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

[smiths]

given that 6 members of the flotilla went missing,
and the people that were shot were selectively shot and finished off at close range,
its not beyond the realms of possibility that the job of those 6 was to mark or tag somehow in advance the targets for the special forces that landed

[Nordic]

Good to see you back, Smiths!

[smiths]

i never went anywhere really, i just gave myself some head room
i was overwhelmed by a confluence of horrible events and i was reading Tony Judt's new book Ill Fares the Land and just felt so angry with the stooges and apologists of rapacious markets and earthly oppression in all its horrible forms

busied myself downloading from the mystical eyetoons in the lounge and sorting out my music files

[Bruce Dazzling]

Eyewitness to the Israeli Assault on the Mavi Marmara

By DAVE LINDORFF

Kevin Neish of Victoria, British Columbia, didn’t know he was a celebrity until he was about to board a flight from Istanbul to Ottawa. “This Arab woman wearing a beautiful outfit suddenly ran up to me crying, ‘It’s you! From Arab TV! You’re famous!’” he recalls with a laugh. “I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she told me, ‘I saw you flipping through the Israeli commando’s book! It’s being aired over and over!’”

A soft-spoken teacher and former civilian engineer with the Canadian Department of Defense, Neish realized then that a video taken by an Arab TV cameraman in the midst of the Israeli assault on the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza of him flipping through a booklet had been transmitted before the Israelis blocked all electronic signals from the flotilla. The booklet had pictures and profiles of all the passengers, and he'd found it in the backpack of an Israeli Defense Force commando.

Neish, 53, was on the second deck of the flotilla’s lead ship, the Turkish Mavi Marmara, with a good view of the stern, when the IDF, in the early morning darkness of May 31, began its assault with percussion grenades, tear gas and a hail of bullets. He then moved to the fourth deck in an enclosed stairwell, from which he watched took photographs as casualties were carried down past him to a makeshift medical station. Several IDF commandos, captured by the passengers and crew, were also brought past him.

“I saw them carrying this one IDF guy down,” he recalls. “He looked terrified, like he thought he was going to be killed. But when a big Turkish guy, who had seen seriously injured passengers who had been shot by the IDF, charged over and tried to hit the commando, the Turkish aid workers pushed him off and pinned him to the wall. They protected this Israeli soldier.”

That was when he found the backpack which the soldier had dropped. “I figured I’d look inside and see what he was carrying,” Neish says. “And inside was this kind of flip-book. It was full of photos and names in English and Hebrew of who was on all the ships. The booklet also had a detailed diagram of the decks of the Mavi Marmara.”

Meanwhile, he says, more and more people were being carried down the stairs from the mayhem above—people who'd been shot, and people who were dying or people already dead. “I took detailed photos of the dead and wounded with my camera,” he says, adding, “There were several guys who had two neat bullet holes side by side on the side of their head--clearly they were executed.”

Neish smuggled his photos out of Israel to Turkey despite his arrest on the ship and imprisonment in Israel for several days. “I pulled out the memory card, tossed my camera and anything I had on me that had anything to do with electronics, and then kept moving the chip around so it wouldn’t be found,” he says. “The Israelis took all the cameras and computers. They were smashing some and keeping others. I put the chip in my mouth under my tongue, between my butt cheeks, in my sock, everywhere, to keep them from finding it,” he says. He finally handed it to a Turk who was leaving for a flight home on a Turkish airline. He says the card ended up in the hands of an organization called Free Gaza, and he has seen some of his pictures published, so he knows they made it out successfully.

Neish says that claims that the Israeli commandos were just armed with paint guns and 9 mm pistols are “Bullshit--at one point when I was in the stairwell, a commando opened a hatch above, stuck in a machine gun, and started firing. Bullets were bouncing all over the place. If the guy had gotten to look in and see where he was shooting, I’d have been dead, but two Turkish guys in the stairwell, who had short lengths of chain with them that they had taken from the access points to the lifeboats, stood to the side of the hatch and whipped them up at the barrell. I don’t know if they were trying to hit the commando or to use them to snatch away the gun, but the Israeli backed off, and they slammed and locked the hatch.”

“I never saw a single paint gun, or a sign of a fired paint ball!” he says.
He also didn't see any guns in the hands of people who were on the ship. “In the whole time I was there on the ship, I never saw a single weapon in the hands of the crew or the aid workers,” he says. Indeed, Neish, who originally had been on a smaller 70-foot yacht called the Challenger II, had transferred to the Mavi Marmara after a stop in Cyprus, because his boat had been sabatoged by Israeli agents (a claim verified by the Israeli government), making it impossible to steer. “When we came aboard the big boat, I was frisked and my bag was inspected for weapons,” he says. “Being an engineer, I of course had a pocket knife, but they took that and tossed it into the ocean. Nobody was allowed to have any weapons on this voyage. They were very careful about that.”

What he did see during the IDF assault was severe bullet wounds. “In addition to several people I saw who were killed, I saw several dozen wounded people. There was one older guy who was just propped up against the wall with a huge hole in his chest. He died as I was taking his picture.”

