Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported

[American Dream]

The reports I have heard are that the Israeli commandos arrived shooting.

Even though I don't like any sort of violence, I'd say that the people on that boat did have a right to defend themselves...

[stefano]

footage like this, if genuine, creates a situation in which they can easilly equivocate responsibility for the incident and deaths.

It can, as long as everyone ignores the fact that it happened on the high sea, or considers international law as a set of rules for wogs. The commando boarded a Turkish-flagged vessel in international waters. If the activists had opened fire with machine guns it would have been legal. It's good, if comical, to see the apologists reduced to writing shit like "yes but they had sticks". Only the blindest and most corrupt are on Israel's side this time. Fuck. I though yesterday of the last episode in Blackadder.

Edmund: Well, you see, George, I did like it, back in the old days when the prerequisite of a British campaign was that the enemy should under no circumstances carry guns -- even spears made us think twice. The kind of people we liked to fight were two feet tall and armed with dry grass.

George: Now, come off it, sir -- what about M'boto Gorge, for heaven's sake?

Edmund: Yes, that was a bit of a nasty one -- ten thousand D'watushi warriors armed to the teeth with kiwi fruit and guava halves.

[kenoma]

Exactly, stefano, well said.
They would have equivocated anyway, without that footage, which is in any case extremely mild. If the people on the ship had staged a sit down protest, put flowers in the barrels of the guns, we wouldn't have seen the footage, the slaughter would have happened anyway, and they would just make shit up, as they are doing in any case.
equivocation can only be created in the minds of those already too stupid to understand the nature of Zionism and how it works. The rest of the world stopped listening to anything Israelis have to say about what they do a long time ago

And 82-28, quit spreading slander about the flotilla, you stupid, smug, self-indulgent fuck. I have met some of those who were travelling with the flotilla: they were neither agents nor dupes of any power.

[Bruce Dazzling]

From the Department of Stuff That Should Come as a Surprise to Absolutely Nobody:

U.S. blocks Security Council criticism of Israeli raid
The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 05/31/2010 10:17:30 PM MDT

United Nations » Israel faced heavy criticism in an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council on Monday in response to its deadly attack on an aid flotilla trying to breach the Gaza blockade, but attempts to issue a formal statement stalled after the United States rejected the strong condemnation sought by Turkey.

Turkey proposed a statement that would condemn Israel for violating international law, demand a U.N. investigation and demand that Israel prosecute those responsible for the raid and pay compensation to the victims. It also called for the end of the blockade.

The Obama administration refused to endorse a statement that singled out Israel, and proposed a broader condemnation of the violence that would include the assault of the Israeli commandos as they landed on the deck of the ship.

While condemnation of Israel in the Security Council is not uncommon, the criticism at the emergency session by Turkey and Lebanon was notable for both its vehemence and for the broad array of countries demanding an independent investigation into the decision to fire on civilians in what they described as a humanitarian mission.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, whose country's once close relations with Israel have deteriorated markedly since Israel's invasion of Gaza in 2008, called the attack "tantamount to banditry and piracy; it is murder conducted by a state."

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_15200395

[norton ash]

I'll have the kosher waffle.

[Bruce Dazzling]

Barbarism on the High Seas
America's Complicity in Evil
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

As I write at 5pm on Monday, May 31, all day has passed since the early morning reports of the Israeli commando attack on the unarmed ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, and there has been no response from President Obama except to say that he needed to learn “all the facts about this morning’s tragic events” and that Israeli prime minister Netanyahu had canceled his plans to meet with him at the White House. Thus has Obama made America complicit once again in Israel’s barbaric war crimes. Just as the US Congress voted to deep-six Judge Goldstone’s report on Israel’s war crimes committed in Israel’s January 2009 invasion of Gaza, Obama has deep-sixed Israel’s latest act of barbarism by pretending that he doesn’t know what has happened.

No one in the world will believe that Israel attacked ships in international waters carrying Israeli citizens, a Nobel Laureate, elected politicians, and noted humanitarians bringing medicines and building materials to Palestinians in Gaza, who have been living in the rubble of their homes without repairs or medicines since January 2009, without first clearing the crime with its American protector. Without America’s protection, Israel, a totally artificial state, could not exist. No one in the world will believe that America’s spy apparatus did not detect the movement of the Israeli attack force toward the aid ships in international waters in an act of piracy, killing 20, wounding 50, and kidnapping the rest. Obama’s pretense at ignorance confirms his complicity.

Once again the US government has permitted the Israeli state to murder good people known for their moral conscience. The Israeli state has declared that anyone with a moral conscience is an enemy of Israel, and every American president except Eisenhower and Carter has agreed.

Obama’s 12-hour silence in the face of extreme barbarity is his signal to the controlled corporate media to remain on the sidelines until Israeli propaganda sets the story.

