Tag: Occupation

June 11, 2010

Bad PR Spill, by Khalil Bendib

EDITOR: The masters of the blockade allow in canned fruit!

What a great victory… Palestinians now are allowed humus in tins, as well as canned peaches. One does not quite know if we should laugh or cry. After all, even Israel, crazy as it is, cannot quite claim that canned peaches were banned for over three years because of security reasons. This was done in order to make the life of Gazans a real misery, on the daily level, and to leave them on a mere subsistence level, which should weaken and dispirit them, and designed to make them rebel against Hamas. Olmert, the war criminal who is also an everyday criminal, having been caught and tried over corruption charges, has called this “putting Gaza ona diet”. Jewish humour is not what ir was, it seems. From the black humour of the oppressed, it turned into the gallows humour of the exectioners. This announcement now is useful in derailing the ongoing debate about the flotilla massacre, and putting a ‘good news’ item on the media agenda. Westerners are fickle, as we know, and anyway, are now mainly into following the world cup, so it is good time to bury bad news.

That did not happen, like so many other things that Israel planned; The Gazans did not rebel against Hamas. Instead, they rose against their real oppressor, Israel. So why this change now? A simple throwaway to Obama, so he can show some ‘achievment’ for his time in office. It is also the first time a US president can count on canned fruit as a ‘real achievement’. For Gazan, however, this might be welcome, as a brief repreieve from their imposed starvation. Most of them, having no income or work, would not even be able to enjoy this change…

Israel eases blockade by letting in extra food items: The Independent

By Donald Macintyre
Thursday, 10 June 2010
Israel has eased its regime for food imports to Gaza, allowing foods like a range of herbs, biscuits, jam, potato crisps, packaged hummus and canned fruits which had been banned from entering the territory from Israel for three years.

But the relaxation – which also allows in razors – fell far short of the much wider lifting of the economic blockade which has been increasingly urged by the international community since last week’s lethal naval commando raid on a pro-Palestinian aid flotilla.

The British Government among others has been urging Israel to consider a substantially new approach to policy, which would spur post-war reconstruction and revive Gaza’s private sector economy, paralysed when Israel imposes its blockade after Hamas’s seizure of full control in the Strip in June 2007.

The Israeli human rights agency Gisha said yesterday that it was “pleased to learn that coriander no longer presents a threat to Israeli security” but added that Israel continued to prevent the transfer of “purely civilian goods” like fabrics, fishing rods, food wrappers, and raw materials for manufacturing including industrial margarine and glucose.

These were being barred “as part of what Israel calls ‘economic warfare'” and so “denies 1.5 million human beings the right to engage in productive, dignified work.”
The foodstuffs relaxation came to light ahead of a visit by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, to the White House. After the meeting Barack Obama, the US President, said the blockade of Gaza was “unsustainable” and a better approach was needed.

A British paper sent by the Foreign Secretary William Hague to the International Quartet (the EU, US, UN and Russia) is understood to propose the opening of the main Karni cargo crossing; an easing of the naval blockade under which officially sanctioned ships, subject to strict prior checking at an Israeli port, could be used for exports and imports in Gaza; and the substitute of a “white list” of permitted goods for a “black list” of banned ones.

Tony Blair, the Quartet’s envoy, has already held two meetings with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, within a week to urge an easing of the blockade. Some other Western diplomats have suggested to Israel that it would be easier to relax pressure for a full-scale international enquiry into last week’s commando raid if Israel were more amenable to lifting the embargo.

A senior Israeli official said yesterday he was “sceptical” about any relaxation of the maritime embargo but that discussions were ongoing about importing more civilian goods, which did not allow Hamas to build up its military infrastructure.
Israel contests an assertion by Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General, that recent limited and strictly controlled imports of materials for international infrastructure and medical projects are a “drop in the bucket”.

EDITOR: Trust the New York Times…

Here you can learn that the real victims in the Middle East are the Israelis…

More Musicians Cancel Performances in Israel: The New York Times

By DAVE ITZKOFF
A music promoter in Israel said that the country was being subjected to “cultural terrorism” as more artists canceled planned performances there, Agence France-Presse reported.
Over the weekend the alternative-rock band the Pixies withdrew from what would have been its first-ever show in Israel, as part of the Pic.Nic music festival scheduled in Tel Aviv this week. “We’d like to extend our deepest apologies to the fans, but events beyond all our control have conspired against us,” the group said in a statement. The bands Gorillaz and the Klaxons have also withdrawn from the festival, after a raid by Israeli commandos on a Gaza-bound flotilla. Last month, Elvis Costello canceled two concerts he was to perform in Israel this summer, citing the complexities of the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

After the announcement of the Pixies’ cancellation, Shuki Weiss, the promoter of the Pic.Nic festival, said in a statement, “I am full of both sorrow and pain in light of the fact that our repeated attempts to present quality acts and festivals in Israel have increasingly been falling victim to what I can only describe as a form of cultural terrorism which is targeting Israel and the arts worldwide.”

He added: “These ‘sudden’ decisions affect thousands of Israeli music lovers turning them into victims and robbing them of a handful of hours of joy, adrenalin and culture, in the name of suffering they have neither caused nor wish for.”

Israel Refuses to Lift Blockade, by Carlos Latuff

EDITOR: As BDS bites in, Israel gets even more aggressive

This is real evidence for the success of the Palestinian and international boycott, which Israel and its supporters have argued will never make any difference. If it did make no difference, why all this illegal legislation? It does make a great difference, and it will be a crucial element in breaking Israeli apartheid; this is exactly why Israel has turned even nastier, and demands that Palestine will continue to finance the occupation by being forced to buy its products. While this will not work, it will make things so much more difficult and bloody, no doubt. It is also designed to frighten off Israeli and international activists. It will also fail there, I am sure.

It is also interesting to see how supine ‘Israeli liberals’ have become, with the so-called left-winger supporting this illegal and immoral mesure. Let it not be said that anyone in the Israeli political elite was moral enough to oppose this! It is also good to know that Margaret Atwood, in the past my favourite feminist writer, prefers murder and occupation to the civil struggle against them. Well, a million dollars do not grow on trees…

Israel plans to send bill to Palestinians over boycotts: The Independent

By Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem
Friday, 11 June 2010
What do The Pixies, Elvis Costello, and Salam Fayyad, Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, have in common? A cursory glance might suggest not much yet all have deeply irked Israel.

Singer Damon Albarn and guitarist Paul Simonon of 'Gorillaz' are one of the acts to have withdrawn from concerts in Israel

When Mr Fayyad first embarked on a door-to-door campaign to persuade Palestinians to shun all products made by Jewish settlers, the Israeli public simply shrugged. But when veteran crooner Costello peered into his conscience and pulled a scheduled appearance in Tel Aviv, Israelis sat up and took notice.

Embattled and increasingly isolated, a group of politicians are now proposing a bill that would outlaw boycotts against the Jewish State, both homegrown and international.

The Land of Israel, a right-wing parliamentary lobby group committed to Jewish settlement of the West Bank, submitted the bill with the support of 25 politicians from right wing and centrist parties. If approved, it could theoretically force the Palestinian Authority (PA) to pay thousands of dollars in compensation to Jewish businesses affected by the Fayyad-led boycott campaign, a scenario that would likely spark furious reaction from Palestinians.

The move comes amid a growing global backlash against Israeli policies, which has intensified since Israel launched its bloody raid on a Turkish-led humanitarian convoy trying to breach the blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Even before the flotilla affair, a campaign to persuade artists and authors to protest what they describe as an illegal and oppressive military occupation of the Palestinian territories was gaining ground. “Merely having your name added to a concert may be interpreted as a political act… and it may be assumed that one has no mind for the suffering of the innocent,” Costello said in a statement prior to the raid.

After last week’s deadly raid on the flotilla, US rock band The Pixies cancelled their gig. Several other bands have followed suit, prompting Israeli music promoter Shuki Weiss to complain that performers are waging a form of “cultural terrorism”.

Human rights activists, meanwhile, decried efforts by politicians to alienate those critical of Israel with new legislation. “We have wild right-wing politicians presenting wild demagogic bills … which create a very nasty public atmosphere,” said Adam Keller, spokesman for Gush Shalom, an Israeli NGO that has joined calls for a boycott of settler-made goods. “If this is passed into law, it would mean a total breakdown between Israel and the PA.”

Israel has condemned Mr Fayyad’s boycott campaign as harmful to the fragile peace process, and Israeli settler leaders have urged the government to respond with harsh retaliatory measures.

Should the proposal gain traction in its current form, it would force boycotters to pay compensation to settlers who claim their business had suffered. It would also affect foreign citizens calling for a boycott of Israel, potentially barring them from Israel for 10 years.

But activists said attempts to muzzle peace activists would make the movement stronger. “No Knesset laws can stop this tide of non-violent, morally consistent struggle for justice, self determination, equality and freedom,” political activist Omar Barghouti said in a statement.

Mr Fayyad, an economist by training, has provided the boycott campaign with fresh impetus in recent weeks, putting it at the heart of a peaceful resistance movement aimed at winning over international support. The boycott calls for Palestinians to shun all products made in the Jewish settlements, most of which sit on expropriated Palestinian farmland and are regarded as illegal under international law.

The PA has also barred Palestinians from working in the settlements as of the end of this year, an unpopular move only slightly eased by the promise of a $50m “dignity” fund designed to help workers make the transition. The PA has threatened those who fail to comply with fines.

The Jewish settlements, which sit atop the West Bank hills, have long been a thorn in the side of the peace process. Palestinians have maintained that as long as Jews are grabbing Palestinian land in the West Bank, Israel cannot be committed to a two-state solution.

“If I… were a Palestinian, I would certainly join the boycott that is being imposed on the settlements and their products,” wrote Yossi Sarid, a commentator in liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. “After all, it would not be human to expect me to buy my tombstone from people who were determined to bury my hopes for a good life and independence.”