Neish says he saw many of the 9 who were known to have been killed, and of the 40 who were wounded, and adds, “There were many more who were wounded, too, but less seriously. In the Israeli prison, I saw people with knife wounds and broken bones. Some were hiding their injuries so they wouldn’t be taken away from the others.” He also says, “Initially there were reports that 16 on the boat had been killed. The medical station said 16. There was a suspicion that some bodies may have been thrown overboard. But what people think now is that the the other seven who are missing, since we’re not hearing from families, may have been Israeli spies.”

Once the Israeli commandos had secured control of the Mavi Marmara, Neish says the ship’s passengers and crew were rounded up, with the men put in one area on deck, and the women put below in another area. The men were told to squat, and had their hands bound with plastic cuffs, which Neish says were pulled so tight that his wrists were cut and his hands swelled up and turned purple (he is still suffering nerve damage from the experience, which his doctor in Canada says he hopes will gradually repair on its own).

“They told us to be quiet,” he says. “But at one point this Turkish imam stood up and started singing a call to prayer. Everybody was dead quiet--even the Israelis. But after about ten seconds, this Israeli officer stomped over through the squatting people, pulled out his pistol and pointed at the guy’s head, yelling ‘Shut up!’ in English. The imam looked at him directly and just kept singing! I thought, Jesus Christ, he’s gonna kill him! Then I thought, well, this is what I’m here for, I guess, so I stood up. The officer wheeled around and pointed his gun at my head. The imam finished his song and sat down, and then I sat down.”

While the commandeered vessels were sailed to the Israeli port of Ashdot, the captives were left without food or water. “All we were given were some chocolate bars that the Israelis pilfered from the ship’s stores,” says Neish. “You had to grovel to get to go to the bathroom, and many people had to just go in their pants.”

Things didn’t get much better once the passengers were transferred to an Israeli prison. He and the other prisoners with him, who hadn’t eaten for more than half a day, were tossed a frozen block of bread and some cucumbers.

On the second day, someone from the Canadian embassy came around, calling out his name. “It turned out he’d been going to every cell looking for me,” says Neish. “My daughter had been frantically telling the Canadian government I was in the flotilla. Even though the Israelis had my name and knew where I was, they weren’t telling the Canadian embassy people. In fact the Canadians--and my daughter--thought I was dead, because people had said I’d been near the initial assault. The good thing is that as they went around calling out for me, they discovered two Arab-born Canadians that they hadn’t known were there.”

“Eventually they got to my cell and I answered them. The embassy official said, ‘You’re Kevin? You’re supposed to be dead.’”

After being held for a few days, there was a rush to move everyone to the Ben Gurion airport for a flight to Turkey. “It turned out that Israeli lawyers had brought our case to the Supreme Court, challenging the legality of our capture on international waters. There was a chance that the court would order the IDF to put us back on our ships and let us go, so the government wanted to get us out of Israel and moot the case. But two guys were hauled off, probably by Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency). So we all said, ‘No. We don’t go unless you bring them back.’”

The two men were returned and were allowed to leave with the rest of the group.

“I honestly never thought the Israelis would board the ship,” says Neish. “I thought we’d get into Gaza. I mean, I went as part of the Free Gaza Movement, and they had made prior attempts, with some getting in, and some getting boarded or rammed, but this time it was a big flotilla. I figured we’d be stopped, and maybe searched. My boat, the Challenger II, only had dignitaries on board including three German MPs, and then Lt. Col. Ann Wright and myself.

At one point in the Israeli prison, all the violence finally got to this man who had witnessed more death and mayhem than many active duty US troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. “I broke down and started crying,” he admits. “This big Turkish guy came over and asked me, ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘Sixteen people died.’”

“He said to me, ‘No, they died for a wonderful cause. They’re happy. You just go out and tell your story.’"

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff06162010.html

[Laodicean]

“Bodies and blood. Unbelievable”

POSTED BY: JASON YOUMANS
06/16/2010 8:00 AM

Kevin Neish on activism and an aid mission gone awry

"I’m many things, but I don’t think I’m a dupe.” So says Kevin Neish, defending himself against the op-editorialists and comment board critics who—at their more charitable—suggest Neish and other Western passengers aboard the ill-fated Free Gaza aid flotilla were tricked by peaceful promises from Turkish terrorists bent on fomenting an international incident as they tried to run the Israeli naval blockade off the Palestinian coast.

Neish averts his eyes to stare stonily at a point where the wall meets the floor as he recounts the chaos that engulfed the 93-metre Mavi Marmara after Israeli commandos descended from helicopters on May 31. He says the convoy’s intentions were honourable and the risks—though ultimately underestimated—were understood. And the 53-year-old knows something about the risks inherent in dissent.

“I started out standing in front of the old Bay store with my mother, keeping a silent vigil against the war in Vietnam,” he says. “I must have been about six years old, and I remember people spitting at my mother for having a silent vigil against the war. So that would have been ’61 or ’62, and then from there, you name the cause and I’ve been there.”

