Re: legal access to Gaza, I haven't fully read the posts so far (sorry). But I encountered this from the freegazaorg twitter account earlier today and thought I should share it.
Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2010 11:12 am Post subject: Of course, they were asking for it...
Mark Steel:
First published in The Independent on 2nd June 2010
It's time the Israeli government's PR team made the most of its talents, and became available for hire. Then whenever a nutcase marched into a shopping mall in somewhere like Wisconsin and gunned down a selection of passers-by, they could be on hand to tell the world's press "The gunman regrets the loss of life but did all he could to avoid violence." Then various governments would issue statements saying "All we know is a man went berserk with an AK 47, and next to him there's a pile of corpses, so until we know the facts we can't pass judgement on what took place."
To strengthen their case the Israelis have released a photo of the weapons they found on board, (which amount to some knives and tools and wooden sticks) that the naive might think you'd expect to find on any ship, but the more astute will recognise as exactly what you'd carry if you were planning to defeat the Israeli army. It's an armoury smaller than you'd find in the average toolshed in a garden in Cirencester, which goes to show the Israelis had better destroy Cirencester quickly as an essential act of self-defence.
It's a shame they weren't more imaginative, as they could have said "We also discovered a deadly barometer, a ship's compass, which could not only be frisbeed at someone's head but even had markings to help the assailant know which direction he was throwing it, and a set of binoculars that could easily be converted into a ray-gun."
That would be as logical as the statement from the Israeli PM's spokesman – "We made every possible effort to avoid this incident." Because the one tiny thing they forgot to do to avoid this incident was not send in armed militia from helicopters in the middle of the night and shoot people. I must be a natural at this sort of technique because I often go all day without climbing off a helicopter and shooting people, and I'm not even making every possible effort. Politicians and commentators worldwide repeat a version of this line. They're aware a nation has sent its militia to confront people carrying provisions for the desperate, in the process shooting several of them dead, and yet they angrily blame the dead ones. One typical headline yesterday read "Activists got what they wanted – confrontation." It's an attitude so deranged it deserves to be registered as a psychosis, something like "Reverse Slaughter Victim Confusion Syndrome".
Israel and its supporters claim that Viva Palestina, made up of people who collect the donated food, cement and items for providing basic amenities such as toilets, and transport them to Gaza, wanted the violence all along. Because presumably they must have been thinking "Hezbollah couldn't beat them, but that's because unlike us they didn't have a ballcock and several boxes of plum tomatoes".
One article told us the flotilla was full of "Thugs spoiling for a confrontation", and then accused them of being "Less about aid and more about PR. Indeed, on board was Swedish novelist Henning Mankell." So were they thugs or about PR? Did they have a thugs' section and a PR quarter, or did they all muck in, the novelist diverting the soldiers with his characterisation while the thugs attacked them with a lethal spirit level?
But some defenders of Israel are so blind to what happens in front of them there's nothing at all they wouldn't jump to defend. Israel could blow up a cats home and within five minutes they'd be yelling "How do we know the cats weren't smuggling semtex in their fur for Hamas?"
If this incident had been carried about by Iran, or anyone we were trying to portray as an enemy, so much condemnation would have been spewed out it would have created a vast cloud of outrage that airlines would be unable to fly through.
But as it's Israel, most governments offer a few diplomatic words that blame no one, but accept the deaths are "regrettable". They might as well have picked any random word from the dictionary, so the news would tell us "William Hague described the deaths as 'hexagonal'", and a statement from the US senate said "It's all very confusing. In future let's hope they make every effort to avoid a similar incident."
Nazareth, Israel // An Arab member of the Israeli parliament who was on board the international flotilla that was attacked on Monday as it tried to take humanitarian aid to Gaza accused Israel yesterday of intending to kill peace activists as a way to deter future convoys.
Haneen Zoubi said Israeli naval vessels had surrounded the flotilla’s flagship, the Mavi Marmara, and fired on it a few minutes before commandos abseiled from a helicopter directly above them.