Israeli Minister of Minority Affairs, Avishay Braverman, who is responsible for Israel’s Arab population, said the boycott was a diversion from the pressing need for direct peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. US-sponsored efforts have brought both sides back to talks, but not in the same room.

“This boycott will have no real impact on Israel, but will harm Palestinian workers,” said Mr Braverman, a former World Bank economist. What it will do “is create a more general boycott on Israel that will harm relations between Israel and the Palestinians”.

And not everyone is moved, Rod Stewart, Elton John and Diana Krall, who is married to Costello, are still scheduled to perform in Israel later this year.

Meanwhile, authors Margaret Atwood and Amitav Ghosh, the joint recipients of an Israeli literary award, have bristled at calls from activists to refuse the prize, with Atwood describing cultural boycotts as “a form of censorship”.

Continue reading June 11, 2010

June 10, 2010

Israel Refuses to Lift Blockade, by Carlos Latuff

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.

Continue reading June 10, 2010

June 7, 2010

EDITOR: Even lying needs to be done professionally…

You would have thought that Israel would be the world expert in lying and creative fictions. It seems, however, that like the rest of their operations in the last decade, the lying operations have also got less and less professional. It will be impossible to enumerate here all the lies spouted by the Creative Writing dept. of the IOF, but one by one, the chickens come home to roost. One of the more disgusting fictions was the cooking of the Mavi Marmara recording, to include the line “Go back to Auschwitz”. That someone thought that this was either acceptable to lie like that, or that it would be accepted, id in itself a mark of the moral and social degradation of this criminalised and militarised society, and its deeply psychotic behaviour.

Israel is adept at inventing antisemitism in situation where it is not on offer freely. This time, it exceeded itself – Israel is actually acting to produce antisemitism the world over, not just by its continuing and escalating war-crimes, but also by the ‘efficient’ Habara – the lie machine; by exposing more and more of the lies and false accusations, Israel is producing an atmosphere in which Jews will automatically be identified with those crimes and their coverup by foul means. This poses grave danger to Jewish communities everywhere, a danger they are not yet fully cognisant of, or prefer to ignore for the time being.

For Israel, this emerging anti-Israel sentiment, which can easily become antisemitic if used by right wing elements, is most welcome. After all, Zionism is based on the single premise that Jews cannot, and should not, live amongst non-Jews. No doubt some Zionist leaders in Israel are looking forward to the increase in immigration to Israel as a result of the rise in antisemitism. Antisemitism has always been the Recruiting Sergeant  for Zionism.

Israel forced to apologise for YouTube spoof of Gaza flotilla: The Guardian

Israeli government press office distributed video link featuring Arabs and activists singing
The Israeli government has been forced to apologise for circulating a spoof video mocking activists aboard the Gaza flotilla, nine of who were shot dead by Israeli forces last week.

The YouTube clip, set to the tune of the 1985 charity single We Are the World, features Israelis dressed as Arabs and activists, waving weapons while singing: “We con the world, we con the people. We’ll make them all believe the IDF (Israel Defence Force) is Jack the Ripper.”

It continues: “There’s no people dying, so the best that we can do is create the biggest bluff of all.”

The Israeli government press office distributed the video link to foreign journalists at the weekend, but within hours emailed them an apology, saying it had been an error. Press office director Danny Seaman said the video did not reflect official state opinion, but in his personal capacity he thought it was “fantastic”.

Government spokesman Mark Regev said the video reflected how Israelis felt about the incident. “I called my kids in to watch it because I thought it was funny,” he said. “It is what Israelis feel. But the government has nothing to do with it.”

The clip features a group led by the Jerusalem Post’s deputy managing editor Caroline Glick, wearing keffiyehs and calling themselves the Flotilla Choir. The footage is interspersed with clips from the recent Israeli raid on the Gaza-bound aid ship, the Mavi Marmara.

The clip has been praised in Israel, where the mass-circulation daily Yediot Aharonot said the singers “defended Israel better than any of the experts”.

But Didi Remez, an Israeli who runs the liberal-left news analysis blog Coteret, said the clip was “repulsive” and reflected how out of touch Israeli opinion was with the rest of the world. “It shows a complete lack of understanding of how the incident is being perceived abroad,” he said. Award-winning Israeli journalist Meron Rapoport said the clip demonstrated prejudice against Muslims. “It’s roughly done, not very sophisticated, anti-Muslim – and childish for the government to be behind such a clip,” he said.

A similar press office email was sent to foreign journalists two weeks ago, recommending a gourmet restaurant and Olympic-sized swimming pool in Gaza to highlight Israel’s claim there is no humanitarian crisis there. Journalists who complained the email was in poor taste were told they had “no sense of humour”.

Last week, the Israel Defence Force had to issue a retraction over an audio clip it had claimed was a conversation between Israeli naval officials and people on the Mavi Marmara, in which an activist told soldiers to “go back to Auschwitz”. The clip was carried by Israeli and international press, but today the army released a “clarification/correction”, explaining that it had edited the footage and that it was not clear who had made the comment.

The Israeli army also backed down last week from an earlier claim that soldiers were attacked by al-Qaida “mercenaries” aboard the Gaza flotilla. An article appearing on the IDF spokesperson’s website with the headline: “Attackers of the IDF soldiers found to be al-Qaida mercenaries”, was later changed to “Attackers of the IDF Soldiers found without identification papers,” with the information about al-Qaida removed from the main article. An army spokesperson told the Guardian there was no evidence proving such a link to the terror organisation.

While the debate over accounts of the flotilla raid continues, Israel is facing more boycotting. In the past week, three international acts, including the US rock band the Pixies, have cancelled concerts in Tel Aviv.

Best-settling authors Alice Walker and Iain Banks have backed the boycott campaign, with Banks announcing his books won’t be translated into Hebrew. Dockworker unions in Sweden and South Africa have refused to handle Israeli ships, while the UK’s Unite union just passed a motion to boycott Israeli companies.

• This article was amended on 7 June 2010. The original referred to Didi Remez as a female. This has been corrected.

Israel and the aid convoy: How to make enemies: The Guardian

Israel’s defiant reaction to the raid on the Gaza aid convoy is almost as appalling as the attack itself
When sovereign states make mistakes, they promise impartial inquiries, they express remorse to the families of the bereaved, they apologise. Not Binyamin Netanyahu’s government. Almost as appalling as the commando raid itself, in which nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed on an aid convoy bound for Gaza, has been Israel’s official reaction to it. The policy was to shoot first and discredit the victims later. On a video posted online by the Jerusalem Post, Mr Netanyahu said: “This wasn’t a love boat. This was a hate boat. These weren’t pacifists, they weren’t peace activists, these were violent supporters of terrorism.” The government press office emailed foreign journalists a satirical clip entitled “Flotilla Choir presents: We Con the World”, before withdrawing it and saying the film’s content did not reflect the official stance of Israel. To cap it all, the Israeli prime minister yesterday rejected calls for an international inquiry.

The format of the inquiry proposed by the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon would have favoured Israel, because Israeli and US representatives would have sat alongside Turkish ones, whose nationals were the commando raid’s principal victims. The proposed chairman of the inquiry would have been the former prime minister of New Zealand, Geoffrey Palmer, an expert on maritime law. No Richard Goldstone he. But even this proposal was too much for Mr Netanyahu, who along with his defence minister Ehud Barak, refused point blank to allow any foreigner to interrogate Israeli officers and soldiers.

As the Winograd commission showed in its investigation into the 2006 Lebanese war, Israeli judges are more than capable of bringing their politicians and military to book. But this is not an internal Israeli matter. The commando raid was carried out in international waters, 77 miles off the coast of Gaza, where Israel has no legal entitlement. Its fatal victims were eight Turkish and one US national, and 30 other nationalities were involved as well.

There are real questions to answer, such as testimony that shots were fired before the commandos hit the deck of the Mavi Marmara, that the victims had multiple gunshot wounds to the head, apparently contradicting the claim that commandos only fired in self-defence. There is also testimony that backs the claim that soldiers were seized and stripped of their weapons before others stormed aboard. This evidence is unlikely to be tested by an Israeli inquiry and the rest of the world, particularly the Muslim one, will conclude that it is because Israeli commanders have something to hide.

Turkey is unlikely to take the shooting of its citizens lying down. Even less so, now that the Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman has branded the Turkish prime minister Reccep Erdogan an Islamic extremist. This week Istanbul will host a Eurasian security summit, attended by eight presidents, which will rapidly turn into an international forum for condemning Israel and its illegal siege of Gaza. Alienating not only 72 million Turks, but the only Muslim member of Nato, will have repercussions for Israel that spread far and wide. Day by day, Israel is isolating itself both from international law and world opinion.

The cost of underwriting the self-destructive behaviour of its strategic partner in the Middle East is starting to mount exponentially in Washington. Both Barack Obama and General David Petraeus have adversely linked the Arab-Israeli conflict to America’s own security interests. First came Mr Netanyahu’s refusal to stop construction in Arab East Jerusalem; now Israel has picked a fight with a key Muslim ally. Israel’s refusal to accept an international inquiry will only add weight to the view that it has become a strategic liability to the interests of the country that guarantees its survival. Mr Netanyahu would be foolish to assume that Mr Obama is not drawing the same conclusion.

Israel rejects multinational inquiry into flotilla attack: The Guardian

UN-proposed commission into flotilla raid is dismissed as global pressure grows for Israel to ease its blockade of Gaza
Israeli soldiers stand behind a Turkish flag, held by activists during a protest against the Israeli naval commando raid on a flotilla attempting to break the blockade on Gaza. Photograph: Abed Al Hashlamoun/EPA
Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, today dismissed a UN proposal for an international commission to investigate last week’s assault on a flotilla of aid ships.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, proposed a commission of inquiry headed by the former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer, who is an expert in maritime law. The commission would include representatives of Israel, the US and Turkey. All nine activists killed in the operation were Turkish; one held joint US citizenship.

