You’re talking bollox, Mr Regev
A short primer on Israeli propaganda for media dummies
By Stuart Littlewood | Redress | 9 June 2010
What were Israel’s excuses for hijacking the Free Gaza ships in international waters and imprisoning their passengers after gunning down nine of them and wounding several more?
- There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and
- Israel already allows sufficient humanitarian aid into Gaza so the flotilla was “an armada of hate and violence”, said Israel’s deputy foreign minister.
But according to John Ging, United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) director of operations in Gaza, “It’s a struggle to survive [with] the infrastructure and water and sanitation in a state of collapse and all that goes with that… People are at their wits’ end to understand when all of this will come to an end.”
- If the Free Gaza ships delivered the humanitarian cargo to the Israeli port of Ashdod, Israel would ensure it was delivered to Gaza after checking it for arms.
That’s very unlikely. The report “Failing Gaza: No rebuilding, no recovery, no more excuses” by a group of 16 European non-governmental organizations, published in December 2009, showed that the Israelis allow only a feeble trickle and what is permitted changes from day to day.
- Israel could not allow the ships into Gaza without searching them for arms that might be of use to Hamas.
There are peaceful alternatives for checking cargoes. Besides, it’s time Israel implemented The Agreement on Movement and Access it signed in November 2005, under which it promised to allow its crossings into Gaza to “operate continuously” so that people and goods could move freely.
The agreement also provides for
- the reduction of obstacles to movement within the West Bank
- bus and truck convoys between the West Bank and Gaza
- the building of a new seaport in Gaza
- reopening of the airport in Gaza
There would then be no need for ships bringing humanitarian aid.
The European Council on 8 December 2009 stated: “The EU again reiterates its calls for an immediate, sustained and unconditional opening of crossings for the flow of humanitarian aid, commercial goods and persons to and from Gaza. In this context, the council calls for the full implementation of The Agreement on Movement and Access.”
Israel has ignored countless verbal appeals. The EU is in position to twist its arm because it has granted Israel privileged access to European markets under the EU-Israel Association Agreement and the plug can be pulled. These trading advantages are conditional on Israel showing respect for human rights and democratic principles. Compliance is an essential element, not an option.
- Israel’s interference with the mercy ships was an act of self-defence against the threat posed by Hamas firing rockets and mortars out of Gaza.
This isn’t about rockets. A ceasefire, brokered by Egypt, was negotiated with Hamas in June 2008. Hamas honoured the agreement, firing no rockets and restraining other resistance groups. Israel broke the ceasefire on 4 November by suddenly making a military incursion into Gaza and killing seven members of Hamas. Operation Cast Lead followed, supposedly to stop the rockets. The deaths of over 1,400 people and the maiming of thousands more were unnecessary. All Israel needed to do was observe the ceasefire. It chose not to.
And whatever Israel may say, the blockade inflicts “collective punishment” on the people of Gaza, which is a violation of international law and Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
- Hamas wants to destroy Israel.
Not true. Hamas has said it will accept Israel within its internationally-recognized 1967 borders, which is the same position the United Nations has adopted.
- Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu now says “dozens of thugs” from what he called “an extremist, terrorism-supporting” organization were on-board the flotilla.
No evidence has been produced so far.
- Israel is a vibrant democracy.
Actually, Israel is a racist ethnocracy, which discriminates in countless vile ways against its Arab minority.
As usual, Israel’s chief propagandist, Mark Regev, was on hand to give the tragedy the benefit of his spin.
- “We did everything we could to avoid violence… They [the aid workers] chose the path of confrontation… Our boarding party was attacked with live fire…”
No such weapons were found.
- “Violence was initiated by these activists…”
No, violence was initiated by armed troops storming the peace ships in the dead of night.
- “We didn’t attack them, they attacked us… We tried to do, in accordance with international law, a peaceful intervention as they were entering a blockaded area…”
International law does not permit armed intervention in international waters, and the blockaded area has no legal basis.
- “There are no shortages in Gaza…”
That is not what the UN and countless NGOs and charities say.
Meanwhile, in London, Israel’s ambassador, Ron Prosor, was saying:
- “The people on board the ships behaved appallingly… they really did everything in order to provoke and confront…”
What is confrontational about sailing lawfully and peacefully on a humanitarian mission?
- “We disengaged completely out of Gaza…”
No, Israel remains in occupation of Gaza’s airspace and coastal waters and in control of all entrances and exits except on the Egyptian border. It has Gaza bottled up.
As always, newspaper and television editors, reporters and presenters were happy to retell the Israeli version of events, the distortion and the plain lies, along with the exaggerated language such as “extremists” and “militants” to describe aid workers, without bothering to examine or question the material in any way.
More pearls of wisdom from Regev
Mark Regev, the Israeli prime minister’s spokesman, is a rich source of propaganda nonsense, for example…
- “It’s not just Israel who refuses to speak to Hamas. It’s the whole international community… Most of the democratic world refuses to have a relationship with Hamas because Hamas has refused to meet the most minimal benchmarks of international behaviour.”
Isn’t that a little cheeky, Mr Regev, coming from a regime widely condemned for war crimes, piracy and mega-lawlessness?
- “It was the former UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, that put four benchmarks on the table. And he said, speaking for the international community…That if Hamas reforms itself… If Hamas recognizes my country’s right to live in freedom… If Hamas renounces terrorism against innocent civilians… If Hamas supports international agreements that are being signed and agreed to concerning the peace process… then the door is open. But unfortunately – tragically – Hamas has failed to meet even one of those four benchmarks. And that’s why today Hamas is isolated internationally. Even the United Nations refuses to speak to Hamas.
Which of those benchmarks has Israel met, Mr Regev?
If you’re getting the impression that Israel is going all-out to demonize Hamas you’d be right, as we’ll see later.
- “Iran’s President openly talks about wiping Israel off the map. The Iranian nuclear programme is a threat, not just to my country, but to the entire region. And it’s incumbent upon us all to do what needs to be done to keep from proliferating.”
Why is Israel the only state in the region not to have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Mr Regev? Are we all supposed to believe that Israel’s 200 (or is it 400?) nuclear warheads pose no threat to the region? Would you also tell us why Israel hasn’t signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, and hasn’t ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty or the Chemical Weapons Convention? What proof do you have of Iran’s nuclear weapons plans?
And why do you deliberately misquote Mr Ahmadinejad? For the record, the Iranian president said, quoting the late Ayatollah Khomeini: “The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”
Israel’s Crapaganda Handbook
The Israeli administration’s scriptwriters use a propaganda training manual that teaches the art of lying and how to sugar-coat their poison so that gullible audiences will easily swallow it. Everything Israel dislikes, and everything that thwarts their lust for domination, is now labeled “Iranian-backed”… They would have us believe that everyone in the West – and that includes you and me and the dog – is in mortal danger from Iran and must therefore huddle together in a collective act of aggression orchestrated by Tel Aviv and Washington.
Situations are defined in language that suits only Israel’s case and ensures that Israel’s narrative, which has little or nothing to do with truth, is the one that is carried by the media.
Take, for example, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to the UN in 2009. Referring to the critical Goldstone report on Israel’s blitzkrieg against Gaza, he said:
Israel justly defended itself against terror. This biased and unjust report is a clear-cut test for all governments. Will you stand with Israel or will you stand with the terrorists?
The false choice is a propaganda favourite. Why would anyone wish to stand alongside either? The fact is, Israel reneged on a ceasefire agreement just before it launched its murderous onslaught, which it had been planning for months.
In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza… We didn’t get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base 50 miles from Tel Aviv. Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a nightmare. You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent.
Israel, camped on the Gazans’ doorstep and still occupying Gaza’s airspace and coastal waters, lobs high explosives into the tiny enclave’s 1.5 million starving and defenceless civilians, and there’s no escape because all exits are sealed.
…If Israel is again asked to take more risks for peace, we must know today that you will stand with us tomorrow. Only if we have the confidence that we can defend ourselves can we take further risks for peace.
What exactly are these “risks for peace” Israel has so bravely taken? In 62 years what peace dividends has Israel delivered?
The 116-page manual is designed to help the worldwide Zionist movement win the propaganda war, keep their ill-gotten territorial gains and persuade international audiences to accept that their crimes are necessary and in line with “shared values” between Israel and the West.
It was written by The Israel Project, which describes itself as “devoted to educating the press and the public about Israel while promoting security, freedom and peace”. The organization claims to provide journalists, leaders and opinion-formers with “accurate information about Israel”.
What it really does is undermine with clever words and discredited techniques the inalienable rights pledged by the UN to all peoples, including the Palestinians.
The manual teaches the sort of propaganda bollox that Israel’s scribblers and drivellers use to try to justify the slaughter, the ethnic cleansing, the land-grabbing, the cruelty and their blatant disregard for international law and UN resolutions, and make it all smell sweet with a liberal sprinkling of persuasive words. It is designed to hoodwink hard-bitten media types into believing that we actually share values with the racist regime in Israel and that its abominable behaviour is therefore deserving of support.
Priority: isolate Hamas
How does it do that?The manual’s strategy from the start is to demonize the democratically-elected Hamas and rob the resistance movement and the Palestinian population of their human rights. It is packed with advice such as this:
- “Clearly differentiate between the Palestinian people and Hamas… Hamas is a terrorist organization – Americans get that already. But if it sounds like you are attacking the Palestinian people (even though they elected Hamas) rather than their leadership, you will lose public support.”
- “The big picture approach is this: You must isolate Hamas as:
– A critical cause of the delay in achieving a two-state solution
– The biggest source of harm to the Palestinian people, and
– The reason why Israel must defend its people from living in terror.
– Read from the Hamas Charter. Now, here’s how to attack Hamas: indict them with their own indoctrination materials. Yes, people know Hamas is a terrorist organization – but they don’t know just how terrifying Hamas can be. The absolute best way to heighten their awareness is to read from the Hamas Charter itself. Don’t just “quote” from it. Read it. Out loud. Again and again. Hand it out to everyone.”
That’s a very good point. Hamas is mad not to have rewritten its charter. Israel’s barbarous behaviour makes Hamas look good, but all that will count for nothing if the charter remains unchanged.
- “Israel’s right to defensible borders: The big picture is that they [specifically the Americans, but equally the British and other Europeans] believe that Hamas’s leadership of Gaza has made Israel and the region less safe… they are willing to grant Israel more leeway in resisting calls to give more land for more peace.”
Here we see the motive for demonizing Hamas: Israel wants more leeway to continue its land-grabs and colonization. The idea that they are “giving land for peace” is utterly absurd – they are required to return land they have seized at gunpoint.
- “If… If… If…Then. Put the burden on Hamas to make the first move for peace by using If’s. If Hamas reforms… If Hamas recognize our right to exist… If Hamas renounces terrorism… If Hamas supports international peace agreements… then we are willing to make peace today.”
Just substitute Israel for Hamas. It reads much better.
- “Peace can only be made with adversaries who want to make peace with you. Terrorist organizations like Iran-backed Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are, by definition, opposed to peaceful coexistence, and determined to prevent reconciliation. I ask you, how do you negotiate with those who want you dead?”
Hamas and Hezbollah are only regarded as terrorists by the White House and Tel Aviv, and by US-Israeli stooges elsewhere.
