The very idea that pacifist, feminist, Jewish, and Christian organizations like CODEPINK, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the American Friends Service Committee would ally with a violent, misogynist, Islamic group like Hamas — much less any group that engages in terrorism — should be recognized as absurd on face value. When prominent Democrats — including the head of the House subcommittee on terrorism — imply that leading American and Israeli peace groups are linked to terrorism, it is no longer simply heated rhetoric in defense of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, but a dangerous attack on civil liberties.
Gaza
In response to a lawsuit by Gisha, an Israeli human rights group, the Israeli government explained the blockade as an exercise of the right of economic warfare.
Public prosecutors in Germany are looking into a war crimes complaint filed against Israel by two members of parliament with the far-left Left Party and a human rights activist who were on board the Mavi Marmara when Israeli troops stormed it 11 days ago.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi has appointed Maj-Gen (ret.) Giora Eiland to head “external inquest into deadly raid of Gaza flotilla”. Gen. Eiland is the main author of the Dahiya Doctrine of “disproportionate response”, which calls for “the wholesale destruction of the military, government and civilian infrastructure of the enemy entity”.
Like other states, Israel has the right of self-defense. But did Israel have the right to use force in Gaza in the name of self-defense? International law, including the U.N. Charter, is unambiguous: A nation has such a right only if it has exhausted peaceful means. In this case such means were not even tried, although—or perhaps because—there was every reason to suppose that they would succeed. Thus the invasion was sheer criminal aggression, and the same is true of Israel’s resorting to force against the flotilla.
As [Istanbul] hosted the third summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), it was clear that Israel, at the receiving end of global condemnation for last week’s attack on an aid ship trying to sail to the Gaza Strip, faced further isolation for its “brazen act” that killed nine peace activists.
What serves the goal of separating Gaza from the West Bank better than forgetting the sealed Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel, and focusing on Rafah and cement? Unintentionally, the runners of the maritime and media blockade focused attention on aspects that do not undermine the essence of Israel’s closure of Gaza. And that essence is denying the right and thwarting the will of Gazans to be an active, permanent and natural part of Palestinian society.
IOA Editor: As always, one can count on Amira Hass to place current events in the context of Israel’s 43-year long Occupation, and the Occupier’s long-term interests which drive Israel’s actions. Important as the focus on the Flotilla is, viewing it in the context of the Gaza Siege and Israel’s designs to separate Gaza from Palestine is far more important.
Israelis are engaged in a Kafkaesque conversation in which the military attack on the civilian ships is characterised as a legitimate “act of self-defence”, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it, and the killing of nine aid activists is transformed into an attempted “lynching of our soldiers” by terrorists.
Hanin Zoabi was aboard the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in the flotilla where all nine activists were killed, and she witnessed some of them bleed to death. When she returned to Israel to speak in the Knesset, she was verbally assaulted by parliament members for her participation in the flotilla.
Although Israel successfully controlled news of its deadly commando raid on the Freedom Flotilla during the first crucial 48 hours of media coverage, emerging evidence from witnesses and survivors is challenging the Israeli government’s version of events.
The real, unlike the declared, strategy is to continue this state of affairs. As long as the international community is complacent, the Arab world impotent and Gaza contained, Israel can still have a thriving economy and an electorate that regards the dominance of the army in its life, the continued conflict and the oppression of the Palestinians as the exclusive past, the present and future reality of life in Israel.
Decision to strip Balad MK Hanin Zuabi of privileges over Gaza flotilla participation passed by a majority of seven to one. Zuabi: We are victims of a witch hunt.
IOA Editor: First the Flotilla massacre; then the massive propaganda campaign filled with lies, and more lies, and then some more lies; then the attempted explanations, and the retractions; then the racist joking about murder and starvation, followed by more retractions, and now an official Israel government apology. What do you know… Aren’t we all thankful to the Israeli government for clearing it up?