Ban discussed the plan with Netanyahu, who later briefed party colleagues on the call, saying: “We need to consider the issue carefully and level-headedly while monitoring Israel’s national interests.”

Israel would not react or take decisions under the pressure of events, an official who was present at the meeting said.

Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, was more explicit: “We are rejecting an international commission. We are discussing with the Obama administration a way in which our inquiry will take place,” he said.

Despite global condemnation of last week’s raid and demands for a thorough and impartial investigation and an easing of Israel’s blockade on Gaza, there was no discussion of the issues at today’s cabinet meeting.

Important decisions relating to security issues are usually taken by a smaller security council, rather than full Israeli cabinet. However, according to the official, there are no firm plans for the smaller group to meet.

Israel is also pursuing compromise measures to deflect growing pressure to relax the blockade. Significantly, the US has added its voice to calls for a new policy, with the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, describing the current siege as “unsustainable”.

Signs of divergent views within the cabinet came from Israel’s welfare minister, Isaac Herzog, who called for the siege policy to be reconsidered. “The time has come to do away with the blockade, ease the restrictions on the inhabitants and find another alternative,” he said.

The government claims it has indicated a willingness for greater flexibility in the amount and type of aid it allows into Gaza through land crossings, but insists it will maintain its naval blockade for security reasons.

“The policy was not static. It was moving anyway [before the flotilla] and we will continue to move,” an official said.

Aid agencies say any relaxation of the blockade has been minimal and the current situation is totally inadequate to meet the needs of the 80% of Gazans dependent on international aid.

Britain’s shadow foreign secretary, David Miliband, described the isolation of Gaza as “a stain on policy right across the Middle East”. “I think there have been a series of deadly and self-defeating actions by successive Israeli governments in respect of Gaza,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

The UK today announced a £19m donation of aid to Gaza.

Israel’s hard line on future shipping aid convoys could be as tested as early as this week after two organisations pledged to send boats carrying aid to Gaza in the next few days. Reporters Without Borders was attempting to assemble 25 European activists and 50 journalists for a boat leaving Beirut. The Free Palestine Movement was planning a similar operation.

The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan – who was the subject of fresh vitriol in the Israeli media today – had raised the idea of personally joining an aid ship to Gaza, according to Lebanese media reports. Turkey last week recalled its ambassador to Israel.

Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, today insisted that “it is inconceivable that we should apologise to the Turkish government”. He hinted that Turkey was heading in the same direction as Iran, saying Iran had been a “good friend” to Israel in the 1970s. This was echoed by his deputy, Danny Ayalon, who said: “If they sever relations, it is clear they are switching sides in the direction of extremist Islam.”

The 19 passengers and crew who were on board the aid ship the Rachel Corrie when it was forcibly diverted to the Israeli port of Ashdod are due to arrive in Ireland tomorrow after being deported from Israel.

The Israeli government, still battling for the dominance of its version of events surrounding the flotilla assault, attempted to draw a distinction between the Rachel Corrie and the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish vessel that was the scene of last week’s bloodshed. “The entire world saw the difference between a humanitarian flotilla and a hate flotilla by violent, terrorism supporting extremists,” Netanyahu told party colleagues.

The US rock band Pixies cancelled a concert in Tel Aviv in protest at last week’s bloodshed. The decision followed similar moves by Klaxons and Gorillaz. Authors Alice Walker and Iain Banks have backed the boycott, with Banks saying his books will not be translated into Hebrew.

Dockworker unions in Sweden and South Africa have refused to handle Israeli ships, while the UK’s Unite union passed a motion to boycott Israeli companies.

EDITOR: A voice in the wilderness…

The editorials in Haaretz have become more and more desperate, and more radical than ever. Unfortunately, this exception proves the rule – the Israeli media is, on the whole, servile and unprofessional, and accepts the IDF’s pronouncements as facts, when most of the time those are crude fabrications. In time, this attitude of the Israeli media, like that of the rest of the social elites, will bring about its decomposition and breakdown. For now, the flag-waving is going on.

Dangerous incitement: Haaretz Editorial

Arab citizens may be the direct victims of government policy and the atmosphere in the Knesset, but all of society will pay the price of the devastation that will result.

Of all the damage done by the botched takeover of the Mavi Marmara, one aspect is particularly serious: the further erosion of the relationship between the State of Israel and its Arab citizens, and between Jews and Arabs in Israel in general.
While decisions were made concerning the flotilla to Gaza, the prime minister, his ministers and his spokesmen knew that on board the Mavi Marmara were a number of Arab Israeli public figures, including a Knesset member and a political-religious leader. However, they took no particular precautions. Apparently, no voice of reason was heard, asking that MK Hanin Zuabi and Sheikh Ra’ad Salah not be turned into heroes. But the intimidation and incitement against them were even more egregious.

Even sworn opponents of Zuabi and her political path should be deeply concerned by Interior Minister Eli Yishai’s proposal to revoke her citizenship and by the formulation of a bill demanding her expulsion from the legislature. The very wording of the bill – calling for “ousting a sitting Knesset member if the member was involved in the action of an enemy country or in incitement against the State of Israel” – shows ignorance with regard to the limits of protest in a democracy (Turkey is not an enemy country; political critique is not incitement ) and, at worst, reflects a trend aimed specifically at silencing Arabs.

This trend is surfacing in most of the parties in the Knesset, with the enthusiastic encouragement of most ministers, above all Yishai, who continually lashes out against Arabs. Some of the unrestrained statements by lawmakers on the right and the center and their distorted initiatives – such as the attempt to deny pensions to Arab MKs who are seen as “betraying the state,” even if they were not tried – are enough to persuade one that the flotilla debacle served those people as a pretext to ratchet up the delegitimization of Israel’s Arab citizens and brand them as traitors.

Avigdor Lieberman is not alone: His work, of inciting against Israel’s Arab community, is now being done by many of the MKs who signed the “Zuabi bill.” In addition to the dubious loyalty legislation that has been proposed, this instance of incitement brings Israel to an unprecedented low. Arab citizens may be the direct victims of government policy and the atmosphere in the Knesset, but all of society will pay the price of the devastation that will result.

Continue reading June 7, 2010

June 6, 2010, Page 2

EDITOR: From the horse’s mouth…

Well, if the navy officers themselves are demanding this, then Netanyahu has a real problem… To say that this is unprecedented is not even starting to explain how amazing this is! So while Netanyahu claims that no inquiry is necessary, and Obama wants the Israeli Navy to check into its own murder, here are some high-ranking officers (the Hebrew title is Ship-Captains, rather officers) saying quite clearly that the Israeli government and its military commanders are responsible for the murder on the boats, condemning the spin against the activists. So now Netanyahu and Obama are on their own, it seems.  This will run and run.

Israel Navy reserves officers: Allow external Gaza flotilla probe: Haaretz

Officers denounce operation as ‘military and diplomatic failure’, slam government for placing blame on the activists.
A group of top Israel Navy reserves officers on Sunday publicly called on Israel to allow an external probe into its commando raid of a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla last week, which left nine people dead and several more wounded.
In a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, the Navy officers denounced the commando raid as having “ended in tragedy both at the military and diplomatic levels.”

“We disagree with the widespread claims that this was the result of an intelligence rift,” said the officers. “In addition, we do not accept claims that this was a ‘public relations failure’ and we think that the plan was doomed to failure from the beginning.”

“First and foremost, we protest the fact that responsibility for the tragic results was immediately thrust onto the organizers of the flotilla,” wrote the officers. “This demonstrates contempt for the responsibility that belongs principally to the hierarchy of commanders and those who approved the mission. This shows contempt for the values of professionalism, the purity of weapons and for human lives.”
The Navy officers’ letter came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was convening his top ministers to deliberate a United Nations proposal to create a joint international committee alongside Turkey and the United States to investigate the circumstances of the deadly raid.

The cabinet was also to discuss the creation of an internal committee to look into the incident. Netanyahu earlier Sunday rejected the idea of an international panel, and reiterated that Israel had the right to conduct its own investigation.
Netanyahu discussed the proposal for a multinational panel with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in a telephone call on Saturday but told cabinet ministers fon Sunday that Israel was exploring other options, political sources said.
“I told [Ban] that the investigation of the facts must be carried out responsibly and objectively,” Netanyahu told ministers. “We need to consider the issue carefully and level-headedly, while maintaining Israel’s national interests as well as those of the Israel Defense Forces.”

Navy reserve officers urge probe on flotilla raid: YNet

Letter sent by 10 Navy reserve commanders to prime minister, defense minister demands independent inquiry commission into commando raid, urges higher security ranks to take responsibility for blunders

A group of 10 Navy reserve officers who served as patrol boat commanders sent a harsh letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday in which they urge the establishment of an independent inquiry commission into the flotilla raid events.

“We believe the operation ended in a military and political disaster,” the letter noted. The officers said they disagreed with claims of an intelligence or a PR failure as they believe the whole operation was doomed from the beginning.
“Most of all, we protest the fact that the responsibility for the disaster was immediately placed on the sail’s organizers,” the letter noted, suggesting that the commanding ranks and decision makers were the ones primarily responsible for the debacle. “We regard this as contempt for professionalism, battle morals and human life.”

The officers demanded the establishment of an independent inquiry commission which would hold a thorough examination of the raid. “We believe this is the best way to restore trust in the Navy command and decision makers,” the letter stated.
The officers were bewildered at the level of risk the Navy fighters were put under. “We were dumbfounded at the dismal outcome of civilians’ deaths and injuries. There is no shred of doubt in our minds that had a less trained and disciplined force been sent, the number of casualties would have been much greater, and therefore wish to express our appreciation of the combat forces.