The definition Bush used to blacklist those it suited him to accuse of committing, threatening to commit or supporting terrorism goes as follows…
“The term “terrorism” means an activity that –
(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and
(ii) appears to be intended –
(a) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(b) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(c) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking.
This of course fits the US and Israel perfectly.
- “There is never, ever, any justification for the deliberate slaughter of innocent women and children. Never … civilized people do not target innocent women and children for death.”
So where does that leave Israel, which recently killed 320 children in Gaza and 773 civilians including 109 women? From 2000 up to the start of Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 Israel had slaughtered 4,790 Palestinians in their homeland, including 952 children, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. In the same period Palestinians killed 490 Israelis in Israel including 84 children. So Israel’s kill-rate is nearly 10 to 1, and rising since the blitzkrieg on Gaza.
Israelis are also expert at making families homeless. Since 1967, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), Israel has demolished in total 24,145 homes in the occupied territories, including 4,247 (a UN figure) destroyed during Operation Cast Lead.
Israel talks a lot about its right to defend itself. Here is the rationale:
- “Americans fundamentally believe that a democracy has a right to protect its people and its borders… There is one and only one argument that will work for Israel:
(1) As a democracy, Israel has the right and the responsibility to defend its borders and protect its people.
(2) Terrorist groups, including Iran-backed Hezbollah and Hamas, continue to pose a direct threat to Israeli security and have repeatedly taken innocent Israeli lives.
(3) Israel is America’s one and only true ally in the region. In these particularly unstable and dangerous times, Israel should not be forced to go it alone.
(4) With America’s financial assistance, Israel can defend its borders, protect its people, and provide invaluable assistance to the American effort against the war against terrorism.”
But it seems that Americans don’t believe in democracy enough to allow Palestinian democracy to flourish.
- “When the terror ends, Israel will no longer need to have challenging checkpoints to inspect goods and people. When the terror ends we will no longer need a security fence.”
No rockets are coming out of the West Bank, so why is the wall still there – and still being built? Why are the occupation troops still there? Why are hundreds of checkpoints still there? Why is Israel still stealing land, demolishing Palestinian homes and building settlements there?
- “Remind people – again and again – that Israel wants peace. Reason One: If Americans see no hope for peace… they will not want their government to spend tax dollars or their president’s clout on helping Israel. Reason Two: The speaker that is perceived as being most for peace will win the debate… peace should be at the core of whatever message you wish to convey.”
Israelis do NOT want peace and never have. They failed to honour previous peace accords. Every action is directed at provoking security crises and keeping the conflict boiling until they have stolen enough land and established enough ‘”acts on the ground” – Jews-only settlements, highways, disconnected Palestinian bantustans – to enable them to re-draw the map to suit their expansionist agenda and make the occupation permanent.
- “Draw direct parallels between Israel and America – including the need to defend against terrorism… The more you focus on the similarities between Israel and America, the more likely you are to win the support of those who are neutral. Indeed, Israel … faces many of the same challenges as America in protecting their citizens.”
Israel’s strategy is dependent on the false idea that they are victims of terror and Western nations need to rally round Israel for mutual protection.
- “The language of Israel is the language of America: ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘security’ and ‘peace’. These four words are at the core of the American political, economic, social and cultural systems, and they should be repeated as often as possible because they resonate with virtually every American… Remind your audience that Israel wants peace and then repeat the messages of democracy, freedom and peace over and over again…. we need to repeat the message, on average, ten times to be effective… But don’t confuse messages with facts…. “
Right, never let facts get in the way of a good message! The only word that matters to Israel is security (at everyone else’s expense, of course). How can democracy be a shared value when Israel is a nasty ethnocracy? How can freedom be a shared value when the world is still waiting for Israel to end the occupation and allow the Palestinians their freedom.
- “How can the current Palestinian leadership honestly say it will pursue peace when previous leaders rejected an offer to create a Palestinian state just a few short years ago and now refuse to live up to their responsibilities as outlined in the Road Map?”
This refers to Ehud Barak’s so-called “generous offer”, a favourite myth. It wasn’t enough that the Palestinians, at the time of the Oslo Agreements in 1993, were willing to concede 78 per cent of the land that was originally theirs, accept the remaining 22 per cent and recognize Israel within “Green Line” borders (i.e. the 1949 Armistice Line), Barak wanted to include 69 Israeli settlements within the Palestinians’ 22 per cent. He also demanded that the Palestinian territories be placed under “temporary Israeli control”, meaning Israeli military and administrative control indefinitely. The “generous offer also gave Israel control over all the border crossings of the new Palestinian state. What nation in the world would accept that?
- “Why is the world so silent about the written, vocal, stated aims of Hamas?”
Why is the world silent about the written, stated aims of the racist regime and its political parties? Read their manifestos.
- “The situation in the Middle East may be complicated, but all parties should adopt a simple approach: peace first, political boundaries second.”
Why should Palestinians renounce resistance while Israel’s jackboot is still on their throat? The international community should first insist on Israel’s compliance with international law and the many UN resolutions it has defied. The boundaries are already defined by these. Whatever issues then remain to be decided, Palestinians should not have to negotiate with a gun to their heads.
- “Bottom line: What will happen if we fail to get the world to care about the fact that Israeli parents in southern Israel need to literally dodge rockets when they drive their children to kindergarten in the morning?”
Only one in 500 makeshift Qassam rockets causes a fatality. The devastation and carnage resulting from the barrage of Israel’s state-of-the-art rocketry targeted on Gaza is a very different story.
- “Humanize Rockets: Paint a vivid picture of what life is like in Israeli communities that are vulnerable to attack. Yes, cite the number of rocket attacks that have occurred. But immediately follow that up with what it is like to make the nightly trek to the bomb shelter.”
Israel claims 12,000 rockets were fired from Gaza in the eight years up to the start of Operation Cast Lead. Would they care to tell the world how many bombs, rockets and shells (including the illegal and prohibited variety) Israel’s F-16s, tanks, armed drones and navy gunboats poured into the densely-packed humanity that is Gaza in the same period? Probably not.
And Israelis are careful not to mention that the township of Sderot, targeted by Gaza’s rockets and a major propaganda asset for Regev and company, is built on the ruins of an ethnically cleansed Palestinian village whose inhabitants were forced to flee by Jewish terrorists.
- “Living together, side by side. This is the best way to describe the ultimate vision of a two-state solution without using the phrase.”
Sounds cute and fluffy, but who would want to live alongside bigots and extremists who have made your life hell for 62 years?
- “When talking about a Palestinian partner, it is essential to distinguish between Hamas and everyone else. Only the most anti-Israel, pro- Palestinian American expects Israel to negotiate with Hamas, so you have to be clear that you are seeking a ‘moderate Palestinian partner’.”
What gives anyone, American or Israeli, the right to ignore a nation’s democratically elected representatives? And where are the moderate Israeli partners?
- “The fight is over ideology, not land; terror, not territory. Thus, you must avoid using Israel’s religious claims to land as a reason why Israel should not give up land. Such claims only make Israel look extremist to people who are not religious Christians or Jews.”
If the fight isn’t about land, why has Israel been stealing it? And why won’t they give it back when told to by the UN?
- “Think pro-Palestinian…I particularly want to reach out to Palestinian mothers who have lost their children. No parent should have to bury their child.”
Reach for the sick-bag. Israel won’t even allow cement into Gaza to build the graves.
- “And so I say to my Palestinian colleagues … you can stop the bloodshed. You can stop the suicide bombings and rocket attacks. If you really want to, you can put an end to this cycle of violence. If you won’t do it for our children, do it for your children.”
This is recommended as “an effective sound bite” for pro-Israel activists.
- “I want to see a future where the Palestinians govern themselves. Israel does not want to govern a single Palestinian. Not one. We want them to govern themselves. We want them to have complete self-determination.”
Pure tosh! That’s not what Israel’s political parties are pledging. For decades Israel has dismissed the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. It is desperate to snuff out Palestine’s fledgling democracy and destroy its chosen government.
What’s to become of the Holy City?
- “The toughest issue to communicate will be the final resolution of Jerusalem. Americans overwhelmingly want Israel to be in charge of the religious holy sites and are frankly afraid of the consequences should Israel turn over control to the Palestinians.”
Israel is in control right now and prevents Muslims and Christians from outside the city from visiting the holy places. Israel has proved it can’t be trusted. In any case, the UN’s partition plan decreed that Jerusalem should become a “corpus separatum” – an international city – under international management…
In addition to their expertise in disinformation the Israelis are adept at concealing or destroying the evidence of their crimes. We saw it again with the confiscation of the flotilla passengers’ cameras, phones, laptops and other personal effects. If they ever get them back they’ll be corrupted. Israel also makes it difficult for even VIPs to enter Gaza – they don’t want outsiders inspecting their major crime scene. Anything to obstruct justice and make it difficult to bring their thugs to book.
Israel’s dirty tricks will be to no avail in the end. They are beginning to lose the propaganda war. That was inevitable. In the long run you cannot succeed with a communications programme based on lies and deception. Even the best public relations is only as good as the “product” or brand, and “Brand Israel’s” reputation was never great. It has now fallen off a cliff. The truth is spreading despite big efforts by mainstream media to block or disguise it.
The thing we must cling to is the obligation that binds all decent people to respect and promote human rights. The following words, written nearly 62 years ago, explain why good will eventually triumph over the selfish and evil outpourings of the Israeli crapaganda machine.
Now, Therefore the General Assembly proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk.
Thanks to Dr David Morrison for sending me the Sadaka Briefing Papers that inspired this article. See: http://www.sadaka.ie/Files/Israels_bogus_excuses_for_piracy.pdf and http://www.sadaka.ie/Files/The_blockade_of_Gaza_must_be_lifted_completely.pdfThe USS Liberty, a flubbed-up false flag
By Deanna Spingola | RenewAmerica | June 8, 2010
By 1948, under David Ben Gurion’s direction, the Israeli government developed the Israeli Terrorist Cell, Unit 131. In the mid 1950s, the U.S. was friends with Gamal Abdel Nasser and Egypt. Ben Gurion, an avid Zionist and the Israel’s first Prime Minister, envisioned an Egyptian terrorist attack against the U.S. in order to destroy that alliance. However, that wasn’t a probability, given the relationship between the two countries. So the Israeli government developed a pattern of using young Israelis who disguised themselves as terrorists of whichever country they were attempting to implicate. This concept would be applied during Operation Cyanide, involving the USS Liberty, in an attempt to initiate World War III.
On May 23, according to instructions from the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Cyrus R. Vance, the Liberty, commanded by William L. McGonagle, was directed to the eastern Mediterranean via Rota, Spain and placed under the direction of the Commander-in-Chief, Europe upon its arrival at Rota. [1] Frank Raven, the G Group Chief resisted such a risky move, “The ship will be defenseless out there. If war breaks out, she’ll be alone and vulnerable. Either side might start shooting at her…I say the ship should be left where it is.” [2]
Army General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, of Northwoods fame, put Admiral John S. McCain, Jr. (father of Senator John McCain), the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Navy in Europe in charge. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, per President Johnson’s instructions had advanced Admiral McCain to a four-star commanding position in February 1967. [3] Admiral John McCain directed operations from his office in London. [4] Johnson promised continued support and help in re-opening the Straits of Tiran, previously closed to Israel by Egypt. Israel was already developing a nuclear program in the Negev desert, but also wanted additional military assistance including — 100 Hawk missiles, 140 Patton tanks, and 24 Skyhawk jets. [5] John P. Roche, an avid supporter of Israel, wrote Johnson’s speech regarding the Straits of Tiran which was delivered in May 1967. [6] Johnson had many Jewish advisors and friends including Mathilde Krim.
