Noam Chomsky on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla & the Angry response of the Israeli and American governments.
Did Israeli operatives sabotage two of the Flotilla ships.
Why is Greece and other Western Nations acting on behalf of the Israeli government to stop the Flotilla from sailing.
Will the US allow Israel to fire on any ships that get close to the Gaza area
And the Flytill being met with deportation from Israel
To Gaza With love
The rights of millions of displaced Palestinians are inalienable and do not lapse because of their long suppression, this is what the Flotilla II encounter is really about and this is also why Israel finds it so dangeous [Reuters]/via Al-Jazeera.
By Torpedoing the Gaza Flotilla, Israel Sunk its Own Ship | | AlterNet
Our modest and peaceful initiative has exposed, for the world to see, the lengths the Israeli government will go to to stop nonviolent international initiatives. We have put the plight of Gaza and the illegality of the siege once again on the radar where it was previously ignored. We have exposed the sad but ultimately unsustainable fact that the Israelis have managed to extend their vindictive siege of Gaza to the shores of Europe and have widened the gulf between the Greek government and Greek popular sentiment with regard to Palestine.
Most importantly, we have given a boost to the larger, massive, multicultural, multinational movement for Palestinian rights. This Friday, hundreds of international activists are flying to Ben Gurion airport where they plan to tell border control agents of their intent to visit Palestine. This "flytilla," as it has been dubbed, has also aroused a hysterical response from the Netanyahu government. Here again, the world's attention will be focused on Israel's control and blockade of movement in and out of the West Bank. The Knesset is on the verge of passing a bill that will effectively outlaw boycotts, a law that will likely only strengthen the resolve and increase the size of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement. And then there will be the showdown at the United Nations, when Palestinians will be calling for recognition as a state.
The Israeli government can only continue its egregious violations of human rights and torpedoing nonviolence initiatives for so long. Eventually, justice will prevail and Palestine will be free. And initiatives like the flotilla will be remembered as part of a continuous wave of resistance that helped turned the tide."
link to Al_Jazeera video of Flotilla Ship Dignite al Karama
"French flotilla ship 'sails for Gaza'Vessel granted permission to sail from Crete to Rhodes but activists say 'final destination' is Palestinian territory." Al-Jazeera, July 9, 2011
The Dignite al Karama, one of the ships which had intended to take part in a Gaza-bound international freedom flotilla, has left Crete with about 10 pro-Palestinian activists on board.
Greek authorities banned all flotilla vessels from leaving Greek ports earlier this week, but the French ship was granted permission by the Greek coast guard to sail to Rhodes on Saturday, Reuters reported.
But an activist on board said the boat's final destination was Gaza.
"We hope that we will reach that destination, but for the time being we are sailing within Greek waters," says Vangelis Pissias, a member of the flotilla's steering committee.
Eight ships remain blocked in Greek ports while a ninth sits in need of repair in a Turkish port after an apparent incident of sabotage.
Israel was also preparing to expel 120 mostly European activists detained after having managed to fly in Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv in a so-called "flytilla" protest.
On Saturday, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said 120 people had been denied entry and were waiting deportation with one or two days. Others had already been flown out, according to an immigration spokeswoman.
Immigration service spokeswoman Sabine Hadad said most of the activists were French, with the others being American, Belgian, Bulgarian, Dutch and Spanish.
Israel said it had been monitoring social media site and compiled a blacklist of persons they regarded as "provocateurs" intending to cause disturbances.
Sabotaging Freedom Flotilla II ;Two of the foreign ships experienced similar forms of sabotage, creating allegations of Israeli responsibility. Richard Falk at Al-Jazeera, 02 Jul 2011
The reports that two of the foreign flagged ships planning to be part of the ten vessel Freedom Flotilla II experienced similar forms of disabling sabotage creates strong circumstantial evidence of Israeli responsibility.
It stretches the imagination to suppose that a sophisticated cutting of the propeller shafts of both ships is a coincidence with no involvement by Israel's Mossad, long infamous for its overseas criminal acts in support of contested Israeli national interests. Recalling the lethal encounter in international waters with Freedom Flotilla I that took place on May 31, 2010 and the frantic diplomatic campaign by Tel Aviv to prevent this second challenge to the Gaza blockade by peace activists and humanitarian aid workers, such conduct by a state against this latest civil society initiative, if further validated by incriminating evidence, should be formally condemned as a form of 'state terrorism' or even as an act of war by a state against global civil society.