“Nevertheless, we feel serious tactical mistakes in judgment and the use of force were made, primarily the inability to aptly characterize the mission while bearing in mind a civil vessel was being targeted.”
The officers stated that based on their experience as vessel commanders other ways could have been employed to stop the flotilla. “The MO which was exercised included a high level of friction which we feel was unnecessary, regardless of the type of resistance discovered upon the raid.”

‘Not endorsing disobedience’
One of the officers, Major Nir Barak told Ynet, “We have a lot of experience in this field. The letter was thought up out of a feelings of discomfort, mainly at the subsequent events and the defense minister and Navy command’s failure to take responsibility.

“We believe mistakes were made by the security establishment’s higher echelons which need to be addressed. We are not endorsing disobedience or draft-dodging but think one can show support for the forces and demand an examination at the same time.”
Major Barak stressed that the criticism is not directed at the soldiers but at the higher echelons which initiated and led the operation. “We think that the Navy command could have better prepared itself for this operation. The event was a military failure and there are questions which need to be answered.”

The Phoney Claim of Self-Defense – Israel’s Dilemma: Counterpunch

By NADIA HIJAB
Israel is stuck. For decades, it has used the same strategy to achieve its objectives and to rout all challengers: overwhelming force. When it meets violence with violence — even when it uses disproportionate force as in Beirut in 1982 and 2006 and Gaza in 2008 — Israel claims self-defense and usually manages to spin the facts its way. And, as it has not yet been held to account in any meaningful way, it has seen no reason to change its strategy.

But when it meets non-violence with violence, the strategy backfires. Israel is pitching the self-defense line to try to shield itself from criticism of its attack on the Freedom Flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza convoy — but it’s not working.

You cannot claim self-defense when you have decided to send a thousand or so well-armed forces to board boats in international waters — vessels that were carefully searched before the voyage to make sure there were no arms. Or when you have killed up to 20 civilians and injured 54 others, while suffering no deaths yourself. If the situation were not so tragic, Israel’s spinning would be the stuff of comedy.

The visible crushing of peaceful activists usually has a powerful effect on world public opinion and this time it has pushed governments to take action to hold Israel accountable in a way that armed force has not. This is perhaps the most important contribution that those brave humanitarians have made to the Palestinian quest for justice.

And things will continue to unravel for Israel because it only knows how to use force to try to get its way. Ironically, Israel’s overkill has made the use of force so costly for those who favor armed resistance that the stage has been left clear for those who believe it is more effective to use civil resistance against a vastly superior armed force. It should be noted that Palestinian civil resistance is not new although it has recently been “discovered” by the mainstream media.

The first Palestinian uprising (Intifada) of 1987-1991 was almost completely non-violent and imposed itself on the world consciousness, making a powerful case for Palestinian rights. Unfortunately, the Palestinian leadership did not know how to translate the power it generated into diplomatic gains. And that uprising was just one of a series of major acts of civil resistance stretching back a century.

Today, acts of peaceful resistance are underway throughout Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, and the rest of the world. And another outcome of Israel’s massacre on the Freedom Flotilla is that it will inexorably draw attention to the violent tactics Israel use to counter these non-violent acts.

For example, many Palestinians and their international supporters have lost their lives and been injured in protests against the illegal Wall Israel has been building in the occupied territory since 2002. The most recent victim was May 31: 21-year-old Emily Henochowicz, a student at New York’s Cooper Union, had her eye knocked out by one of the tear gas canisters Israel’s armed force routinely fire at unarmed demonstrators. She and a group of Palestinians and internationals were demonstrating in the occupied West Bank against Israel’s assault on the Flotilla. An Israeli tear gas canister killed the peaceful anti-Wall activist Bassem Abu Rahme in April 2009 as he demonstrated against his village Bil’in’s loss of 60% of its land to Israel’s Wall and settlements — and critically injured American citizen Tristan Anderson just a few weeks previously.

Israel’s international standing is also further eroded by the violence it is using against its own Palestinian citizens as they pursue their non-violent quest for equality, most recently in its draconian arrest of community leaders Ameer Makhoul and Omar Saeed. Having incarcerated both for weeks without access to legal counsel and subject to such torture as stress positions and sleep deprivation, Israel now claims to have evidence through both men’s “confessions” of collaboration with Israel’s enemies — confessions they have since retracted as obtained under duress.

Israel’s word against Ameer Makhoul’s? When it weighs the word of a known user of indiscriminate force and terror against that of a prominent civil society leader, the world will know whom to believe.

The real dilemma for Israel is that all of the force it brings to bear is aimed at achieving the unachievable: Keeping the territories it occupied in 1967, illegal under international law; privileging Jews over non-Jews within Israel, in violation of the United Nations Charter and international conventions; and denying Palestinian refugees their right of return. There are only two alternatives for Israel: to make its peace with justice and equality, or to experience growing and costly isolation.

Nadia Hijab is a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies.

Jewish flotilla to break Gaza siege: YNet

German Jewish group prepares flotilla to protest Israel’s blockade on Gaza. ‘Activists frightened, but not by Hamas,’ member of organization says
The German-Jewish organization Jewish Voice for Peace in the Middle East is preparing a Jewish flotilla to the Gaza Strip. “We intend to leave around July,” a member of the organization, Kate Leitrer, said to Ynet. “We have one small craft so far, in which there will be between 12 and 16 people, mostly Jews.”

Leitrer, herself Jewish, said there was great interest in joining. “Getting another boat means more expenses, and we’re discussing this possibility,” she said. “Because of limited space, there will be school equipment, candy, and mainly musical equipment, and there’ll be musicians aboard who’ll teach the children of Gaza. They need to see that Jews are not what how they are drawn in their eyes.”
Leitrer also claimed that Israel acted criminally in its lethal raid on the Gaza flotilla last Monday.
“The head of UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) appealed to the world to send ships due to the shortage of important supplies in Gaza,” she said. “By stopping the flotilla, Israel acted criminally. Israel must not act like pirates.”

The activists are frightened, she said, but not by Hamas.

“Jews have been to Gaza in the past, and they were treated in a friendly manner,” Leitrer continued. “We have also talked with them recently, and they are very keen for us to come. We are frightened by what happened on the Marmara, but if you are committed to do good things, you have to act. People were also killed in the fight against fascism.”

She rejected Israel’s fears that weapons would be smuggled into Gaza on the aid boats.
“We haven’t heard there were weapons on the last flotilla, and people were shot and killed there,” she said. “We have contacted Israel figures and told them they are welcome to carry out searches on the boats, but we ask to be allowed to continue to Gaza. These are Gazan waters, and Israel must not control them.”

‘Open a window to Gaza’
Edith Lutz, a German Jewish member of the organization, said to Ynet the vessel is already anchored in Mediterranean waters, and that the organization had received many requests from Jews and non-Jews to take part in the flotilla.
“We began in Germany,” she said, “but many have called us from England, Sweden and the US. There may also be another boat accompanying us, mainly carrying reporters.”

Lutz explained that the Jewish flotilla aims to convey a message: Lift the siege.
“Our vessel can open a window between Israel and Gaza residents,” she said. “Two years ago I took part in the Free Gaza flotilla and wore a Magen David (Star of David), and the kids said, ‘Look, she’s Jewish,’ and they all accepted me very well. When we met (Hamas leader) Ismail Haniyeh and they told him about me, he turned to me and said they have nothing against Jews or Israel, only against the occupation.”

Continue reading June 6, 2010, Page 2

June 6, 2010

Tariq Ali speaking outside Downing Street after the attack on the aid flotilla to Gaza

EDITOR: Today, 43 years ago, started a bloody chapter in Middle East history, one which still affects us all. For the second time, Palestinians found themselves facing the Israeli armed forces, without an armed force of their own, and this time Israel has occupied the whole of Palestine, with support from the USA, and a nod and a wink from the other western nations. At that point the long and painful occupation looked neigh impossible, not just unlikely. But despite the international protest, the UN and Security Council resolution, and the unceasing Palestinian struggle for independence and for ending the occupation, here it still is, with hundreds of illegal settlements, with over 650,000 Israelis living in the Occupied Territories, and with the hundreds of check-points, the apartheid wall, and the daily brutalities of the settlers and the IOF, the Israeli Occupation Forces.

Some things have changed, though. The recent Israeli massacre of human rights activists on the Freedom Flotilla is a spark which has started fires everywhere. A new and larger Flotilla is being prepared, and each attempt will be bigger and bolder, until the illegal blockade crumbles. The great and growing BDS movement is evidence of the groundswell in public support for the Palestinian struggle for a just settlement of the conflict. Without waiting for governments to pressurise Israel into a retreat from the OPT, the international community has started acting in earnest towards that goal. This struggle, civic, economic, political and cultural, will be the deciding factor in bringing Israeli apartheid to an end.

To see how this type of apartheid id supported by Jews elsewhere, just read the first item below. The American Dream, on Land stolen from the Arabs, but Arabrein (free of Arabs, in German, similar to Judenrein, free of Jews, used by the Nazis)

Looking for the American Dream in Eretz Yisrael?:Moshavyishi

Looking for the American Dream in Eretz Yisrael?


Are you interrested in a 2 acre housing lot in an orthodox community where streets are closed on Shabbos? (2 acres = 12 tennis courts including the red area).

Do you want American neighbors and immediate access to Bet Shemesh and Ramat Bet Shemesh schools, health and community services, clubs, recreation, and social activities?

Do you appreciate living within easy walking distance of a national forest, rolling farmland, resevoirs, terrific views, and other places of natural beauty?

Would you like a private pool, tennis court, equestrian facilities, gardens, lawns, and room enough to feel genuinely relaxed on your own property?