The Victoria resident’s adventures in social justice have taken him to Guatemala and El Salvador as an electoral observer, he has been a witness to trade union persecution in Colombia and has travelled to the Middle East where he says he acted as a human shield to protect medics retrieving injured Palestinians during clashes in Bethlehem. These journeys, Neish contends, are less about ideology—although he is an avowed Marxist—than something rather more basic.

“It’s just a matter that I don’t like bullies. It doesn’t matter where, how big they are, what race, what religion, what colour,” he says.

At this point, Neish rolls up his sleeve to display the deep disfigurement of his left shoulder and bicep, a decades-old product, he recounts, of an encounter with two bullies in Port Renfrew who were making trouble for the neighbourhood where he and his late wife lived. So, he organized a campaign to correct their behaviour. And then they shot him.

“Him and his best friend ended up challenging me in the middle of the night with a rifle and a shotgun and the end of it was that I almost got my arm blown off by these thugs because they were just tired of me trying to lay down the law and saying ‘Quit harassing the neighbours, quit threatening people and quit being pricks’—and they had to haul a gun out to try and stop me. But I don’t stop too easily.”

Neish’s contention that he is anti-bully will do little to pacify the armchair critics who equate his rejection of Zionism with anti-Semitism. Victoria’s Michael Ross launched a rather prickly critique of Neish—and other so-called “chardonnay socialists”—in a recent edition of the National Post. In that column, Ross asks why Neish, and those like him, are never found in the many ugly corners of the world where gross injustice and violence is regularly visited upon those least able to defend themselves—the Sudans and Zimbawbwes of the planet, for example.

Neish contends he is not a charity worker.

“I want to step in where people are organized, where they’ve got a fight-back going on,” he says. “And indeed they need my level of commitment to assist them, to stand with them, so that they can be more effective in their struggle.”

Neish says his contribution to any cause is, at the end of the day, a modest one.

“I don’t like to fall back on racist language, but what I’ve got is white privilege. I’ve got a Canadian passport, and because of that, I’ve got a lot of power, so to speak.”

And while he lives to tell the tale, the power of that passport was little help when the shooting started on board the Mavi Marmara two weeks ago. The experience, Neish says, saw him drawn into violence he had never before witnessed in his decades of activist actions.

“I’ve gone face-to-face with some pretty brutal guys in the elections in El Salvador; they were death-squad people, and you could see that they would like nothing more than to eviscerate me when I was physically getting between them and the polling booths so they wouldn’t be able to see how someone voted,” says Neish. “Normally they would have just dragged me away and cut me into pieces, I’m sure, on some country road. But because I had a little plastic nametag saying that I was an official observer from Canada, they couldn’t touch me. But that doesn’t come close to this. Having an Israeli soldier level his sidearm at my head, fully expecting, or I certainly had to consider, that he was simply going to pull the trigger.”

When hell broke loose on the Mavi Marmara, Neish was inside the boat’s passageways. To do otherwise, he recalls, would have invited death. But the carnage outside soon seeped in, as the bodies of injured and dead activists were carried below deck.

“I called it the stairway to hell,” he says. “Bodies and blood. Unbelievable. Hand prints smeared down the stairway, just like out of a movie. There were puddles of blood, dripping from step to step. Just unbelievable, the bloodshed.”

Photos taken by Neish—stored on memory cards he hid in his mouth and on his body once he was taken into Israeli custody—and subsequently published in the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, have fanned the flames of debate about how peaceful the peace activists on board the Mavi Marmara had planned to be, showing as they do that several Israeli commandos were taken captive by the Mavi’s passengers and brought into the ship’s bowels. But Neish argues all bets were off when—as he was told by an Al Jazeera reporter who witnessed the scene from the vessel’s topside—the Israeli Defense Force began firing from hovering helicopters before its troops had even hit the Mavi’s deck.

“This was piracy,” says Neish. “We were in international waters. They were breaking the law. I realize that everyone says ‘You knew it was coming, you knew what to expect.’ Well, premeditated crimes are usually treated more seriously and harsher than ones that simply happen. This was premeditated. Israel said they were going to be violent and they were going to do anything it takes to stop us, and it was coming. But for the Turks, their line was that they were in the right; every law, every Geneva convention law of the sea, security council resolutions, they were all on our side, and the Turks were going to take the world at its word.”

It is yet unclear whether the world is prepared to back the Turks, but certainly, says Neish, the Canadian government has failed in its responsibilities not only to its three citizens on board the Mavi, but also to all the flotilla participants.

“Why has the government not called Israel out on this piracy and blatant violation of international law? Why didn’t Ottawa summon the Israeli ambassador to express its outrage, or at the very least demand an explanation?” reads an open letter to Stephen Harper signed by Neish and the two other Canadians in the maritime aid convoy.