Terrified passengers had been forced off the deck when water was sprayed at them. She said she was not aware of any provocation or resistance by the passengers, who were all unarmed.
She added that within minutes of the raid beginning, three bodies had been brought to the main room on the upper deck in which she and most other passengers were confined. Two had gunshot wounds to the head, in what she suggested had been executions.
Two other passengers slowly bled to death in the room after Israeli soldiers ignored messages in Hebrew she had held up at the window calling for medical help to save them. She said she saw seven other passengers seriously wounded.
“Israel had days to plan this military operation,” she told a press conference in Nazareth. “They wanted many deaths to terrorise us and to send a message that no future aid convoys should try to break the siege of Gaza.”
Released early yesterday by police, apparently because of her parliamentary immunity, she said she was speaking out while most of the hundreds of other peace activists were either being held by Israel for deportation or were under arrest.
Three other leaders of Israel’s large Palestinian Arab minority, including Sheikh Raed Salah, a spiritual leader, were arrested as their ships docked in the southern port of Ashdod. Lawyers said that under Israeli law they could be held and questioned for up to 30 days without being charged.
Contradicting Israeli claims, Ms Zoubi said a search by the soldiers after they took control of the Marmara discovered no arms or other weapons.
It was vital, she added, that the world demand an independent UN inquiry to find out what had happened on the ship rather than allow Israel to carry out a “whitewash” with its own military investigation.
Ms Zoubi spoke as Palestinians inside both Israel and the occupied territories observed a general strike called by their leaders.
A statement from the High Follow-Up Committee, the main political body for Israel’s Palestinian citizens, described the raid on the flotilla as “state-sponsored terrorism”.
Demonstrations and marches in most of the main Palestinian towns and villages in Israel passed off quietly. Local analysts described the mood as angry but subdued, not least because of the openly hostile climate that has developed towards Palestinian citizens since crackdowns on their protests during the Israeli attack on Gaza 18 months ago.
However, police were reported to have been put on high alert, with thousands of extra officers drafted into the north, where most Palestinian citizens live.
On Monday, clashes between protesters and police broke out close to the al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City and in the northern town of Umm al Fahm after false rumours circulated that Sheikh Salah, the leader of Israel’s main Islamic Movement, had been killed in the Israeli naval operation.
Police were reported to have arrested 18 youths, mainly for throwing stones in various locations in the north.
Scores of Palestinians demonstrated outside the Turkish consulate in East Jerusalem yesterday to show their support for Ankara, which has harshly criticised Israeli actions. Two demonstrators were reported to have been arrested by police.
In the West Bank, many Palestinians observed the first of three days of mourning decreed by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, over the killings of international activists.
Even before the attack on the flotilla, the country’s Palestinian minority, a fifth of the population, had been braced for a backlash from the government and Jewish public for its leaders’ participation in the flotilla. As the ships set sail, Ynet, Israel’s most popular news website, had asked whether Ms Zoubi was an “MP in the service of Hamas”.
But faced with the severe diplomatic fall-out from Israel’s killing of peace activists, Israel’s Palestinian leaders warned that they were likely to come under even fiercer criticism in coming days.
Yesterday right-wing parties launched their first attacks on Ms Zoubi, demanding the revocation of her immunity and her expulsion from the parliament. Danny Danon, a member of the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, called for her to be “tried for treason”.
In her statement on the attack, Ms Zoubi said that at 4am on Monday she had seen at least 14 Israeli boats surround their ship 130km out at sea, in international waters.
She said the passengers had been gripped with fear at the noise and confusion as the commandos abseiled on to the deck. “I did not believe we were going to survive more than five minutes,” she said.
Taleb al Sana, another Arab MP, supported Ms Zoubi’s contention that Israeli claims that the commandos shot only at the passengers’ legs were false. “I have visited the wounded in hospital and they all have shot wounds to the head and body,” he said.
Adalah, a legal centre for Israel’s Arab minority, said nine lawyers had been given limited access yesterday afternoon to the hundreds of activists detained in Beersheva and were trying to take testimonies “in very difficult circumstances”.
