Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported (2)

[chiggerbit]

Were any white-looking people killed? I haven't seen much on the list of those shot. Couldn't the Israelis have been thinking that they could avoid the Rachel Corrie problem by only shooting Turks or brown people, that Americans, at least, wouldn't pay all that much attention so long as none of the assassinated were white, blonde---and female, for that matter? I know there were woment injured, but were any killed?

[American Dream]

http://www.muzzlewatch.com/2010/06/10/s ... ed-states/

Silencing Gaza flotilla activists in the United States

Posted on June 10 2010 by Cecilie Surasky


The Israeli government, with the aid of its many proxies- especially in the Jewish institutional world, is working overtime after the Mavi Mavera massacre to paint the Gaza flotilla participants as terrorists.

Apparently–jamming satellite communications, absconding with tens of thousands of dollars of equipment, confiscating every photo and video they could find, and releasing pathetically doctored “evidence” (thank you Ali Abunimah and Max Blumenthal and others) is not enough. Now groups are working to keep flotilla human rights activists out of the country.

Here’s the stunning petition the NY Jewish Community Relations Council has put together to keep activists out. Mondoweiss has audio of retired US Colonel Ann Wright, who was just in NYC, speaking about what happened. She must be the person they’re trying to keep out of the country. Good luck with that. So much for America-first.



JCRC motto:Meeting challenges indeed. Meanwhile, Iara Lee has even more footage that she and her cameraman were able to sneak off the boat. Unlike the IDF, she has the courage to let you see it unedited and raw.

[JackRiddler]

Were any white-looking people killed? I haven't seen much on the list of those shot. Couldn't the Israelis have been thinking that they could avoid the Rachel Corrie problem by only shooting Turks or brown people, that Americans, at least, wouldn't pay all that much attention so long as none of the assassinated were white, blonde---and female, for that matter? I know there were woment injured, but were any killed?

I don't know details of the Israeli micromanagement of their assault. My impression is that they don't feel they have a "Rachel Corrie problem." That's us looking at it. If you look at the hasbara around the Web, Rachel Corrie asked for it and it's really funny because only stupid people challenge the righteous bulldozers and if anyone else tries, they'll deserve the same. What I see is a faction ascendant looking to demonstrate that they can and will kill merely to assert their policy, never mind if it's necessary. Obviously killing an American didn't matter, and I doubt very much it would have mattered if he'd been a white European man. A veteran, maybe.

[vanlose kid]

Anti-semiticism (def):

* Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

Exhibit A: from HAARETZ


Israel’s Greatest Loss: Its Moral Imagination
If a people who so recently experienced such unspeakable inhumanities cannot understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions are inflicting, what hope is there for the rest of us?

By Henry Siegman

Following Israel’s bloody interdiction of the Gaza Flotilla, I called a life-long friend in Israel to inquire about the mood of the country. My friend, an intellectual and a kind and generous man, has nevertheless long sided with Israeli hardliners. Still, I was entirely unprepared for his response. He told me—in a voice trembling with emotion—that the world’s outpouring of condemnation of Israel is reminiscent of the dark period of the Hitler era.

He told me most everyone in Israel felt that way, with the exception of Meretz, a small Israeli pro-peace party. “But for all practical purposes,” he said, “they are Arabs.”

Like me, my friend personally experienced those dark Hitler years, having lived under Nazi occupation, as did so many of Israel’s Jewish citizens. I was therefore stunned by the analogy. He went on to say that the so-called human rights activists on the Turkish ship were in fact terrorists and thugs paid to assault Israeli authorities to provoke an incident that would discredit the Jewish state. The evidence for this, he said, is that many of these activists were found by Israeli authorities to have on them ten thousand dollars, “exactly the same amount!” he exclaimed.

When I managed to get over the shock of that exchange, it struck me that the invocation of the Hitler era was actually a frighteningly apt and searing analogy, although not the one my friend intended. A million and a half civilians have been forced to live in an open-air prison in inhuman conditions for over three years now, but unlike the Hitler years, they are not Jews but Palestinians. Their jailers, incredibly, are survivors of the Holocaust, or their descendants. Of course, the inmates of Gaza are not destined for gas chambers, as the Jews were, but they have been reduced to a debased and hopeless existence.

Fully 80% of Gaza’s population lives on the edge of malnutrition, depending on international charities for their daily nourishment. According to the UN and World Health authorities, Gaza’s children suffer from dramatically increased morbidity that will affect and shorten the lives of many of them. This obscenity is a consequence of a deliberate and carefully calculated Israeli policy aimed at de-developing Gaza by destroying not only its economy but its physical and social infrastructure while sealing it hermitically from the outside world.