Does an Arab-free environment sound appealing? Yishi is miles inside the green line and even further from the nearest Arab settlement.

Moshav Yishi offers a lifestyle option available nowhere else in Israel: To be one of the very lucky, very few, to enter the Promised Land… and actually get the Land! Whether you delight in hobby aggriculture and the mitzvot of Eretz Yisrael or simply want the feeling of expansiveness and freedom no city can offer, Yishi is a delightful place to be. As more and more Americans move in, as more and more of Yishi is reinvigorated and rebuilt, Yishi will become more and more delightful a community to call home. Unfortunately it’s not yet available for the whole nation, but for a fortunate few, “Yishi” will be exactly that – “my Salvation”. A place in Israel that comes as dreamed, no concessions, no compromise.

Freedom Flotilla Massacre protest | John Rees Speaking | London 31 May 2010

Breaking out of the siege: Haaretz Editorial

If Israel is to break out of the international siege and strategic catastrophe it now faces, it urgently needs a different policy.
The intelligence failure and faulty planning in last week’s operation to board the Mavi Marmara led to a crisis in Israel’s foreign relations in the blink of an eye and a low in its standing in world public opinion. The international community is demanding an investigation into the incident and is roundly criticizing the siege Israel continues to impose on the Gaza Strip’s 1.5 million residents. Friendly countries such as the United States and France are demanding that the Israeli government lift restrictions on the passage into Gaza of goods and raw materials for civilian use.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his usual manner, rushed to raise the specter of the Iranian threat along with the adage that “the whole world is against us.” Instead of locating the source of the fire scorching the diplomatic relations we built up with such effort, Netanyahu is following in the footsteps of his ostracized foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, accusing the world of hypocritical treatment of Israel.
In an effort to evade responsibility for the crisis and escape his obligation to fundamentally change his policy, the prime minister is distorting the nature of the criticism against his government and has plied it as hatred of the Jews.

Netanyahu and Lieberman are imposing a siege on a Jewish and democratic state that has professed to be a light unto the nations, but is becoming anathema among nations. The disagreement over halting construction in West Bank settlements and East Jerusalem sorely eroded the goodwill Israel had garnered in the wake of Netanyahu’s declared support for a two-state solution. Last month’s nuclear nonproliferation conference diverted attention from the Iranian nuclear program to Israel’s nuclear capabilities. The summit of countries bordering the Mediterranean, which had been due to open today in Barcelona, was scrapped following Arab leaders’ refusal to be in the company of the Israeli foreign minister. And finally, the proximity talks with the Palestinians are being portrayed as a recipe for perpetuating the deadlock in the peace process.

Reasonable governments of democratic countries act in accordance with the interests of their citizens. Even if the world is “hypocritical,” as Netanyahu claims, he must fundamentally change his government’s aggressive and inward-looking approach; it is not within his power to change the nature of the rest of the world.

A thorough investigation of the Mavi Marmara incident and the lifting of the siege against civilians in Gaza are essential steps, but they are certainly not sufficient. If Israel is to break out of the international siege and strategic catastrophe it now faces, it urgently needs a different policy.

Press Release: JFJFP

by email
Jewish Boat to Gaza is sailing soon

In a harbour in the Mediterranean a small vessel is waiting for a special mission. She will be sailing to Gaza during the second half of July. In order to avoid sabotage, the exact date and name of the port of departure will be announced only shortly before her launch.

“Our purpose is to call an end to the siege of Gaza, to this illegal collective punishment of the whole civilian population. Our boat is small, so our donations can only be symbolic: we are taking school bags, filled with donations from German school children, musical instruments and art materials“, says Kate Leiterer, one of the organizers. „For the medical services we are taking essential medicines and small medical equipment, and for the fishermen we are taking nets and tackle. We are liaising with the medical, educational and mental health services in Gaza.“

”In attacking the Freedom Flotilla, Israel has once again demonstrated to the world a heinous brutality. But I know that there are very many Israelis who compassionately and bravely campaign for a just peace. With  broadcasting journalists from mainstream television programmes accompanying our boat, Israel will have a great chance to show the world that there is another way, a way of courage rather than fear, a way of hope rather than hate”, says Edith Lutz, organizer and passenger on the ”Jewish boat”.

The ”Jüdische Stimme” (‚Jewish Voice’ for a Just Peace in the Near East), along with her friends of EJJP (European Jews for a Just Peace in the Near East) and Jews for Justice For Palestinians (UK) are sending a call to the leaders of the world:  help Israel find her way back to reason, to a sense of humanity and a life without fear. ”Jewish Voice” expects the political leaders of Israel and the world to guarantee a safe passage for the small vessel to Gaza, thus helping to form a bridge towards peace.

Contacts:
Edith Lutz, EJJP-Germany  +15204519740
Kate Katzenstein-Leiterer, EJJP- Germany  +1629660472472
Glyn Secker, Jews for Justice For Palestinians (UK)  +7917098599

What Is Not Allowed: Irish Times

RICHARD TILLINGHAST

POEM: No tinned meat is allowed, no tomato paste,

no clothing, no shoes, no notebooks.

These will be stored in our warehouses at Kerem Shalom

until further notice.

Bananas, apples, and persimmons are allowed into Gaza,

peaches and dates, and now macaroni

(after the American Senator’s visit).

These are vital for daily sustenance.

But no apricots, no plums, no grapes, no avocados, no jam.

These are luxuries and are not allowed.

Paper for textbooks is not allowed.

The terrorists could use it to print seditious material.

And why do you need textbooks

now that your schools are rubble?

No steel is allowed, no building supplies, no plastic pipe.

These the terrorists could use to launch rockets

against us.

Pumpkins and carrots you may have,

but no delicacies,

no cherries, no pomegranates, no watermelon, no onions,

no chocolate.

We have a list of three dozen items that are allowed,

but we are not obliged to disclose its contents.

This is the decision arrived at

by Colonel Levi, Colonel Rosenzweig, and Colonel Segal.

Our motto:

‘No prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis.’

You may fish in the Mediterranean,

but only as far as three km from shore.

Beyond that and we open fire.

It is a great pity the waters are polluted –

twenty million gallons of raw sewage dumped into the sea every day

is the figure given.

Our rockets struck the sewage treatments plants,

and at this point spare parts to repair them are not allowed.

As long as Hamas threatens us,

no cement is allowed, no glass, no medical equipment.

We are watching you from our pilotless drones

as you cook your sparse meals over open fires

and bed down

in the ruins of houses destroyed by tank shells.

And if your children can’t sleep,

missing the ones who were killed in our incursion,

or cry out in the night, or wet their beds

in your makeshift refugee tents,

or scream, feeling pain in their amputated limbs –

that’s the price you pay for harbouring terrorists.

God gave us this land.

A land without a people for a people without a land.

Continue reading June 6, 2010

June 5, 2010, Page 2

ISRAELI MILITARY FORCIBLY STOPS AID BOAT TO GAZA – AGAIN : Free Gaza

WRITTEN BY GRETA BERLIN     |     05 JUNE 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For More Information, please contact:

Free Gaza Cyprus: Greta Berlin or Mary Hughes

tel: +357 99 187275 or +357 96 383 809, < friends@freegaza.org >

Free Gaza Ireland: Niamh Moloughney

tel: +353 (0)85 7747257 or +353 (0)91 472279, < freegazaireland@gmail.com >

Perdana Global Peace Organisation, Malaysia: Ram Karthigasu

tel: +60 1222 70159, < ramkarthigasu@gmail.com >

(Off the Gaza coast, 5 JUNE) – Just before 9am GMT this morning, the Israeli military forcibly siezed the Irish-owned humanitarian relief ship, the MV Rachel Corrie, from delivering over 1000 tons of medical and construction supplies to besieged Gaza. For the second time in less then a week, Israeli naval commandos stormed an unarmed aid ship, brutally taking its passengers hostage and towing the ship toward Ashdod port in Southern Israel.  It is not yet known whether any of the Rachel Corrie’s passengers were killed or injured during the attack, but they are believed to be unharmed.

The Corrie carried 11 passengers and 9 crew from 5 different countires, mostly Ireland and Malaysia. The passengers included Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire, Parit Member of the Malaysian Parliament Mohd Nizar Zakaria, and former UN Assistant Secretary General, Denis Halliday.  Nine international human rights workers were killed on Monday when Israeli commandos violently stormed the Turkish aid ship, Mavi Marmara and five other unarmed boats taking supplies to Gaza. Prior to being taken hostage by Israeli forces, Derek Graham, an Irish coordinator with the Free Gaza Movement, stated that: “Despite what happened on the Mavi Marmara earlier this week, we are not afraid.

The 1200-ton cargo ship was purchased through a special fund set up by former Malaysian Prime Minister and Perdana Global Peace Organisation (PGPO) chairman Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. The ship was named after an American human rights worker, killed in 2003 when she was crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer in the Gaza Strip. Its cargo included hundreds of tons of medical equipment and cement, as well as paper from the people of Norway, donated to UN-run schools in Gaza.

According to Denis Halliday: “We are the only Gaza-bound aid ship left out here. We’re determined to deliver our cargo.” The Rachel Corrie had been part of the Freedom Flotilla, a 40-nation effort to break through Israel’s illegal blockade, before being forced to drop off late last week due to suspicious mechanical problems.

The attack on the Rachel Corrie may spell trouble for Israel’s relationship with Ireland. The Irish government had formally requested Israel allow the ship to reach Gaza. On 1 June, the Irish parliament also passed an all-party motion condemning Israel’s use of military force against civilian aid ships, and demanding “an end to the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza.”

Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire summed up the hopes of this joint Irish-Malaysian effort to overcome Israel’s cruel blockade by saying: “We are inspired by the people of Gaza whose courage, love and joy in welcoming us, even in the midst of such suffering gives us all hope. They represent the very best of humanity, and we are all privileged to be given the opportunity to support them in their nonviolent struggle for human dignity, and freedom. This trip will again highlight Israel’s criminal blockade and illegal occupation. In a demonstration of the power of global citizen action, we hope to awaken the conscience of all.”

—

Passengers aboard the Rachel Corrie include:

Ahmed Faizal bin Azumu, human rights worker, Malaysia

Matthias Chang, attorney, author & human rights worker, Malaysia

Derek Graham, Free Gaza Ireland

Jenny Graham, Free Gaza Ireland

Denis Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary General, Ireland

Mohd Jufri Bin Mohd Judin, journalist, Malaysia

Shamsul Akmar Musa Kamal, PGPO representative, Malaysia

Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Ireland

Abdul Halim Bin Mohamed, journalist, Malaysia

Fiona Thompson, film-maker, Ireland

The Hon. Mohd Nizar Zakaria, Parit Member of Parliament, Malaysia

Erdogan to Netanyahu: You shall not kill ! Lo Tir’tsach !

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan says to Netanyahu: you shall not kill in 3 languages: Turkish, English and Hebrew.

You shall not kill ! Lo Tir’tsach ! Öldürmeyeceksin !

Erdogan to Netanyahu: You shall not kill ! Lo Tir’tsach ! Hamas is not a terror organisation

Gaza flotilla attack: Israeli ambassador to Madrid tries to play down deaths: The Guardian

Consul intimates Spain should focus more on domestic road traffic fatalities, and aligns activists with Madrid train bombers
Thermal imaging footage of the Israeli raid on the Gaza aid flotilla ship, in which nine people died. The Israeli ambassador to Madrid suggests Spain should be more worried about domestic road traffic fatalities. Photograph: guardian.co.uk
Israel’s ambassador in Madrid provoked outrage this morning by suggesting Spaniards should worry more about the number of people dying on the roads every weekend and less about the nine people killed in his country’s raid on the Gaza flotilla.

“Yes, nine people have died. But 155 died in a terrorist attack in India last week. Who cares about that? Have you heard anything about it? Twenty-three Spaniards died on the roads this weekend,” Raphael Schutz told El Periódico newspaper.

Pro-Palestinian protesters denounce Israel's raid of the Gaza flotilla, in India on June 2, 2010 Photo by: Reuters

An embassy spokesman, Lior Haiat, said comments had been taken out of context and the ambassador had been referring to Spanish media coverage. “Of course we care about any deaths,” said Haiat, who claimed the flotilla carried 100 Turkish mercenaries. “Even when they are mercenaries and terrorists.”

In an interview published in Spanish, Schutz compared the Gaza flotilla activists to the radical Islamist train bombers who killed 191 people on Madrid commuter trains in 2004.

“We are talking about people on board [the flotilla] who are connected to al-Qaida,” he said when El Periódico’s interviewer pointed out that the Madrid attacks had been carried out by al-Qaida-inspired terrorists. “Fifty of the people who left Turkey are known for their connections with Hamas, with al-Qaida. Are these people pacifists?”. They hide behind a few Europeans.”

Bible stories retold, by Martin Rowson, Guardian June 5, 2010

Israeli PR machine won Gaza flotilla media battle: The Guardian CiF

Reporting by mainstream media on the Gaza flotilla attack was unbalanced and dominated by Israel’s edited version of events
The provenance of photographs of weapons supposedly found on the boats has been questioned in the blogosphere. Photograph: AP
From the moment that the Israeli naval commandos launched their attack on the flotilla aiming to break the siege of Gaza by carrying humanitarian aid to the territory, the struggle by both sides to dominate how the media covered the events – a struggle that began days in advance of the 4am attack on Monday – entered a completely new phase.

Soon after the commandos landed on the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish ship carrying more than 600 of the activists, the live satellite broadcasts from the vessel were cut. From that point on, the Israeli authorities seized almost complete control of how evidence of what was taking place could be made public. Video of the last footage broadcast by the journalists on board was immediately available from sources such as al-Jazeera and the IHH (the Turkish Foundation for Freedoms and Human Rights and Humanitarian Relief), but it showed a very confusing picture: there were badly injured passengers, yet it was impossible to know how they had been injured.

What the world has been watching since then is either edited video shot by the Israelis or other video shot by activists, confiscated by the Israelis and subsequently edited and made available through Israeli sources.

In an operation reminiscent of the first week or so of the Israeli offensive against Gaza in winter 2008-2009, the Israeli PR machine succeeded in getting the major news outlets to focus on its version of events and to use the Israeli authorities’ discourse for a crucial 48 hours. (One example of how this was being done is a leaked, sophisticated briefing paper with key talking points, compiled using official government sources and pro-government Israeli media, issued through the World Zionist Organisation on 1 June.)

This time, however, commentators in the Israeli media, on the left and the right, were immediately slamming the commando attack as a failure. The repeated screening of the video, taken from an Israeli assault craft, of the commandos abseiling down ropes onto the Mavi Marmara and then being set upon by the activists waiting for them on the deck, became the defining image of the capture of the boats. Posted by the IDF on YouTube, by Wednesday it had attracted more than 600,000 views.

The activists’ actions were described by Israeli spokespersons as a premeditated terrorist attack by al-Qaida sympathisers, using clubs, knives and guns, carried out with the intention of “lynching” the commandos who were carrying out an entirely legal and peacefully executed operation.

This Israeli version of events was very often given an uncritical airing. The fact that the video was a selected and edited segment, that the activists who witnessed what happened were being held incommunicado, that every bit of recorded evidence they may have had in their possession was being confiscated – this context was rarely highlighted, with BBC online and radio coverage particularly weak in this respect.

Of course, the media were not responsible for the Israeli clampdown – which continued even after the activists began to be seen in public being taken into detention at the Israeli port of Ashdod and when they were being deported – but there could certainly have been more attention drawn to the imbalance in the sources from which the media were obtaining their information. Even after first-hand accounts started to be broadcast, there seemed to be a belittling of their validity by describing eye-witnesses simply as “activists” or “pro-Palestinians” when some were writers, members of parliament and journalists.

By late Tuesday afternoon, Israel had still not provided a list of names or locations of the injured; there was no official number or list of the deceased; no official count of the numbers of the detainees and their locations; no report on the legal status of the wounded at the IPS medical facility and at hospitals across the country and extremely limited access to the wounded. And those arrested, detained or in hospital were still being denied unrestricted access to lawyers, relatives and consular representatives.

But once the testimony of the activists became available and the blogosphere got its teeth into the visual evidence, from whatever source, an alternative picture quickly emerged and the mainstream media struggled to keep up.

Prior to the landing of the commandos, the boats were probably softened up with rubber bullets, smoke bombs, tear gas; the provenance is in question of pictures of weapons supposedly found on the boats and posted on Flickr by the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs; the Americans appeared to confirm that there was no evidence to suggest that IHH was a terrorist organisation with links to al-Qaida. And the Israeli army all but admitted that the activists did not have guns of their own before the raid.

The truth is, however, that after five days, the mainstream media have moved on (the attack on the Gaza flotilla is no longer featured as a top story in the news box on the BBC’s front page). The news imbalance may have been partly redressed, but the Israeli version of the events and the presentation of legal arguments to justify Israel’s actions by friendly commentators continues to occupy significant media space. And given the fact that virtually all the visual evidence is now in Israeli hands, it’s almost inconceivable that we will ever know precisely what happened. At this stage, it seems fanciful to believe that any Israeli-based investigation will make available all the raw footage Israel has in its possession.

I suspect that the government of Binyamin Netanyahu and those responsible for the relentless effort invested in media management will judge their PR onslaught as a success, in spite of the fact that many Israelis and Israel’s supporters will rail at the media for being biased. That this is so only further confirms how blinkered and foolish the Israeli government has become.

Far from generating much sympathy for Israel’s action, the video images of the assault on the commandos only deepens the impression of an Israeli military as weak, unprepared and pathetic. It confirms that the decision to undertake such a disastrous action showed “hubris, poor intelligence work, and determined inability to learn from experience”.

And the fact that so much attention is paid in Israel to the PR and media implications, with even some critical commentators there viewing the action as right and only the PR result a disaster, is surely deeply troubling evidence, albeit not exactly new, of the lack of a moral compass among the country’s leadership.

Continue reading June 5, 2010, Page 2

June 5, 2010

Israel threatens the Rachel Corrie, by Carlos Latuff

EDITOR: The flood of responses to Israel’s latest brutality

First, apologies to those of you who were trying to access the website yesterday. It was sabotaged and brought down, and you don’t need to be genius to know who has done it. Nonetheless, here it is again, and here it will remain.

The caricature above is by Carlos Latuff of Brazil, one of the leading cartoonists working today, and the most prolific. He has supported Palestine’s struggle for freedom for years, since the beginning of his career, and has sometimes frawn two cartoons a day on this topic. Please send as widely as possible, as his drawings are possibly the best means of ralying the relaties to people – they opearte beyond any specific language.

It has become impossible to follow the huge amount of responses, analyses and witness evidence now flooding the webways on this topic. I the interest of future research, I am trying my best to include the most important examples, but even that effort is fraught with difficulty, as many excellent pieces do not get a look in. The number of new website has also escalated; this is the clearest evidence that millions of people across the globe are now communicating every day about Israel’s iniquitous regime and its war crimes, and that the stage of isolation and pariahzation is now taking place.

‘Mad Dog’ Diplomacy: ICH

A cornered Israel is baring its teeth
By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth

June 04, 2010 “Information Clearing House” — Moshe Dayan, Israel’s most celebrated general, famously outlined the strategy he believed would keep Israel’s enemies at bay: “Israel must be a like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.”