Mathilde Krim’s first husband was David Danon, a Bulgarian Jew and member of the Irgun, a terrorist group. She converted to Judaism and associated with many of Israel’s future leaders, as she had been a dedicated gunrunning member of Irgun, headed by Menachem Begin, prior to 1948. She was also friendly with the Stern Gang, another Zionist terrorist group founded by Avraham Stern and headed by Yitzhak Shamir. In 1958 she married Arthur B. Krim, a New York attorney and head of United Artists and a close advisor to Johnson and an avid Zionist. Krim was the finance chairman for the Democratic national committee and ran the President’s Club, Johnson’s fund-raising apparatus that held a $1,000 a plate dinner in New York on June 3, 1967. Arthur Krim built a huge vacation mansion next door to Johnson’s Texas ranch. [7]
On June 3, 1967, the USS Liberty was trolling in international waters off the coast of the Gaza Strip where the ship was to engage in an “extended independent surveillance operation in the eastern Mediterranean.” [8] Israel launched a long-planned war against her Arab neighbors at 7:45 a.m. Sinai time on June 5, 1967. In 1982, Menachem Begin, then Israel’s Prime Minister, admitted, “The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.” [9] Mordechai Bentov, a member of Israel’s coalition cabinet during the war, said, “All this story about the danger of extermination has been a complete invention and has been blown up a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territories.” [10]
President Johnson, an apparently energetic philanderer given the number and notoriety of his sexual exploits, was in Texas until June 1 when he returned with his “friend” Mathilde Krim who remained at the White House with Johnson for the next week. When Johnson, who was absolutely dazzled by Mathilde’s blonde beauty and intelligence, was informed of the beginning of the war on the morning of June 5. The very first person he informed was Mathilde Krim. Official records indicate that Mathilde passed documents from Israel directly to Johnson over the duration of the crisis. Johnson didn’t meet with his advisors, except Walt Rostow, nor any Israeli or Arab officials during the duration of the very short war, he knew exactly what was going on with the Israelis due to his intimate relationship with Mathilde Krim. [11]
It was evident, as that first day progressed, that Egypt was unprepared and inundated by Israel’s aggressiveness. Ambassador Michael Hadow, a British expert on Israel and the Middle East didn’t believe that war was inevitable. [12] Yet his advice, as well as negotiation possibilities were ignored. He sent a telegram to the British Foreign Office, “It looks as if the Israelis started it. We have been led up the garden path.” [13] Abba Eban, Israel’s Foreign Minister, told U.S. Ambassador Walworth Barbour that his government was going to protest Egypt’s actions to the U.N. Security Council. [14] Eban, along with other dignitaries, misled the entire world but never offered any apologies for his deception about Egypt initiating the war. The Western media characterized Israel as a vulnerable country threatened with extinction by its Arab neighbors. Rather than a war of land seizure, it was portrayed as a defensive war of survival. However, Israel kept the land her military grabbed. [15]
Of course it was all over the news and millions of Americans believed that the Arabs had started the war and attacked the poor defenseless state of Israel, an act that could have erupted into World War III. Although both parties, the Arabs and the Jews had participated in the warfare, the Israelis were the only people who had immediate access to President Johnson any time they wanted. Conversely, the Arabs were silenced by their inaccessibility to the White House and the U.S. media. [16]
Yitzhak Rabin, former Chief of Staff and then Ambassador to the United States, said, “I do not believe that Nasser wanted war…The two divisions he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.” Rabin recognized that any country with good intelligence, like Israel, could ascertain that Egypt had no plans to wage war against Israel. The CIA, before the war, embraced Israel’s views about Egypt’s intentions. Israel would have won any war, a veritable turkey shoot, in a week. [17] Further, Israeli intelligence had broken the Arab codes as soon as the fighting started. The Israelis also had the ability to block and alter all communications between King Hussein in Cairo and Egypt’s military. Israel, with military and tactical superiority, altered the communications to give the Arabs the impression that they were winning when in fact they were being ambushed and summarily slaughtered. [18]
Israel had air supremacy immediately after their surprise attack on Egypt. Within hours, Israeli jets pummeled twenty-five air bases from Damascus, in Syria to Luxor. They used machine guns, mortar fire, tanks and air power in their assault against the Jordanian section of Jerusalem and the Jordan River’s west bank. Israeli tanks and auxiliary personnel transporters assaulted the Sinai moving towards the Suez Canal. They transformed the area into a “massive killing field” as Egyptian deaths, according to one Israeli general, amounted to between 7,000 to 10,000 people. His losses were only about 275 soldiers. Indian peacekeeper soldiers, flying the U.N. flag, were also attacked on their way to Gaza. Fourteen peacekeeper soldiers were killed in what one Indian officer called the “deliberate, cold-blooded killing of unarmed U.N. soldiers.” [19]
The Israelis had captured some Egyptians and held them in the town of El Arish. By June 8, the prisoners had become annoyances as the Israelis had no place to house them and insufficient forces to guard them and too few vehicles to move them to regular prison camps. Consequently, the Israelis transformed the town into a “slaughterhouse” by methodically “butchering” their Egyptian prisoners. They lined up sixty unarmed Egyptians with their hands tied behind their backs and, with machine guns, slaughtered them in cold blood. Another group of thirty prisoners were killed nearby. The Israelis directed some Bedouins to bury those victims. In another incident, the number of Egyptian prisoners killed totaled about 150, as witnessed by an Israeli journalist, Gabi Bron. Some prisoners were forced to dig graves for the dead and then they were shot. Aryeh Yitzhaki, an Israeli army historian, and other officers collected testimony from dozens of soldiers who admitted killing Egyptian prisoners. According to Yitzhaki, Israeli soldiers murdered about 1,000 Egyptian prisoners in the Sinai, including about 400 in El Arish. Ariel Sharon was close to El Arish at the time of the incidents. Yitzhaki said that the Israeli leadership, Dayan, Rabin and others knew about the slaughter. [20]
The Liberty, close to El Arish at the time, and loaded with $10.2 million of sensitive equipment eavesdropped on Israel’s Six-Day War with Egypt, then known as the United Arab Republic. The Israelis were aware by 10:55 the morning of June 8 that a clearly-marked U.S. ship was off the coast and unmistakably visible from El Arish. [21] On that day, June 8, 1967, without any warning and apparently without reason, the Israeli Navy and Air Force attacked the ship with torpedoes, rockets, white phosphorous, cannons and armor-piercing bullets. The Israelis used napalm, a flammable liquid or jellied gasoline to turn the Liberty’s deck into a 3,000-degree holocaustic firestorm. Thirty-four Americans were killed and 171 others were wounded, one of which died later from his wounds. [22] Napalm is designed to kill and maim, generate panic and cause confusion. [23]
The first wave of attacks, comprised of as many as eight planes using heat-seeking missiles, destroyed the transformers (miraculously, all except one) which fed the aerial systems. This was a well-planned, premeditated strategy to prevent the USS Liberty from alerting the world of this murderous attack. The surveillance ship was no longer able to listen in to the war or send messages. If that was the objective of the attack, then the goal was met and the attack should have subsided. However, the real objective was to slaughter the crew and send the ship to the bottom. [24] Finally, the planes left only to be followed up by three surface craft which fired torpedoes. One hit below the water line and made a hole which measured 45 feet by 34 by 37. Amazingly, the ship didn’t sink but listed eleven degrees. When the crew inflated the lifeboats, the torpedo boats even destroyed those boats. [25]
The war was over by June 8 and Egypt had lost. The men on the Liberty first assumed that the Arabs, in unmarked planes and ships, were attacking their ship in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel. [26] There were 294 survivors from the premeditated Israeli attack, directed by Moshe Dayan. The remains of five men were never found and body parts were put into sacks for burial. [27]
Vice Admiral William I. Martin, a former World War II test pilot and “Pentagon loyalist,” had assumed command of the Sixth Fleet in April 1967. [28] During Israel’s assault there were several U.S. ships in the area, the aircraft carrier Saratoga commanded by Captain Joseph Tully, the Flagship commanded by Vice Admiral Martin, a Cruiser commanded by Rear Admiral Roger Payne, the USS America, a new aircraft carrier was under the command by Captain Don Engen. Rear Admiral Lawrence Geis was the Sixth Fleet carrier Division Commander. Additionally, there were approximately a dozen escorting destroyer ships. The Saratoga’s Communications Officer received a message from the Liberty, addressed to any or all U.S. ships or stations, “Liberty is under attack by unknown enemy air and surface units. Request Assistance.” [29]
Help was only about 15 to 20 minutes away from the Liberty. Captain Tully notified Vice Admiral Martin and said, “Unless otherwise directed, I plan to launch my Ready Strike Group in support of Liberty.” Martin approved and directed the USS America to launch their Ready Strike Group. However Rear Admiral Geis of the USS America recalled his aircraft which created a dilemma for Captain Tully. Vice Admiral ordered another strike to give aid to the Liberty but it was again recalled by Rear Admiral Geis. [30] [31] According to an independent, unofficial study, the “The White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of USS Liberty by recalling Sixth Fleet military rescue support while the ship was under attack…” [32] McNamara recalled the aircraft that had been launched from the Saratoga within minutes. Certainly, he would not have made such a move without Johnson’s approval. [33]
Secretary McNamara ordered the aircraft recalled a second time. Admiral Geis was told that President Johnson had ordered the aircraft to be returned, “He would not have his allies embarrassed, he didn’t care who was killed or what was done to the ship.” [34] According to Admiral Geis, President Johnson, known for his ruthlessness and vile profanity told Geis, “I want that goddamn ship going to the bottom. No help — recall the wings.” [35] Tony Hart, a Navy communications technician stationed at the U.S. Navy Base in Morocco in June 1967 reported that McNamara responded, “We are not going to war over a bunch of dead sailors.” [36] If the Liberty had sunk, as Johnson wanted, Egypt would have been blamed. Government officials, including the McCains have maintained absolute silence about the Liberty’s assault.
