Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, which carried out the autopsies for the Turkish ministry of justice today.
The results revealed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back. A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back, said Yalcin Buyuk, vice-chairman of the council of forensic medicine.
The findings emerged as more survivors gave their accounts of the raids. Ismail Patel, the chairman of Leicester-based pro-Palestinian group Friends of al-Aqsa, who returned to Britain today, told how he witnessed some of the fatal shootings and claimed that Israel had operated a "shoot to kill policy".
He calculated that during the bloodiest part of the assault, Israeli commandos shot one person every minute. One man was fatally shot in the back of the head just two feet in front him and another was shot once between the eyes. He added that as well as the fatally wounded, 48 others were suffering from gunshot wounds and six activists remained missing*, suggesting the death toll may increase.
Above quote From:
Gaza flotilla activists were shot in head at close range
Exclusive: Nine Turkish men on board Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times, autopsy results reveal
Robert Booth
guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 June 2010
On legality of the blockade and International Law-
The question of who attacked whom is irrelevant, however, according to experts in international law. The blockade itself is illegal, and therefore Israel had no right to board those ships in the first place. It renders the argument over culpability moot. Israel committed an illegal act of war attacking the convoy, regardless of who tried to draw "first blood."
...The parallel is entirely false. Gaza is not an independent state at war with Israel. Gaza is occupied by Israel, and, as such, an entirely different set of international laws apply. As UC Hastings legal scholar George Bisharat explained this week, the 2005 withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from the ground in Gaza is immaterial, as the area remains under Israel's "effective control" -- it's a remote occupation but an occupation nonetheless.
Under customary international law that Israel accepts as binding ... a territory is "occupied" when foreign forces exercise "effective control" over it, whether accomplished through the continuous presence of ground troops or not.
Israel patrols the territorial waters and airspace of the Gaza Strip, regulates Gaza's land borders, restricts internal movements by excluding Gazans from a "buffer zone" that includes 46 percent of the strip's agricultural land, and controls the Gaza Strip's supplies of electricity, heating oil, and petrol. Together these factors amount to remote but "effective control."
From article by Joshua HollandThe Gaza Blockade Is Illegal and the Flotilla Attack Was an Illegal Act of War by Joshua Holland Via Alternet, June 5, 2010
Film released by Israel part of an IDF recording of the nights events.Still missing what might be hours of video tape-
But we know it has been edited
what we need are the videos made by others on the ships-because they jammed Cell phones computers satelitte feed we don't know if anything recorded was not actually erased by the IDF a strong magnet can do the damage or the heel of an army boot.
UNSEEN RAW FOOTAGE: ISRAELI FLOTILLA ATTACK AFTERMATH VIDEO
Was the attack on the Turkish ship last week could it be construed as a declaration of war on Turkey- a Gulf of Tonkin incident leading to a war-
Secondly Turkey is a member of Nato
Nato is supposed to come to the defense of any of its members countries if they are attacked.
So did NATO become irrelevant when dealing with Israel backed by the USA
Cenk makes a sound argument by asking what if . What if the tables were turned and armed Turkish soldiers boarded an Israeli ship for some reason- what if this also suggest is that any country can do whatever it wants by citing the Americans and the Israelis. They reassure the world when it comes to oppressing people it is not allowed except in the case of the Palestinians or Arabs or Muslims .
Israel & US ties are too close and irrational
Israel trumps NATO Israel trumps Britain or France or Germany
Israel Trumps the EU.
Cenk argues the fact is that the United States in the end has only one ally that it will defend above all others an
The Young Turks Cenk Uygur talking about the Israeli act of piracy
He argues that too often the assumption is in America that one can be labeled anti-semitic just for criticizing the current Israeli's governments policies and actions.
He notes that Israel's blockade of Gaza is itself illegal
They attacked a foreign vessel in International Waters
Some people fought back Israel was this justification for IDF forces to kill 9 people and wounded a couple of dozen or more
It's a long video 59 min. -but there is a bit on the BP oil disaster and Tony Hayward wants his life back
while some are Arguing to only fine BP what they can get so as not to ruin Poor BP cause they're too big to fail.