As Neish awaits Harper’s response he must also contemplate his next steps. Maybe it was the confusion of the moment, or the manifestation of a deeper commitment, but Neish says during his days in Israel’s Beer Sheva prison he told his Turkish cellmates he would one day sail with them again. Back home in Fernwood now, however, Kevin Neish doesn’t seem so sure of that decision. M

Kevin Neish will speak about his experience aboard the Free Gaza flotilla 7 p.m. on Thursday, June 24 at the BCGEU Hall, 2994 Douglas Street.

http://mondaymag.com/articles/entry/bod ... elievable/

[smiths]

“I never saw a single paint gun, or a sign of a fired paint ball!” he says.

in the video, posted earlier at Vimeo, paint ball guns are clearly visible being fired from the small launches that come along side the ship,
the sounds at this point are also completely consistent with the sounds paint ball guns make

once the soldiers are on board the sounds then change and sound like single and automatic gunfire from proper guns

it is also clear from the video, despite an earlier link suggesting the israelis 'created' their own footage, that a decent number of the passengers on the mavi marmara were throwing projectiles at the launches as they came along side, and were arming themselves with sticks, baseball bats and catapults

i dont think this justifies the israeli response but lets not get some bullshit blindness developing here about the dudes on the mavi marmara,
they were quick to arm themselves with rudimentary weapons which they seemed to have in reasonable numbers, and were clearly prepared to repel Israeli boarding attempts with physical force,
they obviously had considered that the Israelis were insane enough to come aboard forcefully and possibly that the israelis would open fire on them, and they obviously thought it was an outcome worth risking

[smiths]

in the interest of accuracy, these stills from the posted video show clearly
1. paint ball guns being used
2. projectiles being thrown at the israeli launches
3. numerous men, many of whom are already wearing balaclavas, carrying sicks/poles of some kind
4. catapults being used

as i said previously, i can completely understand this response from the people on the mavi maramar,
i just want to dispel notions that they werent using poles, catapults and projectiles when they clearly were

i'd also like to point out that although there are five seperate men carrying poles in these photos, all of the poles look idetical, suggesting to me that they were not just 'found objects' in the heat of the moment, but weapons which had been prepared in advance

[Sweejak]

Certainly paint ball guns were there, but also weapons which looked exactly like silenced Uzi's and which have been called paintball guns, hence I wouldn't draw any conclusions from the sound especially in recordings where you can't see actual paintball guns.
Has this been posted? Just in case:

Eyewitness to the Israeli Assault on the Mavi Marmara
By DAVE LINDORFF

Neish says that claims that the Israeli commandos were just armed with paint guns and 9 mm pistols are “Bullshit--at one point when I was in the stairwell, a commando opened a hatch above, stuck in a machine gun, and started firing. Bullets were bouncing all over the place.

http://www.counterpunch.com/lindorff06162010.html

and:


Also: http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en ... =&gs_rfai=

[smiths]

have you got any images of the weapons which looked like uzis which you say you are certain were there,

and just to clarify, i think they used automatic weapons, i can hear short burst automatic weapon fire in the audio,

but silenced, i doubt it, its pointless when you are landing in helicopters

[Sweejak]

I can't find the site that had a convincing look at it. I'll look again. The video, not the inflatable video, shows something that looks unlike any paintball gun I've ever seen. Silencing would be useful, anytime, anywhere, especially in a ship with lots of corridors, rooms, hatches and decks.

All I get is crappy Youtubes.
This one is a bit better, with stills.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw1kmPUjDmc

[Nordic]

Yeah, I saw that one dude with the slingshot. Terrifying. Those IDF commandoes must have been pissing their pants.

[Nordic]

Hey, here's a new one:

Are U.S. Warships Gearing Up for a Confrontation With an Iranian Aid Flotilla to Gaza?

http://www.alternet.org/story/147265/ar ... la_to_gaza

Here's Page 1:

A U.S. Navy fleet is moving through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea, probably aiming to head off the Iranian flotilla headed toward Gaza.


Anchors aweigh. The United States Navy is sending an aircraft carrier and nearly a dozen other warships through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea, according to the British Arabic Language newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, which reported that the ships carry infantry troops, armored vehicles, and ammunition.

The report was taken very seriously in Israel, where two major newspapers gave it headline coverage -- perhaps because the U.S. fleet is joined by at least one Israeli ship, according to eyewitnesses who saw it pass through the Canal.

Iran’s Press TV claims that the Defense Department has confirmed the movement of American ships. However, neither the U.S. nor the Israeli governments have made any statement about the fleet’s destination or purpose. So we’re left to speculate.

Can it be just coincidence that this is happening precisely when “two Iranian vessels are due to set sail for Gaza in the coming week,” according to Al Jazeera, sponsored by the Iranian Red Crescent, carrying food, medicine, and clothing? And when Iran is promising more aid flotillas after this first one?

When the Iranian flotilla was first announced, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said: "I don't think that Iran's intentions vis-a-vis Gaza are benign." Since then, the U.S. has remained silent.

Newsweeks.com’s Mark Hosenball says he has talked with U.S. and European officials and found them “surprisingly relaxed” about the Iranian challenge to Israel’s blockade of Gaza. They told him that “Tehran actually seems to have dialed back some of its rhetoric and threats for the moment,” and pointed out that the Navy is the weakest arm of Iran’s military.