And to think that all of this is supported and financed by hard-earned US tax-dollars and by tax-deductible contributions… under the presidency of a Nobel (Peace!) Laureate who has yet to criticize Israel for carrying out all these actions that his administration, like all previous ones, is so very generously financing. Not a pretty picture, any way you look at it.
On the other hand, kinder and better people decided to vote with their feet this week, to show their disapproval of Israeli actions: the Occupation, the Gaza Siege, the attack of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
They include: Best-selling authors Alice Walker and Iain Banks [and Henning Mankell] who have backed the boycott campaign; three international performance groups that canceled their scheduled Tel Aviv appearances; Dockworker unions in Sweden and South Africa who refused to handle Israeli ships;
a UK union that passed a motion to boycott Israeli companies.
Now, this is Hope, this is Change!
UPDATE: Max Blumenthal’s Nailed Again: IDF Description of Suspicious Photo It Distributed Is Retracted
An example of racist, hateful Israeli propaganda widely distributed after Israel’s attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla
This Israeli naval-officers letter is important. As commanding officers of attack boats, they know the laws governing behavior in international waters and realize how grave Israel’s violation of these basic international laws was (Hebrew).
“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.”
IOA Editor (UPDATED): This Israeli naval-officers letter is important. As commanding officers of attack boats, they know the laws governing behavior in international waters and realize how grave Israel’s violation of these basic international laws was.
In addition to the Haaretz coverage of this story, the officers’ letter states: “Based on our experience as commanders of [attack] boats and commando units… we think that it was possible to act in different ways in order to stop the ship. The approach used in the field included a high level of friction which, in our opinion, was unnecessary – and this irrespective of the nature of the resistance encountered during the raid on the ship [Mavi Marmara]. The nature of the operation [that was carried out] is contrary to other methods which were appropriate to implement, based on the understanding that the object was a civilian vessel, sailing under Turkish jurisdiction, in international waters.”
And, crucially, they attribute responsibility for the attack to Israel’s military elite rather than to activists. This flies in the face of all of Israel’s propaganda of last week.
“Purity of Weapons” is an old, mythological Israeli term that attempts to distinguish between “just” killing (nearly always) and unjust killing (practically never) by IDF soldiers. For example, to date, no official Israeli source has termed Israel’s attack on Gaza as violating this mythological standard.
MORE: Read officers letter (Hebrew) HERE
The myth of the brave and utterly infallible Israeli soldier is shattered. Now we can add: they are common thieves. For I was not the only one to be robbed of my money, credit card, clothes, MP3 player, laptop; the same happened to many others on the same ship as me, which was attacked early one morning by masked Israeli soldiers, who were thus in fact nothing other than lying pirates.
[T]he simplest answer to [the] question of what Israel could do to maintain its security in place of a blockade is that it is precisely the blockade that causes the threats to Israeli security. Without the blockade, there would be no obstacle to negotiating a long-term ceasefire, which would mean the end to rocket fire and other threats to Israel’s legitimate security interests.
ALSO : Stephen R. Shalom: Palling Around with Terrorists – Obama and the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Hijacking boats in international waters and killing passengers is, of course, a serious crime… For decades, Israel has been hijacking boats in international waters between Cyprus and Lebanon, killing or kidnapping passengers, sometimes bringing them to prisons in Israel including secret prison/torture chambers, sometimes holding them as hostages for many years. Israel assumes that it can carry out such crimes with impunity because the US tolerates them and Europe generally follows the US lead.
IOA Editor: UPDATED to correct an omission from Noam Chomsky’s statement on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
[T]he Gaza Freedom Flotilla was a provocation… in the sense that civil rights protesters in the American south who sat at segregated lunch counters represented a provocation to segregationists, or in the sense that all nonviolent protests against the illegitimate acts of a government are by definition provocations. Under an illegal siege, the delivery of aid to civilians is a prohibited act; the intent of our humanitarian convoy was to violate this unjust prohibition.