Until now, most observers had assumed Dayan was referring to Israeli military or possibly nuclear strategy, an expression in his typically blunt fashion of the country’s familiar doctrine of deterrence.

But the Israeli commando attack on Monday on the Gaza-bound flotilla, in which nine activists have so far been confirmed killed and dozens were wounded as they tried to break Israel’s blockade of the enclave, proves beyond doubt that this is now a diplomatic strategy too. Israel is feeling cornered on every front it considers important – and like Dayan’s “mad dog”, it is likely to strike out in unpredictable ways.

Domestically, Israeli human rights activists have regrouped after the Zionist left’s dissolution in the wake of the outbreak of the second intfada. Now they are presenting clear-eyed – and extremely ugly – assessments of the occupation that are grabbing headlines around the world.

That move has been supported by the leadership of Israel’s large Palestinian minority, which has additionally started questioning the legitimacy of a Jewish state in ways that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.

Regionally, Hizbullah has progressively eroded Israel’s deterrence doctrine. It forced the Israeli army to exit south Lebanon in 2000 after a two-decade occupation; it stood firm in the face of both aerial bombardment and a ground invasion during the 2006 war; and now it is reported to have accumulated an even larger arsenal of rockets than it had four years ago.

Iran, too, has refused to be intimidated and is leaving Israel with an uncomfortable choice between conceding to Tehran the room to develop a nuclear bomb, thereby ending Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly, and launching an attack that could unleash a global conflagration.

And internationally, nearly 18 months on from its attack on Gaza, Israel’s standing is at an all-time low. Boycott campaigns are gaining traction, reluctant support for Israel from European governments has set them in opposition to home-grown sentiment, and even traditional allies such as Turkey cannot hide their anger.

In the US, Israel’s most resolute ally, young American Jews are starting to question their unthinking loyalty to the Jewish state. Blogs and new kinds of Jewish groups are bypassing their elders and the American media to widen the scope of debate about Israel.

Israel has responded by characterising these “threats” all as falling within its ever-expanding definition of “support for terrorism”.

It was therefore hardly suprising that the first reaction from the Israeli government to the fact that its commandoes had opened fire on civilians in the flotilla of aid ships was to accuse the solidarity activists of being armed.

Similarly, Danny Ayalon, the deputy foreign minister, accused the organisers of having “connections to international terrorism”, including al-Qaeda. Turkey, which assisted the flotilla, is widely being accused in Israel of supporting Hamas and trying to topple Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

Palestinians are familiar with such tactics. Gaza’s entire population of 1.5 million is now regularly presented in the Israeli media in collective terms, as supporters of terror – for having voted in Hamas – and therefore legitimate targets for Israeli “retaliation”. Even the largely docile Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has rapidly been tarred with the same brush for its belated campaign to boycott the settlements and their products.

The leaders of Israel’s Palestinian citizens too are being cast in the role of abettors of terror. The minority is still reeling from the latest assault: the arrest and torture of two community leaders charged with spying for Hizbullah. In its wake, new laws are being drafted to require that Palestinian citizens prove their “loyalty” or have their citizenship revoked.

When false rumours briefly circulated on Monday that Sheikh Raed Salah, a leader of Israel’s Islamic Movement who was in the flotilla, had been gravely wounded, Israeli officials offered a depressingly predictable, and unfounded, response: commandoes had shot him after they came under fire from his cabin.

Israel’s Jewish human rights community is also under attack to a degree never before seen. Their leaders are now presented as traitors, and new legislation is designed to make their work much harder.

The few brave souls in the Israeli media who try to hold the system to account have been given a warning shot with the exile of Haaretz’s investigative journalist Uri Blau, who is threatened with trial on spying charges if he returns.

Finally, Israel’s treatment of those onboard the flotilla has demonstrated that the net against human rights activism is being cast much wider, to encompass the international community.

Foreigners, even high-profile figures such as Noam Chomsky, are now routinely refused entry to Israel and the occupied territories. Many foreign human rights workers face severe restrictions on their movement and efforts to deport them or ban their organisations. The Israeli government is agreed that Europe should be banned from “interfering” in the region by supporting local human rights organisations.

The epitome of this process was Israel’s reception of the UN report last year into the attack on Gaza by Richard Goldstone, a respected judge and international law expert who suggested Israel had committed many war crimes during its three-week operation. Goldstone has faced savage personal attacks ever since.

But more significantly, Israel’s supporters have characterised the Goldstone report and the related legal campaigns against Israel as examples of “lawfare”, implying that those who uphold international law are waging a new kind of war of attrition on behalf of terror groups like Hamas and Hizbullah.

These trends are likely only to deepen in the coming months and years, making Israel an ever greater paraiah in the eyes of much of the world. The mad dog is baring his teeth, and it is high time the international community decided how to deal with him.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

Israel arrests Free Gaza chief: Ma’an News

Published yesterday (updated) 05/06/2010 11:20
Bethlehem – Ma’an – Israeli forces arrested the chairwoman of the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla at Friday’s demonstration in Bil’in, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, supporters said.

EDITOR: As the MV Rachel Corrie is approaching Gaza, the daily brutalities are continued with special venom…

Bil’in Protest In Solidarity Protest With The Gaza Flotilla 04-06-2010 By Haitham Al Katib

Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American from Michigan, is a human rights activist who was on board the aid flotilla that came under attack Monday, in a raid that left nine dead.
Activists said two anti-wall protesters were also detained, one Palestinian and one Israeli.
An Israeli police spokesman said three foreign nationals were detained at the rally.

EDITOR: In between the massacres, other crimes are getting lost

For no crime at all, apart from the Orwellian Thought Crime, Israel is illegally deporting four of its own citizens, Palestinian Members of the national assembly, and not for the first time. Is there enough paper in the world to have the full list of Israel’s iniquities? One may think that this better than being killed, but actually it is all a matrix of evil and lawlessness, synchronised to harm the Palestinians beyond repair.

Hamas officials given one month to leave Israel: Haaretz

By Liel Kyzer, Haaretz – 4 June 2010
Jerusalem police confiscated the Israeli identity cards of four Hamas legislators overnight on Thursday and gave them until July to leave the country.
Mohammed Abu Tir, Mohammed Totach, Khaled Abu Arafa, and Ahmed Atoun are all Hamas legislators who refuse to give up their duties within the Hamas Legislative Council.
Detectives from the Jerusalem District Police Central Unit took their identity cards after The High Court of Justice ruled that they would not prevent the men’s expulsion from Jerusalem.

Hamas’ Mohammed Abu Tir at his East Jerusalem home after his release from an Israeli jail on Thursday, May 20, 2010
The four men were, in the past, warned by Israel that they must renounce their membership in Hamas or risk losing their residency rights in East Jerusalem.
Abu Tir was released from Israeli prison last month, after being jailed for the last four years, since his arrest along with 65 other senior Hamas men in response to the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006.
After his release, Abu Tir was prohibited from entering Jerusalem. Israel has so far released nine of the Hamas officials who were jailed after Shalit’s abduction convicted of belonging to an illegal organization. Israeli defense officials said those ministers had just completed their prison terms and their release was not connected to a prisoner swap deal for Shalit’s release.
Hamas won control of the Palestinian parliament in 2006 elections and then seized the Gaza Strip in 2007, leading to rival governments in the West Bank and Gaza.

Continue reading June 5, 2010

June 4, 2010

Netanyahu - Bloodthirsty Pirate, by Carlos Latuff

EDITOR: The Evidence Was Highjacked With the Survivors…

On kidnapping the Mavi Marmara and other passengers to Israel, not only were a large number of laws broken, as is usual with all Israeli behaviour, but the evidence collected by the survivors about the massacre was itself illegally confiscated and removed by the Israeli authorities. How useful is the law, international and even the Israeli law, when Israel’s behaviour is concereed? Lawyers will argue, justifiably, that we must use what law we have, to bring criminals to justice; in this case, however, the criminal government is breaking its own laws all the time, and refuses to carry out its own Supreme Court decisions, so the use of law as an efficient vehicle of bringing justice to bear must be extremely limited, especially as other governments, and especially those of the US and UK, thremselves involved in war crimes, are supporting and abetting the Israeli regime.

Below, Daniel Machover, of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, is proving that not only the murders were illegal, but that the whole operation broke a number of laws, and so did the treatment of the survivors. Let us hope that this helps to persuade some in government that thir continued unprincipled support of mass murder should come to an abrupt end…

Freedom Flotilla attack – Daniel Machover of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights

Full video of Daniel Machover from press conference organised by Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Also appearing was Sarah Colborne who was on the ship stormed by Israeli commandos.

Turkey is not an enemy: Haaretz Editorial

Compared to Egypt, Turkey has for years maintained close and cordial ties with Israel at all levels. Israelis have considered it a sister nation, trade with Turkey has expanded, and military cooperation has been perceived as a given.

Of all Israel’s ties with Muslim countries, those with Turkey are the oldest. Until recently, in terms of strategy, that country was considered no less important than Egypt. The affair of the Gaza aid flotilla and the harsh and excessive comments by Turkey’s prime minister against Israel have dramatically shaken the stability of these ties. Israelis now perceive Turkey as an enemy that should be denounced, or at least boycotted.

But it should be pointed out that compared to Egypt, Turkey has for years maintained close and cordial ties with Israel at all levels. Israelis have considered it a sister nation, trade with Turkey has expanded, and military cooperation has been perceived as a given. Visits by the leaders of both countries have also become a standard part of our political lives. Turkey’s involvement in the indirect talks between Syria and Israel helped forge understandings between Damascus and Jerusalem, and normalization was not a subject Turkey and Israel disagreed on. Normalization actually preceded official ties between the two countries.

