Viva Palestina - Gaza mission #4

[modern]

3 Facts You Need to Know About the Israeli Attack on Peace Activists on the Gaza Flotilla

Our main media organizations have willingly allowed Israeli spokespeople to fill the airwaves with misinformation. Let's reiterate a few simple facts.

May 31, 2010

It is quite astounding that Israel has been able to create over the past 12 hours a news blackout, just as it did with its attack on Gaza 18 months ago, into which our main media organisations have willingly allowed Israeli spokespeople to step in unchallenged.

How many civilians were killed in Israel’s dawn attack on the Gaza-bound flotilla of aid? We still don’t know. How many wounded? Your guess is as good as mine. Were the aid activists armed with guns? Yes, says Israel. Were they in cahoots with al-Qaeda and Hamas? Certainly, says Israel. Did the soldiers act reasonably? Of course, they faced a lynch, says Israel.

If we needed any evidence of the degree to which Western TV journalists are simply stenographers to power, the BBC, CNN and others are amply proving it. Mark Regev, Israel’s propagandist-in-chief, has the airwaves largely to himself.

The passengers on the ships, meanwhile, have been kidnapped by Israel and are unable to provide an alternative version of events. We can guess they will remain in enforced silence until Israel is sure it has set the news agenda.

So before we get swamped by Israeli hasbara let’s reiterate a few simple facts:

* Israeli soldiers invaded these ships in international waters, breaking international law, and, in killing civilians, committed a war crime. The counter-claim by Israeli commanders that their soldiers responded to an imminent “lynch” by civilians should be dismissed with the loud contempt it deserves.

* The Israeli government approved the boarding of these aid ships by an elite unit of commandoes. They were armed with automatic weapons to pacify the civilians onboard, but not with crowd dispersal equipment in case of resistance. Whatever the circumstances of the confrontation, Israel must be held responsible for sending in soldiers and recklessly endangering the lives of all the civilians onboard, including a baby.

Israel has no right to control Gaza’s sea as its own territorial waters and to stop aid convoys arriving that way. In doing so, it proves that it is still in belligerent occupation of the enclave and its 1.5 million inhabitants. And if it is occupying Gaza, then under international law Israel is responsible for the welfare of the Strip’s inhabitants. Given that the blockade has put Palestinians there on a starvation diet for the past four years, Israel should long ago have been in the dock for committing a crime against humanity.

Today Israel chose to direct its deadly assault not only at Palestinians under occupation but at the international community itself.

Will our leaders finally be moved to act?

http://www.alternet.org/story/147052/3_facts_you_need_to_know_about_the_israeli_attack_on_peace_activists_on_the_gaza_flotilla/

[modern]

Turkey: Future Gaza Aid Ships Will Have Military Escorts

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/05/31/turkey-future-gaza-aid-ships-will-have-military-escorts/

[luke]

from craig murray;

I was talking overnight to friends in the UK Mission to the United Nations in New York who were personally sickened by the US role in negotiations. The US threatened to veto any statement which named Israel as the attacker. There is not even a mention of Israel in the security council statement. My friend in New York described the attitude of the American negotiators under Obama as even more aggressively and openly pro-Israel than under Bush.

[faceless]

Egypt temporarily lifts its side of Gaza blockade for aid
39 mins ago

CAIRO – An Egyptian official says the government is temporarily lifting its blockade of the Gaza Strip to allow aid into the area a day after Israel raided an international flotilla carrying supplies to the Palestinian territory and killed nine activists.

The governor of northern Sinai, Murad Muwafi, says President Hosni Mubarak ordered the opening of the border crossing to Gaza in the town of Rafah for several days. Muwafi says the opening of the crossing — which Egypt sealed after Gaza was taken over by Hamas militants in 2007 — is an effort to "alleviate the suffering of our Palestinian brothers after the Israeli attack" on the flotilla.

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If they're your brothers, why even close the border in the first place?! Still, it's a good symbolic act and should help the Palestinians at least get some basic supplies in.

[Ash]

Sadly these things do not surprise me at all. I hope this activist-led aid movement will carry on until the Palestinians get their state with the full right of return.

[luke]

Israelis opened fire before boarding Gaza flotilla, say released activists
First eyewitness accounts of raid contradict version put out by Israeli officials

Survivors of the Israeli assault on a flotilla carrying relief supplies to Gaza returned to Greece and Turkey today, giving the first eyewitness accounts of the raid in which at least 10 people died.

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."

Cetin is among a handful of Turkish activists to be released; more than 300 remain in Israeli custody. She said she agreed to extradition from Israel after she was warned that conditions in jail would be too harsh for her child.

"I am one of the first passengers to be sent home, just because I have baby. When we arrived at the Israeli port of Ashdod we were met by the Israeli interior and foreign ministry officials and police; there were no soldiers. They asked me only a few questions. But they took everything – cameras, laptops, cellphones, personal belongings including our clothes," she said.

Kutlu Tiryaki was a captain of another vessel in the flotilla. "We continuously told them we did not have weapons, we came here to bring humanitarian help and not to fight," he said.

