Author: shergald

….Will Allow In All Goods Except For Weapons

Substantiating the ruse that the siege of Gaza and the restriction of goods and food into Gaza is about Israel’s security needs is this report from the Associated Press yesterday: Some reported the announcement as a win for the peace activists, who have sent boats and flotillas to break the inhumane siege of Gaza over the past two years. After the slaughter of nine Turkish peace activists on the Mavi Marmara on the last flotilla, it was just impossible for Israeli hasbara to control the press, as more and more people around the world became cognizant of what Israel has been doing to the Gazan Palestinians.

JERUSALEM — Israel’s government decided Sunday to draw up a list of items banned from Gaza limited to weapons and materials deemed to have military uses and said the easing of the three-year-old blockade of the Palestinian territory would be implemented immediately.

The list of banned goods replaces an old list of allowed items that permitted only basic humanitarian supplies for the 1.5 million Gazans. Under the new system, the government said practically all non-military items can enter Gaza freely.

“From now on, there is a green light of approval for all goods to enter Gaza except for military items and materials that can strengthen Hamas’ military machine,” Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said.

Israel decided on Thursday to ease the blockade under intense international pressure after its raid on a blockade-busting international flotilla bound for Gaza killed nine pro-Palestinian activists.

In a critical shift, Israel said it would allow construction materials into Gaza for projects approved by the Palestinian Authority, such as housing and schools, as long as the projects are under international supervision. Up to now, Israel has banned most construction materials,

It’s a beginning at least, although the Palestinians remain skeptical. The siege itself will continue.

95% of Gaza’s industries are either destroyed or closed due to lack of raw materials and equipment, unemploment is sky high, clean water is scarce because of destruction of treatment plants, and sewage is still dumped into the sea surrounding Gaza daily. And fishing is still limited to a few miles off the coast and enforced by the Israeli navy.

But it is at least a partial win for the leaders of past flotillas and the memory of the nine Turkish peace activists who were murdered on the Mavi Marmara.

But it was also about the future that Israel was facing. This summer, flotillas from Lebanon, Iran, Germany (organized by Jewish peace org), and England (another Jewish peace org), will attempt to break the siege. Another Turkish flotilla was also being discussed. Viva Palestina, the British pro-Palestinian org that sent a land convoy to Gaza last January, will send simultaneous land and sea convoys, expected to be quite large, this September.

For Israel, the future was fraught with more bad press, and repeated reminders of the massacre that occurred on the Turkish flotilla.

Neoconservatism is often described as a right-wing political philosophy that emerged in the USA, and which supports using American economic and military power to bring liberalism, democracy, and human rights to other countries as necessary. Although neoconservatives claim to be liberal on economic issues, the right shift of this movement seems entirely based on its radical foreign policy. The Bush Doctrine, for example, is a often perceived as a Neoconservative project and the Iraq War an example of its implementation after 9/11.

However, according to Harvard professor Stephen Walt, the Neoconservative movement is not what it seems to be, but that it has always been an Israel-centric movement to involve the US in foreign adventures that seem advantageous to Israel, and not for the idealist purpose of spreading democracy around the world. In this regard, there is plenty of evidence that the trillion dollar Iraq war was engineered by Neocons situated in the Defense Department, that it was done for Israel’s sake on falsified evidence of Saddam’s WMDs and terrorist connections.

But Neocon influences did not end with Iraq, but went on to push for an attack on Iran, and then, now, Turkey, which is being singled out for its criticism of Israel based on recent events. As Walt put it, “the critic of my friend is my enemy,” hence, the anti-Turkey focus of recent Neocon efforts to support Israel.

Turkey and the Neocons

It couldn’t be more predictable. Back when Israel and Turkey were strategic allies with extensive military-to-military ties, prominent neoconservatives were vocal defenders of the Turkish government and groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and AIPAC encouraged Congress not to pass resolutions that would have labeled what happened to the Armenians at the hands of the Turks during World War I a “genocide.” (The “Armenian lobby” is no slouch, but it’s no match for AIPAC and its allies in the Israel lobby). The fact that the ADL was in effect protecting another country against the charge of genocide is more than a little ironic, but who ever said that political organizations had to be ethically consistent? Once relations between Israel and Turkey began to fray, however — fueled primarily by Turkish anger over Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians — the ADL and AIPAC withdrew their protection and Congressional defenders of Israel began switching sides, too.

Last week Jim Lobe published a terrific piece at InterPress Service, detailing how prominent neoconservatives have switched from being strong supporters (and in some cases well-paid consultants) of the Turkish government to being vehement critics. He lays out the story better than I could, but I have a few comments to add.

