19 Killed As Israel Storms Unarmed Aid Convoy

[Nullifidian]

[Nullifidian]

I've been hearing this song over and over in my head ever since I first read the news.

"What made your cop hurt my unarmed peace worker? I've got to know, yes, I've got to know why!"


Utah Phillips - "I've Got to Know"

[Qingdai]

I'm not surprised they are attacking aid ships with lethal weapons, as they consider dates "comfort food to help the enemy" and I know that a friend of mine bringing in crayons for children had those confiscated.

"Shockingly, Israel blocks fabric, sewing machines, musical instruments, pencils, paper, heaters, and even children's toys."

Read more: Peace Train: Breaking the Gaza seige - Colorado Daily
Coloradodaily.com

[Watser?]

Some fall-out from the bloody raid:

Egypt will open its border with the Gaza Strip to let Palestinians cross, officials said on Tuesday, following a storm of international criticism of Israel's bloody enforcement at sea of its blockade on the enclave.

The decision, urged by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas against whom the embargo has been directed, prompted dozens of people to race to the crossing point in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, although the gates remained closed.

Officials in Egypt and Gaza said the crossing would open on Wednesday until further notice -- a step seen as an attempt by Cairo to deflect criticism of its role in imposing the blockade.

Rafah is the only point on Gaza's borders not controlled by Israel. Cairo, coordinating with Israel, has opened it only sparingly since Hamas seized control of Gaza three years ago.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6502H820100601

More ships are on the way already btw.

[Watser?]

BBC has talked to some of the deported activists, most are still held by Israel.

"This was not an act of self-defence," said Mr Paech, a politician, as he arrived back in Berlin wrapped in a blue blanket.

"Personally I saw two and a half wooden batons that were used... There was really nothing else. We never saw any knives.

"This was an attack in international waters on a peaceful mission... This was a clear act of piracy," he added.

Mr Paech had been a passenger on the Turkish passenger ship Mavi Marmara where most, if not all, of the deaths occurred.

BBC News - Witnesses cast doubt on Israel's convoy raid account

Activist Bayram Kalyon, arriving back in Istanbul, had also been a passenger on the Mavi Marmara.

"The captain... told us 'They are firing randomly, they are breaking the windows and entering inside. So you should get out of here as soon as possible'. That was our last conversation with him."

The Guardian has some others:

Arriving at Istanbul's Ataturk airport with her one-year-old baby, Turkish activist Nilufer Cetin said Israeli troops opened fire before boarding the Turkish-flagged ferry Mavi Marmara, which was the scene of the worst clashes and all the fatalities. Israeli officials have said that the use of armed force began when its boarding party was attacked.

"It was extremely bad and very tough clashes took place. The Mavi Marmara is filled with blood," said Cetin, whose husband is the Mavi Marmara's chief engineer.

She told reporters that she and her child hid in the bathroom of their cabin during the confrontation. "The operation started immediately with firing. First it was warning shots, but when the Mavi Marmara wouldn't stop these warnings turned into an attack," she said.

"There were sound and smoke bombs and later they used gas bombs. Following the bombings they started to come on board from helicopters."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010...counts-gunfire

Michalis Grigoropoulos, who was at the wheel of the Free Mediterranean, said: "We were in international waters. The Israelis acted like pirates, completely out of the normal way that they conduct nautical exercises, and seized our ship. They took us hostage, pointing guns at our heads; they descended from helicopters and fired tear gas and bullets. There was absolutely nothing we could do … Those who tried to resist forming a human ring on the bridge were given electric shocks."

[D. Scarlatti]

Dear Watser?:

Assume u WON'T get straight scoop on Israeli flotilla incident via mainstream media; PLEASE read Krauthammer,Horowitz,et al 2learn other side -- Sarah Palin, Twit

[Watser?]

And here I was thinking the other side would be the side that is not bombarding you with spokesmen or locking up witnesses.

