Israel continues its merciless pounding of the defenceless.

[Dr Gloom 21868]

A Society in Crisis

 

“Israeli society is reaching new heights of racism,” said Sami Michael, one of the country’s most celebrated equality advocates and president of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).26 A growing body of research indicates that racist sentiments are not the preserve of the right-wing fringe but increasingly prevalent across Israeli Jewish society.

 

One particularly disturbing indicator is that the chant “Death to the Arabs” is voiced not just by mobs of right-wingers angered by this or that Palestinian attack. Rather, “in the late 1990s and onwards,” writes Amir Ben-Porat, a professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Ben Gurion University, “‘Death to the Arabs’ became a common chant in almost every football [soccer] stadium in Israel.” Ben-Porat, who authored a study on the use of the chant, says that because of the importance of soccer in Israeli society and its high profile in the media, “This chant is heard far beyond the stadium.”27

 

In its 2007 Israeli Democracy Index, the Israel Democracy Institute found that 87 percent of all Israeli citizens rated Jewish-Arab relations in the country as being “poor” or “very poor.”28

 

 

 

In addition:

 

• 78 percent of Israeli Jews opposed having Arab parties or ministers join Israel’s government.29

 

• Just 56 percent of Israeli Jews support full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel and an identical number agreed that “Arabs cannot attain the Jews’ level of cultural development.”30

 

• 75 percent of Israeli Jews agreed with the statement that “Arabs are inclined to violent behavior” (as compared with 54 percent of Palestinian citizens of Israel who had an equivalent view of Israeli Jews).31

 

• 43 percent of Israeli Jews agreed that “Arabs are not intelligent” and 55 percent agreed that “the government should encourage Arab emigration from the country.”32

 

A recent Haifa University survey found that half of Israeli Jews object to Arabs living in their neighborhoods (56 percent of Arabs supported residential integration with Jews).33 Similarly, ACRI reported that 75 percent of Israeli Jews surveyed said they would not agree to live in the same building as Arabs. The same survey found that more than half of Israeli Jews felt that Arabs and Jews should have separate recreational facilities.34

 

 

There are two consistent trends among all these surveys: both Palestinian citizens of Israel and Israeli Jews hold some prejudices towards each other, but on almost every measure, Israeli Jewish views of Arabs are more negative and extreme than Arab views of Jews; second, the negative trends have risen markedly in recent years as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has intensified. Between 2005 and 2006, there was a 26 percent rise in racist incidents targeting Arabs, and the number of Israeli Jews reporting they felt “hatred” towards Arabs doubled to 30 percent.35

While the conflict is undoubtedly the overarching context for these sentiments, an important contributing factor may be the consistently dehumanizing and denigrating stereotypes of Arabs that have for decades been presented to Israeli Jewish schoolchildren in their textbooks and media.36"

 

 

Not really how you're painting it is it Dan?

 

You come across as very balanced and have taken this thread in a good spirit, but unfortunately racism and discrimination of Arabs living in Israel is rife.

 

i'm only going on my own experience of people i have met in israel, who on the whole have been open-minded and liberal. i'm sure there is widespread prejudice there, as in most countries in the world. but in israel, just like here in the uk, i wouldn't rush to mix with such people.

 

one point i'd like to make, is my auntie used to be a "peacenik" and a leading member of the peace now movement. she campaigned for the tweo state solution and remember that it was very close int he mid 90s until rabin was shot. anyway, the song they used to sing was "we shall overcome". quite different from "death to the jews" or "gaza or martyrdom" that was the battlecry of many on the flotilla - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUKi1YeBcMw

 

now, like many israelis who in the past were peace activists, my auntie has become old and cynical and now thinks that a majority in gaza (and certainly those that voted hamas) do not seek peace. she sees them as islamic jihadists bent on murdering as many jews and others as possible and spreading havoc in the world until they achieve their ultimate goal: an islamic world.

 

the prejudice and hatred increases with ever act of violence and retalitaion and sadly will rumble on for generations to come it seems.