First, if this doesn’t convince you that virtually all neoconservatives are deeply Israeli-centric, then nothing will. This affinity is hardly a secret; indeed, neocon pundit Max Boot once declared that support for Israel was a “key tenet” of neoconservatism. But the extent of their attachment to Israel is sometimes disguised by the claim that what they really care about is freedom and democracy, and therefore they support Israel simply because it is “the only democracy in the Middle East.”

But now we see the neoconservatives turning on Turkey, even though it is a well-functioning democracy, a member of NATO, and a strong ally of the United States. Of course,Turkey’s democracy isn’t perfect, but show me one that is. The neocons have turned from friends of Turkey to foes for one simple reason: Israel. Specifically, the Turkish government has been openly critical of Israel’s conduct toward the Palestinians, beginning with the blockade of Gaza, ramping up after the brutal bombardment of Gaza in 2008-2009, and culminating in the lethal IDF attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. As Lobe shows, a flock of prominent neoconservatives are now busily demonizing Turkey, and in some cases calling for its expulsion from NATO.

Thus, whether a state is democratic or not matters little for the neocons; what matters for them is whether a state backs Israel or not.  So if you’re still wondering why so many neoconservatives worked overtime to get the U.S. to invade Iraq — even though Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan or Pakistan — and why they are now pushing for war with Iran, well, there’s your answer.

Walt goes on to re-evaluate the US-Israel relationship, and how detrimental it has been for both the US and Israel, but he also recommends the article by Jim Lobe, for which his commentary is merely an introduction: Neo-Conservatives Lead Charge Against Turkey. It can be read at the LINK.

What is perhaps the greatest detriment of the Neocon-AIPAC-UN Congress nexus is its total allegiance to the right wing Likud party of Israel, today represented by the return of Netanyahu to lead Israel, who apparently intends to implement, at last, A Clean Break, the Neocon prescription for the future of Israel.

Richard Silverstein (Tikun Olam), after reviewing the geriatric makeup of the commission Israel assigned to investigate the Gaza Flotilla massacre, could only conclude that: “the fix is in.” The average age of the panel is 85 years, at least some of participants being recruited from nursing homes. But that is not as damning as the well-known biases they carried through in their more lucid times.
The laughing begins when we hear about who will chair the commission: the youthful, 75 year-old Justice Yaakov Tirkel. About Tirkel, the Yediot Achronot wrote:

The judge heading up the Gaza flotilla investigation is known in his rulings as someone who says “Yes” to the security services.  He also protects freedom of speech-as long as its not connected to state security.

Tirkel is known to derive his legal rulings, not from legal precedence or law, but from “a set of nationalist and humanist values,” which gives favor to Israeli security needs and the IDF. Quoting Tirkel,

With great sorrow, I view the honor and freedom of our fighters as more dear than those of the enemy’s fighters.

Need one say more.

Ninty-three year old Shabbtai Rozen, chosen for the commission, was once an eminent Israeli diplomat and scholar of international law, is being recruited from a nursing home. A picture shows him before the cameras in his summer pajamas along with his Filipino caretaker. According to Silverstein, an published interview with him ‘makes him appear equally out to lunch.’

Then there’s 86 year-old Amos Horev, a distinguished Israeli general with impeccable intelligence credentials, but a former booster boy for the Israeli defense industry. Whether Horev is or is not in a nursing home himself, having an Israeli general sit in judgment of the IDF has obvious bias implications.

As to the rest of the octogenarians plus or minus on the commission, not much information is available.

If internal Israeli biases and waning cognitive faculties were the only problems, what about the two international observers brought in to give the commission an air of objectivity? But even here, we see a commission loaded up to fix the final conclusions about the Mavi Marmara massacre.

FireDogLake headlined it this way: John Bolton Pal Appointed to Israeli Whitewash Panel. The pal referred to is none other than David Trimble of the Ulster Unionist party. Trible was most recently a founding member of the Friends of Israel, a little select group of Israel government friends which includes AIPAC favorite John Bolton and Dore Gold. It was formed on the day of the Flotilla murders. Trimble is also a member of the Henry Jackson Society, closely allied with Richard Perle, James Woolsey and William Kristol, notorious American Neocons, who led the Bush administration by the nose (think Iraq).

The Friends of Israel initiative was reportedly formed with concern about the “unprecedented delegitimation campaign against Israel, driven by the enemies of the Jewish state and perversely assumed by numerous international authorities” and concern “about the onslaught of radical Islamism as well as the specter of a nuclear Iran since these are threats affecting not only Israel, but the entire world.” Need one say more? More can be read about Trimble at the link.