The change did not happen because of the victory of the Justice and Development Party and the election of Recep Tayyip Erdogan as prime minister. That party has been in power since 2002, and despite the dark prophecies that accompanied its rise to power, relations between the two countries continued normally. Turkey’s anger exploded when its prime minister felt betrayed by former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who allowed Turkey to try to mediate between Israel and Hamas on the eve of Operation Cast Lead. Turkey realized then that Israel considers it a given; that it has to agree with all of Israel’s whims.

Erdogan’s criticism of Israel is not different in substance than the criticism by other friends of Israel in Europe and the United States. But his style is more blatant and direct. Erdogan does not agree with Israel on continuing the blockade of the Gaza Strip, and he is finding hard to understand, like many Israelis, the logic behind the blockade after four years in which it has not achieved Israel’s goals. Erdogan’s backing of the flotilla was just a continuation of the view that the blockade cannot go on.

Israel can ignore Turkey’s serious arguments, slander its prime minister and describe the flotilla’s activists as terrorists. This will not be enough to remove the stain of the operation that dragged Israel’s image − not Turkey’s, eight of whose citizens were killed − into the mud internationally.

Israel, which is now struggling to save its good name, considers public relations the sole means for achieving its goals. But without wise policy, public relations will prove empty of substance. The first step is to rehabilitate relations with Turkey, especially with its prime minister.

For this, political courage is necessary, which will lift the blockade on Gaza Strip and bring Turkey closer to the region’s political process. Without all this, Israel can only continue being pleased with itself under the political blockade imposed on it.

The Gaza Flotilla and Israel’s Many, Many Right: Takimag

by Charles Glass,  June 03, 2010

Anybody can support Israel when times are good and The Timeses in London and New York write about Israeli entrepreneurs in Herzliya, Nobel prizes for physicians, and the blooming desert. That’s easy. How about now, though, when Israeli forces have blasted a humanitarian convoy at sea and killed nine people bringing food, medicine, baby clothes, and building supplies? When the going gets tough, only a few get going. God bless Les Gelb, Alan Dershowitz and the other singular champions of Israelism for standing up now, when nine Turkish citizens lie dead and Israel’s reputation is once again, for a moment, in tatters. Gelb bravely asserted on The Daily Beast, “Israel had every right under international law to stop and board ships bound for the Gaza war zone late Sunday.”
Even if no international law, and certainly no Law of the Sea, actually permits armed soldiers to board unarmed merchant ships in international waters, it is good that Gelb had the guts to say there’s one. Israel can rely as well on Dershowitz, the Harvard Law professor who years ago proposed that Israel destroy Palestinian villages in retaliation for suicide bombings—his own “Lidice” solution for which the Nazis who destroyed the Czech village of Lidice in retaliation for the murder of Rheinhard Heydrich were hanged. His counsel on the Huffington Post will soon have the Israeli army storming Gaza, devastating Lebanon, nuking Iran, and sinking cruise liners. When push came to the shove of ethnically cleansing the entire West Bank of its Arab population, Les and Al would be there to tell us all that it was right and, of course, legal. That’s what lawyers, I mean real friends, are for.
I now list the rights that Israel is entitled to exercise now and forever with the full support of its true friends, mainly in America, but wherever else they may be found. Perhaps not, at the moment, in Turkey.
Israel has the right to kill anyone, anytime, for any reason it chooses. This includes those it designates as terrorists or terrorist supporters in Israel itself, in the occupied territories, in Dubai, on airplanes, in cars and on ships. No other state is entitled to this right for reasons that I now forget, but which I am sure Al and Les can remind us about.
Israel is entitled to at least $5 billion a year from the American taxpayer, however hard-pressed he or she may be, during the good times as well as in the midst of financial crises. Israel’s government may spend the money as it sees fit, without oversight or audit by the US Treasury, the Government Accounting Office or the Congress. If a few million bucks go astray or pay for allegedly illegal activities, like displacing Palestinians from their homes and building Israeli settlements on them, that is nobody’s business. If Congress doesn’t like it, it can go to the White House and ask for more.
Israel may use the weapons the United States gives it in any way it chooses, whenever it chooses, and wherever it chooses. US-Israeli treaties limiting their use to defense and prohibiting the deployment of cluster bombs on civilians may be ignored as having no legal force. I defer to the experts at the Harvard School of Law for an exact exegesis of this proposition, but it should be self-evident to all who truly support Israel and not just the whining ninnies who only support it when it is not breaking the law—which, as I said, it is never really breaking anyway.
Israel has the right to spy on and attack American institutions and military installations. The precedents for this obvious assertion are many—Israel’s bombing of American cultural centers in Egypt in the 1950s, its attack on the American naval ship Liberty in 1967 with thirty-two American sailors killed and another 17 wounded, and the many instances when agents like Jonathan Pollard steal American defense secrets and Israeli intelligence passes the information onto America’s enemies. (Read my old colleague James Bamford’s Body of Secrets for the details. You’ll need Les and Al to help you finish the book without having a certain patriotic fury at some of Israel’s breaches of American security.) Bombing American cinemas in Egypt and an American communications ship may seem illegal (and certainly hostile) to the people Les Gelb courageously calls “knee-jerk left-wingers and the usual legion of poseurs around the world.” To the rest of us, the illegal is obviously legal when done by Israel.
“Stand by Israel now. Stand by the real Israel and not those cry babies who defame the state from within. If you don’t, you lousy left-wing, knee-jerk poseur, you’re nothing but an anti-Semite.”

United Nations resolutions do not apply to Israel. The UN should pass a resolution immediately to make this clear. Israel has been in contravention, at least on paper, of more UN resolutions than any other member state. It has consistently refused to adhere to Security Council and General Assembly resolutions on the refugees who fled or were expelled by its forces in 1948 and 1967, on its occupation of territories seized in 1967, on its seizure of land in those territories, on its transfer of its own civilians into occupied territories, on the construction of settlements in the same territories and on its treatment of indigenous civilians in those territories. Let’s get this straight. The UN can say whatever it likes, but it cannot expect its resolutions to apply to Israel—except, of course, the one that recognized Israel as a state in 1948. Non-compliance with UN resolutions may be used as a justification for invading Iraq, but they cannot possibly justify criticism of Israel in the knee-jerk, left-wing press or among the blogs of the Legion of Poseurs. (Perhaps there really is an organization called the Legion of Poseurs. If there is, I am sure Les will let us know about it.)
Israel can bomb and invade Lebanon whenever it wants, but we all know that.
Israel can discriminate between its Jewish citizens and non-Jewish citizens, as well as between its settlers and those stateless souls in the occupied lands. Jews can own land in Israel, and (except for about eight per cent of it) Arabs may not. Israel can make the distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish people without knee-jerk left-wingers and legionary poseurs calling it apartheid. Apartheid was what the South African whites did, which was to discriminate between white and non-white people. There is a big difference between dividing society into whites and non-whites as opposed to dividing it between Jews and non-Jews. I am sure Harvard Law has published many papers to clarify the distinction.
Israel can put Gaza under siege whenever it likes. If the Palestinians in Gaza don’t like it, they can go home. Well, actually, the ninety per cent of them who are refugees can’t go home, because Israel won’t let them. And that too is Israel’s right. Do not forget it is always legal for Israel to prevent shipments of food, medicine, children’s toys, light bulbs and anything else it likes from entering Gaza, even though international law says that collective punishment and deprivation of life’s necessities are illegal.
Israel may stop any ship bound for Gaza (or anywhere else) whenever it wants. Les Gelb found a precedent for this: the Allied blockade of Germany. Germany was at war with the British, and German U-boats were as effective at besieging the British as the Royal Navy was at blockading Germany. Israel cannot be in a legal state of war with territory it occupies. If it were, it would be obliged to treat Palestinian anti-occupation fighters in its custody as prisoners of war with rights under the Geneva Conventions. And we all know how likely that is and what Israel thinks of the Geneva Conventions. You guessed it, right up there with treaties and UN resolutions. The German-British siege is about as good a precedent for the siege of Gaza Les is likely to give us, even if he is free to reject its other implications. Thus, on the high seas, Israel can ram aid ships like it did last year or drop armed commandos on them as it did last week. And those bloody Turkish civilians have no right to take away the Israeli soldiers’ pistols. That is pure aggression. Les concedes that, while Israel can board ships in international or, presumably, Gazan waters, it cannot do the same in the territorial waters of another state. He writes, “Thus, for example, if the Israelis stopped the ships in Egyptian waters, that would have been a violation.” Frankly, Les, that’s trimming. Of course, it can stop ships in Egyptian or Lebanese (which it does all the time) or American waters. And I’ll bet ten to one that, whenever it does stop a ship in Egyptian waters, you’ll change your mind.
Israel can demand that Hamas and every other Palestinian group recognize Israel and its “right to exist” (even though, in any other context, the concept “right to exist” has no existence in law), while Israel refuses to recognize the state of Palestine within the 1947 borders set by the United Nations or the 1949 ceasefire lines that became the first, albeit temporary, borders of Israel. Not only does Israel not have to recognize such a state, it may physically prevent it from coming into being (as it has done since 1967). Let me repeat: Israel has the right to recognition without giving recognition in return. No other two states in the world have relations on that basis, but those states are not Israel. Professor Dershowitz can no doubt have one of his students (at least one who wants a job when he graduates) prepare a thesis giving the rationale behind what knee-jerk left wingers and poseurs contend is an extremely odd state of affairs.
There you have it. Stand by Israel now. Stand by the real Israel and not those cry babies who defame the state from within. If you don’t, you lousy left-wing, knee-jerk poseur, you’re nothing but an anti-Semite. Al and Les can explain why anyone and everyone, even Jews, critical of any Israeli action should be called anti-Semitic. I used to know why, but I’ve forgotten.

Attorney Tsemel brings Testimonies of Gaza Freedom Flotilla Detainees

Continue reading June 4, 2010