Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported

[Bruce Dazzling]

This sums up the situation quite nicely.

[sunny]

jeremyscahill will be on @Antiwar2 Radio discussing #Gaza #flotillamassacre and Ed Koch at 2:05pm EST Livestream: http://bit.ly/apSnkK

[Bruce Dazzling]

jeremyscahill will be on @Antiwar2 Radio discussing #Gaza #flotillamassacre and Ed Koch at 2:05pm EST Livestream: http://bit.ly/apSnkK

[Bruce Dazzling]

Under Scrutiny, IDF Retracts Claims About Flotilla’s Al Qaeda Links
Max Blumenthal
6/3/2010

When placed under journalistic scrutiny, the IDF is being forced to admit that its claims about the flotilla’s links to international terror are based on innuendo, not facts. On June 2, the IDF blasted out a press release to reporters and bloggers with the shocking headline: “Attackers of the IDF soldiers found to be Al Qaeda mercenaries.” The only supporting evidence offered in the release was a claim that the passengers “were equipped with bullet proof vests, night vision goggles, and weapons.” A screen capture of the press release is below:

More at link:

http://maxblumenthal.com/2010/06/under- ... eda-links/

[elfismiles]

Under Scrutiny, IDF Retracts Claims About Flotilla’s Al Qaeda Links
Max Blumenthal
6/3/2010

When placed under journalistic scrutiny, the IDF is being forced to admit that its claims about the flotilla’s links to international terror are based on innuendo, not facts. On June 2, the IDF blasted out a press release to reporters and bloggers with the shocking headline: “Attackers of the IDF soldiers found to be Al Qaeda mercenaries.” The only supporting evidence offered in the release was a claim that the passengers “were equipped with bullet proof vests, night vision goggles, and weapons.” A screen capture of the press release is below:

More at link:

http://maxblumenthal.com/2010/06/under- ... eda-links/

Under Scrutiny, IDF Retracts Claims About Flotilla’s Al Qaeda Links
On 06.03.10, By Max
.
When placed under journalistic scrutiny, the IDF is being forced to admit that its claims about the flotilla’s links to international terror are based on innuendo, not facts. On June 2, the IDF blasted out a press release to reporters and bloggers with the shocking headline: “Attackers of the IDF soldiers found to be Al Qaeda mercenaries.” The only supporting evidence offered in the release was a claim that the passengers “were equipped with bullet proof vests, night vision goggles, and weapons.” A screen capture of the press release is below:


The IDF distributed this press release on June 2. The following day, it changed the headline, essentially retracting its lurid accusation.

Not content to believe that night vision goggles signal membership in Al Qaeda, Israel-based freelance reporter Lia Tarachansky and I called the IDF press office to ask for more conclusive evidence. Tarachansky reached the IDF’s Israel desk, interviewing a spokesperson in Hebrew; I spoke with the North America desk, using English. We both received the same reply from Army spokespeople: “We don’t have any evidence. The press release was based on information from the [Israeli] National Security Council.” (The Israeli National Security Council is Netanyahu’s kitchen cabinet of advisors).

Today, the Israeli Army’s press office changed the headline of its press release (see below), basically retracting its claim about the flotilla’s Al Qaeda links. The new headline reads: “Attackers of the IDF Soldiers Found Without Identification Papers” (the top of the browser screen still contains the original headline about Al Qaeda). The more Israel’s claims about the flotilla’s terrorist links are challenged, the more they fall apart.


After admitting "there is no evidence" to back up its claim about the flotilla's Qaeda links, the IDF quietly changed the headline of its press release.

http://maxblumenthal.com/2010/06/under- ... eda-links/

[Laodicean]

U.S. citizen among those killed in Israeli flotilla raid

By Janine Zacharia, Scott Wilson and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 3, 2010; 12:39 PM

JERUSALEM -- A U.S. citizen of Turkish origin was among the nine people killed in a botched Israeli effort to stop a Turkish aid ship from reaching the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, a Turkish official said Thursday.

"It's a Turkish-origin American citizen. We know that," the official said by phone from Turkey, adding that more details were not yet available.