The other outside observer is a Canadian,  former military judge advocate general Ken Watkin, whose only fame was his involvement in an apparent stonewalling of a House of Commons inquiry into whether Canadian troops turned over Afghan detainees to be tortured. Uri Avnery, the Israeli peace activist, wrote that Watkin’s behavior in this incident “does not bode well for (his) willingness or ability to participate in exposing facts which might prove embarrassing to the Government of Israel.”

According to news reports, Israeli PM Netanyahu stated that the inquiry being set up by Israel into the Gaza-bound aid flotilla raid will “make it clear to the world that Israel is acting legally, responsibly and with complete transparency”.He said that exposing the facts “will prove that (Israel’s) aim was to conduct a defensive operation according to the highest standards”.

To repeat Richard Silverstein, “the fix is in.”

In an incredible display of ignorance if not crass insensitivity to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, US Senator Chuck Schumer, addressing the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America a few days ago (above), actually stated that it ‘makes sense to strangle (Gaza)’ economically, ‘until it votes the way Israel wants.’ This statement is not so much an abrogation of democracy as it is about send people into the voting booth with a gun behind their heads.

This past Wednesday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) delivered a wide-ranging speech at an Orthodox Union event in Washington, D.C. The senator’s lecture touched on areas such as Iran’s nuclear program, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and several domestic policy issues.

During one point of his speech, Schumer turned his attention to the situation in Gaza. He told the audience that the “Palestinian people still don’t believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution,” and also that “they don’t believe in the Torah, in David.” He went on to say “you have to force them to say Israel is here to stay.”

New York’s senior senator explained that the current Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip — which is causing a humanitarian crisis there — is not only justified because it keeps weapons out of the Palestinian territory, but also because it shows the Palestinians living there that “when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement.” Summing up his feelings, Schumer emphasized the need to “to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go”:

A deep in-depth analysis of Schumer’s remarks substantiate that he is either seriously misinformed or acting as a conduit of Israeli propaganda.

First of all, Schumer is simply wrong that the majority of Palestinians refuse to accept a two-state solution. On one major point, a recent poll found that 74 percent of the Palestinian population wants to see a two-state solution with an independent Palestinian state side by side with Israel. This is also the position of Abbas, and there are indications that Hamas may also be compelled to support such a solution. The problem is that Israel is unwilling to give up Hamas, lest it lose its ‘victim of terrorism’ meme gained after 9/11 (when Netanyahu acknowledged that 9/11 was good for Israel) and give up a prize red herring that distracts from the continuing colonization of the West Bank. The siege is of course a staple aspect of the Hamas terrorism bugaboo.

The reality is that Israel’s right wing government, including Likud and the religious parties, and perhaps even the moderate right Kadima party, prefers Hamas over two-states, the will of the Israeli people notwithstanding.

A golden rule about discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that Nazi analogies are not permitted lest a charge of anti-Semtism follow soon afterward, but Juan Cole, whose site Informed Consent, follows the IP conflict (among other Arab world topics) reminds Israel of the German concept of Sippenhaftung ( roughly, kin liability laws). Sippenhaftung was the practice in Nazi Germany in which relatives of persons accused of crimes against the state were held to share the responsibility for those crimes and subject to arrest and sometimes execution. In short, it is a form of collective punishment. However, it was never practiced against Jews, who suffered a worse fate, but against German dissidents and their families.

According to Cole, Sippenhaftung is now being practiced by Israel against the Gazan Palestinians, half of whom of are children. Cole also reminds Israel of some facts that it is reluctant to repeat publicly about Gaza and its inhabitants.

“Gaza” is an abstraction to most Israelis, including Sen. Charles Schumer of New York. A majority of the 1.5 million Gazans is not even from Gaza, but rather is from what is now Israel.

Americans do not know, and perhaps do not care, that 68% of Gazans are refugees living in 8 refugee camps, who were ethnically cleansed and violently expelled from their homes in 1947-48, in what is now Israel. And no, they were not combatants, just civilians caught up in a civil war of sorts. They lost massive amounts of property and their homes, which would now be worth billions, but have never received a dime from the Israelis in reparations or compensation. Then in winter of 2008-2009, the Israeli military destroyed one in every eight Palestinian homes, rendering even more people homeless.

Schumer accuses the Gazans of not `recognizing’ Israel, which is sort of like accusing the pelicans in the Gulf of Mexico of not `recognizing’ BP. If Schumer wants the recognition and good will of the Gazans, he should arrange for them to be paid for the homes and farms out of which they were chased by the Israelis, who made them homeless refugees in a kind of vast concentration camp in Gaza, and are now half-starving them.

So anything short of `starving to death’, i.e. mass extermination in the camps, is all right as long as it convinces the enemy?

How about something short of starving to death, such as 10% of children being stunted from malnutrition? Would that be worth it? Or a majority of Gazans being `food insecure’ according to the United Nations?