The attack ended at about 3:15 pm. A while later, Israeli helicopters circled the ship. Some of the crewmembers, not yet realizing that Israel was the perpetrator of the attack, were glad to see their friendly ally. Then one crewmember shouted, “They’ve come to finish us off.” The copters just hovered as the Israeli troops watched without signaling and then soared away as if the attack had finally been called off. The survivors were stunned by what had happened and by the total lack of response from U.S. rescue planes. The ship generated sufficient steam to start moving from the area. There were 851 rocket hits and it was estimated that there were at least fifteen planes that had targeted the USS Liberty. One hit could be rationalized as an accident but not 851. [37]
Captain Ward Boston, the chief Navy attorney for the 1967 U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry, revealed that the clear-cut evidence demonstrated that the ship was clearly marked as an American ship. On October 9, 2003, Captain Boston said, “Admiral Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack…was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew.” Captain Boston stated that Admiral Kidd had, in 1967, concluded that the attack was “a case of mistaken identity” because he was “under direct orders to do so by Defense Secretary McNamara and President Johnson.” [38] At the time, Congress, failing in their check and balances responsibility, opted not to convene a formal investigation of the situation. Israel was not held accountable and no one was punished or reprimanded. [39] The U.S. Navy prohibited its investigators from going to Israel to question Israeli pilots and boat captains. The Navy conducted an eight-day inquiry and issued a top-secret final report. [40]
Prior to the attack, Petty Officer Phil Tourney had determined that there had been at least thirteen over flights by Israeli planes. Two of the over-flights were by planes that had the prominent Star of David plainly visible. One plane got so incredibly close that Tourney waved and smiled at the pilot or co-pilot and he smiled and waved back. [41] The survivors knew that the attack was not the result of an identification error. On the fourth day of the war the men on the USS Liberty who were monitoring radio traffic during the war between Israel and Egypt could see the smoke of the fighting even though the ship was thirteen miles from land within international waters. The militarily superior Israelis were decidedly victorious over Egypt. [42]
Yitzhak Rabin, the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, concluded that Israel was not to blame for the attack on the USS Liberty but said, “In any event, to express our goodwill and humanitarian concern, the Israeli Government paid $13 million in compensation to the families of the Americans killed or wounded in the attack.” [43]
On June 19, 1967, Abba Eban, Israel’s Foreign Minister, delivered a speech to the Special Assembly of the United Nations in which he claimed, “The danger to his country was great.” He said, “The military build-up in Egypt proceeded at an intensive rate. It was designed to enable Egypt to press its war plans against Israel while maintaining its violent adventures elsewhere. In the face of these developments, Israel was forced to devote an increasing part of its resources to self-defense.” Eban claimed he heard the following on a Cairo broadcast on May 25, 1967, “The Arab people is firmly resolved to wipe Israel off the map and restore the honour of the Arabs of Palestine.” Levi Eshkol, Israel’s Prime Minister, in a newspaper article in October 1967, “The Egyptian layout in the Sinai and the general military build-up there testified to a military defensive Egyptian set-up south of Israel.” Ezer Weizman, chief of the operations staff under Rabin, told an Israeli newspaper that there was “no threat of destruction.” He admitted that the attack against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria was intended to allow Israel to “exist according to the scale, spirit and quality she now embodies.” [44] Rabin’s deceptive claims were designed to win the world’s support and ultimately blame the war on Nasser. [45]
Operation Cyanide was the reason that the USS Liberty was sent to the war zone without protection. Yet, thirty years after the attack, there isn’t a single reference to Operation Cyanide despite numerous Freedom of Information Act requests regarding the attack. The Government archives for this period are kept at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, Texas. Among all of the papers about the Liberty there is one dated April 10, 1967 stamped — SECRET — EYES ONLY. That document was “sanitized” in December 1988. It was apparently the minutes from a meeting on April 7, 1967 that included Walt Rostow (National Security Advisor), Ambassador Foy Kohler (Deputy Under Secretary of State), Cyrus Vance (Deputy Secretary of Defense), and Admiral Rufus Taylor (CIA Deputy Chief). [46]
Apparently, Operation Cyanide included an Israeli war against Egypt in order to depose Gamal Abdul Nasser, a purported Soviet puppet. U.S. intelligence and military specialists were sent to Israel months before to plan and prepare for the operation. The operation was an agreement between Johnson and Israel during which the USS Liberty was supposed to be sunk, along with all of her crew. When Israel’s attack failed to sink the ship, the game plan changed which included an apology from Israel and a phony cover story. [47] According to author Peter Hounam, a U.S. intelligence agent claimed that Captain McGonagle was aware of the pretext and the intentions of the U.S. to attack Egypt and had been briefed to anticipate a superficial strafing attack on the USS Liberty. [48] The attack unexpectedly accelerated, perhaps because what the Liberty’s surveillance revealed about Israel’s terrorism against the Egyptians.
Ephraim Evron, the Minister of the Israeli Embassy in Washington in 1967 and an avowed Socialist, served with Ambassador Avraham Harman. Evron, who viewed Johnson as a hero, was frequently invited to Johnson’s Texas ranch. In addition to Evron and Harman, Harry McPherson, Special Counsel in the White House, served as a link between Johnson and the country’s Jewish population and represented their interests. Evron greatly admired Johnson and regarded him as the greatest thing that had ever happened to America for the “social revolution” that Johnson was “going to achieve.” He believed that Johnson, Israel’s best friend, would never do anything that would hurt Israel. Johnson’s affection for Jews and Israel had more to do with their votes and financial support than sentimentality or principles. The very generous U.S. Jewish community, amounting to 5.5 million, supported Johnson’s divisive Vietnam policies. [49]
In the mid 1990s Rabin attempted to achieve peace with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat with the U.S. acting as the mediator. Some of the other Zionists saw this as a hindrance to their plans of expanding Israel’s control of the area for an ultimate “greater Israel.” Consequently, whether acting on his own or as an agent, Yigal Amir, a young law student, shot five bullets into the Prime Minister when he was attending a 1995 peace rally. He later told investigators that he had absolutely no regrets. In the New York Times, dated November 27, 1995, Rabin’s assassin reportedly claimed, “According to Jewish law, the minute a Jew betrays his people and country to the enemy, he must be killed. No one taught me that law. I’ve been studying the Talmud all my life, and I have all the data.” [50]
Senator John McCain, backed by William Kristol in the 2000 presidential race, has always supported Israel. Representative Vin Weber, a pro-Israel member of the CFR, helped found William Kristol’s Empower America. Weber backed McCain in the 2000 and advised McCain during his campaign. Representative Weber sabotaged “an effort to force a congressional investigation of Israel’s terroristic 1967 attack on the U.S.S. Liberty.” [51] Robert S. McNamara later claimed, in his memoirs, that he didn’t know what happened and didn’t “take the time to find out.” The attack on the USS Liberty, part of Operation Cyanide, had to be concealed and all evidence had to be whitewashed. [52]
It took another false flag, 9/11, to get the U.S. embroiled in the Middle East. A 9/11 Commission was convened despite Bush and Cheney’s efforts. But, it took time to gather the right people to staff the commission which predictably failed to reach accurate conclusions because essential evidence was withheld by the government. One member, Bob Kerrey, admitted that 9/11 was a thirty- year conspiracy. [53] Shortly after 9/11, Eckehardt Werthebach, the former president of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Verfassungsschutz said, “the deathly precision” and “the magnitude of planning” behind the attacks would have required “years of planning.” [54] Was 9/11 another false flag, with blame again placed on the Arabs, to compensate for the flubbed-up false flag on June 8, 1967? And if that is the case, did the planning begin shortly after the first failure? Benjamin Netanyahu, the day after the horrific event, said that the 9/11 terror attacks were good for Israel. [55] The five Israelis who were in the U.S. prior to 9/11 and were caught photographing the event admitted, “Our purpose was to document the event.” [56]
© Deanna Spingola
Shot in the Back
By DAVE LINDORFF| June 7, 2010
You want to know why we need independent journalism, and why those of you who are reading this article need to support the publication in which it is appearing and the article in which it originally appeared? Because if you rely for your news on the US corporate media, whether ad-supported or underwriter-supported, you won’t learn that Furkan Dogan, the 19-year-old American citizen slain by Israeli commandos in the raid on the Gaza-bound flotilla May 31, was shot in the back and in the back of the head, as well as multiple times in the face.
This is the conclusion of the autopsy conducted by the Turkish Council of Forensic Medicine, which also did autopsies on the eight other Turkish citizens killed in the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara ferry and five other smaller boats in the so-called Freedom Flotilla. Of the other eight dead, the medical examiners found that five had been shot in the back, or in the back of the head.
This critically important information has not appeared in US news reports. Some American news organizations have left out the autopsy information entirely from their reports as of Saturday. CNN, in its report on Friday, did note that five of the nine were shot in the head, and at close range, but the all-important fact that most of the victims were shot from behind was left out. ABC had the same information on Thursday, again without mentioning the shots from behind. In its article on Friday, the NY Times had yet to even name Dogan, the American victim, much less mention the bullets that hit him or how he was shot.
And yet, if you’re trying to establish what happened on that ship, the direction of the firing, not just the number of bullets, or the distance from which they were fired, is crucial.
I had some experience with this as a reporter in Los Angeles, back in the 1970s. There was a story that ran in all the local papers, including the LA Times, and my paper, the LA Daily News, about a 14-year-old kid killed by police while he was burglarizing an empty house in the San Fernando Valley. All the papers reported the police story that he had been shot and killed when police entered the house on a call of a burglary, and he “turned and appeared to be carrying a gun” (it turned out to be some camera equipment he was trying to cart off).
On a hunch, I decided to look more into the story, and as my beat was county government, I went to visit the coroner’s office. There I was shown, at my request, the drawings and report on the boy’s autopsy. What I discovered was that all the police bullets entered the boy’s back. He was shot while fleeing the police, not while turning to face them.
If you’re a real reporter, not a stenographer to power, you’ve got to ask. A reporter from the Guardian did ask. US reporters did not ask. Or if they did ask, they didn’t put the answer in their reports. Or if they did put the answer in their reports, editors removed the answer. And so far, no reporter has come forward to protest this news blackout, even anonymously.
In this current case of the Israeli commando assault on the Gaza aid flotilla, if victims were shot in the back or in the back of the head, then one is left really with only two possible conclusions: either the shooters, who were the Israeli commandos (according to Israel, no Israeli soldiers were themselves shot, plus all the recovered bullets were 9 mm, the type of shells in the Israeli weapons, making it clear who had the guns), fired at people who were fleeing from them, or alternatively they shot people from the front, and later executed them with shots to the back of the head, which is maybe even worse (certainly a war crime).
There aren’t many other possible explanations, and either way we’re talking about criminal behavior on the high seas in what many are calling an act of piracy, or else an act of war against a NATO nation.
I suppose if only one of the nine victims had exhibited a rear head wound, one might at least theorize a scenario in which he might have spun around upon being shot in the face, and the commando, firing rapidly, might have gotten off one unneeded extra round that caught the victim from the rear. But for that to happen five times requires a tremendous suspension of disbelief.
So much for the Israeli government propaganda about its poor and unprepared commandos being surprised and set upon by vicious “terrorists” on the boat, armed with kitchen knives, sticks and metal rods, when they were anticipating nothing but peaceful resistance. (This absurd story line was contradicted by Israel’s other story line, that it considered the organizer of the flotilla, the Turkish IHH charity, to be linked to Hamas and Hezbollah, and that it “knew” that Palestinian terrorists had insinuated themselves among the boat’s activists–a claim which, if true, means the commandos would have been, and surely were, well-armed and prepared for a truly violent reception.)
In any event, what the autopsies reveal is a massacre, with commandos deliberately murdering activists on the boats–either directly, or after initially wounding them.
What they also reveal is the shameless pro-Israel bias of the US media, which has simply decided that facts uncomfortable to Israel and its US government backer are not news that’s “fit to print.”
You can read about the autopsies in the U.K. Guardian newspaper, or in Switzerland (SwissInfo) or in Australia (the Melbourne Age), and you can even read it in a Reuters report (which is a news service that most American news organizations subscribe to, but which they actually show their readers only selectively), but you cannot read it or hear about it in the mainstream US media, where most Americans unfortunately still turn for their information.