IOA Editor: Iara Lee held a press conference at the UN on 10 June 2010, presenting her raw video footage from the Mavi Marmara and answering questions. Her article about the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was published earlier.
UPDATE: UN screening of ‘one-sided’ Gaza flotilla film spurs Israeli complaint
[T]he blockade has been a colossal moral, political and diplomatic failure. Not only has it wrought a humanitarian catastrophe on Gaza’s 1.5 million people: it has so strengthened Hamas that it alone could claim the high ground in the wake of the flotilla debacle. It was that moral weight that compelled Egypt to open Gaza’s Rafah crossing into the Sinai on 1 June.
Israel’s entrenchment is so deep-seated that it has announced it will certainly not lift the blockade on Gaza. Its blindness means that there is sure to be another round… There is nothing to investigate. This is the situation; everyone knows it. We just have to decide whether to go on like this, or take a deep breath and choose a different path.
Israel was tonight under pressure to allow an independent inquiry into its assault on the Gaza aid flotilla after autopsy results on the bodies of those killed, obtained by the Guardian, revealed they were peppered with 9mm bullets, many fired at close range.
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.
An embargo on adequate food and medical aid can never be lawful, so those on board had the right to defend themselves. The attack by Israeli forces on the Turkish-registered vessel Mavi
Marmara in international waters was clearly unlawful.
“In recent days,” Yishai wrote, “Israel’s citizens have witnessed how an Israeli member of parliament, Hanin Zuabi, headed a group of terrorists who aimed to hurt Israel Defense Forces soldiers, under the protection of her parliamentary immunity.”
[P]rotected by a Western empire, you colonize a part of the world, ethnically cleanse as many of its indigenous people as you can, and confine the remainder to stew in a series of besieged reservations, which are in effect open prisons. And when the victims try to resist, you depict them as “savages” and “terrorists”; and present yourself, the colonizer, as acting in “self-defence”. Similarly, when humanitarian sympathizers of the colonized try to provide them with some help.
“We can’t sit by and watch Israel violate international law every day. We want the British government to take action, ensure there is no future attacks on humanitarian aid convoys, to ensure there is a search carried out for those that remain missing, to ensure that those people who have been detained illegally will be released and most importantly to end the siege of Gaza.”
RT (Rusian TV in English) interviews MK Haneen Zoabi.
Palestinian member of Israel’s parliament, MK Haneen Zoabi, was viciously attacked and physically threatened by her Israeli Knesset “colleagues” who attempted to shut her out. Quite a remarkable display of Israel’s democracy-for-Jews, and only for Jews. This extreme level of abuse is unprecedented, exposing Israel’s true face as it concerns Palestinian Arab citizens, including Knesset members. Among the name-calling, “traitor,” “terrorist,” and “Trojan Horse” (video and text).
MK Miri Regev (Likud) accused Zoabi of being “responsible for a double crime: Joining terrorists, and a moral crime against the state of Israel.” Regev then called at her in Arabic: “Go to Gaza, you traitor.”
Rashid Khalidi covers Israel’s attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, and turns the focus to Israel’s Gaza siege, Israel-Palestine, and the US – Israel relations in an interview with WBEZ radio, Chicago (Audio).
Democracy Now! interviews former US Ambassador Edward Peck
who was on the Gaza aid flotilla that came under attack by Israeli forces. At least nine people were killed and dozens wounded. Peck says Israel’s explanation for the attack is “twisting the truth” and is “as full of holes as a window screen.”
Jonathan Cook: Haneen Zoubi said Israeli naval vessels had surrounded the flotilla’s flagship, the Mavi Marmara, and fired on it a few minutes before commandos abseiled from a helicopter directly above them… She added that within minutes of the raid beginning, three bodies had been brought to the main room on the upper deck in which she and most other passengers were confined. Two had gunshot wounds to the head, in what she suggested had been executions.
CNN interview with Gaza Freedom Flotilla leader Huwaida Arraf.