[But]

This incident is stretching Israel's usual outstanding ability to frame, spin and lie to its breaking point. It has transformed the normal level of outrageous bullshit into something of comical proportions. Even the war crimes in Gaza and Lebanon could possibly be justified as some sort of active, disproportionate defense against an attack if you tried hard enough, but here we have unarmed ships bringing wheelchairs, building materials and medical supplies into Gaza, so they are saying the ships were transporting hate and violence. Monty Python has nothing on these guys.

[Jug Pilot]

Just for reference, don't forget what happened to the USS Liberty.

USS Liberty incident - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[chunksmediocrites]

Greenwald:

Israel is now not only detaining the victims of its aggression, but also threatening to prosecute and imprison them. Israeli Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch said yesterday: "All those who lifted a hand against a soldier will be punished to the full extent of the law." So when Israel seizes ships in international waters and kills anyone who resists (and others standing near them), that is an act of noble, plucky self-defense. But those who fail to submit completely to this lawless and barbarous act of aggression are the Real Criminals who will be prosecuted and imprisoned "to the fullest extent of the law." In other words, not only is Israel -- which seized ships in international waters and killed civilians -- the Real Victim, but the Real Criminals are those on the ship. But doesn't the victim of a crime usually want media coverage of what the criminal did? How odd for the victim in this case to take such extreme steps to ensure that the world cannot hear from the witnesses.

Heathlander:

The narrative from Israel has been almost comically predictable, as has the extent to which that narrative has been accepted by news organisations. In the week leading up to the mission Israeli officials repeatedly threatened the ships, with the Foreign Minister going so far as to label the unarmed humanitarian voyage a “violent” threat. The flotilla was smeared as “pro-Hamas” and condemned for refusing to deliver a letter to Cpl. Shalit from his father (a claim that, while repeated uncritically in the purportedly ‘liberal’ Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, is a “a blatant lie”), and its attempts to dock in Gaza were declared an “an infringement of Israel’s sovereignty”. Needless to say, this last accusation does not sit well with Israel’s claim that it does not occupy and has no intention to annex Gaza (the Israeli human rights NGO Gisha notes, in this vein, that the assault on the Freedom Flotilla “is proof that despite claims to the contrary, Israel never ‘disengaged’ from the Gaza Strip but rather continues to control its borders – land, air and sea”).

The Israeli navy began harassing the convoy when it was still well over 100 miles from Gaza, deep into international waters. As the ships drew closer the Israeli military attempted to disrupt their communications (journalists were reporting from on-board and a live video feed was streaming online) and began issuing threats. Finally, Israeli forces attacked, with soldiers descending from helicopters to board the ships. Initially Israel claimed that no activists were killed. It then performed an abrupt reversal, familiar to veterans of its clumsy rhetorical acrobatics during the Gaza massacre, reporting that at least 10 people were killed, but claiming that it was the peace activists who “attacked” first (as one commentator observed: “[p]eculiar how Israel is always violently attacked but it’s only the ‘attackers’ who die”). Thus news organisations reported that “[f]ighting broke out between” (via) the activists and the soldiers, as if unarmed peace activists could ever meaningfully “fight” highly-trained, heavily armed members of one of the most sophisticated militaries on the planet.
...>snip<...
Why would Israel attack the flotilla? It’s worth recalling what the activists were trying to do. Since 1991 Israel has kept the Gaza Strip under siege, the intensity of which has varied over time but never to the extent of allowing the residents of Gaza to live something approaching decent, dignified lives. Following Hamas’s 2006 election victory and its takeover of Gaza in 2007, undertaken in response to a US/Israeli-backed coup attempt, the closure was sharply intensified, provoking what human rights organisations described as a “humanitarian implosion” of “unprecedented” scale. The objectives, which also motivated the Dec ‘08-Jan ‘09 Gaza massacre, were clear: to punish Palestinians for voting the ‘wrong’ way in the 2006 elections; to entrench the separation between Gaza and the West Bank; to isolate Hamas diplomatically and thereby thwart its threatened ‘peace offensive’ (yesterday, in a further blow to Israeli rejectionism, alleged ‘hardliner’ Khalid Meshal again affirmed that Hamas is prepared to end violence once Israel “returns to the ‘67 borders”); to undermine the ‘moderates’ within Hamas at the expense of the ‘hardliners’; and to turn the population of Gaza into a “humanitarian” as opposed to a “political” problem. To these ends, Israel, the US and the EU have systematically reduced the 1.5 million residents of Gaza – most of whom are children – to poverty, unemployment and aid dependency. They have, as one senior official explained, “put the Palestinians on a diet”.