That is unacceptable.
Israel Released Several Faked Photos – How Can They Be Trusted in ANY Investigation?
By EdwardTeller | Fire Dog Lake | June 2, 2010
Proof has surfaced today that many of the so-called “evidence” photographs being distributed by the Israeli government as examples of terror weapons on board the Gaza aid flotilla date back years:
The bulletproof vest photos on the Israeli flickr page are dated February 2006.
The axe photo was taken in 2003.
The pepper spray photos – 2003
The iconic pictures of knives and other weapons on the Saudi flag and other stuff:
Hi. Just to confirm that the EXIF metadata points to this photo being taken in 2006:
barney@benchwood:~$ identify -verbose farm5.static.flickr.com/4047/4662965686_a91f8 bab2e_o_d.jpg | grep Date
exif:DateTime: 2010:06:02 10:38:47
exif:DateTimeDigitized: 2006:02:07 05:52:19
exif:DateTimeOriginal: 2006:02:07 05:52:19
And on and on…..
Absolutely, this is strong evidence that by allowing the Israeli government to be trusted in any aspect of the investigation of these high seas crimes will be foolhardy and negligent.
The most recent evidence we have of how the Israeli government deals with crime scenes where American lives have been put in jeopardy is in the ongoing civil suit brought by Rachel Corrie’s family against the Israeli government. Testimony will resume some time – or not. The Israeli government is trying to stop the trial. But so far, here’s some of what has come out that reflects on the ability of the Israeli government or military to conduct honest investigations:
March 24: Military investigator testifies that head of IDF Southern Command instructed bulldozer operator not to cooperate with investigation.
March 15: Eye Witness Testifies: Israeli Military Investigator Tried to Influence My Statement.
March 14: Autopsy doctor admits to violating court order in Rachel Corrie autopsy.
Essentially, aspects of IDF conduct involving their handling of the death of Corrie clearly violate Israeli law, and call for trial, possible conviction and imprisonment of all officers involved:
But now evidence has emerged in the civil suit that Israel’s then Gaza commander obstructed the military police investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death.
The apparent intervention of Major-General Doron Almog, then head of Israel’s southern command, is documented in testimony taken by Israeli military police from the commander of the bulldozer a day after Ms Corrie was killed.
The handwritten affidavit effectively puts the entire state of Israel on trial. Is it willing to tolerate Maj-Gen Almog’s gross interference in the investigation or will it hold him to the three years’ imprisonment the law accords for such an offence?
In the affidavit, the commander of the D-9 tells military police investigators that he did not see Ms Corrie before she was wounded.
However, Alice Coy, now a nurse in Glasgow, and an ISM volunteer activist who was near Ms Corrie during the incident, said in an affidavit to the court that “to the best of my knowledge the bulldozer driver could see Rachel while pushing earth over her body”.
The D-9 commander, a reservist named Edward Valermov, was in the middle of his testimony when a colonel dispatched by Maj-Gen Almog entered the room and ordered him to stop speaking, according to the document.
The military police investigator wrote: “At 18:12 reserve Colonel Baruch Kirhatu entered the room and informed the witness that he should not convey anything and should not write anything and this at the order of the general of southern command.”
In his testimony before he was stopped, Mr Valermov said that the bulldozers, manned by two people, were ordered by their company commander to continue their work despite the presence of the ISM protesters.
He said that troops in an armoured personnel carrier threw stun grenades, used tear gas and fired shots toward the ground in order to scare the protesters away.
“It didn’t help and therefore we decided to continue the work with all possible delicateness on the orders of the company commander,” he added.
Mr Valermov testified that the protesters nearly touched the bulldozers, making it impossible to advance, but that after the company commander’s order “we started moving with the D-9, we continued laying bare the area from all of the things that were there.
“It was only when we moved the D-9 backwards that I saw her. The woman was lying in a place where the instrument had not reached. As soon as we saw the harmed woman we returned to the central corridor, stood and waited for orders.”
Mr Valermov’s last statement before Maj-Gen Almog’s interdiction was, “my job was to guide. The driver cannot guide himself because his field of vision is not large.”
In a phone interview from Olympia, Washington, Rachel’s father Craig Corrie termed Maj-Gen Almog’s intervention in Mr Valermov’s testimony “outrageous”.
Maj-Gen Almog has angrily denied halting Mr Valermov’s testimony.
Moshe Negbi, legal commentator for the state-run Voice of Israel radio, said of Maj-Gen Almog’s interdiction: “If a commander prevents a witness from testifying than it is disruption of an investigation, a criminal offence whose penalty is three years’ imprisonment.”
By deciding Maj-Gen Almog’s fate, Israel will be deciding if it is a state of law or a state of the generals – past and present.
Anyone who thinks the officers involved in the Corrie coverup will be held accountable is a fool. Anyone who thinks that the Israeli government will conduct an impartial investigation of Sunday morning’s tragedy is even more foolish, especially in light of mounting evidence that the Israelis are already disseminating totally false images as examples of some sort of forensic evidence.
It is time to put pressure on our government to demand the truth, rather than accept criminally motivated bullshit and lies.
Israel thumbs nose at world anger
Press TV – June 6, 2010
Israel has triggered a new tide of global outrage after it started circulating a video that pokes fun at the Freedom Flotilla activists, recently attacked by armed Israeli commandos.
While world countries and international organizations are up in arms over a deadly Israeli attack on a ship carrying aid for Gazans, Tel Aviv continues to refuse to show any remorse for its violent actions.
In a move that further added insult to injury, the Israeli Press Office (GPO) distributed a link to a highly offensive musical video, dubbed “We Con the World”, which was put together by a former member of the Israeli military, Caroline Glick.
Set to the tune of the 1985 hit, “We are the World”, the video shows over a dozen Arab lookalikes sporting traditional clothes and singing satirical verses, such as “There’s no people dying, so the best that we can do is create the biggest bluff of all.”
The move raised a storm of protest across the globe, which was instantly shrugged off by Glick, who described the video as “an important Israeli contribution to the discussion of recent events.”
Glick, who now serves as a columnist for an Israeli daily, said she hoped the video would be distributed “far and wide.”
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev, unabashed by the tidal wave of world condemnation, also brushed aside criticism over the video link, saying he actually thought it was “funny.”
“I called my kids in to watch it because I thought it was funny,” he said, adding that he first noticed the video on the New York Times website.
“It is what Israelis feel … The GPO distributes non-government items, things that we think that show our side of the story,” Regev said.
The new move by Israel comes as twenty-eight children lost their fathers as a result of the Israeli attack on the Freedom Flotilla aid convoy.
Nine people died on May 31 when Israeli soldiers opened fire on the Turkish vessel M.V. Mavi Marmara as it attempted to transport humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip.
Tories ready to reopen Dr David Kelly suicide inquiry
By James Slack and Miles Goslett | Daily Mail | 5th June 2010
The investigation into the death of weapons inspector David Kelly is likely to be reopened, it has emerged.
The case has ‘concerned’ Attorney General Dominic Grieve and – as the highest ranking law officer in England – he is considering an inquiry to review the suicide finding, Whitehall sources say.
At the same time, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke is considering a request from campaigning doctors to release medical files relating to the death.
Lord Hutton, whose inquiry into the death was denounced as a whitewash, has indicated the papers should be kept secret for 70 years.
Medical experts have repeatedly questioned whether Dr Kelly could have taken his own life in the circumstances described by Lord Hutton.
The re-opening of the case is understood to have the backing of several other Government members, including Transport minister Norman Baker, who believes Dr Kelly was murdered.
Dr Kelly’s body was found in woods close to his Oxfordshire home seven years ago next month. Although a coroner’s inquest was set up to examine the 59-year-old’s death, it was suspended.
In its place the Government established the Hutton Inquiry. Unlike a coroner’s inquest it had no statutory powers and did not require witnesses to give evidence under oath.
Hutton concluded that Dr Kelly killed himself by cutting his left wrist with a blunt gardening knife after he was named as the source of a BBC news report questioning the Blair government’s grounds for invading Iraq.
But the Hutton Report, published in January 2004, was dismissed by experts as a whitewash for clearing the Government of any blame, despite evidence it had leaked Dr Kelly’s name to smear him.
From the time Dr Kelly’s body was found, on 18 July 2003, questions have been raised about the nature of his death. A group of leading doctors who are campaigning for a coroner’s inquest to be held spent a year compiling their own medical report.
It disputes that Dr Kelly, a Ministry of Defence employee and the world’s leading weapons inspector, could have died from haemorrhage, as Hutton concluded.
The doctors said it was not possible he would have died by severing the ulnar artery in his left wrist, as Hutton thought, because it is so small and difficult to access.
It also emerged after the Hutton Inquiry that no fingerprints were found on the knife Dr Kelly is alleged to have used, and that he was not wearing gloves when his body was found.
In January, it came to light that Lord Hutton secretly classified vital evidence relating to Dr Kelly’s death, including all medical and scientific records, the post-mortem report and photographs, for 70 years – until 2073.
This information was not included in the Hutton Report. Mr Grieve’s willingness to re-examine how Dr Kelly died comes three months after he wrote to Michael Powers QC, who has been working with the doctors to secure an inquest.
In the letter Mr Grieve said: ‘I am aware of the work of the doctors’ group on challenging Lord Hutton’s findings.
‘They have made an impressive and cogent case.’
A source confirmed his position has not changed since he entered the Government and he is exploring a way to reopen the inquiry.
As Attorney General he would be the final arbiter in any decision to apply to the High Court for a full inquest.
In January, the doctors applied to the Ministry of Justice to see Dr Kelly’s post-mortem report and records. So far the MoJ has not released them.
Mr Baker told the Daily Mail: ‘It’s astonishing that such a high profile death has not yet been subject to a proper inquest. If the Attorney General is seeking to correct this I welcome it.’
70 years of secrecy
Lord Hutton has been criticised for ordering that medical records relating to the death of Dr David Kelly should be kept secret for 70 years.
A 30-year ban was placed on ‘records provided which were not produced in evidence’. This is thought to refer to witness statements given to the inquiry which were not disclosed at the time.
But Lord Hutton ordered all medical reports – including the post-mortem examination findings by pathologist Dr Nicholas Hunt and photographs of Dr Kelly’s body – to remain classified information for the seven decades. This usually only applies in cases of murder.
The normal rules on post-mortem examinations allow close relatives and ‘properly interested persons’ to apply to see a copy of the report. They can also ‘inspect’ other documents. The precise legal basis for Lord Hutton’s order has puzzled experts.
The most likely source is a rule which states that medical reports and post-mortem reports can be classified by the Government until the deceased’s youngest child is aged 100.
Dr Kelly’s youngest daughters were 30 when he died. Classifying the papers for 70 years would take them to the age of 100.
The Real Motive Behind the Gaza Flotilla Attack
Sabotaging Peace
By RANNIE AMIRI | June 4 – 6, 2010
Worldwide outrage and condemnation of Israel’s brazen, unprovoked attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which killed at least nine activists and injured dozens, was predictable and justified. Many remained puzzled, though, as to why Israel thought it necessary to send in elite, rappelling commandos to confront an unarmed civilian flotilla carrying 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid to the beleaguered territory. The six-ship convoy was co-sponsored by a Turkish humanitarian organization and sailed under Turkey’s flag when it was raided in international waters.