Particularly appalling is that this policy has been the source of amusement for some Israeli leaders, who according to Israeli press reports have jokingly described it as “putting Palestinians on a diet.” That, too, is reminiscent of the Hitler years, when Jewish suffering amused the Nazis.

Another feature of that dark era were absurd conspiracies attributed to the Jews by otherwise intelligent and cultured Germans. Sadly, even smart Jews are not immune to that disease. Is it really conceivable that Turkish activists who were supposedly paid ten thousand dollars each would bring that money with them on board the ship knowing they would be taken into custody by Israeli authorities?

That intelligent and moral people, whether German or Israeli, can convince themselves of such absurdities (a disease that also afflicts much of the Arab world) is the enigma that goes to the heart of the mystery of how even the most civilized societies can so quickly shed their most cherished values and regress to the most primitive impulses toward the Other, without even being aware they have done so. It must surely have something to do with a deliberate repression of the moral imagination that enables people to identify with the Other’s plight. Pirkey Avot, a collection of ethical admonitions that is part of the Talmud, urges: “Do not judge your fellow man until you are able to imagine standing in his place.”

Of course, even the most objectionable Israeli policies do not begin to compare with Hitler’s Germany. But the essential moral issues are the same. How would Jews have reacted to their tormentors had they been consigned to the kind of existence Israel has imposed on Gaza’s population? Would they not have seen human rights activists prepared to risk their lives to call their plight to the world’s attention as heroic, even if they had beaten up commandos trying to prevent their effort? Did Jews admire British commandos who boarded and diverted ships carrying illegal Jewish immigrants to Palestine in the aftermath of World War II, as most Israelis now admire Israel’s naval commandos?

Who would have believed that an Israeli government and its Jewish citizens would seek to demonize and shut down Israeli human rights organizations for their lack of “patriotism,” and dismiss fellow Jews who criticized the assault on the Gaza Flotilla as “Arabs,” pregnant with all the hateful connotations that word has acquired in Israel, not unlike Germans who branded fellow citizens who spoke up for Jews as “Juden”? The German White Rose activists, mostly students from the University of Munich, who dared to condemn the German persecution of the Jews (well before the concentration camp exterminations began) were also considered “traitors” by their fellow Germans, who did not mourn the beheading of these activists by the Gestapo.

So, yes, there is reason for Israelis, and for Jews generally, to think long and hard about the dark Hitler era at this particular time. For the significance of the Gaza Flotilla incident lies not in the questions raised about violations of international law on the high seas, or even about “who assaulted who” first on the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, but in the larger questions raised about our common human condition by Israel’s occupation policies and its devastation of Gaza’s civilian population.

If a people who so recently experienced on its own flesh such unspeakable inhumanities cannot muster the moral imagination to understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions—and even its legitimate security concerns—are inflicting on another people, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Henry Siegman, director of the U.S./Middle East Project, is a visiting research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Program, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is a former Senior Fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations and, before that, was national director of the American Jewish Congress from 1978 to 1994.

*

[JackRiddler]

Former national director of the American Jewish Congress!

[AlicetheKurious]

More about Israel's hoaxes:



Link

The Israelis forgot to add the name of the Mavi Marmara to the boat they used in the hasbara video that purports to show the Israeli commandos being "beaten" by the passengers.

Besides the absence of the boat's name, there are other discrepancies that prove that it's not the same boat (for example, the "observation deck" at the top of the mast goes all the way around in the fake video, but on the Mavi Marmara it was just a small balcony facing in one direction).

[DoYouEverWonder]

Tdi Karadeniz aka Dream and the Mavi Marmara.

[DoYouEverWonder]

Based on the videos taken of the Mavi Marmara leaving port, it appears that the dome/antenna was upgraded some time after the picture in the above post.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeKtcHIbMjY

This is why we need the full, unedited video that the Israelis shoot when they attacked the ship.

There is not enough visual information in their version to know what really happened.

[seemslikeadream]

An Israeli listens to Helen Thomas and goes home to Poland

[JackRiddler]

http://www.muzzlewatch.com/2010/06/10/silencing-gaza-flotilla-activists-in-the-united-states/

Silencing Gaza flotilla activists in the United States

Posted on June 10 2010 by Cecilie Surasky

Where is this happening?

[American Dream]

The complete lack of information about this anywhere that I can see makes me think that the event is not going to happen. Maybe it never was going to happen- one gets the sense that the JCRC nearly blew a gasket with their loathing of the people on the flotilla. This wouldn't be the first time people like that told mistruths, after all...

[hava1]

An Israeli listens to Helen Thomas and goes home to Poland

http://pipl.com/search/?FirstName=Ori&L ... terface=46 ??

[Laodicean]

Holy shit...

U.S. Filmmaker Recorded Flotilla Massacre Video

By Tim King (Salem-News.com)

Bad news for Israel's spinmasters...