But if U.S. officials are so relaxed, why spend a fortune (and it does cost a fortune) to move a whole war fleet including an aircraft carrier into the Red Sea and perhaps further, to the Persian Gulf -- where Israeli nuclear submarines are also headed?

Egypt, which controls the Canal, has a central role to play in this drama. Egyptian troops guarded the Canal, which was closed to other traffic, while the U.S. fleet passed through, despite criticism from leaders of Egyptian opposition parties.

It remains unclear how the Egyptians would deal with the Iranian aid ships. Those ships plan to pass through the Canal and then stay close enough to shore to be in Egyptian waters until reaching the area off the Gaza coast, which Israel claims as its territorial waters.

Israel radio has reported that Cairo rejected an Israeli request by for Egypt to block the Iranian ships, claiming that under international law the canal must be free to all ships. However, the Egyptians could delay the Iranians on technicalities for a long time.

Iranian officials have denied a report that their naval forces would escort the ships. “But if and when the Iranian ship reaches the Mediterranean,” as Hosenball says, “no one can be sure what will happen.” However we can be sure that an Iranian ship approaching Gaza would be a major crisis for both the Netanyahu government in Israel and the Obama administration. Very likely, the U.S. administration hopes that its war fleet, accompanied by a token Israeli ship for symbolic value, will head off the need to face that crisis.

Let's hope the U.S. isn't that fucking stupid.

[Bruce Dazzling]

The Israeli Media’s Flotilla Fail
On 06.22.10, By Max Blumenthal

My summary of the Israeli media’s shambolic performance following the flotilla massacre was originally published here in Hebrew at Dvorit Shargal’s excellent Israeli media blog, Velvet Underground. The English version follows:

If the raid of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was a disaster for the Israel Defense Forces, its aftermath demonstrated an equally bewildering performance by the Israeli media. The IDF Spokesman’s Office churned out one misleading claim after another, each one more implausible than the next, seeking to implant in the public’s mind a version of events that bore little relation to reality. To a degree, this was to be expected; but it was startling to see how some of Israel’s most respected reporters lined up to serve as military stenographers, barely challenging the IDF’s rapidly changing versions of events. IDF claims about the flotilla passengers’ links to Al Qaida, anti-Semitic statements shouted at the Israeli Navy, and their terrorist intentions were eagerly broadcast by the Israeli media without a second thought. When independent reporters forced the IDF to retract or “clarify” all of these claims, Israeli news outlets refused to correct their errors, or covered them up without acknowledgment.

It so happened that I arrived in Israel for a research trip the day after the flotilla raid. As a result, I was able to do something which I always thought to be a very basic journalistic practice, so basic it’s supposed to be applied routinely: Asking an implicated party in a story to produce evidence for its claims. What I found bewildering is that at least judging from Israeli media reports, few, if any, mainstream reporters applied this practice, and when a visiting colleague did their job for them – nobody bothered to correct or withdraw their original report.

On June 2, the IDF disseminated a press release entitled, “Attackers of the IDF soldiers found to be Al Qaeda mercenaries.” The accusation was not accompanied by any conclusive evidence — the IDF reported that Mavi Marmara passengers were equipped with night-vision goggles (gasp!). This did not stop Yedioth’s Ron Ben-Yishai, who was embedded with the Navy commandos, from amplifying the baseless charge. Citing an “interrogation” of Marmara passengers — “lynchers,” he called them — Ben-Yishai wrote the same day, “Some among the [flotilla passengers] are believed to have ties with World Jihad groups, mainly Al Qaeda.” The article made no reference to any efforts on part of Ben Yishai to investigate this claim, nor did he seem to think to ask why the IDF was about to release dangerous operatives of Osama Bin Laden — presumably they would attack again, wouldn’t they?

On June 3, Israeli journalist Lia Tarachansky of the Real News Network and I placed calls to the IDF Spokesman’s Office to demand further evidence of the Marmara’s Al Qaeda ties. We received identical responses from spokespeople from the IDF’s Israel and North America desks: “We don’t have any evidence. The press release was based on information from the National Security Council.” Hours later, the IDF retracted its claim, changing the title of its press release to, “Attackers of IDF Soldiers Found Without Identification Papers.” Despite the official retraction, Ben-Yishai’s article remains uncorrected.

On June 4, the IDF released an audio clip purporting to consist of transmissions between the Mavi Marmara and a Naval warship. “Go back to Aushwitz!” a Marmara passenger shouted, according to the IDF. YNet and Haaretz reported on and reproduced the audio clip without investigating its authenticity. Forget that the voice uttering the anti-Semitic slur sounded like a mentally disturbed teenager; had reporters performed a cursory search of the IDF Spokeman’s Office website, they would have found a longer clip released on May 31 that featured a dramatically different exchange with the Marmara with no mention of Auschwitz. Further, the voice of flotilla organizer Huwaida Arraf was featured in the “Aushwitz” clip, yet Arraf was not aboard the Marmara (she was on the Challenger One). Could the IDF have doctored audio to exploit public hysteria surrounding the issue of anti-Semitism?