[Happy Face 29]

Of course, the fact that there is a democratic system is better than just about all the Arab countries.

 

I know it's not what you intended but this could be construed as suggesting few of the Arab countries have any democratic system at all. There are only four governments in the world that don't claim to be democratic. Vatican City, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar and Brunei.

 

Some other countries have single candidate sham elections, like Israel's buddy Egypt. But lots of Middle Eastern countries have multiple candidate elections.

 

I'd agree that Israel probably has the most transparent elections in the region, but even so, according to the 2008 Democracy Index, it's a "flawed democracy".

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

 

 

yeah, but look at place like iran and syria. none of us used to living in a western democracy could ever live in those countries. on the other hand, if you take away the threat of bombings in israel, i'd wager many of us could live a happy life there. tel aviv is similar to any european city in the med

 

I think that's a different question, whether or not we as western democrats could integrate into a society has little to do with their election process.. I know people that do live and work under an authritarian regime in Saudi Arabia.

 

Qatar explicitly uses Sharia law as the basis of its government, but the quality of life is deemed to be about the same as Israel.

 

not sure i'd fancy living in qatar if i was a woman

 

I'd prefer it to living in occupied Gaza as a man or a woman.

[Dr Gloom 21868]

one thing i find slightly ironic is how it is considered liberal to now side with the islamists. by definition, israel is far more liberal than any of the surrounding countries

[Dr Gloom 21868]

Of course, the fact that there is a democratic system is better than just about all the Arab countries.

 

I know it's not what you intended but this could be construed as suggesting few of the Arab countries have any democratic system at all. There are only four governments in the world that don't claim to be democratic. Vatican City, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar and Brunei.

 

Some other countries have single candidate sham elections, like Israel's buddy Egypt. But lots of Middle Eastern countries have multiple candidate elections.

 

I'd agree that Israel probably has the most transparent elections in the region, but even so, according to the 2008 Democracy Index, it's a "flawed democracy".

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

 

 

yeah, but look at place like iran and syria. none of us used to living in a western democracy could ever live in those countries. on the other hand, if you take away the threat of bombings in israel, i'd wager many of us could live a happy life there. tel aviv is similar to any european city in the med

 

I think that's a different question, whether or not we as western democrats could integrate into a society has little to do with their election process.. I know people that do live and work under an authritarian regime in Saudi Arabia.

 

Qatar explicitly uses Sharia law as the basis of its government, but the quality of life is deemed to be about the same as Israel.

 

not sure i'd fancy living in qatar if i was a woman

 

I'd prefer it to living in occupied Gaza as a man or a woman.

 

but not israel, which was the point i was making

[Happy Face 29]

one thing i find slightly ironic is how it is considered liberal to now side with the islamists. by definition, israel is far more liberal than any of the surrounding countries

 

I'm not siding with the liberals or conservatives. I'm siding with the victim against the aggressor.

[Dr Gloom 21868]

looks like the whole affair is going to force israel into making concessions.

 

Israel signals rethink on blockade

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b84c64fc-6ef4-11...144feabdc0.html

 

Israel gave the first sign of concession to international calls for an end to its blockade of the Gaza Strip as thousands of mourners took to the streets of Istanbul on Thursday for the funerals of Turkish victims of its attack on a Palestinian aid flotilla.

 

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was meeting senior ministers last night to discuss ways to ease the Gaza blockade. One Israeli official, explaining government thinking, said it was “necessary to examine every ship that could bring rockets and missiles into Gaza” while also allowing “civilian products” to reach the population. “We are currently exploring additional paths to implement this principle,” the official said.

 

News agency and television reports suggested ministers would consider some sort of international role in enforcing an arms embargo on Gaza. But the prime minister’s office was also quoted as saying another aid ship intending to reach Gaza at the weekend would not be allowed to do so.

 

The Israeli government has rejected calls for an international investigation into Monday’s incident off the Gaza coast. Senior figures are divided over whether to establish an independent Israeli inquiry.