(SALEM, Ore.) - The world is slowly absorbing the real magnitude of the Israeli attack on the Freedom Flotilla to aid Gaza. A filmmaker as it turns out, was able to smuggle an hour of raw video back to the USA and two versions, a 15-minute edited video, and the full 60-minutes of raw video, are both published below.

Cultures of Resistance director Iara Lee was aboard the besieged Mavi Marmara and has since returned home safely.

I would consider her to be one of the bravest and most successful filmmaker/documentarians in the world. Nobody expected this, the amount of gunfire from Israel's military is unbelievable, horrifying.

According to Cultures of Resistance: "On the night of Sunday, May 30, showing a terrifying disregard for human life, Israeli naval forces surrounded and boarded ships sailing to bring humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip."

On the largest ship, the Mavi Marmara, Israeli commandos opened fire on civilian passengers, killing at least 9 passengers and wounding dozens more.

Others are still missing. In fact at least 17 people have just disappeared, gone off the radar... only Israel knows.

The final death toll is yet to be determined.

Despite the Israeli government's thorough efforts to confiscate all footage taken during the attack, Iara Lee was able to retain some of her recordings.

The Gaza Blockade

Try to imagine: Palestinians in Gaza live in an atmosphere that closely resembles the concentration camps of Europe. No, there are not gas chambers; that would never fly. Instead, Israel caged people in like animals and have slowly been killing them, razing their crops, bull dozing their villages and homes, in an overall attempt to destroy their actual will to live.

It isn't working.

What Israel's seemingly cruel and unusual approach to the "Palestinian Problem" has actually managed to do, is grab the world's attention, and illustrate this lethal Israeli approach to halting a convoy for peace. It is not just or fair to remove human life this way, it all could have been avoided.

By that I do not mean the people in the Flotilla; they're doing the much needed work of God, or Allah, depending on your cultural reference for our creator; I mean only Israel.

The Flotilla was deemed the only possible response to the problem in Gaza, but no matter how nice or sincere these people were in their desire to help other human beings placed in jeopardy by Israel, the IDF 'commandos' set out to kill people aboard the ship, targeted by a assassin photo pamphlet the IDF soldier/sailors carried.

Debunking Israel's Myths

Another aspect of this is the testimony of former U.S. Marine Ken O'Keefe, a Gulf War Veteran. He relates how the Mavi Marmara crew had disarmed and captured three Israeli soldiers and how the soldiers looked at them as though they expected to be killed. They were not killed. That is the beginning and end of the ill motives of this ship's crew. Their friends were slaughtered in cold blood, unarmed, and when given the chance, did not kill in retaliation.

Many Israelis may not understand the notion of not retaliating, as it is extremely customary of Israel to wage heavy handed attacks over things like unguided rocket attacks from the elected but unrecognized political party and militant group Hamas.

In a standard western context, military or otherwise, attacking those who are unarmed is criminal and a show of extreme cowardice. There is not an exception to the rule.

Israel has so far:

* Released video clips supposedly of their soldiers being attacked on the Mavi Marmara, that actually was Israeli Defense Force training video shot aboard the vessel's sister ship.
* Released audio clips edited to include a reference to Auschwitz and other ridiculous assertions that Israel thought would actually be believed.
* Hired actors and producers and writers and technicians to create a video mocking the song "We Are The World" by Michael Jackson and an all star cast, which claims that these peace activists were members of Hamas, blah, blah etc.
* Agreed to allow certain items from the Flotilla into Gaza, but almost nothing of significance.
* Watched both Turkey and Egypt take brave positions for humanity and against the Israeli attack.

Below is raw footage from the moments leading up to and during the Israeli commandos' assault on the Mavi Marmara.

Please visit, support and appreciate: culturesofresistance.org. Iara Lee heroically revealed something that Israel tried very hard to prevent.

This is the gut wrenching reality of what Israel is, and a very candid look at the people who were aboard the Mava Marmara. They are shot, they are dying, and they are remarkably calm and collected for the circumstances. It is impossible to not respect people willing to die to help others.

The Freedom Flotilla for Gaza was never a threat to Israel - only hope for Israel's victims. Word is circulating that Israel will take the seized cement intended for Gaza from the confiscated ships, and use it to build more illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

It is the gunfire though, so much, and the knowledge that Israeli soldiers actually did have a 'hit list' and there is video of one, after it was removed from an Israeli soldier. It truly was a hit mission to murder people whose only goal was to assist the hungry and battered people of Gaza. There is not a possible excuse for it unless one believes that cold blooded murder is acceptable.

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/june ... lation.php

Raw Video (Warning):

[Nordic]

thanks for that, Laodicean.

[Laodicean]

edited. vimeo embed enabled.