It would appear that Senator Schumer supports the practice of  Sippenhaftung, collective punishment, in Gaza.

The degree of polarization achieved within the Jewish community by the topic of Israel was witnessed last weekend in San Francisco, when organizations of differing perspectives, peace activists from the Bay Area Women in Black and Jewish Voice for Peace, confronted members of StandWithUs/SF Voice for Israel. The peace activists were holding a silent vigil outside the main entrance to the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation while it was celebrating an annual event, “Israel in the Gardens.” The StandWithUs group lined the street.

Here is a video of the confrontation:

Just in case the comments from the StandWithUs group cannot be read off the video, here is a sample:

“Nazi, Nazi, Nazi!” – this done as a group chant
“You’re all being identified, every last one of you…we will find out where you live. We’re going to make your lives difficult..we will disrupt your families…”, all on above video.
“Sink the flotilla–and you on it!”
“Terrorists, terrorists, terrorists.”
One man yelled (to someone who may have looked heat exhausted) “I hope you stroke out, old man!”
“Ugly bitches” said to older women.
“You’re not a Jew! you gave up your Jewishness!”
“Witches in black! Bitches in black!” (hard to tell which one it was, or whether they alternated the chant)
“You fucking…!”
“Bin Laden loves you! you support terrorism!”
“Is there a coroner in the house? Women in Black are dead!”
“Is there a doctor in the house? Women in Black are sick!”
“End the occupation of our sidewalk.”
“Remember 9/11, they were dancing in the streets.”
“Asshole!”
“Anti-Semite!”
“Bigot!”
“Sharmuta!” this was chanted for a while (means “slut” or “whore” in Arabic and which was particularly shocking for Arabic speakers to hear)
“Commit suicide!”
“Anti-women, anti-gay, why support Hamas today!”
They were also lesbian-baiting, even though they were chanting “Anti-women, anti-gay, why support Hamas today?” One guy yelled “lesbian” at me and my friend (correctly assessing our sexual identity) and maybe the same guy yelled at someone else, “When’s the last time you dated a man?”

Information about recent encounters with StandWithUs can be read at Muzzlewatch, a subsidiary of Jewish Voice for Peace, which also covered the weekend confrontation.

Watching these two groups interact, it is evident that the peace activists are parading quietly and reserved, apparently not responding to the jeers, while the pro-Israel StandWithUs group are highly aroused, hostile, and even threatening, at least verbally.

Watching these two groups, I wondered: what makes a Jewish person join one side as opposed to the other? Immediately the thought came, one side, the peace activists, must be Judaic, while the other, the pro-Israel group, must be Zionist. Other contrasts I thought of were the usual political ones, liberal-conservative, Democrat-Republican, but how can one know? A search for studies of personality trait differences among Jews that might affect their feelings toward Israel came up empty. A 2007 study claimed a generational factor, that attachment to Israel was declining among younger Jews, but that finding was contradicted the next year by another study that found no such decline. Besides, a look at the participants in the SF confrontation video clearly showed persons of all ages on both sides.

So what’s the deal?

I returned to Muzzlewatch report on the SF confrontation and found this, written by Cecile Sarasky:

You will see a lot of Jews protesting Israel’s actions silently, and look at the response. It’s not considered, it’s fearful and angry and hateful. There are numerous threats against the demonstrators. There is the Animal Farm scream that is in my headline, repeated and repeated. As Max Blumenthal says, American Zionism is turning into a tea party. This is exactly like the screaming I noticed at our silent demo outside the Waldorf IDF fundraiser back in March. The fervent lobby has lost its solid rank and file. It is left with the fringe.

So it was a mainstream versus fringe confrontation. Simple enough.

This titled text was attached to an article by Uri Avnery, founder of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom, and distributed by Tikkun via email. The article itself is available at the Gush Shalom site. This attachment is by ML Rosenberg, a Huffington Post contributor, and exposes the lies now being propagated by the Israeli government, which are being circulated in the mainstream media in the US, and possibly Europe, filling peoples’ minds with utter falsehoods about the flotilla attack, Hamas, and the dire situation in Gaza.(Sorry about the earlier misattribution.)
BEGIN

It’s been one lie after another in the US media about the Israeli attack on the Gaza-bound relief flotilla.  No matter that the Israeli media views the whole incident as a debacle for Israel, in this country the Israel-can-do-no-wrong crowd is on overdrive defending the operation.  As usual, facts don’t matter to them.

Except they do.

The first thing you need to know about the Gaza flotilla disaster is that the intention of the activists on board the ships was to break the Israeli blockade.  Delivering the embargoed goods was incidental.