The nine bodies were flown home from Israel to Turkey on Wednesday, along with hundreds of activists, aboard a Turkish plane. Israel was not able to identify the bodies because the dead had no identification on them, Israeli officials said.

The American citizen was identified by the Anatolia news agency as Furkan Dogan, a 19-year-old student. His body had four bullet wounds to the head and one to the chest, the news agency reported.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01931.html

[Nordic]

U.S. citizen among those killed in Israeli flotilla raid

By Janine Zacharia, Scott Wilson and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 3, 2010; 12:39 PM

JERUSALEM -- A U.S. citizen of Turkish origin was among the nine people killed in a botched Israeli effort to stop a Turkish aid ship from reaching the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, a Turkish official said Thursday.

"It's a Turkish-origin American citizen. We know that," the official said by phone from Turkey, adding that more details were not yet available.

The nine bodies were flown home from Israel to Turkey on Wednesday, along with hundreds of activists, aboard a Turkish plane. Israel was not able to identify the bodies because the dead had no identification on them, Israeli officials said.

The American citizen was identified by the Anatolia news agency as Furkan Dogan, a 19-year-old student. His body had four bullet wounds to the head and one to the chest, the news agency reported.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01931.html

from the rawstory article of the same story:

Dogan was a high school student studying social sciences in the town of Kayseri in central Turkey. He was born in the United States and moved to Turkey at the age of 2. He will be buried in his hometown tomorrow.

Thank god he didn't destroy Israel. That was a close call.

[Bruce Dazzling]

The American citizen was identified by the Anatolia news agency as Furkan Dogan, a [b]19-year-old student. His body had four bullet wounds to the head and one to the chest, the news agency reported.

I'm surprised that Israel isn't claiming that he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head four times.

[Nordic]

The American citizen was identified by the Anatolia news agency as Furkan Dogan, a [b]19-year-old student. His body had four bullet wounds to the head and one to the chest, the news agency reported.

I'm surprised that Israel isn't claiming that he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head four times.

They would if he had been an investigative journalist.

[Bruce Dazzling]

Here's the National Jewish Democratic Council's statement regarding the anti-Israeli activist's vicious assault on the unsuspecting IDF welcome wagon.

June 1, 2010
NJDC Regrets Loss of Life; Supports Israel’s Rights; Applauds Obama Administration’s Efforts

Listed in: Israel, NJDC News, Press Releases

WASHINGTON, DC, Ira N. Forman, CEO of the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC), issued the following statement in response to the recent confrontation between the Israeli Defense Forces and the flotilla attempting to break the blockade of Gaza:

“We at the National Jewish Democratic Council are saddened by the regrettable loss of life during this weekend’s events. We know that Israel will investigate the matter fully and impartially, as it has done in the past.

However, every nation has a right to self-defense and Israel is no exception. Israel has a responsibility to enforce its naval blockade as a means to protect its citizens from the ever-present threat of weapons entering the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip – weapons that historically have been trained on Israeli civilians and soldiers alike. Those around the world who are so quick to judge Israel should pause and reflect upon how they would react if challenged under similar circumstances – since they would most likely react in the same way, in defense of the security of their citizens.

The American Jewish community should also understand the role that our government has played in the past 24 hours, from President Barack Obama’s close contact with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to our representation at the United Nations. As Politico reported today, it appears that President Obama is the only world leader to give Israel the benefit of the doubt regarding this unfortunate incident.

NJDC applauds President Obama and his Administration for all of their productive efforts in support of Israel. The Obama Administration’s successful work to keep this incident in perspective – and replace a one-sided anti-Israel statement within the UN Security Council with a more measured one – demonstrates yet again that President Obama will not waiver from America’s time-honored responsibility to ensure that Israel is treated in a fair manner in international bodies. Through its actions, the Obama Administration has made it clear that a biased investigation into the matter will not be tolerated and that Israel’s enemies will not be able to use this incident as a tool to delegitimize the Jewish State.

Jewish Democrats as well as the entire pro-Israel community should be grateful for President Obama’s commendable leadership on this matter.”

[JackRiddler]

.