On my blog, I pointed out the discrepancies in the IDF’s footage and raised the question of doctoring. The next day, the IDF conceded that it had in fact doctored the footage, releasing a “clarification” and a new clip claiming to consist of the “full” exchange between the Navy and the flotilla. Unfortunately, the authenticity of the new clip was impossible to verify.

Despite the IDF’s admission, YNet and Haaretz have not corrected their original reports, though Haaretz has at least altered its headline. Once the doctoring was exposed, the New York Times covered the episode in detail, directing international attention to the triumph of independent online reporting and the apparent failure of Israel’s parochial press corps.

On June 7, Haaretz’s Anshel Pfeffer reported on an IDF press release claiming without evidence that five flotilla passengers had links to international terror. The press release was larded with highly implausible claims, including that Ken O’Keefe, who runs an aid organization with Tony Blair’s sister-in-law, was planning to train a Hamas commando unit in the Gaza Strip. When I called the IDF Spokesman’s Office, I learned that once again, no evidence was available to support their press release. “There is very limited intelligence we can give in this specific case,” Sgt. Chen Arad told me. “Obviously I’m unable to give you more information.” Did Pfeffer demand more evidence? If he did and was answered in the same manner as I did, why did Haaretz publish an unsubstantiated spin as fact?

Joined by Haaretz military correspondents Avi Isacharoff and Amos Harel, Pfeffer became a channel for another daytime deception by the IDF. On May 31, the three reporters produced an article based exclusively on testimony from Naval commandos — the flotilla passengers’ side of the story was ignored — claiming they had faced live fire and lynching attempts from Marmara passengers. Since the story was published, the IDF has produced scant evidence to support either accusation. The article was accompanied by a suspicious photo from the IDF Spokesman’s Office depicting a bearded Muslim man brandishing a knife and surrounded by photojournalists. Daylight beamed in from a window behind the man. Haaretz’s caption, which was sourced to the IDF, asserted that the photo was taken “after” the commandos had boarded the Marmara. However, the commandos raided the ship at night, while the photo was taken during the day. Once again, the IDF’s story was fishy.

I called Sgt. Arad at the IDF Spokesman’s Office to investigate. He told me he had no evidence to support the photo’s questionable caption. Soon after our phone conversation, Haaretz quietly altered the caption, removing its claim that the photo was taken “after” the commando raid. For nearly a week, the false photo caption had remained intact. Why did Haaretz suddenly change it? The only plausible explanation is that the paper received a tip from the IDF Spokesman’s Office. If true, the tip-off suggests a scandalous level of coordination between the Israeli military and the country’s media.

In the wake of the flotilla raid, Israeli journalists had a unique opportunity to lead the global media’s investigation into the bloodbath that occurred on the deck of the Mavi Marmara. After all, no one had better access to the military or the eyewitnesses aboard the flotilla. Instead, too many among the Israeli press corps allowed themselves to be conscripted into the IDF’s hapless information war, leaving the important task of investigating the raid to independent reporters who remembered to view claims by any nation’s military with extreme skepticism.

So why do well-connected, experienced reporters follow the IDF baton so willingly, and fail to follow up when IDF claims are retracted? Is it simple bias, a desire to present their military in the best possible light, a desire so strong they abandon their duty to their readers to verify their information? Are they afraid of sanctions, of losing contacts and access to information? Do they fear personal reprisals? Their readers, and the world media that still relies on Israeli journalism as a vital source of information, need to know.

http://maxblumenthal.com/2010/06/the-is ... illa-fail/

[Nordic]

http://www.haaretz.com/news/internation ... a-1.298165


Iranian aid flotilla cancelled, won't sail to Gaza

Organizers cite 'Israeli threats' as the reason for canceling the flotilla; separate Iranian ship heads to Gaza via Caspian Sea.

By Haaretz Service

One of the organizers of an Iranian aid flotilla that was to said to Gaza in efforts to break Israel's naval blockade on the territory, announced Thursday that the event has been cancelled due to "Israeli threats."

Army Radio reported that a separate Iranian ship, carrying 60 Iranian activists, was being prepared to sail to Gaza via the Caspian Sea. This after the Lebanese media reported several days ago that Egypt has denied Israel's request to prevent Iranian ships from passing through the Suez Canal toward Egypt.

Meanwhile Thursday, the U.S. State Department issued a statement calling the aid flotillas to Gaza irresponsible.

"Mechanisms exist for the transfer of humanitarian assistance to Gaza by member states and groups that want to do so," the U.S. State Department said regarding Lebanese plans to ship aid to Gaza. "Direct delivery by sea is neither appropriate nor responsible, and certainly not effective, under the circumstances."

The Lebanese and Iranian efforts come after a tragic incident aboard a Turkish aid ship, part of an 8-ship Turkish flotilla, which was headed for Gaza on May 31. Israeli navy commandos, intent on preventing the ship from reaching Gaza's shore, boarded the ship, and were met by a violent mob wielding sticks and knives. The clash that ensued resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish activists.