In other words, the activists were like the civil rights demonstrators who sat down at segregated lunch counters throughout the South and refused to leave until they were served.  Their goal was not really to get breakfast.  It was to end segregation.

That fact is so obvious that it is hard to believe that the “pro-Israel” lobby is using it as an indictment.

Of course the goal of the flotilla was to break the blockade.  Of course Martin Luther King provoked the civil authorities of the South to break segregation.  Of course the Solidarity movement used workers’ rights as a pretext to break Soviet-imposed Communism.

The bottom line is that the men and women of the flotilla had every right to attempt to destroy an illegal blockade that Israel had no legal standing to impose and which was designed to inflict collective punishment on the people of Gaza. (There is no truth to the story that Israel would have delivered the goods on the ships to Gaza if asked; the Israelis never made that offer and, judging by years of precedent, would have blocked any delivery).

As for the Israeli argument that its soldiers were attacked, that is ridiculous. Israeli commandos were ordered to board a civilian ship in international waters and the government that sent them claims that the resisting passengers attacked them without provocation.  This is like a carjacker complaining to the police that the driver bashed him with a crowbar that was under the seat.  Neither carjackers nor hijackers should expect their victims to acquiesce peacefully.

Here are the facts about life in Gaza today — facts that only can be changed by breaking the blockade.  These data come from the American Near East Relief Association (ANERA), which provides relief to Gazans to the extent permitted by the Israeli (and American) authorities.  ANERA is neither “pro-Israel” nor “pro-Palestinian.”  It has no political agenda at all.  It merely determines what human needs are and tries to respond to them.

8 out of 10 Gazans depend on foreign aid to survive.

The World Food Program says Gaza requires a minimum of 400 trucks a day to meet basic nutritional needs – yet an average of just 171 trucks worth of supplies enters Gaza every week,

Clothes that were held in the port of Ashdod for over a year were released into Gaza but arrived covered with mold and mildew, unusable.

95% of Gaza’s water fails World Health Organization standards leaving thousands of newborns at risk of poisoning.

Anemia for children under the age of 5 is estimated at 48%.

75 million liters of untreated sewage are pumped into the Mediterranean Sea every day – because piping and spare parts are not permitted.

During the 2009 bombing:

More than 120,000 jobs were lost as Gaza’s industrial zone was destroyed… 15,000 homes and apartments were damaged or destroyed… 1/3 of all schools were destroyed.

None of these can be rebuilt, because construction supplies are kept out by the Israeli authorities.

Also, check this out from The Economist.  It is a partial list of commodities allowed into Gaza and commodities banned.  

So what is the blockade about?

It is not about stopping terrorism.  Hamas has repeatedly offered Israel an indefinite cease-fire in exchange for lifting the blockade.  And, on a half dozen occasions, Israel accepted the deal but did not live up to its side of it.  In fact, the 2009 war began after Israel ignored its commitments under the Gaza cease-fire agreement, continued the blockade, and then provoked the resumption of attacks on Sderot through a series of targeted assassinations of Palestinians (Israel claims that no cease-fire agreement curtails its right to kill any Palestinian it deems to be a terrorist).

Israel asserts that it will not accept any long-term cease-fire agreement with Hamas because Hamas does not recognize its right to exist.

But Israel does not need the permission of anyone — let alone Hamas — to exist.  All it needs from Hamas is an end to violence and that is precisely what Hamas is offering, in exchange for lifting the blockade.

This is not to say that Hamas need never recognize Israel.  It should.  But it is ridiculous to insist on recognition as a precondition for anything.  Recognition would be the end result of negotiations, not a precondition for it.

But that is not what Israel wants.  It wants to destroy Hamas because it is a terrorist organization.  And that makes sense until one realizes that the African National Congress, Sinn Fein, the Israeli Irgun, the Algerian FLN and a host of other resistance movements were called terrorist organizations before negotiations brought them to power.  Former Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir were both unabashed terrorists prior to their entrance into respectable politics.  And so what?  If dealing with terrorists — as Israel has repeatedly done with Hezbollah — will help achieve a worthy goal, why not do it?  After all, if negotiations fail, one can always walk away.

But Israel will not change its self-defeating policies until we change ours.  And there is no evidence that is happening (at least, not until after the November elections, for obvious reasons).

For now, our policies are joined at the hip with Israel’s.  We support the blockade of Gaza.  We oppose any efforts at reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.  We even back Israel’s opposition to the Arab Peace Initiative, which offers Israel full peace and normalization of relations with every Arab country in exchange for the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

Enough is enough.  The Obama administration needs to join the rest of the world in demanding an end to the Gaza blockade as a first big step toward the resumption of negotiations.