"The attack on the Mavi Marmara came in an instant: they attacked it with 12 or 13 attack boats and also with commandos from helicopters. We heard the gunshots over our portable radio handsets, which we used to communicate with the Mavi Marmara, because our ship communication system was disrupted. There were three or four helicopters also used in the attack. We were told by Mavi Marmara their crew and civilians were being shot at and windows and doors were being broken by Israelis."

Six Greek activists who returned to Athens accused Israeli commandos of using electric shocks during the raid.

Dimitris Gielalis, who had been aboard the Sfendoni, told reporters: "Suddenly from everywhere we saw inflatables coming at us, and within seconds fully equipped commandos came up on the boat. They came up and used plastic bullets, we had beatings, we had electric shocks, any method we can think of, they used."

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."

Grigoropoulos, who insisted the ship was full of humanitarian aid bound for Gaza "and nothing more", said that, once detained, the human rights activists were not allowed to contact a lawyer or the Greek embassy in Tel Aviv. "They didn't let us go to the toilet, eat or drink water and throughout they videoed us. They confiscated everything, mobile phones, laptops, cameras and personal effects. They only allowed us to keep our papers."

Turkey said it was sending three ambulance planes to Israel to pick up 20 more Turkish activists injured in the operation.

Three Turkish Airlines planes were on standby, waiting to fly back other activists, the prime minister's office said.

from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/01/gaza-flotilla-eyewitness-accounts-gunfire

this would seem to corroborate the raw footage ( i posted it earlier in this thread ) from al jazeera which was filmed before the israelis had boarded the ship - where the guy on board was saying that israel had been firing upon the ship, people had already been hit and there was tear gas and smoke grenades being used against them as well.

[faceless]

This is the blog of the American lassie who was shot in the eye with a tear-gas cannister yesterday.

And here's video of Israeli scum celebrating the attack on the flotilla outside the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv.

The fucking sick bastards.

[reject]

...........................................................................................
The UN Charter on the Law of the Sea says only if a vessel is suspected to be transporting weapons, or weapons of mass destruction, can it be boarded in international waters. Otherwise the permission of the ship's flag carrying nation must be sought.


hmmm....

[Brown Sauce]

the law in this one is international humanitarian law. The San Remo Manual.

should be looking up the specific laws on a blockade, and they do have them ...

http://www.icrc.org/IHL.nsf/WebART/560-14?OpenDocument

http://www.icrc.org/IHL.nsf/WebART/560-17?OpenDocument

http://www.icrc.org/IHL.nsf/WebART/560-24?OpenDocument

http://www.icrc.org/IHL.nsf/WebART/560-25?OpenDocument

there is also some in the geneva convention.

I've looked and read and haven't come to any conclusions. You can bet that the likes of Kevin Ovenden would know this stuff, and very likely loads more, inside out.

edit.

I think that what it boils down to is, is the blockade legal.

[faceless]

That's what I was thinking too Sauce - if Israel are basing this on that San Remo agreement then the situation must fit with the conditions it requires... and considering the UN has called for aid to be allowed in I can't see how they can possibly justify it. Unless the San Remo agreement supercedes the UN, which I doubt.

[Brown Sauce]

They have offered to let the aid in, after inspection, which goes along with san remo.
If the blockade is deemed illegal, then the boarding too is.

I think they've covered themselves, by giving the very minimum to the Palestinians.

102 The declaration or establishment of a blockade is prohibited if:

(a) it has the sole purpose of starving the civilian population or denying it other objects essential for its survival;or
(b) the damage to the civilian population is, or may be expected to be, excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the blockade.

edit,

it's stumbling on b, but that seems to me to be what all the propaganda's on about, a never ending stream of bullshit.

[faceless]

Irish ship keeps on through adversity
1 June 2010
morningstaronline.co.uk

A lone boat carrying Free Gaza activists is heading towards the Gaza Strip in a poignant display of defiance following Israel's slaughter of at least nine of their colleagues. The Rachel Corrie is carrying an Irish and Malaysian crew of 12. Among its cargo it is thought there are 200 fire officers' uniforms donated by Fire Brigades Union members in Bristol. Nobel laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire and former UN assistant secretary general Denis Halliday are both on board.

Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin demanded that Israel allows the boat - named after the US activist who was crushed to death under an Israeli army bulldozer in 2003 - to reach its destination unimpeded. "The Rachel Corrie, the Irish ship which citizens of Ireland are on, can be shadowed in, but unimpeded, given what has happened and the need to defuse the situation rapidly and allow them to discharge their goods," he said.

Speaking about Israel's three-year siege of Gaza yesterday, Ms Maguire said: "Could you imagine if that happened to the 1.5 million people in Northern Ireland, the world would be absolutely crying out that this stop immediately."

The latest attempt to break Israel's illegal blockade follows the assault on Monday morning on a convoy carrying 700 solidarity campaigners. Tel Aviv has since been the focus of continued outrage - particularly from Turkey, the home country of the victims of the bloody massacre on the lead ship.