 

“No decision has yet been taken,” said an official in the prime minister’s office. But several ministers argued that an Israeli investigation was necessary to stave off international criticism. Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, told Israeli radio: “We have no need to fear any commission of inquiry. I told the prime minister . . . that we should create a commission of inquiry that is open and transparent.”

 

But Ehud Barak, the defence minister, is likely to resist this call. A senior security official said: “Objectively, we don’t need [an independent investigation] to understand what happened, because our [internal] procedures are enough.” He conceded, however, that outside pressure may yet make that stance untenable.

 

The repercussions of Monday’s incident have raised questions over the state of US-Israeli relations. The Obama administration wants an investigation into the incident, but argues that an Israeli inquiry would be preferable to a formal United Nations process.

 

Anthony Cordesman, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, suggested that Israel could now be a “strategic liability” for the US. Officials in the Obama administration stressed that they had called for Israel to exercise “restraint” before the raid on the flotilla.

 

The aftermath has complicated the US drive to secure approval from the UN Security Council for new sanctions on Iran. But a vote on a draft resolution is still expected to take place this month.

 

The aircraft that returned 466 pro-Palestinian activists to a rapturous welcome in Turkey also brought home the corpses of the nine who died, all of them Turkish. One of the dead, Furkan Dogan, 19, was a dual national who also held a US passport.

 

The names of the dead published by the Anatolian news agency included a journalist, a mayoral candidate from the Islamist Saadet party and a 54-year-old Taekwondo champion. All nine had suffered gunshot wounds, according to a state forensic institute. Turkish prosecutors are thought to be investigating the case for legal action against Israel.

 

“Israel has made one of the biggest mistakes in its history. Without doubt, Turkey will never forgive such an attack,” said Abdullah Gul, the Turkish president.

 

But some are beginning to voice criticism of the ruling AK party, saying it failed to prevent a confrontation that now poses risks for Turkey.

[Dr Gloom 21868]

one thing i find slightly ironic is how it is considered liberal to now side with the islamists. by definition, israel is far more liberal than any of the surrounding countries

 

I'm not siding with the liberals or conservatives. I'm siding with the victim against the aggressor.

 

there are victims and agressors on both sides of this conflict.

[Happy Face 29]

one thing i find slightly ironic is how it is considered liberal to now side with the islamists. by definition, israel is far more liberal than any of the surrounding countries

 

I'm not siding with the liberals or conservatives. I'm siding with the victim against the aggressor.

 

there are victims and agressors on both sides of this conflict.

 

I'm speaking collectively.

 

The vast majority of Germans in WW2 were victims. Collectively, they were the aggressor.

[Happy Face 29]

one thing i find slightly ironic is how it is considered liberal to now side with the islamists. by definition, israel is far more liberal than any of the surrounding countries

 

I'm not siding with the liberals or conservatives. I'm siding with the victim against the aggressor.

 

there are victims and agressors on both sides of this conflict.

 

 

In one of his many speeches, to U.S. troops in Vietnam, [Lyndon] Johnson said plaintively, "There are three billion people in the world and we have only two hundred million of them. We are outnumbered fifteen to one. If might did make right they would sweep over the United States and take what we have. We have what they want." That is a constant refrain of imperialism. You have your jackboot on someone's neck and they're about to destroy you.

 

The same is true with any form of oppression. And it's psychologically understandable. If you're crushing and destroying someone, you have to have a reason for it, and it can't be, "I'm a murderous monster." It has to be self-defense. "I'm protecting myself against them. Look what they're doing to me." Oppression gets psychologically inverted; the oppressor is the victim who is defending himself.

[Dr Gloom 21868]

israel will argue they aren't the agressor, as will the palestinians. remember though that israel is a sovereign state, recognised by the UN. it's worth noting also that many pelestinian refugees were not welcomed by surrounding arab nations. and yet they show solidarity when backign sucide bombers against israel. just as long as they dobn'ty launch their attacks from their own back yard i suppose.