The attack on the flotilla was one of the most disastrous blunders in Israel’s history.  At last, the whole world sees Israel’s policy of collective punishment for what it is — a means to perpetuate the occupation forever. Only the United States government has chosed to close its eyes.

The occupation is killing Israel.  And we are on the sidelines letting it happen.  Some ally

END

Lawrence of Cyberia graciously provided an obituary on the nine Turkish peace activists who died on the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. They were all Turkish citizens. In retrospect, one can only imagine how they, like others aboard the flotilla, were affected by the Gaza massacre of December 2008, when Israel killed 1,400 Palestinians, especially the more than 300 children who died. The pictures were heartbreaking.

We all saw those pictures. Yet only a few of us, like those who died on the Mavi Marmara, were inspired enough to act. So these now dead activists joined an humanitarian aid convoy. They ended up dying for their principles. In the terminology of Islam, they died martyrs.

A brief introduction to the nine Turkish people shot dead on 31 May 2010, by Israeli soldiers who attacked the Turkish vessel M.V. Mavi Marmara, as it attempted to transport humanitarian aid to the people of the Gaza Strip.

1.Ibrahim Bilgen, 61, an electrical engineer from Siirt. Member of the Chamber of Electrical Engineers of Turkey. Married with 6 children.

2. Ali Haydar Bengi, 39, ran a telephone repair shop in Diyarbakir. Graduate of Al-Azhar University, Cairo (Department of Arabic Literature). Married to Saniye Bengi; four children.

3. Cevdet Kiliçlar, 38, from Kayseri. Originally a journalist, worked for the past year as webmaster for the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH). Married to Derya Kiliçlar; two children. He participated in an IHH African relief project.

4. Çetin Topçuoglu, 54, from Adana. Former amateur soccer player and taekwondo champion, who coached Turkey’s national taekwondo team. Married with one son, Aytek. His wife, Çigdem Topçuoglu, was also aboard the Mavi Marmara, but survived.

5. Necdet Yildirim, 32, an IHH aid worker from Malatya. Married with a three-year-old daughter.

6. Fahri Yaldiz, 43, a firefighter who worked for the Municipality of Adiyaman. Married with four children.

7. Cengiz Songür, 47, from Izmir. Married to Nurcan Songür; six daughters, one son.

8. Cengiz Akyüz, 41, from Iskenderun. Married to Nimet Akyüz ; three children – Furkan (14), Beyza (12) and Erva Kardelen (nine).

9. Furkan Dogan, 19, student at Kayseri High School; hoped to become a doctor. Son of Dr. Ahmet Dogan, Assoc Prof at Erciyes University. A Turkish-American dual national, with two siblings.

Check out Lawrence of Cyberia’s link above for further information about these dead Turkish peace activists.

Thanks Diane.

In spite of reports from Gaza Flotilla survivors who witnessed the carnage on the Mavi Marmara, that Israeli soldiers “were shooting to kill,” the Free Gaza Movement this morning announced that the second wave of ships headed by the MV Rachel Corrie is on its way to Gaza.

Cyprus, June 4, 2010

The Rachel Corrie is 150 miles away from Gaza in international waters and on her way. They will arrive on Saturday morning. The 1200 ton cargo ship is the last ship from the Freedom Flotilla and is loaded with construction materials, 20 tons of paper and many other supplies that Israel refuses to allow into the imprisoned people of Gaza.

Some of the High-Profile people on board:

Mairead Maguire and others holding a Palestinian flag

Mairead Maguire from Belfast, Ireland, a Nobel Peace Laureate (l976) and Co-founder of Peace People, Northern Ireland.  She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace and a nonviolent solution to the Ethnic/political conflict in Northern Ireland. Mairead went on the maiden Voyage of Dignity in October 2008, the second successful voyage for the Free Gaza Movement.  She was also on Board `Spirit’ when Israel hijacked the Boat in International Waters, taking all 2l humanitarian passengers to Israel, where they were arrested, detained for a week in an Israeli prison and then deported.

Denis Halliday, from Ireland, a UN Assistant Secretary-General from 1994-98. Appointed by SG Boutros Ghali, he served as ASG UN Human Resources Management in New York and in mid 1997 to end 1998 as Head, Humanitarian Programme in Iraq to support the Iraqi people struggling under the genocidal impact of UN Sanctions. Since resigning from the UN in 1998, Halliday has delivered numerous parliamentary briefings, provided extensive media inputs and has given public/university lectures on Iraq, human rights, and the UN, in particular its reform.

Matthias Chang Wen Chieh is a Malaysian of Chinese descent. He is a Barrister of 32 years standing and once served as the Political Secretary to the Fourth Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. He is the author of three bestsellers, “Future Fast Forward”, “Brainwashed for War, Programmed to Kill”, and “The Shadow Money-Lenders and the Global Financial Tsunami”, published in the US and in Malaysia.

