Echoes of Raid on ‘Exodus’ Ship in 1947
By ROBERT MACKEY The Lede Blog May 31, 2010
UPDATE: 1:37 PM ,June 2, 2010
(note: Glenn Beck Ponzi scheme story at end of post )
"Israel faced a global diplomatic firestorm Monday over its deadly raid on a protest flotilla carrying humanitarian aid that was attempting to break through an Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.From:Israel criticized over raid on Gaza flotilla by Edmund Sanders , LA Times June 1, 2010
Amid demonstrations erupting worldwide, foreign leaders and protest organizers accused Israel of using excessive force in the raid in international waters. At an emergency meeting, the United Nations Security Council condemned the violence and called for an investigation."
Arrested activists eyewitness accounts contradict Israel's :
...When we arrived at the Israeli port of Ashdod we were met by the Israeli interior and foreign ministry officials and police; there were no soldiers. They asked me only a few questions. But they took everything – cameras, laptops, cellphones, personal belongings including our clothes," she said.
Michalis Grigoropoulos, who was at the wheel of the Free Mediterranean, said: "We were in international waters. The Israelis acted like pirates, completely out of the normal way that they conduct nautical exercises, and seized our ship. They took us hostage, pointing guns at our heads; they descended from helicopters and fired tear gas and bullets. There was absolutely nothing we could do … Those who tried to resist forming a human ring on the bridge were given electric shocks."
Grigoropoulos, who insisted the ship was full of humanitarian aid bound for Gaza "and nothing more", said that, once detained, the human rights activists were not allowed to contact a lawyer or the Greek embassy in Tel Aviv. "They didn't let us go to the toilet, eat or drink water and throughout they videoed us. They confiscated everything, mobile phones, laptops, cameras and personal effects. They only allowed us to keep our papers."
From Guardian article: Israelis Opened Fire Before Boarding Gaza Flotilla, say Released Activists :First eyewitness accounts of raid contradict version put out by Israeli officials by Dorian Jones in Istanbul and Helena Smith Guardian UK, Via Common Dreams, June 1,2010
also see article by Robert Fisk comparing Berlin airlift 1948 to Flotilla going to Gaza :
Robert Fisk West is too cowardly to help save lives Via The Independent UK, June 2, 2010
Robert Fisk: Can the Gaza War of 2008-09 (1,300 dead) and the Lebanon War of 2006 (1,006 dead) and all the other wars and now yesterday's killings mean that the world will no longer accept Israel's rule?
Don’t hold your breath.
You only have to read the gutless White House statement – that the Obama administration was “working to understand the circumstances surrounding the tragedy”. Not a single word of condemnation. And that’s it. Nine dead. Just another statistic to add to the Middle East’s toll.
But it’s not.
In 1948, our politicians – the Americans and the British – staged an airlift into Berlin. A starving population (our enemies only three years before) were surrounded by a brutal army, the Russians, who had erected a fence around the city. The Berlin airlift was one of the great moments in the Cold War. Our soldiers and our airmen risked and gave their lives for these starving Germans.
Yes besides the oil gushing into the Gulf Israel has manged to get on the front page with its disastrous assault on the Flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza.
It resulted in the deaths of 9 or more people. My question is if Israel's IDF decided to attack the Flotilla then why attack it in international waters, and why do it at night time when there is more chance of confusion .
The heavy handed way in which it was done it was bound to end badly . But according to one source the IDF intended to do some severe damage to the activists on the ships. And now Egypt in response has opened up its crossing into Gaza for the next week or so to allow more humanitarian aid to be delivered .
Israel attacks Flotilla
America no longer has the privilege of claiming to be the Moral arbitrator for the world. American government's public statements defending Israel are disingenuous at best if not absolutely cynical & opportunistic. Obama is intent on defending Israel as USA and Israel prepare for the Big Game as it were of declaring war on Iran and other Muslim states. Under the Bush Regime and the Obama regime too many criminal acts have been committed by the U.S. and then defended so it can no longer be trusted to tell the truth about Israel or The Perpetual Unending Propaganda War on Terror. America reverts to colonialism when it comes to the Middle East as if this whole region was America & Israel's own Medieval style fiefdom. The USA believes all the natural resources including labor in the Middle East rightfully belongs somehow to America . Is this really about democracy, justice or Human Rights or is it merely about the oil and geopolitical strategy to insure American & Israeli hegemony over the region.
The world hoped Obama would actually change things instead he has committed himself to many of the notorious and egregious policies of the Bush/Cheney Regime especially when it comes to Israel and the War On Terror. We saw it in the way he kowtowed to Wall Street and the corporate elite - he has finally gone after BP after some 40 days of stalling. This corporation with its reckless attitude and ways of performing difficult and intricate tasks making stuff up as they go along BP is not a friend to the American people or anyone else.