The Israeli story, preposterous as always, is that the humanitarians on one of the ships took two pistols from Israeli commandos, highly trained troops armed with automatic weapons, and fired on the attack force. The Israeli government claims that the commandos’ response (70 casualties at last reporting) was justified self-defense. Israel was innocent. Israel did not do anything except drop commandos aboard from helicopters in order to intercept an arms shipment to Gazans being brought in by ships manned by terrorists.

Many Christian evangelicals, brainwashed by their pastors that it is God’s will for Americans to protect Israel, will believe the Israeli story, especially when it is unlikely they will ever hear any other. Conservative Americans, especially on Memorial Day when they are celebrating feats of American arms, will admire Israel for its toughness. Here in north Georgia where I am at the moment, I have heard several say, admiringly, “Them, Israelis, they don’t put up with nuthin.”

Conservative Americans want the US to be like Israel. They do not understand why the US doesn’t stop pissing around after nine years and just go ahead and defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. They don’t understand why the US didn’t defeat whoever was opposing American forces in Iraq. Conservatives are incensed that America had to “win” the war by buying off the Iraqis and putting them on the US payroll. Israel murders people and then blames its victims. This appeals to American conservatives, who want the US to do the same.

It is likely that Americans will accept Israeli propagandist Mark Regev’s story that Israelis were met by deadly fire when they tried to intercept an arms shipment to Palestinian terrorists from IHH, a radical Turkish Islamist organization hiding under the cover of humanitarian aid.

Americans will never hear from the US media that Turkey’s prime minister Erdogan declared that the aid ships were carefully inspected before departure from Turkey and that there were no terrorists or arms aboard: "I want to say to the world, to the heads of state and the governments, that these boats that left from Turkey and other countries were checked in a strict way under the framework of the rules of international navigation and were only loaded with humanitarian aid."

Turkey is a US ally, a member of NATO. Turkey’s cooperation is important to American’s plan for world hegemony. Erdogan must wonder about the morality of Israel’s American protector. According to a report in antiwar.com, the Turkish government declared that “future aid ships will be dispatched with a military escort so as to prevent future Israeli attacks.” Will the CIA assassinate Erdogan or pay the Turkish military to overthrow him? Murat Mercan, head of Turkey’s foreign relations committee, said that Israel’s claim that there were terrorists aboard the aid ships was Israel’s way of covering up its crime.

Mercan declared: "Any allegation that the members of this ship is attached to al-Qaeda is a big lie because there are Israeli civilians, Israeli authorities, Israeli parliamentarians on board the ship."

The criminal Israeli state does not deny its act of piracy. Israeli military spokeswoman, Avital Leibovich, confirmed that the attack took place in international waters: “This happened in waters outside of Israeli territory, but we have the right to defend ourselves.” Americans, and their Western European puppet states and the puppet state in Canada, will be persuaded by the servile media to buy the story fabricated by Israeli propaganda that the humanitarian aid ships were manned by terrorists bringing weapons to the Palestinians in Gaza, and that the terrorists posing as humanitarians attacked the force of Israeli commandos with two pistols, clubs, and knives. Many Americans will swallow this story without a hiccup.

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts06012010.html

[Gouda]

I thought PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS had signed off, said good bye...

[82_28]

Exactly, stefano, well said.
They would have equivocated anyway, without that footage, which is in any case extremely mild. If the people on the ship had staged a sit down protest, put flowers in the barrels of the guns, we wouldn't have seen the footage, the slaughter would have happened anyway, and they would just make shit up, as they are doing in any case.
equivocation can only be created in the minds of those already too stupid to understand the nature of Zionism and how it works. The rest of the world stopped listening to anything Israelis have to say about what they do a long time ago

And 82-28, quit spreading slander about the flotilla, you stupid, smug, self-indulgent fuck. I have met some of those who were travelling with the flotilla: they were neither agents nor dupes of any power.

Hey now loco. I may be stupid. But I am not smug or self indulgent. Only asking questions as to how this whole flotilla thing fits into the bigger picture of where we are in the world. We got a North Korea threatening war. We got a row now between Turkey and Israel. Just wondering. Wasn't slandering a bit either. If you look up thread I believe I called it a noble act. Don't call me names either man.

I didn't say that anyone on this flotilla were dupes or agents either nor did I intimate that. I asked about financing and was curious, as I said, about how this all fits into the bigger picture of the global situation -- seems too good to be true just as news comes in that Israel is parking 3 nuke subs off the coast of Iran. Bums me out that you would take my naive and neutral questions with such anger. It more than bums me out, the situation as it is everywhere. Chill man. I'm on your side.

[sunny]

Israelis celebrating attack on Turkish Aid Ship-in front of Turkish Embassy,Tel Aviv

[Nordic]

From the Department of Stuff That Should Come as a Surprise to Absolutely Nobody:

U.S. blocks Security Council criticism of Israeli raid
The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 05/31/2010 10:17:30 PM MDT

United Nations » Israel faced heavy criticism in an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council on Monday in response to its deadly attack on an aid flotilla trying to breach the Gaza blockade, but attempts to issue a formal statement stalled after the United States rejected the strong condemnation sought by Turkey.

