outlets that reported the army’s claims have not corrected their stories. Consequently, many Israelis are accepting their government’s view without a second thought. As one demonstrator said, “I believe every word our soldiers. Every word!”

The rally was organized through Israeli Facebook groups and by the notoriously anti-Arab football club Betar Jerusalem. It was only one of many spontaneous outbursts of extreme nationalism that have erupted across Israel since the flotilla raid. Many participants in the rally remarked that they had not seen the public so thoroughly united behind the government in all their lives. As one demonstrator put it, “I’m very happy [about] what happened because it united the country, and not all the Israelis, all the Jewish [sic]; all united for a cause, and it’s against the civil war that we always had.”

Israel apologises for spoof video mocking Gaza flotilla: BBC

Page last updated at 11:03 GMT, Monday, 7 June 2010 12:03 UK
E-mail this to a friendPrintable version The video parodies the 1985 charity single We Are the World
The Israeli government has apologised after its press office emailed to journalists a spoof video about the flotilla which tried to dock in Gaza.

The video shows people dressed as peace activists singing “we con the world” to the tune of We Are the World.
A spokesman said the video did not represent the Israeli government’s view.
The video contains real footage of the Israeli raid on the flotilla in which nine activists died

‘Bluff’
In the clip, which parodies the video made for the 1985 charity song, the singers are dressed up in costumes representing the captain of the flotilla, western peace activists, and Arabs wearing keffiyeh scarves.

“There’s no people dying, so the best that we can do, is create the greatest bluff of all”, they sing.

“I thought it was funny. It is what Israelis feel, but the government has nothing to do with it”
Mark Regev
Israeli government spokesman
“We are peaceful travellers, we’re waving our own knives,” the song goes.
The song builds to a chorus of “we con the world, we con the people. We’ll make them all believe the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) is Jack the Ripper.”
At one point the singer dressed as the flotilla captain sings “Ithbah al-Yahud” which means “slaughter the Jews” in Arabic.
The video is interspersed with footage from the Israeli commando raid on the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish lead vessel of the flotilla which tried to break an Israeli and Egyptian blockade on Gaza last week.

‘Funny’
Nine passengers on board were killed during the Israeli commando raid on the ship.
The ships were towed to the port of Ashdod and the activists deported.
Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister’s office, told the UK’s Guardian newspaper: “I called my kids in to watch it because I thought it was funny. It is what Israelis feel. But the government has nothing to do with it.”

The video was made by the Hebrew satirical website Latma.co.il, run by Jerusalem Post deputy editor Caroline Glick.
On her website she said the clip featured “the Turkish-Hamas ‘love boat’ captain, crew and passengers in a musical explanation of how they con the world.”
“We think this is an important Israeli contribution to the discussion of recent events,” Ms Glick wrote.
But there has also been condemnation of the spoof.
“The video is a repulsive attempt to use satire to make Israel’s case on Flotilla debacle,” Didi Remez of the Coteret blog said.

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.”