 

1948 Arab-Israeli War. Began after the declaration of the State of Israel on May 15, 1948. According to Israel, the war resulted from Arab rejection of the United Nations Partition Plan of November 1947 (in which Israel was formed out of part of Palestine). Arabs maintain they fought a defensive war, as Israel intended to expand its territory beyond that mandated by U.N. Many Palestinians fled and some were expelled by Jewish militias from their country; some surrounding Arab countries expelled their Jewish populations or they were compelled to flee due to anti-Jewish sentiment. 600,000 Palestinians and 600,000 Jews became refugees. In a few cases local Arab governments strongly encouraged Jews to stay (especially in Morocco). Jewish refugees were absorbed by Israel; Palestinians are neglected by most Arab nations which by some are blamed for the poverty and hatred prevailing in some Palestinian camps.

 

http://www.fact-index.com/a/ar/arab_israeli_conflict.html

Edited June 4, 2010 by Dr Gloom

[Happy Face 29]

[Happy Face 29]

israel will argue they aren't the agressor, as will the palestinians. remember though that israel is a sovereign state, recognised by the UN. it's worth noting also that many pelestinian refugees were not welcomed by surrounding arab nations. and yet they show solidarity when backign sucide bombers against israel. just as long as they dobn'ty launch their attacks from their own back yard i suppose.

 

Exactly....and they're engaged in the collective punishment of 1.5m people without a recognised state that can defend them.

[Park Life 71]

It never ceases to amaze me how Jewish Americans put Israel before America. *Koch

Edited June 4, 2010 by Park Life

[Happy Face 29]

How do wars begin? With a "master illusion", according to Ralph McGehee, one of the CIA's pioneers in "black propaganda", known today as "news management". In 1983, he described to me how the CIA had faked an "incident" that became the "conclusive proof of North Vietnam's aggression". This followed a claim, also fake, that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked an American warship in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964.

 

“The CIA," he said, "loaded up a junk, a North Vietnamese junk, with communist weapons - the agency maintains communist arsenals in the United States and around the world. They floated this junk off the coast of central Vietnam. They shot it up and made it look like a firefight, and they brought in the American press. Based on this evidence, two marine landing teams went into Danang and a week after that the American air force began regular bombing of North Vietnam." An invasion that took three million lives was under way.

 

The Israelis have played this murderous game since 1948. The massacre of peace activists in international waters on 31 May was "spun" to the Israeli public for the better part of the week, preparing them for yet more murder by their government, with the unarmed flotilla of humanitarians described as terrorists or dupes of terrorists. The BBC was so intimidated that it reported the atrocity primarily as a "potential public relations disaster for Israel", the perspective of the killers, and a disgrace for journalism.

 

Guilt trip

A similar master illusion now consumes Asian governments. On 20 May, South Korea announced it had "overwhelming evidence" that a torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine sank one of its warships, the Cheonan, in March with the loss of 46 sailors. The US keeps 28,000 troops in South Korea, where the public has long supported détente with Pyongyang.

 

On 26 May, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, flew to Seoul and demanded that the "international community must respond" to "North Korea's outrage". She flew on to Japan, where the new North Korean "threat" eclipsed the briefly independent foreign policy of the Japanese prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, elected last year with popular opposition to America's permanent military occupation of Japan. (On 2 June Hatoyama resigned, having failed to move a US military base in Okinawa.) The "overwhelming evidence" is a propeller that "had been corroding at least for several months", reported the Korea Times. In April, the director of South Korea's national intelligence, Won Se-hoon, told a parliamentary committee that there was no evidence linking the sinking of the Cheonan to North Korea. The defence minister agreed. And the head of South Korea's military marine operations said, "No North Korean warships have been detected [in] the waters where the accident took place." The reference to an "accident" suggests the warship struck a reef and broke in two.