Obama appears to believe without question Israel's side of the Attack on the humanitarian aid Flotilla in international waters.
The Obama administration does think there should be an investigation but conducted by the defendants that is Israel. IDF investigates itself as it did in Gaza and found no wrong doing since the word of a Palestinian or Arab is not even considered and a Jewish Israeli who criticized the IDF is really a self-hating anti-Israeli Jew.
A host of countries are calling for the UN or the International Criminal Court to investigate. The UN might agree to this but the USA, Canada and Britain will put a stop to an honest investigation.
Myself I haven't seen much change in Obama's attitude towards Israel as much different to Bush's- did he punish them for their uncalled for war of aggression against Gaza last year- while that war continued the US sent an extra supply of armaments to help them invade Gaza. What can Obama say he has done nothing to properly investigate the Bush/Cheney Regime's War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.
By not taking action against these pirates, kidnappers, torturers, murderers sadistic sobs Obama is giving tacit approval so the little Eichmanns get away once again. Obama has also continued to fight two wars and is naive enough to believe with the right amount of force America can win these wars bring peace security and democracy -maybe they don't want an Americanized form of governance especially after experiencing the brutal force of America's Democracy and its facile talk of justice which is only meant for some American citizens .
The Iraqis, Afghans and Pashtun , Pakistanis don't trust America based upon their real experience of America which rains down bombs and White Phosphorous on villages & towns hoping that there is a Taliban member or others designated as the enemy though after 9 years of fighting the US still refuses to refer to captured fighters as POWs. What sort of country targets weddings and funerals and other family gatherings blows everybody up to get a couple of bad guys.
'We're the only ones who believe them' by Ben Smith via Politico.com, June 1, 2010
... referring to Israeli protestations — backed by Israel Defense Forces video — that their solders were attacked by passengers on a ship headed for Gaza with humanitarian aid, when they boarded the ship in what the Israelis concede were international waters.UN Security Council Members Demand Israel End Blockade Via Huffington Post , June 6, 2010
Organizers of the flotilla, meanwhile, insisted that participants were unarmed and that Israeli forces used excessive force.
The timing of the incident had to be viewed with rueful irony among the administration’s Middle East hands. Obama spent this spring damping down concern among American friends of Israel that his seeming feud with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had brought the administration to the verge of fundamentally altering the historic U.S. alliance with the Jewish state. Obama met personally with Jewish members of Congress and dispatched top officials to Jewish groups to stress the point, as the “anti-Bibi” rhetoric was simultaneously dialed back precipitously.
...Six hours later, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley issued a third statement, adding that the U.S. expects that the Israeli government — the unstated emphasis was not the United Nations — “will conduct a free and credible investigation.”
...The most immediate challenge... will be steering a special session of the U.N. Security Council — called by Arab members — away from forcing the U.S. either to vote on condemning Israel’s actions or to veto a resolution condemning them.
Observers of the process expect the U.S. to attempt to craft a resolution that doesn’t condemn Israeli directly and doesn’t establish any international investigation, like an earlier inquiry into Israel’s actions in Gaza led by the former South African Judge Richard Goldstone.
Obama and other American officials stressed the need to study the details of the incident, as the Israeli government pointed to video of passengers on the ship — which was boarded in international waters — attacking Israeli commandos with what appeared to be chairs and metal poles.
"At this point, it is unclear what happened, and there must be a thorough investigation," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry said in a statement.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting Monday on Israel's deadly commando raid on ships taking humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip, with the Palestinians and Arab nations demanding condemnation and an independent investigation.
The Palestinians and Arabs, backed by a number of council members including Turkey, also called for Israel to lift the blockade on Gaza, immediately release the ships and humanitarian activists, and allow them to deliver their goods.
Assistant Secretary-General Oscar Fernandez-Taranco said in his briefing to the U.N.'s most powerful body that the early morning bloodshed on Monday would have been avoided "if repeated calls on Israel to end the counterproductive and unacceptable blockade of Gaza had been heeded,"
NATO Wants Probe Of Israeli Raid via Huffington Post, June 1, 2010
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Pro-Palestinian activists sent another boat to challenge Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday and Egypt declared it was temporarily opening a crossing into the Palestinian territory after a raid on an aid flotilla that ended with Israeli soldiers killing nine activists.
The raid provoked ferocious international condemnation of Israel, raised questions at home, and appeared likely to increase pressure to end the blockade that has deepened the poverty of the 1.5 million Palestinians in the strip.