The consensus was that Israel was “sending a message.” Anyone who dared challenge its naval blockade and siege of Gaza would meet a similar fate.
This is a correct yet superficial analysis. The real motive behind the Israeli assault is far more sinister: to deliberately undermine (if not entirely abort) consequential, substantive peace talks with the Palestinians and Syrians, and repay the Turks for negotiating a nuclear fuel-swap deal with Iran (which significantly set back Israel’s case for military intervention).
In essence, it was done to sabotage peace.
“We have to set up a dynamic state bent upon expansion,” David Ben Gurion famously stated. And peace, stability and diplomacy are obstacles to Zionism’s tenets of land acquisition and subjugation of indigenous peoples.
There have been recent calls to advance the indirect, United States-mediated proximity talks taking place between the Israeli government and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. This now seems unlikely.
The opening sentence of a May 31 Associated Press report inferred similarly:
“Israel’s bloody, bungled takeover of a Gaza-bound Turkish aid vessel is complicating U.S.-led Mideast peace efforts, deepening Israel’s international isolation …”
That was exactly the intent. Israel can easily wither “international isolation” to the degree the U.S. protects it from meaningful sanction. Israel actually covets isolation; it permits it to operate in “nothing to lose” mode. Expropriation of Palestinian land accelerates and reckless behavior goes unchecked.
Additionally, the attack effectively severs relations with Turkey. Israel wants no part of a non-military solution to the Iranian nuclear issue like the one just brokered by Turkey and Brazil. Turkey’s role in mediating between Syria and Israel, for all the perfunctory plaudits the latter gave it, was actually unwelcome and is now off the table as well.
It would not be the first time Israel deliberately provoked a crisis at the expense of civilian lives to further its expansionist agenda, justify war, or use as a campaign issue:
- Six weeks before Israel’s 1996 elections, Prime Minister Shimon Peres launched operation “Grapes of Wrath,” a two-week military blitz in Lebanon conducted in the midst of a two-decade occupation of the south. During it, the Israelis massacred 106 civilians that had sought shelter at a United Nations compound in Qana.
- In September 2000, four months before his election, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (accompanied by 1,000 riot police), paraded through the Haram al-Sharif compound in Jerusalem, which includes al-Aqsa mosque—the third holiest site in Islam—leading to the Second Intifada.
The United Nations Human Rights Commission, in a resolution titled “Grave and massive violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people by Israel,” condemned “the provocative visit to Al-Haram al-Sharif on 28 September 2000 by Ariel Sharon, the Likud party leader, which triggered the tragic events that followed in occupied East Jerusalem and the other occupied Palestinian territories, resulting in a high number of deaths and injuries among Palestinian civilians.”
Sharon then campaigned on putting down the intifada he instigated.
- 1,500 Lebanese were killed, one million displaced, and the country’s civil infrastructure decimated during Israel’s failed bid to destroy Hezbollah in the July 2006 war. The conflict started after two Israeli commandos were caught snooping around the Lebanese border town of Aitaa al-Chaab. After years of repeated, illegal violations of Lebanese airspace failed to provoke a response, the soldiers’ capture was the pretense needed to initiate the disproportionate Israeli onslaught.
- The flimsy rationale upon which the 2008-2009 Gaza invasion was based was previously discussed.
The latest Israeli operation against 700 activists delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza is only the latest in a series of criminal endeavors meant to quash any hope for peace, negotiation or conflict resolution between Israel, its neighbors and the Palestinians.
Mission accomplished.
Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator. He may be reached at: rbamiri [at] yahoo [dot] com.
Gaza occupation and siege are illegal
George Bisharat, The Electronic Intifada, 5 June 2010
Israel’s deadly attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was flagrantly illegal. The Flotilla, carefully searched for arms before disembarkation, enjoyed the right of free navigation in international waters, and Israel had no legal justification to interrupt its peaceful mission.
Flotilla passengers were entitled to defend themselves against Israel’s forcible boarding of the Mavi Marmara, whether or not Israeli commandos fired immediately on landing on the ship’s deck, as the passengers maintain. Dropping 100 armed soldiers on a ship from the sky is not a peaceful maneuver. Nor can Israeli armed commandos claim self-defense, any more than a purse snatcher facing a victim who elects to fight back. Hence, Israel is culpable for the killings that followed.
Israel has claimed that it is in “armed conflict” with the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip and that its actions on the high seas to enforce the blockade of the Gaza Strip are therefore permissible. That claim is wrong.
In fact, under customary international law that Israel accepts as binding, Israel continues to occupy the Gaza Strip, despite the withdrawal of its ground troops and settlers from that region in 2005. A territory is “occupied” when foreign forces exercise “effective control” over it, whether accomplished through the continuous presence of ground troops or not.
Israel patrols the territorial waters and airspace of the Gaza Strip, regulates Gaza’s land borders, restricts internal movements by excluding Gazans from a “buffer zone” that includes 46 percent of the Strip’s agricultural land, and controls the Gaza Strip’s supplies of electricity, heating oil, and petrol. Together these factors amount to remote but “effective control.” Thus, the Gaza Strip remains occupied, as the United Nations, the US government and the International Committee of the Red Cross have all recognized.
Israel has authority to halt arms imports into the Gaza Strip. But it also owes a general duty of protection to civilians under its control, and has specific duties to allow them access to adequate food and medical supplies, and to maintain public health standards — duties it has deliberately violated in imposing the siege on Gaza. Currently 77.2 percent of Gaza Palestinians either face or are vulnerable to hunger; of these, 65 percent are children younger than 18. According to UNICEF, 10 percent of Gaza children show signs of stunting, while the World Health Organization maintains that another 10 percent face chronic malnutrition.
Moreover, collective punishment is specifically barred under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Israeli officials have repeatedly stated that the objective of the blockade is to weaken the Gaza economy and undermine support for Hamas. That is a political, not a military, objective, and it is impermissible under international law to target innocent civilians to achieve nonmilitary goals.
Actions taken to enforce an illegal siege cannot themselves be legal. Israel’s blockade violates the human rights of Gaza Palestinians and must be brought to an end.
Israel’s attack on the Freedom Flotilla is the logical consequence of years of Israeli impunity from international law — abetted by the diplomatic cover provided it by the US government. At some point, genuine friends of both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs must impress on Israel that its serial lawlessness is good for no one, multiplying resentment and pain, and pushing the prospects of regional peace into a more distant future.
George Bisharat is a professor at Hastings College of the Law and writes frequently about law and politics in the Middle East. This article originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle
Eyewitnesses, both activists and reporters, contradict Israeli account
By Steve Hynd | June 4, 2010
As Israel releases detained activists and journalists after the assault on the Gaza relief flotilla, they are beginning to tell their version of events. The story has so far been dominated by Israeli offical releases and “hasbara” so it’s important that the voices of these witnesses are heard by the international community. So far, though, these eyewitness accounts aren’t penetrating the U.S. media. If they did, more Americans would doubtless agree with the New York Times editorial calling for a “impartial international investigation” – not a self-serving one run by Israel.
Most importantly, every witness who has so far spoken out contradicts the Israeli account of some kind of self-defense, saying that the Israelis first attacked in boats and that they had already opened fire on the flotilla before commandos began descending from helicopters. They also agree that several people were shot from behind or above, that the Israeli attackers didn’t immediately allow treatment of convoy wounded and that weapons ripped from the hands of commandos were stripped of their ammunition and thrown overboard.
Perhaps the best eyewitness account to begin with is that of Paul McGeough, twice named Australia’s journalist of the year. He writes:
The Israeli attack was timed for dawn prayers – when a good number of the men aboard the Mavi Marmara were praying on the aft deck of the big Turkish passenger ferry, as it motored steadily through international waters in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
…Suddenly sound bombs and tear gas were exploding on the main aft deck, where prayers were held five times a day. The life-jacketed passengers on the rails at first seemed oblivious as those behind them donned the few gas masks that were on board and others, wearing asbestos gloves, sought to grab the devices and hurl them back at the Israeli commandos before they exploded.
In failing to get their grappling irons to hold on the rails of the five-deck ferry, the commandos in their Zodiac-style assault craft continued to be an irritant, or perhaps a decoy because at this point the Israelis opted for a critical change of plan – if they could not come up from the water, they would have to drop from the sky.
On hearing the machines, activists on the upper decks rushed to the top level of the ship – grabbing the commandos even before they landed, disarming them; beating them until, according to some who were present, leaders demanded the Israelis not be harmed; but in one case, one of the Israelis was hurled from one deck of the ship to the next.
…There were conflicting accounts of the first commando landing – some activists said he was injured and was being carried inside the ship for treatment by the flotilla doctors. However, a Serbian cameraman, Srojan Stojiljkovic, said some of the activists had armed themselves with lengths of chain and metal posts that had served as cordons around the ship’s lifeboats.
“Some of the people caught the first commando before he touched the deck – a few started to hit him, but a lot of people moved in to shelter him with their bodies,” the cameraman said. “Another soldier with a bleeding nose was brought in … a few people threw punches, but not as many as I would have expected.”
Matthias Gardel, a leader of the Swedish Palestinian support group, confirmed the soldiers had been beaten, but insisted those involved were unarmed and in keeping with the ship’s non-violent charter, the soldiers’ weapons were thrown overboard.
McGeough also notes that at least two people were shot from behind while treating wounded, another was shot from above.
The Turkish actor Sinan Albayrak said he had witnessed one of the most senior of the Turkish activists ordering passengers to cease beating two of the Israeli soldiers. Later, he saw a Turkish photographer who had been shot in the back of the head; while he and others had been attempting to assist another injured activist, “Israeli troops had opened fire on them . . . we ran away from the injured man”.
The dead include a Turkish journalist, Chetin Genghis, whose head wounds suggested he had been shot from above – possibly from one of the helicopters. After witnessing his dying moments, his colleague Hisham Goruney said:”I want to forget – I still don’t believe that I saw it.”
Another of the dead was said to be an Indonesian cameraman, Sura Fachrizaz, shot in the chest. Also among the dead was a Malaysian doctor who, activists said, was shot while treating the wounded.
All of these elements are confirmed by other witness accounts. Canadian Farooq Burney, mentioned byJohn earlier, is head of an organisation that was bringing a consignment of laptops into Gaza to help educate children there.
Speaking from Istanbul, where he arrived after being released from Israeli detention, Burney said the Israeli military began firing objects at the ship before the boarding party landed.
“There were a lot of gunshot noises that could clearly be heard. Whether they were rubber bullets, whether they were live ammo, there was a lot of gunfire coming from the helicopter, coming from the boats (alongside the Mavi Marmara.)”
Burnley also recounted seeing his first casualty.
Canadian Farooq Burney (37) described how an elderly activist died after being shot in the chest. “We couldn’t see where he was hit so we opened up his lifejacket and we could clearly see that he was hit in the chest, he was losing a lot of blood,” Mr Burney said.
“It was on. . . the right, just close to his chest and there was blood coming out from there. He passed away,” he added.