The Young Turks: TYT Hour - June 1st, 2010
If America and Israel share the same policies and values will the US build Arab-American or Hispanic-Americans or Whites only roads. Israel has roads which are very well maintained but are roads upon which only Jewish Israelis can drive while Palestinians are left with old roads barely maintained . The Israeli are continuing to erect an Apartheid style wall to keep Palestians from having any real freedom of movement. Meanwhile Netanyahu is encouraging more Israelis to move to the so -called settlements -what they really are is suburbs or small cities with all the modern conveniences while Palestinans And Arab Israelis are mostly left to live in squalor. Arab Israelis in East jerusalem can be kicked out of their home because there are more Jewish Israelis who want to live in that area.
We know that the Israelis and Americans are big boosters of torture or what they call Enhanced Interrogation Techniques
Both use targeted assassinations
Both believe they have the right to enter any country they want to kidnap, torture and kill people they believe are some way supporting terrorists.
When the Iranian government kills activist the USA & Israel criticize Iran
But Israel or America are above all such quaint laws as Condi Rice aptly put it.
Washington Asks: What to Do About Israel? By HELENE COOPER via New York Times , June 4, 2010
Some topics are so inflammatory that they are never discussed without first inserting a number of caveats. And so, when Anthony Cordesman, a foreign policy dignitary in this town’s think tank circuit, dropped an article on Wednesday headlined “Israel as a Strategic Liability,” he made sure to open with a plethora of qualifications.
and then laid out a dispassionate argument that has gained increased traction in Washington — both inside the Obama administration (including the Pentagon, White House and State Department) and outside, during forums, policy breakfasts, even a seder in Bethesda. Recent Israeli governments, particularly the one led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Cordesman argued, have ignored the national security concerns of its biggest benefactor, the United States, and instead have taken steps that damage American interests abroad.
“The depth of America’s moral commitment does not justify or excuse actions by an Israeli government that unnecessarily make Israel a strategic liability when it should remain an asset,” Mr. Cordesman wrote, in commentary for the centrist Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he is the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in strategy. “It is time Israel realized that it has obligations to the United States, as well as the United States to Israel, and that it become far more careful about the extent to which it tests the limits of U.S. patience and exploits the support of American Jews.”
The list of recent moves by the Netanyahu government that potentially threaten American interests has grown steadily, many foreign policy experts argue. The violence that broke out when Israeli commandos stormed aboard a Gaza flotilla last week chilled American relations with a key Muslim ally, Turkey. The Gaza fight also makes it more difficult for America to rally a coalition that includes Arab and Muslim states against Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Mr. Netanyahu’s refusal to stop Jewish housing construction in Arab East Jerusalem also strains American ties with Arab allies. It also makes reaching an eventual peace deal, which many administration officials believe is critical to America’s broader interests in the Muslim world, even more difficult.
Both President Obama and Gen. David H. Petraeus, who oversees America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have made the link in recent months between the long-running Arab-Israeli conflict and American security interests. During a press conference in April, Mr. Obama declared that conflicts like the one in the Middle East ended up “costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure”; he drew an explicit tie between the Israeli-Palestinian strife and the safety of American soldiers as they battle Islamic extremism in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
General Petraeus sounded a similar theme in Congressional testimony earlier this year, when he said that the lack of progress in the Middle East created a hostile environment for America...“But the status quo is unsustainable,” he said in an interview Friday. “If you don’t achieve progress in a just and lasting Mideast peace, the extremists are given a stick to beat us with.”
And in March, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, that new construction in East Jerusalem or the West Bank “exposes daylight between Israel and the United States that others in the region hope to exploit.”
All of this has led to deep soul-searching in parts of the American Jewish community, alongside a fierce debate among officials from past and present administrations. Mr. Obama’s mere characterization of the acts that led to the deaths in the Gaza flotilla as “tragic” unleashed a withering response from Liz Cheney, daughter of the former vice president. “There is no middle ground here,” she said in a statement. “Either the United States stands with the people of Israel in the war against radical Islamic terrorism or we are providing encouragement to Israel’s enemies — and our own.”
Ms. Cheney’s remarks reflect some of the alarm among Israeli officials and some American Jewish leaders, who preferred the Bush administration’s steadfast support, no matter which Israeli government was in office and no matter what actions that government took.
...Some foreign policy experts say the new willingness to suggest that the Israeli government’s actions may become an American national security liability marks a backlash against the Bush-era neoconservative agenda, which posited that America and Israel were fighting together to promote democracy in an unstable region.
...Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, author of one of the most well-read blogs in the American Jewish community, put it this way: “I don’t necessarily believe you solve all of America’s problems in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen by freezing settlement growth. On the other hand, there’s no particular reason for Israel to make itself a pain in the tush either.”
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