 

To the American media, North Korea's guilt is beyond doubt, just as North Vietnam's guilt was beyond doubt, just as Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, just as Israel can terrorise with impunity. But, unlike Vietnam and Iraq, North Korea has nuclear weapons, which helps to explain why it has not been attacked, not yet: a salutary lesson to other countries, such as Iran, currently in the cross hairs.

 

In Britain, we have our own master illusions. Imagine someone on state benefits caught claiming £40,000 of taxpayers' money in a second-home scam. A prison sentence would almost certainly follow. But David Laws, chief secretary to the Treasury, does the same and is described as follows: "I have always admired his intelligence, his sense of public duty and his personal integrity" (Nick Clegg). "You are a good and honourable man" (David Cameron). Laws is "a man of quite exceptional nobility" (Julian Glover, the Guardian), and "a brilliant mind" (BBC).

 

The Oxbridge club and its associate members in politics and the media have tried to link Laws's "error of judgement" and "naivety" to his "right to privacy" as a gay man, an irrelevance. The "brilliant mind" is a wealthy, Cambridge-groomed investment banker devoted to the noble task of cutting the public services of mostly poor and honest people.

 

Crushing blow

Now imagine another public official, the force behind one of the great war criminals and liars. This official "spun" the illegal invasion of a defenceless country that resulted in the deaths of at least a million people and the dispossession of many more: in effect, the crushing of a human society. If this was the Balkans or Africa, he would very likely have been indicted by the International Criminal Court.

 

But crime pays for the clubbable. In quick step with the Laws affair, this truth was demonstrated by the continuing celebration of Alastair Campbell, whose frequent media appearances provide a vicarious thrill for the liberal intelligentsia. To the Guardian, Campbell is "bullish, sometimes misdirected, but unafraid to press on where others might have faltered". The Guardian's immediate interest is its "exclusive" publication of Campbell's "politically explosive" and "uncut" diaries. Here is a flavour: "Saturday 14 May. I called Peter [Mandelson] and asked why he didn't return my calls yesterday. 'You know why.' 'No, I don't.' He said he was incandescent at my Newsnight interview . . .'"

 

In a promotional interview with the Guardian, Campbell dispensed more of this dated incest, referring just once to the bloodbath for which he was a principal apologist. "Did Iraq lose us support in 2005?" he asked rhetorically. "Without a doubt . . ." Thus, a criminal tragedy equal in scale to the Rwandan genocide was dismissed as a "loss" for New Labour: a master illusion of notable profanity.

[Happy Face 29]

Noam Chomsky on Israel and the Gaza Flotilla Attack: "Sheer Criminal Aggression, with no Credible Pretext"

 

CHICAGO, Illinois - June 2 - Professor Noam Chomsky, renowned foreign policy analyst and bestselling author of Hegemony and Survival and most recently of Hopes and Prospects (Haymarket Books) offered the following statement to Egypt's Al-Ahram regarding Israel's justification for it's attack on humanitarian aid boats headed for Gaza and the broader context regarding the economic blockade which the activists aboard the ships were attempting to break. Chomsky, who is Jewish, was recently detained at the Israeli border and barred from entering the West Bank for a planned speaking engagement, provoking an international debate, and outrage over the issue of free speech in Israel.

 

Hijacking boats in international waters and killing passengers is, of course, a serious crime. The editors of the London Guardian are quite right to say that "If an armed group of Somali pirates had yesterday boarded six vessels on the high seas, killing at least 10 passengers and injuring many more, a Nato taskforce would today be heading for the Somali coast." It is worth bearing in mind that the crime is nothing new.

For decades, Israel has been hijacking boats in international waters between Cyprus and Lebanon, killing or kidnapping passengers, sometimes bringing them to prisons in Israel including secret prison/torture chambers, sometimes holding them as hostages for many years.

 

Israel assumes that it can carry out such crimes with impunity because the US tolerates them and Europe generally follows the US lead.