Mr Burney also said activists who snatched pistols from the commandos removed the bullets and threw them into the sea, contradicting Israeli assertions that the weapons were used against the boarding party.
Gulf News reporter Abbas Al Lawati wrote for his own paper:
As I saw angry activists drag one of the Israeli soldiers down the stairs and punch him, I lost my journalistic objectivity and found myself urging the activist to stop hitting the soldier.
Seeing the anger in the activist’s eyes, I thought that he would kill him. I had images of the wars that Israel has waged over its captive soldiers, and the number of people that have died as a result of them. My thought was that if an Israeli soldier was to die on that ship, the entire flotilla would be bombed until it sank.
That was, of course, before I saw the bloodshed. The activists’ anger was suddenly put in context when I saw a number of people carrying a dying man down the stairs. His face was unrecognisable, covered in blood. He was apparently one of the first to go down, after an Israeli gun targeted the centre of his forehead from a helicopter, spilling his brains into the hands of another activist who was trying to look after him.
Lawati also describes meeting one of the Israeli commandos disarmed by the ship’s passengers.
I took a few steps down to film the other captive soldier, struggling to keep my balance with so much blood under my feet. He stood in a corner being attended by two medics onboard, in shock, crying.
It was surreal. I knew that that soldier could destroy the entire flotilla, and thought I would get some close up footage of him. I took my camera as close as possible to his face and asked his name twice. He was too traumatised to answer. I could see fear of death in his eyes. He was petrified. Then I heard women screaming. “They are coming!”
New Zealand activist Nicola Enchmarch spoke to the NZ Herald:
She said she saw an activist shot on the deck after the forces stormed the ship, part of a flotilla attempting to breach a blockade to deliver aid to Gaza.
“He was shot in the head – probably live ammunition because the back of his head, the injury was severe,” she told the BBC.
“He died there and we had to move because it was just getting crazy, there was a lot of gunfire coming from all directions.”
Her group moved down from the deck to shelter inside and escape the danger. On the way she saw a man shot in the back, who survived.
She said the activists were acting defensively while the Israeli forces were menacing and aggressive. They set off sound bombs and released what was possibly tear gas.
While Irishman Dr. Fintan Lane spoke of his experience on one of the flotilla’s smaller boats.
Dr Lane said he was assaulted: “When they boarded our boat, we resisted entirely peacefully. I sat on the floor and tried to reason with them, but the Israeli commandos physically attacked us,” he said.
“Fiachra [Ó Luain, from Boston USA] was dragged around the ground and I had a gun pointed in my face by a screaming commando. His mania was so intense that I genuinely feared for my life.”
Haneen Zuabi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset who has recieved death threats for her participation in the relief convoy, told reporters:
“Israel wanted many deaths to terrorise us and to send a message that no future aid convoys should try to break the siege of Gaza,” she told journalists this week.
Zuabi said that naval boats surrounded the Mavi Marmara and fired on it before soldiers abseiled aboard from a helicopter. She went below to the ship’s hold and said that, within minutes, two dead passengers were brought inside, followed by two more who had been seriously wounded.
soldiers refused her requests for medical assistance for the injured passengers, who died shortly after.
Zuabi – known in Israel as an articulate Hebrew speaker – said that soldiers specifically asked her to translatetheir instructions. At first, she refused. “I shouted back, ‘Why didn’t you ask for my help before you murdered these people?'”
Al Jazeera journalist Jamal ElShayyal taped his account for his own station. Juan Cole writes:
he asserted that the Israelis opened fire as they were boarding the vessel, and that one passenger took a bullet through the top of his head. Many passengers have now confirmed that they were fired on even before the commandos had boots on the deck. Presumably it is this suppressive fire that killed or wounded some passengers and which provoked an angry reaction and an attack on the commandos.
You can watch ElShayyal’s whole account here.
Robert Mackay excerpts some of his testimony for the NYT’s The Lede blog:
It was evident there was definitely fire from the air, because one of the people who was killed was clearly shot from above — he was shot, the bullet targeted him at the top of his head. There was also fire coming from the sea as well. Most of the fire initially from the sea was tear gas canisters, sound grenades, but then it became live fire. After I finished filing that last report and I was going down below deck one of the passengers who was on the side of the deck holding a water hose — trying to hose off, if you will, the advancing Israeli navy — was shot in his arm by soldiers in the boats below. […]
There is no doubt from what I saw that live ammunition was fired before any Israeli soldier was on deck. What I saw, the sequence of events that took place, there was a pool camera, so reporters took it in turns to file, so after I had done my first file, I turned around to see what was going on and there were several shots fired. In fact, one of the helicopters at the front of the ship, you could almost see the soldiers pointing their guns down through some sort of hole or compartment at the bottom side of the helicopter and firing almost indiscriminately without even looking where they were firing. And those bullets were definitely live bullets.
And apparently the violence didn’t stop after the Israelis had taken control. Irish-American peace campaigner Ken O’Keefe, a former US Marine, says he’s been beaten up twice while in Israeli custody. The second beating was so severe that he is still in an Israeli hospital and is now on hunger strike.
There’s a remarkable consistency among eyewitness accounts that Israel supporters will doubtless put down to complicity and others will ascribe to telling the truth. What’s certain is that these accounts are so very different from the official Israeli line that we have to question Israel’s credibility as an honest reporter of events as much as we question the eyewitnesses – perhaps even more so, since many of these witnesses are reporters with reputations for impartial accuracy rather than activists or soldiers following orders.
Robert Mackay writes:
The way these accounts diverge from that of Israel’s military would seem to make an independent investigation into the events crucial. That is particularly true since, as The Lede noted on Wednesday, Israel is apparently in possession of much more video evidence than it has yet released.
In a post making the case that Israel should not conduct that inquiry, Noam Sheizaf, an Israeli journalist and blogger, pointed out that journalists in the flotilla seem to have left Israeli custody without any of the video they shot during the raid that might bolster their accounts.
Israel has confiscated some of the most important material for the investigation, namely the films, audio and photos taken by the passengers [and] journalists on board and the Mavi Marmara’s security cameras. Since yesterday, Israel has been editing these films and using them for its own PR campaign. In other words, Israel has already confiscated most of the evidence, held it from the world and tampered with it. No court in the world would [trust] it to be the one examining it.
The Obama administration and pro-Israel members of Congress are busy saying that Israel is competent and can be trusted to investigate its own actions. Everything we’re hearing from those released says that simply isn’t the case.
Update: The Palestinian Monitor spoke to Italian activist Manolo Luppichini, who told them he was beaten in custody by his israeli captors because “I asked to call my family and my embassy”. Luppichini also says he spoke to Australian Jennie Campbell, one of the nurses present on the Mavi Marama. She told him that she had seen and counted 19 bodies, not the 9 being reported by the media.
Also, check out Gaza Flotilla Survivors, which is aggregating accounts by eyewitnesses.
Update 2: British journalist Hassan Ghani told BBC Radio Scotland:
“They began by throwing stun grenades on to the deck of the ship when people were in the middle of morning prayers.
“Then they began using rubber bullets, they tried to come aboard the ship from the side. People repelled the commandos with water cannons they had set up on the side of the ship.
“Then the Israelis used helicopters to drop people onto roof and there was scuffles on the roof.
“The Israeli solders had already opened fire on the ship, so people were grabbing anything they could to stop the attack in international waters.”
Eyewitness reports are very consistent and at odds with the Israeli official line.
Israel Derangement Syndrome
By Andrew Sullivan | The Atlantic Monthly | 04 June 2010
To read Charles Krauthammer today is to enter a twilight zone of an alternate reality. A country permanently occupying and colonizing a neighboring region, and treating its original inhabitants as dangerous interlopers, is the victim. An elite commando unit attacking a ship carrying toys and wheelchairs in the hours before dawn are those we should feel pity for. A country with 150 nuclear warheads and the strongest military in its region, the victor in every conventional war it has always fought, is somehow also always fighting for its very existence. A country backed by the sole superpower, supplied with aid by huge majorities in the US Congress, is facing extinction. Self-defense requires not civilly disabling and inspecting the cargo of an unarmed ship but raiding it at dawn and killing nine and injuring dozens. Basic human revulsion at a military that can kill over a thousand people – including scores of women and children in a trapped, impoverished enclave – can only be a function of anti-Semitism. A territory that is being systematically populated with Israelis in illegal settlements in contravention of the Geneva Conventions is merely a “buffer zone”. You need to colonize buffer zones?
Invasion and occupation of neighboring countries is “forward defense”. And asking that a two-state solution be moved forward by freezing illegal settlement construction and allowing a blockade that, while interdicting arms, doesn’t seek to kill civilians and restrict the import of basic necessities is to deprive a country with 150 nuclear warheads of any legitimate form of self-defense.
This is a form of derangement, or of such a passionate commitment to a foreign country that any and all normal moral rules or even basic fairness are jettisoned. And you will notice one thing as well: no regret whatsoever for the loss of human life, just as the hideous murder of so many civilians in the Gaza war had to be the responsibility of the victims, not the attackers. There is no sense of the human here; just the tribe.
Something has been wrong here for a very long time, and now it is inescapable. Until the discourse is rescued from the victims of Israel Derangement Syndrome, Israel and America will slowly be drawn into wars they cannot ultimately win, lose every other ally they ever had, and embolden and fortify the very Islamist forces we are seeking to defuse and defeat.
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly
Israel censors news on deadly Flotilla raid
Mel Frykberg, The Electronic Intifada, 4 June 2010
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Freedom Flotilla activists being marched away from a bus at the Ben Gurion International airport. (Mel Frykberg/IPS) |
TEL AVIV (IPS) – Attempts by media to interview some of the hundreds of Freedom Flotilla members, who were being deported from Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport, Wednesday, were thwarted by Israeli authorities.
“No you will not be able to talk to them or interview them,” Shahar Ariel, a deputy-spokesman from Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs told IPS as TV crews and journalists jammed one of the airport’s sidewalks and filmed the dramatic departure.
Foreign media, and some Israeli journalists, have accused Israeli authorities of censoring news and interfering with journalists trying to interview the Freedom Flotilla activists who were trying to deliver humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip when they were attacked by Israeli commandos.
Israeli journalists from the left-leaning daily Haaretz have complained of extreme difficulty in contacting the top brass in political and military echelons willing to give interviews and comment on the debacle.
Furthermore, the Israeli military had imposed a blackout on the names and nationalities of the activists on board the Freedom Flotilla and refused to reveal in which hospitals the wounded were receiving treatment.
Some of the details leaked out, but journalists were forbidden from talking to the wounded in the hospitals with Israeli soldiers stationed in hospital corridors to enforce the blackout.
Reporters Without Borders (RWB) reported that at least 60 of the approximately 700 passengers on board the Freedom Flotilla were journalists and slammed the treatment of the media.
“We point out that the journalists were there to do their job, which was to cover what happened. They should not be confused with the activists,” RWB said.
Some of the reporters on board the boats were assaulted and their equipment confiscated or destroyed. They were amongst the last to be released by the Israeli authorities.
“We tried to race ahead of the commandos so that we could send out pictures of the dead and wounded to the international media,” Huwaida Arraf, the Free Gaza Movement’s chairwoman, told IPS. “But our satellite phones had stopped functioning. The Israelis had scrambled the signals to prevent us communicating with the outside world.”