NATO on Tuesday joined calls for a "prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation" into the raid. "As a matter of urgency, I also request the immediate release of the detained civilians and ships held by Israel," said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in a statement after representatives of the alliance's 28 nations had met.
and :
Israel says the Gaza blockade is needed to prevent the Iranian-backed Hamas, which has fired thousands of rockets into the Jewish state, from building up its arsenal. It also wants to pressure Hamas to free an Israeli soldier it has held for four years.
Critics say the blockade has failed to weaken Hamas but further strapped an already impoverished economy. It also has prevented Gaza from rebuilding after a devastating Israeli military offensive early last year.
Egypt, which has enforced the blockade with Israel since Hamas militants seized control of Gaza in 2007, said it was opening the border for several days to allow aid into the area as a humanitarian gesture. It was unclear, however, when the frontier would open.
Several thousand Gazans - some in cars with suitcases piled on their roofs, others on foot - rushed to the Egyptian border, hoping to take advantage of a rare chance to escape the blockaded territory.
...Greta Berlin said the Free Gaza Movement, which organized the flotilla, would not be deterred and that another cargo boat was off the coast of Italy en route to Gaza. A second boat carrying about three dozen passengers is expected to join it, Berlin said. She said the two boats would arrive in the region late this week or early next week.
"This initiative is not going to stop," she said from the group's base in Cyprus. "We think eventually Israel will get some kind of common sense. They're going to have to stop the blockade of Gaza, and one of the ways to do this is for us to continue to send the boats."
...Protests erupted in a number of Muslim countries, including Turkey, which unofficially supported the flotilla, Indonesia and Malaysia, where a Palestinian man slashed himself outside the U.S. Embassy.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an outspoken critic of Israel, told lawmakers the Israeli raid was an attack "on international law, the conscience of humanity and world peace."
"This bloody massacre by Israel on ships that were taking humanitarian aid to Gaza deserves every kind of curse," he said, demanding that Israel immediately halt its "inhumane" blockade of Gaza.
Turkey's Foreign Ministry said four Turkish citizens were confirmed slain by Israeli commandos and another five were also believed to be Turks. Israeli authorities were still trying to confirm their nationalities.
B'Tselem Press Release May 31
31 May '10: Open an immediate investigation into the action to gain control of the flotilla to Gaza
B’Tselem demands that an immediate, independent and effective investigation be made into the circumstances of the military action taken to gain control of the ships, which led to the death and injury of dozens of activists. The investigation must be conducted by non-military officials.
Among the issues to be investigated are whether the army used proportionate force, whether the forces were trained to cope with this type of event, were they equipped with the correct means, what open-fire regulations were given to the soldiers, and whether alternative options were considered.
The IDF Spokesperson claims that extreme violence was used against the soldiers by activists on the boat. This information is based solely on statements of soldiers. However, before reaching conclusions, the investigation must consider the testimonies of all eyewitnesses to the events, including persons who participated in the flotilla who are currently in custody in Israel.
Notes:
About
B'TSELEM - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories was established in 1989 by a group of prominent academics, attorneys, journalists, and Knesset members. It endeavors to document and educate the Israeli public and policymakers about human rights violations in the Occupied Territories, combat the phenomenon of denial prevalent among the Israeli public, and help create a human rights culture in Israel.
B'Tselem in Hebrew literally means "in the image of," and is also used as a synonym for human dignity. The word is taken from Genesis 1:27 "And God created humans in his image. In the image of God did He create him." It is in this spirit that the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "All human beings are born equal in dignity and rights."
As an Israeli human rights organization, B'Tselem acts primarily to change Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories and ensure that its government, which rules the Occupied Territories, protects the human rights of residents there and complies with its obligations under international law.
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And now a good news story about our old friend Fox's own Clown in Chief Glenn Beck's as a salesmen/hawker/griffter/conman for Goldline
First he fills his audience with fears that their paper money and credit cards will soon be worthless because of the coming break down of American society - Therefore Beck and other uberconservatives then urge their audiences to purchase Gold which will be the only acceptable currency -
It is illegal for Beck and other uberconservatives to be Urging the purchase of gold on their radio and TV programs followed by ads for Goldline & their personal endorsement -
And Goldline sells Gold at a marked up price -unethical , illegal, criminal
Some of the other pushers of Gold and the company Gold Line:
Glenn Beck Laura Ingraham Fred Thomson
Dennis Miller Mark Levine Monica Crowley
Lars Larson Mike Huckabee
Beck and the rest believe that these accusations and allegations are part of the liberal/socialist Obama 's attack on him - it is an evil conspiracy to get him off the air. He doesn't get it he's a contemporary Father Coughlin embracing the extreme right he is not a lone voice in the wilderness speaking truth -he's just another greedy opportunist and agitator or 'agent provocateur'.
Anthony Weiner Takes On Conservative Commentators Pushing Gold
and so it goes,
GORD.
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