Much the same is true of Israel's pretext for its latest crime: that the Freedom Flotilla was bringing materials that could be used for bunkers for rockets. Putting aside the absurdity, if Israel were interested in stopping Hamas rockets it knows exactly how to proceed: accept Hamas offers for a cease-fire. In June 2008, Israel and Hamas reached a cease-fire agreement. The Israeli government formally acknowledges that until Israel broke the agreeement on November 4, invading Gaza and killing half a dozen Hamas activists, Hamas did not fire a single rocket. Hamas offered to renew the cease-fire. The Israeli cabinet considered the offer and rejected it, preferring to launch its murderous and destructive Operation Cast Lead on December 27. Evidently, there is no justification for the use of force "in self-defense" unless peaceful means have been exhausted. In this case they were not even tried, although—or perhaps because—there was every reason to suppose that they would succeed. Operation Cast Lead is therefore sheer criminal aggression, with no credible pretext, and the same is true of Israel's current resort to force.

 

The siege of Gaza itself does not have the slightest credible pretext. It was imposed by the US and Israel in January 2006 to punish Palestinians because they voted "the wrong way" in a free election, and it was sharply intensified in July 2007 when Hamas blocked a US-Israeli attempt to overthrow the elected government in a military coup, installing Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan. The siege is savage and cruel, designed to keep the caged animals barely alive so as to fend off international protest, but hardly more than that. It is the latest stage of long-standing Israeli plans, backed by the US, to separate Gaza from the West Bank.

 

These are only the bare outlines of very ugly policies, in which Egypt is complicit as well.

 

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/06/02-8

[ewerk 30406]

Well the Rachel Corrie is nearly at the blockade and isn't going to stop. I'm expecting the Israelis to board but be a lot more restrained than the last time. It should get interesting soon.

[Happy Face 29]

It reminds me of Thirteen Days when Kevin Costner is imploring the jet pilots to not get shot at due to the precariousness of the Cuban Missile situation.....the difference being Israel's soldiers seem to be told to shoot the shit out of the boats.

[Guest alex]

one thing i find slightly ironic is how it is considered liberal to now side with the islamists. by definition, israel is far more liberal than any of the surrounding countries

Not sure about any one else but I side more with the Palestinians on the basis they're far more oppressed by the Israelis than the Israelis are by them or anyone else. Also, you could say America is far more liberal than any number of countries but that doesn't mean you automatically say their foreign policy is ok.

[Dr Gloom 21868]

the idf has just boarded the rachel corrie. let's hope they handle the situation better than last week

[Dr Gloom 21868]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...olumns&sid=

[Happy Face 29]

John Stewart said Charles Krauthammer has a deadened soul the other night.

 

Pure evil.

[Park Life 71]

Israel risked a fresh wave of international condemnation today when its troops boarded a boat attempting to break the blockade of Gaza and forcibly diverted it to the port of Ashdod.

 

Five days after the botched assault on a six-boat flotilla ended in the deaths of nine activists and international isolation for Israel, an unknown number of naval commandos stormed the MV Rachel Corrie in international waters, about 20 miles from the coast of Gaza.

 

Today's operation was mounted despite growing calls for Israel to ease its siege of Gaza significantly. The US, Israel's staunchest ally, said the blockade was "unsustainable and must be changed".

 

Israel said it had met no resistance in stopping the 1,200-ton Rachel Corrie. "They complied with us completely," an Israeli military spokeswoman told the Observer.

 

Greta Berlin of the Free Gaza Movement, the main organisation behind the flotilla, said the passengers and crew had four times refused to accede to Israeli demands to divert to Ashdod voluntarily.

 

"There's no way that 20 people are going to resist a fully armed force," she said. "The fact that Israel boarded a civilian boat in international waters is a violent act."

 

She expected the 11 passengers – including the Nobel peace laureate Máiread Maguire– and nine crew would be treated "with kid gloves: the world is watching".

 

There had been no contact with the boat since early this morning, said Berlin. "Communications are shut down."

According to Israeli military accounts, commandos boarded the Rachel Corrie from naval vessels alongside rather than from helicopters, as happened in Monday's operation. They gained control of the boat within minutes.