The “diet” has been an extreme one:

* since the intensification of the siege in June 2007, “the formal economy in Gaza has collapsed”. (More than 80 UN and aid agencies [.pdf])

* “61% of people in the Gaza Strip are … food insecure”, of which “65% are children under 18 years”. (UN FAO)

* since June 2007, “the number of Palestine refugees unable to access food and lacking the means to purchase even the most basic items, such as soap, school stationery and safe drinking water, has tripled”. (UNRWA)

* “in February 2009, the level of anemia in babies (9-12 months) was as high as 65.5%” (UN FAO)

* “water resources in the Gaza Strip are critically insufficient” (UN FAO)

* “the blockade has been a major obstacle to repairing the damage done by Israeli air attacks and destruction. Nearly none of the 3,425 homes destroyed during Cast Lead have been reconstructed, displacing around 20,000 people. Only 17.5% of the value of the damages to educational facilities has been repaired … [T]he infrastructure which remains unrepaired is often that which is most essential to the basic needs and well-being of the Gaza population.” (UNDP)

The siege of Gaza is explicitly directed against the civilian population. It has been condemned by nearly every government in the world, and according to UN agencies and human rights organisations it constitutes “collective punishment … a flagrant violation of international law” (Amnesty International [.pdf]), possibly amounting to a “crime against humanity”. In attempting to deliver aid to Gaza the Freedom Flotilla activists were not merely highlighting the brutality of the siege, they were challenging Israel’s basic right to dominate and control the occupied territories. Hence the hysteria from Israel, and hence the attack.

Even so, Israel’s cavalier disregard for its own, already battered PR image is surprising. To attack a convoy of unarmed peace activists in international waters, and then to claim that it was the peace activists who committed the aggression, is so manifestly absurd that one wonders whether Israel truly has, as Chomsky recently implied, entered the “irrational” phase. I would caution against this conclusion. In the run-up to the voyage Israeli officials showed a keen awareness of the difficult PR situation they were in. It’s not that the Israeli government doesn’t care about its international image – far from it. Rather, the most plausible explanation is that, after a cost-benefit analysis, it determined that it would be able to attack the peace activists on the flotilla, take the concomitant day or two of bad media coverage in its stride, muddy the waters as much as possible with PR spin, and then move on without suffering too much damage as a result. Yousef Munayyer recently observed that ‘Palestinian non-violence requires global non-silence’. Evidently, the Israeli government took the risk of attacking the flotilla on the presumption that the world would be muted in its response.

I hope this time it is different, and that this won't all result in world condemnation, US tacit support, and no consequences for Israel or change in their policy towards Gaza. And I hope that this will result in a lifting of the Gaza Blockade. I really want someone in our government to connect the dots about how every time the Israelis do this and the US backs them, how that undermines our efforts in the world and our standing. But I'm not holding my breath.

[Jug Pilot]

YouTube- Israelis celebrating attack on Turkish...

I think we just need to accept the fact that peace will never occur in the Middle East, ever.

[California Tanker]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

I read somewhere (can't find it now) that Israel is claiming they had non-lethal weapons. How did 20 people die then?

They brought lethal ones as well. One of the videos clearly shows a paintball gun being used even after the live ammo shooting started. The situation seemed to have escalated beyond the level of non-lethal force rather quickly.

Egypt will open its border with the Gaza Strip to let Palestinians cross, officials said on Tuesday, following a storm of international criticism of Israel's bloody enforcement at sea of its blockade on the enclave.