Too much time in the Hasbara echo chamber induces blindness. The 2006 war against Lebanon and the 2009 aerial bombing of the caged residents of Gaza were the beginning of the end for Israeli PR in the world. This week's assault on third-country territory in international waters was a kill-shot, and the only place where the media don't know it is the United States. The media here are still seriously allowing without challenge the view that armored soldiers rappelling down on a neutral-flagged civilian ship from attack helicopters in international waters get to invoke a right to self-defense if their unarmed victims happen to try defending themselves. (Assuming their unarmed victims tried anything of the sort, which is doubtful.) NPR is the worst, by the way. Even Israelis are painfully aware of their position, but most of them don't seem to care because their whole society has had a psychopathic break, not with reality itself, but from the idea that their actions should be limited by any of the consequences, even to themselves.

One wonders how extreme an Israeli action would have to be not to fall within the Hasbara-defined category of self-defense. If a warship torpedoes the next aid convoy as it comes out of the Turkish port and receives a shower of plastic deck chairs when it pulls up alongside the sinking ship for a summary strafing, will that also be self-defense? Only in America!

(And remember, it's a blockade as defined by Israeli reading of international law, but it's not an occupation. Certainly not. Gaza is independent territory.)

.

[alwyn]

Have we had enough yet?


Where would Israel be today, if the world had let Hitler and the Germans do what they pleased with the Warsaw ghetto, with the death camps? Germany was a democratically elected government—should we have stepped back from the horror of their inhumane treatment of the Poles? Does the suffering that the Jewish peoples endured in the 40's give them carte blanche for war crimes now? Why is it different, when the treatment is the same, but only the names have changed?

Evil endures. It wears different masks. The atrocity we stamped out in one generation recurs in the next. It seldom recurs in the same way. Yes, the Jewish peoples suffered massively in WWII. (They weren't the only ones, ask the Romany, ask the Russians, ask the French and the Belgians). Obviously, people who have suffered so much would not repeat the evil that they lived through at another's hands, would they?

And yet, modern science and psychology bears this out. Victims of violence often become perpetrators of the same. Without treatment, violent crimes are perpetuated through the generations, repeated upon new innocents. This is Israel's condition today. Israel was a nation founded by shell-shocked sufferers of PTSD. They didn't get treatment, they went to war again, this time against the indigenous peoples of Palestine, and it continues to this day. Should we let the innocents of Palestine suffer? Why do we let the world's largest ghetto, the largest open air prison, continue to exist? For this is certainly what Gaza is, Warsaw revisited. Why do we let the obviously traumatized Israelis continue to perpetrate violent acts of aggression against children, for Christ's sake! For there are children in Gaza, there are mothers there, and fathers, and all they want is what anyone wants, a chance for life, a chance for family, and ways and means to feed and keep them.

The blockade of Gaza is illegal, it is immoral, it is evil at it's shape-shifting best, all dressed up in fancy words and self-righteous indignation. Just because the Jewish people suffered in the 40's does not give them a right to turn around and give out a 'healthy dose' of the same. It certainly does not give them a right to board a boat in international waters, guns blazing, to kill peaceful peoples, who only were doing what they did for the Jews in WWII, trying to stop the madness, trying to stop the blockade, and to give humanitarian aid to distressed peoples.

What if the world had sat back and let Germany have its way? Think about it. But the world did not sit back then, and we should not sit back now. Evil still wages war, it has patriotic words, and massive PR machines, and plenty of reasons to justify its actions. But its nature has not changed, and we are still fighting the same battle. However, we can't use the weapons of evil to win the war, or we face becoming what we fight.

The Turkish people who died on that convoy are heroes. As are the rest of the international crew. And the Israeli soldiers who opened fire on peaceful people are still war criminals and evil-doers, pawns or no. The world can not stand back and let this continue. We didn't let Hitler's Germany get away with its treatment of Warsaw, and we cannot let Israel do the same to Gaza. Keep up the work, keep up the talk, keep trying to break the blockade. Write, talk, act, contact your representatives, make them listen. Vote, vote with your political choice, vote with your collective currency. Don't support the war machine, don't support politicians who stand back and do nothing, don't support the evil that is the Gazan blockade. Don't buy Israeli products until they lift the blockade. These are the peaceful choices we have, we who live too far from the conflict to try to cross the blockade. But we must make this choice, for the sake of the world, and for the sake of our children, everywhere.