Trying to help ghettoized, terrorized people is "irresponsible". America: the asshole nation.

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://imeu.net/news/article0019260.shtml

Flotilla Fact Check


Flouting international demands for an independent investigation of its deadly attack on a humanitarian aid flotilla in international waters, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has formed an internal commission composed of three Israelis and two, non-voting international observers. The commission chair, retired Israeli Supreme Court justice Yaakov Tirkel, expressed his hope that the panel would finish its work as "quickly" as possible. And Netanyahu has promised that the "Gaza flotilla probe will show the world Israel acted lawfully." Both comments leave many observers wondering how seriously the findings of a quick, internal investigation with a seemingly pre-determined outcome can be taken. Skepticism is heightened by the way in which Israel handled evidence of the incident and by what many see as its misinformation campaign designed to discredit the flotilla's humanitarian aid workers.


How did Israel handle evidence of its deadly raid in international waters?

According to Australian journalist and flotilla passenger Paul McGeough, "The systematic attempt and very deliberate first priority for the Israeli soldiers as they came on the ships was to shut down the story, to confiscate all cameras, to shut down satellites, to smash the CCTV cameras that were on the Mavi Marmara, to make sure that nothing was going out. They were hellbent on controlling the story."

After seizing all recordings of the event, Israeli authorities then began releasing highly-edited footage, including footage stolen from journalists and others on board the ships. The Committee to Protect Journalists denounced Israel's use of stolen footage. And the Foreign Press Association in Israel, representing hundreds of foreign correspondents, called the use a "clear violation of journalistic ethics and unacceptable" and warned news outlets to "treat the material with appropriate caution."


Israel claims its heavily-armed Navy commandos were "lynched" by the flotilla passengers and acted in self-defense. Do the facts support this claim?


CLAIM #1: The violence onboard the Mavi Marmara resulted from the surprising resistance the Israeli commandos encountered when they boarded the ship. According to an Israeli military spokesman, "We had in mind a sit-down, a linking of arms."

IN FACT:
Testimony from passengers confirms that Israeli commandoes began firing before boarding the ship. According to Al-Jazeera correspondent and Mavi Marmara passenger Jamal El Shayyal, "Commandos on board the choppers joined the firing, using live ammunition, before any of the soldiers had descended onto the ship. Two unarmed civilians were killed just meters away from me. Dozens of unarmed civilians were injured right before my eyes"

An Israeli soldier's testimony shows that "the commandos threw a number of stun grenades and fired warning shots before rappelling down onto the deck."

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren acknowledged that Israel considered the Mavi Marmara to be "simply too large to stop by nonviolent means."

And Israel's Maariv newspaper documented the significant planning that went into the raid, including the approval of the use of force by senior government officials well ahead of the incident.






CLAIM #2: "when IDF forces tried to quietly carry out their mission to stop the flotilla, they unfortunately met violence, including from firearms on deck of the ship that were used against IDF soldiers." Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon

IN FACT: The IDF could provide no evidence of this claim. The boats and passengers were thoroughly searched before setting sail and were only cleared to sail because they were found to be free of weapons. IDF sources then changed their story claiming that firearms may have been thrown overboard. Mavi Marmara passengers confirm that firearms were in fact thrown overboard - firearms which passengers confiscated from the Israeli commandos in self defense. According to Swedish Mavi Marmara passenger and professor of religion Mattias Gardell, "An Uzi and a pistol were seized, emptied of ammunition and were thrown into the sea. We would by all means show that there was a peaceful campaign and that we did not have weapons….Then came the paratroopers in four helicopters and they shot sharply already from the time they were in the air."




CLAIM #3: When Israeli soldiers boarded the ship "they were going to be killed and they had to act in self-defense" Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

IN FACT:
As a result of the IDF's violence, which began prior to boarding the ship, nine passengers on the Mavi Marmara were killed, having been shot a total of 30 times. Five of the nine were shot in the head, some at close range, some from the back, and one, a 19 year old American citizen named Furkan Dogan, was shot in what can only be seen as execution-style: once in the chest and four times in the head from a range of less than 45 centimeters.

Photographs from the incident show that, once they were disarmed, IDF soldiers had their wounds treated and were given water by passengers, further disproving the claim that they were intent on killing Israelis.

The testimony of filmmaker Iara Lee who was onboard the Mavi Marmara shows that passengers called for medical help for the injured, "but [they] were ignored, and a lot of people who were injured actually ended up bleeding to death and died." Her testimony is supported by other eyewitness accounts.




What other claims did Israel make that were then retracted or proven false?

"GO BACK TO AUSCHWITZ"

The Israeli military released what it claimed were audio transmissions of flotilla passengers responding to radio calls from the IDF by telling the soldiers to "go back to Auschwitz" and to quot;remember 9/11."

IN FACT:
Investigative journalists uncovered the fact that IDF had previously released what appeared to be identical video of the exchange between this Israeli sailor and the Mavi Marmara in which the only reply from the ship was "Negative, negative. Our destination is Gaza. Our destination is Gaza."