Mohd Nizar bin Zakaria,Perak, Malaysia, MP Mohd Nizar bin Zakaria is a Member of the Malaysian Parliament.

In addition, there is a three-member camera crew on board from Malaysia TV3 and journalis Shamsul Akmar bin Musa Kamal.

The passengers on board the ship have stated, “Communication is difficult and sometimes impossible and there are many rumors out there started by Israeli authorities, but there is no way we are going to Ashdod. We are, for sure, on our way to Gaza.”

Now we wait and see just how stupid Israel’s leaders can be.

This morning Netayahu announced that there would be no investigation of the Gaza flotilla attack, and presumably Israel will not assist in an international or UN effort. If anyone wonders why Israel would not seek to at least justify the killings of nine peace activists and the wounding of many dozen others, Juan Cole threw some light on the problem: hypocrisy. Actually, I think deception or lies might also sum it up. (Links in the original)
START HERE:

The sloppy Israeli propaganda effort against the Free Gaza humanitarian flotilla has been so bad that the pictures released by the Israeli army have been tagged by alert bloggers as forgeries, some of them having been on the Web for years. This site alleges that many of the pictures put out by Israel purporting to show arms on the aid ship still contained internal tags allowing them to be identified as old photos from years ago. Even if the charges of forgery are false, the photos show chains, sticks, an axe- things that would be on any ship.

The defiant speech on Wednesday of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu defending the Israeli boarding of an aid flotilla headed for Gaza, and his insisting that the blockade of Gaza would continue displayed all the problems with hyper-nationalist Israeli discourse, of inappropriate analogies, factual errors, propaganda, and magical thinking. These fallacies have dominated the narrative presented by members of the Netanyahu government and those who support it.

The first fallacy is to identify all the people of Gaza with the Hamas party-militia, dismissing them all as “terrorists.” But over half of the 1.5 million people of Gaza is children, who can hardly be terrorists. And if Palestine Authority elections had been held in both the West Bank and Gaza this spring, likely Fatah (which recognizes Israel and has agreed to peace talks) would win, not Hamas, according to a recent Angus Reid poll. (The news is even worse for Hamas: nearly a third of Palestinians want to throw in the towel and seek Israeli citizenship. Oh, yeah, Palestinian nationalism is such a threat to Israel; geez, this is like a third of Americans in the 1950s announcing that what they really wanted was Soviet citizenship).

So collectively punishing all the people of Gaza, as Israel does, is just wrong. It necessitates half-starving little children, since they are so much of the population. And the Israeli perpetrators of the blockade assume that they are punishing Gaza supporters of Hamas when it is clear that a majority of Palestinians would not vote for Hamas at this point.

The Israeli hyper-nationalists argue from contiguity, from things being next to each other, demonizing entire groups and peoples rather than considering their actions in the real world. Thus, IHH, the fundamentalist Turkish charity that sponsored the lead ship in the aid convoy, sympathizes with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. The ship was then branded a “Hamas” vessel. But none of the passengers is known ever to have actually engaged in anything like terrorism and the Turkish government would not allow it to operate if it were actually considered radical (look at the way Turkish security tracks down the Turkish Hizbullah).

And, since Iran sympathizes with Hamas, as well, and since IHH is a known sympathizer with the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, actually the ship is not just a Hamas ship but is an Iranian one. Even though Iran had nothing to do with it and even though it had no weapons aboard. All of Gaza is transformed by this way of thinking (if you are sympathetic with a group, you are identical to that group and they are identical to you) into an “Iranian port on the Mediterranean.” In fact, of course, the Israelis do not allow the Gazans to have a port at all, much less an Iranian one. And, if that were the danger, then surely Tyre (in Lebanese Hizbullah territory) is already an `Iranian port on the Mediterranean,’ since Iran is a patron of Hizbullah. But wait, that situation already exists. And no one in Europe has been menaced by Tyre, of which most of them have not heard. Imaginary dangers in the future can always be dressed up as more menacing that mundane existing situations.

The fallacies of guilt by association, appeals to emotion, poisoning the well, etc., etc. reach such a crescendo in this Israeli discourse that the IHH charity is simultaneously accused of being a stalking horse for Shiite Iran and for Shiite-killing hyper-Sunni al-Qaeda. The absurdity of a whole host of European parliamentarians, former US diplomats, Nobel prize winners, and a Swedish novelist, being fronts for `al-Qaeda’ is so profound that it is like a Monty Python skit. `No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!’