[barracuda]

Was Hitler Right?

This headline, while predictable, cannot possibly be useful even in the aftermath of this disgraceful episode.

[Iamwhomiam]

Fair Warning: boots & basin necessary

Boots on now, please.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/opinion/03oren.html

June 2, 2010
An Assault, Cloaked in Peace
By MICHAEL B. OREN

Washington

PEACE activists are people who demonstrate nonviolently for peaceful co-existence and human rights. The mob that assaulted Israeli special forces on the deck of the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara on Monday was not motivated by peace. On the contrary, the religious extremists embedded among those on board were paid and equipped to attack Israelis — both by their own hands as well as by aiding Hamas — and to destroy any hope of peace.

Millions have already seen the Al Jazeera broadcast showing these “activists” chanting “Khaibar! Khaibar!”— a reference to a Muslim massacre of Jews in the Arabian peninsula in the seventh century. YouTube viewers saw Israeli troops, armed with crowd-dispersing paintball guns and side arms for emergency protection, being beaten and hurled over the railings of the ship by attackers wielding iron bars.

What the videos don’t show, however, are several curious aspects Israeli authorities are now investigating. First, about 100 of those detained from the boats were carrying immense sums in their pockets — nearly a million euros in total. Second, Israel discovered spent bullet cartridges on the Mavi Marmara that are of a caliber not used by the Israeli commandos, some of whom suffered gunshot wounds. Also found on the boat were propaganda clips showing passengers “injured” by Israeli forces; these videos, however, were filmed during daylight, hours before the nighttime operation occurred.

The investigations of all this evidence will be transparent, in accordance with Israel’s security needs.

There is little doubt as to the real purpose of the Mavi Marmara’s voyage — not to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, but to create a provocation that would put international pressure on Israel to drop the Gaza embargo, and thus allow the flow of seaborne military supplies to Hamas. Just as Hamas gunmen hide behind civilians in Gaza, so, too, do their sponsors cower behind shipments of seemingly innocent aid.

This is why the organizers of the flotilla repeatedly rejected Israeli offers to transfer its cargo to Gaza once it was inspected for military contraband. They also rebuffed an Israeli request to earmark some aid packages for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held hostage by Hamas for four years.

In the recent past, Israeli forces have diverted nine such flotillas, all without incident, and peacefully boarded five of the ships in this week’s convoy. Their cargoes, after proper inspection, were delivered to non-Hamas institutions in Gaza. Only the Marmara, a vessel too large to be neutralized by technical means such as fouling the propeller, violently resisted. It is no coincidence that the ship was dispatched by Insani Yardim Vakfi (also called the I.H.H.), a supposed charity that Israeli and other intelligence services have linked to Islamic extremists.

The real intent of breaking the embargo is to allow rockets to be transported to Gaza from Hamas’s suppliers in Syria and Iran. Israel has already intercepted several such ships laden with munitions. Since Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005, Hamas has fired more than 10,000 rockets and mortars at our civilian population. This week, two Hamas rockets exploded near Ashkelon, one of Israel’s largest cities.

Israel has a right and a duty to defend itself from Hamas and its backers. Our struggle is not with the people of Gaza but only with the radical regime that overthrew the legitimate Palestinian Authority and has pledged to seek Israel’s destruction. Each day, Israel facilitates the passage into Gaza of more than 100 truckloads of food and medicine — there is no shortage of either. We, too, want a free Gaza — a Gaza liberated from brutal Hamas rule — as well as an Israel freed from terrorist threats.

Israel will scrupulously review the events surrounding the Marmara’s interception. But Israel will also persist in denying advanced weaponry to Hamas. At the same time, the Israeli government will vigorously pursue peace with the Palestinian Authority, which shares our need for defense against armed extremists. The real peace activists are those who support our vision of a two-state solution, not those supporting the terrorists bent on destroying it.

Michael B. Oren is Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

OK. now where's that basin?

[Simulist]

Was Hitler Right?

No! Hitler was not right.

As much as I despise the bigotry, behavior, and outright brutality of the Israeli regime, I cannot imagine how any educated person (or anyone with even the barest vestiges of a conscience, for that matter) could even need to ask that question.