One of the individuals whose voice appears on the IDF's tape, Huwaida Arraf, confirmed that she was not even on the Mavi Marmara, but on another ship altogether.

The IDF then admitted that the audio transmission was edited and released what it claims was the full, unedited transmission. Though as New York Times reporter Robert Mackey points out, "since they are snippets of audio over a black screen, it is impossible to verify their authenticity."




IHH LINKS TO TERROR

Israel claims that groups participating in the flotilla, particularly the Turkish aid group , Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH) "are non-governmental organizations that support terror and are affiliated with terror" and that the flotilla's organizers "have close, longstanding ties with agents of international terror, international Islam, Hamas, Al-Qaeda and others."

IN FACT:
The Israeli government failed to provide evidence of individual claims of terrorist affiliations or intentions.

The Israeli government edited its own websites to remove Al-Qaeda assertions after it could not substantiate claims that flotilla passengers had connections to Al-Qaeda.

The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, a think tank with ties to Israel's Defense Ministry, concluded that there is "no known evidence of current links between IHH and 'global jihad elements."

Not only does the IHH not appear on the US State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, the group played an active role in delivering humanitarian aid to Haiti after the devastating January earthquake while the US military directed relief efforts there.




What about Israel's claims regarding the humanitarian situation in Gaza?

Israel claims that it told the flotilla that if they docked in Ashdod, the Israeli government would "transfer their aid through the existing land crossings, in accordance with established procedures."


Did the flotilla passengers have reason to doubt that Israel would in fact let the humanitarian aid enter Gaza?

Yes. According to a guide produced by the BBC, for much of the last three years, Gaza's "1.5 million people have relied on less than a quarter of the volume of imported supplies they received in December 2005." This falls far short of the minimum required to avoid malnutrition, poverty, and prevent or treat a variety of illnesses. According to Amnesty International's recently-released annual report, the siege has resulted in "mass unemployment, extreme poverty, food insecurity and food price rises caused by shortages."


Israel claims that "there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza"

Consider the following statistics:
61 percent of households face food insecurity, defined as inadequate physical, social or economic access to food, and rely on assistance from aid agencies. An additional 16.2 percent are considered vulnerable to food insecurity.

65 percent of the food insecure are children under the age of 18.

Unemployment is at 40 percent.

10 percent of children under five are stunted (low height for age, usually attributed to a chronic lack of protein and micronutrients, including iron and essential vitamins), a steadily increasing trend over recent years, according to UNICEF.

More than 10 percent of children are chronically malnourished, according to the World Health Organization, a significant increase since siege began.

The number of children under five suffering from acute malnutrition nearly doubled between 2006 and 2008 from 1.4 to 2.4 percent, according to UNICEF.

65 percent of children aged 9-12 months, and 35 percent of pregnant women are anemic.

According to a recent poverty survey conducted by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the number of Palestinian refugees completely unable to secure access to food and lacking the means to purchase even the most basic items, such as soap, school stationery and safe drinking water ('abject poverty') has tripled since the imposition of the blockade in June 2007.




Israel claims that its blockade of Gaza is in response to rockets fired into Israel.
As documented by the Israeli human rights organization Gisha, "Beginning in September 2007, Israel openly stated that it would restrict the movement of goods into and out of Gaza not in order to protect against security threats stemming from the transfer, but rather as part of a policy to apply "pressure" or "sanctions" on the Hamas regime." This amounts to collective punishment of Gaza's civilians, and as such is a violation of international humanitarian law (Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949). Further, as an occupying power, Israel is required under Articles 55, 59 and 60 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to ensure free, unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief and is prohibited from impeding the full realization of the occupied people's human rights. Israel's blockade impedes Gazans' rights to food, to an adequate standard of living, to work, and to the highest attainable standard of health.

Further, according to Amnesty International, Hamas upheld its end of the 2008 cease-fire and halted rockets, yet Israel did not respond by lowering the blockade on Gaza. The cease-fire had been "the single most important factor in reducing civilian casualties and attacks on civilians to the lowest level since the outbreak of the uprising (intifada) more than eight years ago. The ceasefire [had] brought enormous improvements in the quality of life in Sderot… However, nearby in the Gaza Strip the Israeli blockade remains in place and the population has so far seen few dividends from the ceasefire."

The cease-fire was unilaterally broken by Israel on November 4th, 2008 and led to an escalation of hostility and the eventual Operation Cast Lead.

Those "22 days of death and destruction" resulted in the deaths of roughly 1,400 Palestinians, destroyed Gaza's infrastructure, schools, and hospitals, and left its citizens in even greater humanitarian crisis than before.

The items blockaded by the Israeli government at various times include "light bulbs, candles, matches, books, musical instruments, crayons, clothing, shoes, mattresses, sheets, blankets, pasta, tea, coffee, chocolate, nuts, shampoo and conditioner." These items have no connection to Hamas rocket capacity and serve only to punish Gaza's civilian population , half of which is comprised of children.