Its lawyers and human rights groups were also trying to track down who had been injured and where they being treated.
“Our view is that Israel is intentionally trying to obstruct this work and is enforcing an information blackout,” said Gaby Rubin, a spokeswoman for Adalah.
In a late-breaking development, Turkey has announced that they will send more ships to aid Gaza, and that this time they'll be accompanied by the Turkish Navy...
Sorry to harp on about the Gaza Maritime map, but you might find this interesting.
It seems that the BBC can be swayed. Last night, I commented on a story; more specifically, on the map shown at the bottom of the story which marked Israeli Territorial waters clearly encroaching on the internationally recognized northern border of Gaza. This is the map:
I pointed this out and provided a link to the Gaza map mentioned earlier in this thread. In an article posted today (link), the map has been updated to this:
It's a small victory, but such is the way of progress.
I tried to locate an official statement, but I haven't been able to. Have you been able to find something? I hope this becomes a reality.
Hi Ash,
From what I can make out at the moment, this maybe just hearsay. Actually I think Israel would welcome the Turkish navy in order to start world war three. After all with America's support, they can get away with what they like, and they would also want to drag in Iran to any conflict. We're dealing with a fanatical nation here, just like Nazi Germany.
Every comments thread on every internet site on the world which has discussed the Israeli naval murders, has been inundated by organised ZIonist commenters stating that the Israeli action was legal under the San Remo Manual of International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea.
They ignore those parts of San Remo that specifically state that it is illegal to enforce a general blockade on an entire population. But even apart from that, San Remo simply does not apply.
The manual relates specifically to legal practice in time of war. With whom is Israel at war?
There is no war.
Israeli apologists have gone on to say they are in a state of armed conflict with Gaza.
Really? In that case, why do we continually hear Israeli complaints about rockets fired from Gaza into Israel? If it is the formal Israeli position that it is in a state of armed conflict with Gaza, then Gaza has every right to attack Israel with rockets.
But in fact, plainly to the whole world, the nature and frequency of Israeli complaints about rocket attacks gives evidence that Israel does not in fact believe that a situation of armed conflict exists.
Secondly, if Israel wishes to claim it is in a state of armed conflict with Gaza, then it must treat all of its Gazan prisoners as prisoners of war entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention. If you are in a formal state of armed conflict, you cannot categorise your opponents as terrorists.
But again, it is plain for the world to see from its treatment and description of Gazan prisoners that it does not consider itself to be in a formal position of armed conflict.
Israel is seeking to pick and choose which bits of law applicable to armed conflict it applies, by accepting or not accepting it is in armed conflcit depending on the expediency of the moment.
I have consistently denounced Hamas rocket attacks into Israel. I have categorised them as terrorism. If Israel wishes now to declare it is in armed conflcit with Gaza, I withdraw my opposition and indeed would urge Hamas to step up such attacks to the maximum.
Does Israel really wish to justify its latest action by declaring it is at war with Gaza? That is what the invocation of San Remo amounts to.
Modern, Thanks for your reply as well. I personally don't think Israel will attack Turkish mainly because USA will not allow it. It will be a dangerous signal for the people of the Arab countries, which Turkey is not. But all of them are Muslim countries. Implicitly Turkey will be undermining the KSA, Egypt and other major players's hard grip on the general public in the sense that the rulers of those countries will not be able to tone down the general emotion of Anti-Americananism (Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Jordan, KSA, etc). Needless to say various US army base will also be issue. You know it's a dangerous thing to do what the majority of the population wants, which happens to be the morally right thing to do as well! You can't have it there!
Of course I'm presuming that Turkey will send in their naval ships, which is unlikely.
update: I bet now Israelis are taking this opportunity to make/authorise more illegal annexation/settlement in the West Bank, Jerusalem. Because the world will be talking about the flotilla massacre.
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i think i see some people on medialens bringing up the same points, so they probably got a few emails on that!