It seems that though Egypt opened their side of the border, Hamas had other ideas.

Gaza blockade eased after raid - Israel-Palestinians- msnbc.com

The Hamas Interior Ministry said police were not prepared to open the crossing and did not say when they would do so.

NTM

[LadyShea]

The situation seemed to have escalated beyond the level of non-lethal force rather quickly.

Well yeah. I think if armed soldiers dropped out of the sky onto my ship in International waters I would escalate the shit out of that situation.

[Qingdai]

Also they have a history of running over non-violent protesters with tanks, letting people die in ambulances in checkpoints, and splitting up Jewish/Palestinian married couples, I can't imagine how anyone could ever think the Israeli army over-reacts.

[LadyShea]

Well and since I got called stupid and an idiot and a supporter of murderers on Yahoo for my opinion on the ship's passengers right to defend themselves against armed trespassers, I want to check my research.

As far as I can tell, Gaza doesn't belong to Israel, and Israel has no legal right to patrol their waters, or blockade their port, or board inbound vessels.

Am I wrong?

[California Tanker]

There are several schools of thought on the issue, depending on which side of the bed you got up on in the morning.

In an interesting reversal of the normal claims, the reliance for this one depends on the state of war or otherwise between Israel and Gaza/Palestine. Historically, the Israelis have been claiming that there is no war, and the international community says there is. The latter being backed up by the odd international court cases.

However, a blockade is a legitimate military strategy. So now we have the Israelis claiming that they've got the right to enforce it under the San Remo Manual, which covers armed conflict at sea, and the international community (without any court cases on this occasion that I'm aware of) saying the blockade is unlawful.

Well and since I got called stupid and an idiot and a supporter of murderers on Yahoo for my opinion on the ship's passengers right to defend themselves against armed trespassers, I want to check my research.

To a point, it's rather academic. I have the legal right in the US to resist an unlawful arrest, or to shoot police who are on my property without due legal authority. However, I am not stupid enough to actually do so, as I know very well what the outcome is going to be: I'm going to be in hospital and then jail anyway. And for redress, I'm going to end up in the same court to sue them, except wearing a cast. Attacking IDF forces in that situation was pretty idiotic from the point of view of defence, who did they really think was going to come out the better for the exchange? Now, if their intent was to provoke the Israelis into a reaction which causes massive international outcry, then the exchange might be in their favour. Personally, I'm not a fan of dying for causes.

NTM

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

To a point, it's rather academic. I have the legal right in the US to resist an unlawful arrest, or to shoot police who are on my property without due legal authority. However, I am not stupid enough to actually do so, as I know very well what the outcome is going to be. Attacking IDF forces in that situation was pretty idiotic, what did they think the outcome was going to be?

NTM

Okay, that analogy fails because you are talking about American law enforcement within their legal jurisdiction of the US. Would you say the same if it were US forces boarding a say Brazilian aid ship bound for Cuba, in International waters, and killing 20 people? Would you be saying the Brazilians shouldn't fight if that happened?

And yes, I am sure they expected some kind of confrontation, but I srsly doubt they anticipated the heavy artillery being used against them with their pipes and kitchen knives or whatever. Typical disproportionate Israeli response.

Also

Meanwhile, in Nazareth, Israeli Arab MP Haneen Zuabi - who was on the flotilla - told a press conference that Israeli forces began firing while still in the helicopters hovering over the ships.

[Watser?]

All the witnesses from the ships so far, including crew and journalists on board, have said the Israelis started firing before they even boarded. It seems to me an explanation that's at least as likely is that they grabbed anything at hand and started fighting back when they understood it was gonna be violent anyway. I have seen pictures of 'confiscated' knives and slingshots and stuff which mean exactly nothing to me. The Israelis have kept most of the witnesses locked up. Their whole story is ludicrous anyway.

Btw: yesterday a woman lost an eye in the West Bank when a tear gas cannister was fired at her face. These things are supposed to be launched into the air, the Israelis routinely fire them straight at people. This would have been routine too if it hadn't been an American girl.