 

The passengers and crew had already declared their intention not to resist.

 

The boat, carrying medical supplies and construction materials, was being towed into port to Ashdod this afternoon. Israel said it would unload the aid and transfer it to Gaza. However, last week it refused to allow any construction materials from the flotilla into Gaza, claiming they could be used to make weapons and build underground bunkers.

 

The passengers, from Ireland and Malaysia, would be deported immediately, Ygal Palmor, spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, told the Observer. The Irish passengers would be offered flights from Ben Gurion airport; the Malaysians – whose government has no diplomatic relations with Israel – would be taken by bus to the land border with Jordan.

 

If they refused to comply with summary deportation, they would be taken to a detention centre until their case could be heard by a court, Palmor said.

 

All those deported would be refused entry to Israel for around 10 years, he added.

 

Israel has spent the past five days struggling to contain a diplomatic crisis and public relations catastrophe. Relations with its regional ally Turkey, whose nationals accounted for all those killed on Monday, have sunk to an unprecedented low.

 

Despite strenuous efforts by Israel to ensure the dominance of its version of events, accounts emerging from activists have claimed that Israeli troops fired first on the boat at the centre of the assault, the Marvi Marmara. Israel has claimed a hard core of 40 "jihadis" on board was intent on attacking its troops.

 

Autopsy reports on the dead activists yesterday revealed that some had been shot at close range, and five had gunshot wounds to the head.

 

The US has joined the growing international chorus for the siege of Gaza to be eased.

 

"We are working urgently with Israel, the Palestinian Authority and other international partners to develop new procedures for delivering more goods and assistance to Gaza," said the national security council spokesman Mike Hammer. "The current arrangements are unsustainable and must be changed."

 

Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has hinted at a limited adjustment in the blockade policy, but aid agencies fear it will a cosmetic change aimed at appeasing international opinion rather than a genuinely relieving of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

 

 

full story

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/0...orrie-gaza-ship

[Park Life 71]

[ChezGiven 0]

If 40 jihadists were onboard that boat intent on killing Israeli soldiers, then there would have been an israeli fatality. They would have fought the attacking soldiers with a minor semblance of skill and would have been able to take out a few of them, if that's what they intended. The Israeli's lies are a testament to their zionistic passion.

[Happy Face 29]

Jewish <> Israeli

 

Jewish Voice for Peace in the Middle East, is planning an aid flotilla to Gaza!

 

There are over 250,000 Jews in contemporary Germany, and more Jews immigrated to Germany in 2005 than to Israel. Four-fifths of them are Russian Jews who prefer Berlin to Beersheva. And, there are some Israelis among them who have similar preferences. In further evidence of how Israel can actually be bad for Jews, the Israeli government lobbied Germany in 2004 to restrict Jewish immigration. But there are now more Jews in Germany than there were in 1939 before the Holocaust.

 

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3899915,00.html

 

Good on 'em.

 

 

In other news, the stream of acts refusing to perform there is becoming a flood, much to the chagrin of promoters....

 

Eric Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell, is often wrongly thought to have been writing science fiction in his seminal novel, 1984. In fact, he was simply warning about certain tendencies in governmental practice as actually observed not only in the mass authoritarian regimes but often in his own Britain.

 

Thus, newspeak, whereby the government calls things by their opposite, is an arrow in the quiver of the abject everywhere. So when the far rightwing government of Israel names anti-war peacenik Kenneth O’Keefe a “terrorist”, it is being Orwellian, but only in the sense of behaving as the worst governments typically do in contemporary times, not in the sense of resembling a dystopian future.

 

Rightwing Zionism is one of the more dangerous purveyors of newspeak nowadays. Former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz tried to invoke anti-terrorism laws forbidding attacks on US troops to keep peaceful protesters away from US military bases.