Turkey proposed a statement that would condemn Israel for violating international law, demand a U.N. investigation and demand that Israel prosecute those responsible for the raid and pay compensation to the victims. It also called for the end of the blockade.

The Obama administration refused to endorse a statement that singled out Israel, and proposed a broader condemnation of the violence that would include the assault of the Israeli commandos as they landed on the deck of the ship.

While condemnation of Israel in the Security Council is not uncommon, the criticism at the emergency session by Turkey and Lebanon was notable for both its vehemence and for the broad array of countries demanding an independent investigation into the decision to fire on civilians in what they described as a humanitarian mission.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, whose country's once close relations with Israel have deteriorated markedly since Israel's invasion of Gaza in 2008, called the attack "tantamount to banditry and piracy; it is murder conducted by a state."

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_15200395

That link is bad, just FYI

[norton ash]

Bums me out that you would take my naive and neutral questions with such anger. It more than bums me out, the situation as it is everywhere. Chill man. I'm on your side.

82-28, I'm finding it increasingly hard to believe you... questioning the motives of Cindy Sheehan, now the Gaza embargo activists.

Of course if you find Goro Adachi easier to believe than a mother who lost her son, or boatloads of devoted lifelong social-justice advocates, that's your business.

Fight the real enemy.

[Bruce Dazzling]

From the Department of Stuff That Should Come as a Surprise to Absolutely Nobody:

U.S. blocks Security Council criticism of Israeli raid
The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 05/31/2010 10:17:30 PM MDT

United Nations » Israel faced heavy criticism in an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council on Monday in response to its deadly attack on an aid flotilla trying to breach the Gaza blockade, but attempts to issue a formal statement stalled after the United States rejected the strong condemnation sought by Turkey.

Turkey proposed a statement that would condemn Israel for violating international law, demand a U.N. investigation and demand that Israel prosecute those responsible for the raid and pay compensation to the victims. It also called for the end of the blockade.

The Obama administration refused to endorse a statement that singled out Israel, and proposed a broader condemnation of the violence that would include the assault of the Israeli commandos as they landed on the deck of the ship.

While condemnation of Israel in the Security Council is not uncommon, the criticism at the emergency session by Turkey and Lebanon was notable for both its vehemence and for the broad array of countries demanding an independent investigation into the decision to fire on civilians in what they described as a humanitarian mission.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, whose country's once close relations with Israel have deteriorated markedly since Israel's invasion of Gaza in 2008, called the attack "tantamount to banditry and piracy; it is murder conducted by a state."

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_15200395

That link is bad, just FYI

Thanks for the heads-up, but it works for me...

[Nordic]

That's weird, it didn't work for me three times in a row, then suddenly did. I kept getting a "File Not Found" screen. Hm, I smell a conspiracy!

[82_28]

Bums me out that you would take my naive and neutral questions with such anger. It more than bums me out, the situation as it is everywhere. Chill man. I'm on your side.

82-28, I'm finding it increasingly hard to believe you... questioning the motives of Cindy Sheehan, now the Gaza embargo activists.

Of course if you find Goro Adachi easier to believe than a mother who lost her son, or boatloads of devoted lifelong social-justice advocates, that's your business.

Fight the real enemy.

Dude. I don't NOT believe her or the intentions of the flotilla. You don't need to believe anything about me period. I'm just a dude who sits at a computer, pontificates, types what thoughts come to his mind and converses with you all. Period. Jesus. I am dropping this. Will monitor thread to read up on it etc. But I am out of this one. I can't believe asking questions about how this all fits in to the bigger picture alarms so many. It's part of the reason I like to read goro. What are the trends? What are we trending towards? That's it, that's all. Who are the players, the figures? What is the popular opinion of such players and figures? How is it being leveraged in the media? I am only asking questions. Shit has gotten weird and I only want to share in the feeble way I can.

[kenoma]

You said this:

Yet I still question the financing of this flotilla. Not because it wasn't necessary, but because it was TOO necessary to vouch for all out war. The financing. You can't just throw a dozen mid-sized ships in the water and think that it is free. Something else is behind this.

This is a libel on the thousands of people right around the world who spent months raising funds for the convoy. No the ships weren't just thrown on the water - good people planned and worked tirelessly for this, broke their fucking backs to get those ships on the water and filled with desperately needed supplies. It is a just cause, and intelligent activism - and if the Turkish govt only helped in order to use it as a PR op to make nice with the Arab world, so what?
But you have come on here right from the start, talking about it being kind of stupid, maybe a psyop, maybe a pawn in the great game, always apologizing and claiming ignorance when called on bullshit, but reverting immediately to uninformed and slanderous speculation about the flotilla.

...seems too good to be true...

Obscene.