[Watser?]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

There are several schools of thought on the issue, depending on which side of the bed you got up on in the morning.

In an interesting reversal of the normal claims, the reliance for this one depends on the state of war or otherwise between Israel and Gaza/Palestine. Historically, the Israelis have been claiming that there is no war, and the international community says there is. The latter being backed up by the odd international court cases.

However, a blockade is a legitimate military strategy. So now we have the Israelis claiming that they've got the right to enforce it under the San Remo Manual, which covers armed conflict at sea, and the international community (without any court cases on this occasion that I'm aware of) saying the blockade is unlawful.

Ok, so can we say for the record then that this Israeli line of rasoning only applies if there is a war going on? Then in future when they claim there isn't, we can throw it back at them.
Bcause if there is a war going on, of course the Geneva Conventions apply, making the settlements illegal (and a war crime).
And even under war rules, a blockade can never be absolute, Israel needs to allow food in. Not just some food as they do now, but enough food, which they are not doing according to all the NGOs involved.

Originally Posted by California Tanker

It seems that though Egypt opened their side of the border, Hamas had other ideas.

Gaza blockade eased after raid - Israel-Palestinians- msnbc.com

NTM

Well, Hamas are assholes and usually pigheaded assholes too. Their reasoning for this as far as I can tell is that Israel would very much like to unload Gaza unto Egypt and be rid of it. Thay want to avoid that and remain a pain in Israel's ass. Even though they have a point about the Israeli intentions, it is fighting a war with the population as hostages and Hamas are no better here than Israel.

[mickthinks]

Originally Posted by Watser?

Btw: yesterday a woman lost an eye in the West Bank when a tear gas cannister was fired at her face.

This is distressing, but also completely irrelevant. Unless, that is, you are suggesting that it is okay to jump to false conclusions about the Isreali action against the convoy because we disapprove of their actions elsewhere.

[Stormlight]

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by mickthinks

This is distressing, but also completely irrelevant. Unless, that is, you are suggesting that it is okay to jump to false conclusions about the Isreali action against the convoy because we disapprove of their actions elsewhere.

As has been mentioned earlier, Israel is known for overreaction and disproportionate responses. This is another example of that as is the flotilla raid.

[Watser?]

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by mickthinks

This is distressing, but also completely irrelevant. Unless, that is, you are suggesting that it is okay to jump to false conclusions about the Isreali action against the convoy because we disapprove of their actions elsewhere.

Or it could be an explicit allusion to a broad IDF practice of applying a theoretically non-lethal or less harmful crowd- and situation-control tactic in ways that are actually intended to wound or kill. Which would bear on the boarding of these ships rather obviously.

But if you didn't detect any relevance in the two nanoseconds you devoted to thinking about this, feel free to blather about false conclusions. Fucking twit.

[Watser?]

Here's B'Tselem's view on the lwafullness of the blockade and on its effects btw:

Since June 2007, when Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip, Israel has imposed a tight blockade on the area. According to Israeli officials, the objective of the siege is to bring down the Hamas government and lead to the release of Gilad Shalit. The siege thus constitutes collective punishment of the civilian population, and as such it is unlawful.

Even after the withdrawal, Israel controls the Gaza Strip

Although Israel withdrew its forces from the Gaza Strip in September 2005, it continues to maintain complete control of the area’s airspace and territorial waters, and of most of the land crossings. As a result, Gaza residents wishing to leave the area must first obtain a permit from Israel. Since the siege began, Israel has only granted permits in rare cases that it classifies as “humanitarian.” The policy also applies to residents who merely wish to cross through Israel in order to reach the West Bank.

Departure from the Gaza Strip via Rafah Crossing, for which Egypt is responsible, is also limited; Egypt only opens the crossing in exceptional cases. Even if Egypt is able to open the crossing more often, this does not eliminate Israel’s responsibility toward the residents of the Gaza Strip, including ill persons who are unable to obtain necessary treatment in the area.

B'Tselem - The siege on the Gaza Strip: 1.5 million people imprisoned