“It was clear from the beginning that Israel was trying to control the media coverage of the event to present its version of events to the world.”
“As soon as the commandos boarded they confiscated our mobiles, recording and video devices and then started filming instead,” Arraf told IPS.
One of the two Australian journalists on board, from The Sydney Morning Herald, Kate Geraghty, was tazered (with an electric baton). Paul McGeough, her colleague, said that the naval commandos’ pursuit of the boats had felt like “being hunted by hyenas at night.”
The two were denied consular access or legal representation. They had originally wanted to fight their deportation order but their lawyer was denied timely access. When an Israeli court eventually agreed to an urgent hearing it appeared too late as their plane was due to leave.
IPS asked Ariel why the Australian journalists had been denied consular access and legal representation and why so many of the activists had suddenly decided not to fight their deportation after initially vowing to do so.
“We want them out of the country as soon as possible. This is a normal situation, at this point in time, for them not to have consular and legal access as they as they are still under investigation,” Ariel told IPS.
The abuse and beatings of activists apparently happened on boats where no resistance had been offered to the raiding commandos, unlike on the Mavi Marmara where some activists tried to fight back with crude kitchen instruments, resulting in a still disputed number of them dead.
The Israelis had claimed there were firearms on board, but withdrew the allegations after being unable to offer proof.
Arraf disputed the accusations, saying that not only had the boats been thoroughly checked by security at the various ports of departure but the Flotilla organizers had hired independent security experts to verify that the boats were weapons-free.
In a separate incident on Wednesday IPS witnessed two very frightened activists who had arrived at the airport on buses and had been forcibly removed, being cuffed and frog-marched out of the departure terminal towards a minivan.
According to an Israeli police spokesman they had acted in a “provocative” manner.
When this correspondent took pictures of the event, she was verbally abused and physically intimidated by one of the security police escorting the Freedom Flotilla detainees before his colleagues pulled him back.
The police then blocked the entrance of the minibus with their bodies so that other reporters arriving on the scene were unable to take further pictures.
Following the incident reporters were physically prevented by security guards from entering the departure terminal.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and member of Israel’s Knesset (parliament), who was on board one of the six Flotilla boats, was provided with bodyguards after another member tried to physically attack her, forcing other legislators to intervene.
Haaretz reported that Hanin Zoabi, the Palestinian MK, had during a parliamentary discussion, described the Israel navy’s bloody raid on a Turkish-flagged ship as a “pirate military operation.”
She had demanded that ministers explain why the soldiers had been ordered to confiscate reporters’ cameras and why the government had refused to allow the media to publish pictures of the people who were killed on board the ship.
The Irony, It Burns …
By Willis Eschenbach | Watts Up With That? | June 3, 2010
Anthony commented yesterday on the question of atolls and sea level rise here, and I had previously written on the subject in my post “Floating Islands“. However, Anthony referenced a paper which was incorrectly linked by New Scientist. So I thought I’d provide some more information on the actual study, entitled “The dynamic response of reef islands to sea level rise: evidence from multi-decadal analysis of island change in the central pacific”, by Arthur Webb and Paul Kench.
One of the ironies of the new paper involves the atoll of Amatuku in the island nation of Tuvalu. Amatuku became the first poster child of “drowning atolls” due to an article in the July/August 2003 issue of Sierra Magazine, the magazine of the Sierra Club. The article was entitled “High Tide in Tuvalu”, with the sub-title “In the tropical Pacific, climate change threatens to create a real-life Atlantis.” Here’s a recent photo of “Atlantis”:
Figure 1. Photo taken in the South Pacific nation of Tuvalu (8°S, 179°E), showing Amatuku Atoll and the abandoned causeway. PHOTO SOURCE
In the Sierra Magazine article the author described the terrifying effects of “global warming” on Amatuku Atoll, site of the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute:
To explain global warming in stark detail, all Tito Tapungao has to do is show a visitor around the grounds of his school. Dressed in his sailor’s pressed whites, the chief executive officer of the Tuvalu Maritime Training Institute points out a small brick cabin built by missionaries in 1903. Now, a century later, annual high tides rise halfway up the bedposts.
YIKES! Be very afraid. So what is the irony in the new study?
Well, I’ll get to that. But first, a bit of history. The Sierra Magazine article was what impelled me to write my 2004 paper (Word Doc) on Tuvalu. I read that article, and my urban legend detector started ringing like crazy. Consider: the missionaries’ cabin was likely built a metre or so above high tide. Add another half metre for the floor, and a half metre to get “halfway up the bedposts” … no way, I thought, that the sea level has risen two metres in Tuvalu.
Upon further investigation, I found out that the answer was already known, because geologists had studied (pdf) the area. They found the changes in the shape of Amatuku Atoll were a result of changing currents from major alterations made in the reef during World War Two. A channel was cut from the lagoon to Amatuku, and a causeway was constructed between Amatuku and nearby Malitefale Atoll. Fill to make the causeway came from “borrow pits”, holes dug in the reef flats to provide coral rubble for the construction. And some decades after the war, further borrow pits were dug to provide building materials for the Maritime Institute. The swimmers in the Fig. 1 are swimming in one of the old borrow pits. Here’s an aerial view of the changes:
Figure 2. Amatuku and Malitefale Atolls, Tuvalu, South Pacific. Amatuku is less than a kilometre long.
As you can see, the changes in the reef structure were quite extensive. All of these alterations in the reef changed the currents around the two atolls. And of course, as a result, the shape of the atolls changed. This change in shape is to be expected – after all, atolls are just piles of sand and rubble in the middle of a wild ocean. One of the results was the erosion (not from CO2, not from warming, not from sea level rise, but erosion from man-made changes in the reef) of the corner of the atoll where the missionaries’ cabin was located.
Over the years since I published my paper, I’ve taken a lot of heat for my claims. I’ve gotten plenty of irate emails from folks in Tuvalu and around the world, emails castigating me for suggesting that the rising sea levels won’t drown the atolls, emails impugning my ancestry, emails saying we’d soon see thousands of “climate refugees” from Tuvalu, emails proposing that I perform anatomically implausible acts of sexual auto-congress, and mostly emails saying that I was clearly wrong, that it was patently obvious that rising sea levels would inevitably drown the atolls, duh, so there.
OK, enough history. I got a pre-publication copy of the current paper under discussion from one of my secret underground (underwater?) sources, my thanks to WS. The abstract of the paper says (emphasis mine):
Abstract
Low-lying atoll islands are widely perceived to erode in response to measured and future sea level rise. Using historical aerial photography and satellite images this study presents the first quantitative analysis of physical changes in 27 atoll islands in the central Pacific over a 19 to 61 year period. This period of analysis corresponds with instrumental records that show a rate of sea level rise of 2.0 mm.y-1 in the Pacific.
Results show that 86% of islands remained stable (43%) or increased in area (43%) over the timeframe of analysis. Largest decadal rates of increase in island area range between 0.1 to 5.6 hectares. Only 14% of study islands exhibited a net reduction in island area. Despite small net changes in area, islands exhibited larger gross changes. This was expressed as changes in the planform configuration and position of islands on reef platforms. Modes of island change included: ocean shoreline displacement toward the lagoon; lagoon shoreline progradation; and, extension of the ends of elongate islands. Collectively these adjustments represent net lagoonward migration of islands in 65% of cases.
Results contradict existing paradigms of island response and have significant implications for the consideration of island stability under ongoing sea level rise in the central Pacific. First, islands are geomorphologically persistent features on atoll reef platforms and can increase in island area despite sea level change. Second; islands are dynamic landforms that undergo a range of physical adjustments in responses to changing boundary conditions, of which sea level is just one factor. Third, erosion of island shorelines must be reconsidered in the context of physical adjustments of the entire island shoreline as erosion may be balanced by progradation on other sectors of shorelines. Results indicate that the style and magnitude of geomorphic change will vary between islands. Therefore, Island nations must place a high priority on resolving the precise styles and rates of change that will occur over the next century and reconsider the implications for adaption.
Ahhh, vindication is sweet. The authors agreed totally with what I had written in 2004. Rising sea levels don’t destroy atolls, and their shape is always changing. Exactly what I had taken so much heat for saying.
In addition to the Abstract, the Conclusions of the paper are quite interesting. Here are some extracts (emphasis mine):
Conclusions
The future persistence of low-lying reef islands has been the subject of considerable international concern and scientific debate. Current rates of sea level rise are widely believed to have destabilised islands promoting widespread erosion and threatening the existence of atoll nations. This study presents analysis of the physical change in 27 atoll islands located in the central Pacific Ocean over the past 20 to 60 years, a period over which instrumental records indicate an increase in sea level of the order of 2.0 mm y-1.
The results show that island area has remained largely stable or increased over the timeframe of analysis. Forty-three percent of islands increased in area by more than 3% with the largest increases of 30% on Betio (Tarawa atoll) and 28.3% on Funamanu (Funafuti atoll [the main atoll in Tuvalu – w.]). There is no evidence of large scale reduction in island area despite the upward trend in sea level. Consequently, islands have predominantly been persistent or expanded in area on atoll rims for the past 20 to 60 years.
… Results of this study contradict widespread perceptions that all reef islands are eroding in response to recent sea level rise. Importantly, the results suggest that reef islands are geomorphically resilient landforms that thus far have predominantly remained static or grown in area over the last 20 – 60 years. Given this positive trend, reef islands may not disappear from atoll rims and other coral reefs in the near-future as speculated. However, islands will undergo continued geomorphic change. Based on the evidence presented in this study it can be expected that the pace of geomorphic change may increase with future accelerated sea level rise. Results do not suggest that erosion will not occur. Indeed, as found in 15% of the islands in this study, erosion may occur on some islands. Rather, island erosion should be considered as one of a spectrum of geomorphic changes that have been highlighted in this study and which also include: lagoon shoreline progradation; island migration on reef platforms; island expansion and island extension. The specific mode and magnitude of geomorphic change is likely to vary between islands. Therefore, island nations must better understand the pace and diversity of island morphological change and consider the implications of island persistence and morphodynamics for future adaptation.
Couldn’t say it better myself … and oh, yeah, what about the irony?
Well, Amatuku, the poster child of disappearing atolls, the threatened “real-life Atlantis”, home of the disappearing missionaries’ cabin, happened to be one of the atolls considered in the study. The authors found that despite the loss of the missionaries’ cabin, Amatuku increased in area by about 5% over the nineteen year period during which it was studied … ah, the irony, it burns.
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Sam Husseini: The entire US establishment helped lie their way into the Iraq war
By Slava Zilber | American Herald Tribune | October 14, 2019
Sam Husseini is a senior analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, independent journalist and contributor to The Nation and FAIR.
Slava Zilber: Sam, three years ago, you appeared on Talk Nation Radio with David Swanson and spoke about the case of the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. You pointed out that the people involved in the spying on the UN and the people authorizing the Iraq War were not held accountable:
“Virtually everybody who went along with the war, whether it is Kerry or Clinton, of course, the Bush administration themselves has falsified their own records in terms of why, what they did, when they did, why they did it, to the extent that they’ve been scrutinised at all.”
You also address it in a recent article. And recently, Joe Biden has been lying about his position on the Iraq War. How can such an important issue escape meaningful scrutiny? … continue
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