 

And it isn’t just governments. Israeli music promoter Shuki Weiss referred to the rash of cancellations by Western bands such as the Pixies of their scheduled appearances in Israel this summer as “cultural terrorism.” The musicians are protesting the aid flotilla massacre, in which 9 innocent persons were killed and 30 wounded. Come on. I’m not big on cultural or academic boycotts myself, but ‘cultural terrorism?’ How is declining to come a way of inspiring fear in someone? Maybe you could call it cultural passive-aggression. But terrorism?

 

By the way, one of the musicians now boycotting Israel is Gil Scott-Heron, who performed the classic “The Revolution will Not be Televised.” What he did not realize was that it couldn’t be televised because the Israeli navy jammed the signals.

 

But back to the serious. The tendency of the modern national security state is to recategorize peace work as a form of terrorism, and the Bush administration placed many peace workers on the no-fly list.

 

The implication of the Israeli government that a corps of ‘trained terrorists’ pre-planned an assault on the Israeli troops that illegally boarded their vessel in international waters is rejected by all the eyewitnesses.

 

A kind reader pointed out that Israeli troops and the Israeli authorities have now admitted to firing bullets at the deck of the Mavi Marmara before the commandos landed, and I think the evidence is that these bullets wounded some passengers and provoked the resistance to the landing.

 

“T. said he realized the group they were facing was well-trained and likely ex-military after the commandos threw a number of stun grenades and fired warning shots before rappelling down onto the deck.”

 

The NYT also reported that the Israeli military fired rubber coated steel bullets before landing on the ship.

 

Alarmingly, there is now good evidence that the Israelis systematically erased much of the photographic evidence of their aggressive assault on the ship after they confiscated it from the passengers and journalists.

 

No wonder the Israelis are rejecting an independent commission to investigate the massacre– it would find that not only were crimes committed, but that there was then a concerted cover-up.

 

http://www.juancole.com/2010/06/israel-nam...-terrorist.html

 

But the Israeli Navy ae still killing people...

 

Israel's navy has shot and killed four Palestinians wearing diving gear off the Gaza coast, officials say.

 

The Israeli military said it believed those on board were planning a terrorist attack.

 

Hamas officials in Gaza say four bodies have been recovered and two people are missing.

 

It comes a week after nine pro-Palestinian activists died in an Israeli raid on an aid flotilla trying to break Israel's blockade of Gaza.

 

Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005, but still controls and occupies the sea off the territory's coast.

 

The Israeli military said the boat was carrying "a squad of terrorists wearing diving suits on their way to execute a terror attack".

 

A spokesman said a naval force had hit its target, but did not give any more details of the operation.

 

The country's Haaretz newspaper quoted an Israeli army source as saying the incident took place at about 0430 local time (0130 GMT), and that the boat had been heading north to Israel from waters off the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

 

Israeli media is reporting that helicopters were involved in the operation.

 

The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Fatah's military wing, has reported that four of its men were killed and a fifth was missing, according to Israeli media.

 

The men had been training off the Gaza coast, the militant group was quoted as having claimed.

 

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said there were no Israeli casualties.

 

Iranian aid ships

 

The BBC's Jon Donnison, in the West Bank town of Ramallah, says it is not yet clear exactly what has happened.

 

But it is not uncommon for the Israeli navy to open fire on fishing boats it feels are too far out at sea, he adds.

 

There has also been sporadic rocket fire out of Gaza into Israel since last week's naval attack on the Gaza aid flotilla.

 

The latest incident comes as the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visits Turkey for a regional security summit.

 

Mr Abbas, who heads the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, is expected to pay his respects to the nine dead activists.

 

His government is the bitter rival of Hamas, which took control of Gaza from Mr Abbas's Fatah movement in 2007.

 

Meanwhile, the Iranian Red Crescent has announced it will send two aid ships to Gaza this week, Iranian state media reports.

 

One of the ships would be carrying donations made by the public, including food and medicine, and the other will be carrying Red Crescent workers, the aid agency said.

 

Our correspondent says if this happens it would no doubt ratchet up the tension off the Gaza coast. Israel believes Iran supplies Hamas with weapons.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/10252229.stm