The Israeli Government has so far done little to deny its culpability. Its highest officials speak of the allegations in self-righteous language that is typically diversionary, asserting an irrelevant right of self-defense, which supposedly comes mysteriously into play whenever civil society acts nonviolently to break the siege of Gaza that has persisted for more than four years.
From the perspective of the obligations to uphold international law it is the Flotilla participants who are acting legally and morally, certainly well within their rights, and it is Israel and their friends that are resorting to a variety of legally and morally dubious tactics to insulate this cruel and unlawful blockade from what is essentially a symbolic challenge.
State-sponsored sabotage
The most relevant precedent for such government-sponsored sabotage is the Rainbow Warrior incident of 1985. There, French agents detonated explosives on a Greenpeace (an environmental NGO) fishing trawler docked in the Auckland, New Zealand harbour prior to proactively challenging the French plans to conduct underwater nuclear tests off the shore of the nearby Pacific atoll, Moruroa.
Fernando Pereira, a Greenpeace activist, and the photographer for the mission, was killed by the explosions, although the devices were detonated at a time when no one from Greenpeace was expected to be on board the vessel. At first, the French government completely denied involvement, later as incriminating evidence mounted, Paris officially claimed that its agents who were identified as being near the scene were only spying on Greenpeace activities and had nothing to do with the explosives, and later still, as the evidence of French culpability became undeniable, officials in France finally admitted government responsibility for this violent undertaking to eliminate activist opposition to their nuclear test, even acknowledging that the operation had been given the somewhat confessional code-name of Operation Satanique.
After some further months, the French Prime Minister, Laurent Fabius issued a contrite statement: "The truth is cruel. Agents of the French secret service sank the boat. They were acting on orders." These orders were later confirmed to have come from the highest French leader, the president of the Republic, Francois Mitterand.
Israel & America are concerned that Palestine in September will be recognized as a state by the United Nations . The Obama administration is threatening to cut off all funding for the United Nations if Palestine is accepted as constituting statehood.
The US and Israel threaten that there will be an escalation in its war against the Palestinians.
Israeli business leaders have advised the Israeli government to begin the process of accepting a two-nation state solution otherwise all Israeli businesses and Israeli citizens will suffer due to sanctions against Israel.
In Israel, a Tsunami Warning By Noam Chomsky July 08, 2011 "Information Clearing House" July 8, 2011
-- In May, in a closed meeting of many of Israel’s business leaders, Idan Ofer, a holding-company magnate, warned, “We are quickly turning into South Africa. The economic blow of sanctions will be felt by every family in Israel.”
The business leaders’ particular concern was the U.N. General Assembly session this September, where the Palestinian Authority is planning to call for recognition of a Palestinian state.
Dan Gillerman, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, warned participants that “the morning after the anticipated announcement of recognition of a Palestinian state, a painful and dramatic process of Southafricanization will begin”—meaning that Israel would become a pariah state, subject to international sanctions.
In this and subsequent meetings, the oligarchs urged the government to initiate efforts modeled on the Saudi (Arab League) proposals and the unofficial Geneva Accord of 2003, in which high-level Palestinian and Israeli negotiators detailed a two-state settlement that was welcomed by most of the world, dismissed by Israel and ignored by Washington.
In March, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned of the prospective U.N. action as a “tsunami.” The fear is that the world will condemn Israel not only for violating international law but also for carrying out its criminal acts in an occupied state recognized by the U.N.
The U.S. and Israel are waging intensive diplomatic campaigns to head off the tsunami. If they fail, recognition of a Palestinian state is likely.
More than 100 states already recognize Palestine. The United Kingdom, France and other European nations have upgraded the Palestine General Delegation to “diplomatic missions and embassies—a status normally reserved only for states,” Victor Kattan observes in the American Journal of International Law.
Palestine has also been admitted to U.N. organizations apart from UNESCO and the World Health Organization, which have avoided the issue for fear of U.S. defunding—no idle threat.
In June the U.S. Senate passed a resolution threatening to suspend aid for the Palestine Authority if it persists with its U.N. initiative. Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., warned that there was “no greater threat” to U.S. funding of the U.N. “than the prospect of Palestinian statehood being endorsed by member states,” The (London) Daily Telegraph reports. Israel’s new U.N. Ambassador, Ron Prosor, informed the Israeli press that U.N. recognition “would lead to violence and war.”
and so it goes,
GORD.
No comments:
Post a Comment