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[faceless]

RELEASE THESE HEROES NOW
The Respect Party
1 June 2010

The Respect Party is calling on the British government to act urgently to secure the release of 28 British nationals who are confirmed missing after the Israeli assault on the Gaza aid flotilla. These were members and supporters of Viva Palestina, the Free Gaza movement and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. So far, the Foreign Office has failed to reply to urgent requests for information regarding the fate of these heroic volunteers.

All were aboard ships taking 10,000 tonnes of construction materials and human assistance to Gaza in defiance of the illegal and inhumane Israeli blockade. The flotilla was attacked in international waters and so far 19 aid volunteers are known to have died. This was an act of piracy and murder.

All five ships were boarded, commandeered and towed to Ashdod port in Israel . The aid was confiscated and all the aid volunteers were arrested. The Israeli government has failed to release any information on their whereabouts or health so they are missing at this time. The full list of those who we know are missing is below.

Among them is Kevin Ovenden, the international coordinator and leading force in the creation and development of Viva Palestina. He has led three aid convoys to break the siege of Gaza since March 2009 and is the epitome of tireless heroism and sacrifice in support of Palestine .

Kevin is a hugely influential and cherished comrade in the Respect Party. He is a member of the Executive Committee, the National Council and a leading figure in Tower Hamlets Respect. He led the Viva Palestina group that joined the Gaza aid flotilla this week and carries the pride and passion of our entire party and movement with dignity and intelligence in this daring mission.

We demand the immediate release of Kevin Ovenden. The Respect Party has firm information that Kevin was unharmed in the assault on the flotilla and we expect his unharmed release from detention forthwith.

We demand the release of all those detained in this murderous attack. These people are heroes who have risked everything to help Palestine . They will be honoured upon return. In particular, we draw attention to Ahsan Shamruk, who travelled with Viva Palestina and was injured in the attack. He is reported to be in a stable condition and we send our thoughts and wishes for his safe return home.

The full list of British nationals (provisional) is as follows:
Laura Macdonald Stuart
Ebrahim Musaji
Jamal Sayed
Parveen Yaqub
Baboo Adem Zanghar
Ahsan Shamruk
Mustafa Cengiz Ahmet
Tauqir Sharif
Boudejma Bounoua
Mohammad Bounoua
Sakir Yildirim
Kenneth O'Keefe
Ali El-Awaisi
Mohammed Bhaiyat
Lort Phillips Alexandra Mary
Sarah Nancy Colborne
Ismail Adam Patel
Nader Daher
Mahi Mohammed Abid
Nur-E-Azom Choudhury
Kevin Ovenden
Peter Venner
Clifford Gardner Hanley
Muzzammil Layth Chogley
Jamaluddin Mohammad Farid Elshayyal
Hassan Al Banna Ghani
Lazrag Salah
Ali Altan

[major.tom]

Israel to deport all activists seized on Gaza flotilla


All 680 activists will be released, including two dozen Israel had threatened to prosecute on charges of assaulting troops.

By Barak Ravid

Israel will immediately deport hundreds of foreign activists seized aboard a six-ship humanitarian aid flotilla seized in an Israel Navy raid en route to the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided late Tuesday.

In the face of mounting world criticism of Monday's assault, Israeli officials said all 680 activists held would be released, including two dozen Israel had threatened earlier to prosecute charging they had assaulted its troops.
Gaza-bound ship

Israeli soldiers walking in front of one of the Gaza-bound ships at the port of Ashdod June 1, 2010
Photo by: Reuters

"It was agreed that the detainees would be deported immediately," Nir Hefez, a spokesman for Netanyahu, said in a written statement to reporters. Netanyahu made the decision after consultations with his top ministers.

The activists from Europe, North America, Asia and North Africa were processed in and around Israel's port of Ashdod on Monday evening, where the six ships of the blockade-running convoy had been escorted after a raid on a Turkish-flagged vessel left nine people dead.

One hundred and twenty of the nearly 700 passengers were transferred Tuesday evening to the border crossing with Jordan, from where they will be returned to their home countries.

The Interior Ministry said 682 activists were ordered deported, and that 45 left on Tuesday, while others were jailed as they challenged the orders, or in hospital being treated for injuries.

Israel gave the following breakdown of countries and numbers of those activists ordered expelled, excluding the nine killed and the seriously wounded in Monday's raid:

Australia 3; Azerbaijan 2; Italy 6; Indonesia 12; Ireland 9; Algeria 28; United States 11; Bulgaria 2; Bosnia 1; Bahrain 4; Belgium 5; Germany 11; South Africa 1; Holland 2; United Kingdom 31; Greece 38; Jordan 30; Kuwait 15; Lebanon 3; Mauritania 3; Malaysia 11; Egypt 3; Macedonia 3; Morocco 7; Norway 3; New Zealand 1; Syria 3; Serbia 1; Oman 1; Pakistan 3; Czech Republic 4; France 9; Kosovo 1; Canada 1; Sweden 11; Turkey 380; Yemen 4.

source

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At last, a very little bit of good news.

[modern]