Netanyahu also presents Gaza not as a territory conquered and occupied by Israel, but as an independent Hamas “regime” with which Israel is actively at war- a war that would justify a military blockade that must be honored by other nations. But Gaza isn’t an independent `regime’. It is not a state at all. It has no army or navy. It is the height of cruelty for Netanyahu to deny the Palestinians statehood but then to declare that he may half-starve them because he is at war with a Palestinian state! Gaza is a territory occupied by Israel, which controls its borders, air space and seas, and even whether its children may have chocolate and nutmegs (the answer is no, and I can’t help hearing in my mind a version of the line from Seinfeld about the cranky soup chef: `No nutmeg for you!’)

So the entire `blockade of an enemy state during war’ analogy to World War II trotted out by Netanyahu and his minions is mind-bogglingly stupid.

Since in the real world Israel is the Occupying power in Gaza, it is responsible under the fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 for the welfare of its residents. Israel may not alter their lifeways, may not engage in collective punishment, and may not arbitrarily “put them on a diet” as a Likud spokesman observed was the real motive of the blockade when it was first tried out.

And since there is no Gazan state with which Israel can be at war, but only a squalid slum under the Israeli jackboot, it is not in fact legal for Israel to rampage about attacking civilian aid ships in international waters, summarily murdering the humanitarian workers aboard them.

After all those imbecilic World War II analogies that the Neoconservatives tried to sell us about Iraq, the idea that Netanyahu is yet again just doing his bit to defeat Adolph Hitler by shooting down humanitarian volunteers rings hollow indeed. It isn’t always 1938 or 1942, folks. Get over it.

In reality, the poor Israelis have gradually become one of the last colonial regimes in the world, and they are acting the way the French did in Algeria or the British did in 1950s Kenya before decolonization. The Israelis have the same chance of ultimate success that the British and French empires had once local people began mobilizing socially and politically, which is to say, none. The French polished off several hundred thousand people during their futile resistance to Algerian independence, and that seems to be where Israel is now headed. Except that France was large, populous and could retreat across the Mediterranean, whereas Israel is small, lacking in manpower, and stuck with defending a postage stamp territory from 300 million Middle Easterners almost all of whom deeply sympathize with the people of Gaza. Netanyahuism can hasten the end of this story, to Israel’s detriment, but can do nothing to stop the rest of the Middle East from getting wealthier, better educated and more militarily sophisticated over the next decade.

Not to mention that several of the nationals the Israel troops murdered were Turks, whose state is already in the G20 and who already possess a formidable military capacity within a NATO context (which Israel lacks).

All this does not end well for Netanyahuism, which, moreover, is itself bankrupt and hypocritical. Israel, which keeps screaming about nuclear proliferation, has as many nuclear warheads as the UK. Netanyahu, who says `terrorist’ as often as other people say the word `the’ openly celebrates the Zionist terrorist bombing of the King David Hotel late in the British Mandate, which infuriates the British. Netanyahu had a prominent Hamas leader actually poisoned nearly to death in the late 1990s, and the Clinton administration made him produce an antidote because they wanted to negotiate with him. Khaled Mashaal, Netanyahu’s intended murder victim, recently declared that if the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza ended, so would the resistance to it. That’s as close as you will get to a peace offering from Hamas; it couldn’t have been made if Netanyahu had succeeded in his bungling attempt to lift the plot of some old Agathie Christie murder mystery.

Netanyahu’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, may be the most corrupt and thuggish politician now serving in elective office anywhere in the world. A former member of the racist Kach party, Lieberman has a thing about wanting to drown people, whether it be prisoners or the entire Egyptian nation. Why it is acceptable to fete Netanyahu and Lieberman in Washington but not to so much as negotiate with Hamas is incomprehensible. And these Israeli thugs get to shoot down innocent aid volunteers in international waters with impunity.

But, well, reality cannot be postponed forever. There will be unpleasant consequences for Israelis of their inhumane and illegal blockade of Gaza. Already, a plurality of Norwegians is eager to boycott Israeli products over what they see as Israel’s Apartheid policies toward the Palestinians. If Netanyahu and his successors go on like this, that sentiment is sure to grow throughout the European Union. Israel deeply depends on trade and technology transfers with Europe, and if those dry up in the next decade, it will limit Israel’s growth and even military strength.

According to the Bible, the ancient Israelis once had a prophet, who dared instruct Pharaoh, “Let my people go!” The Israelis have fallen into a shameful role for Jews, playing Pharaoh, denying Palestinians not only food, medicine and cement but the very right of citizenship in a state, which is the basis for all civil and human rights. They have to let those people go. We know what happened to Pharaoh when he refused.

END

By permission.

It ain’t over til’ it’s over, and from what is being reported this morning, it ain’t. The Irish ship that was to be part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, apparently, for technical reasons, never left port in the southern Mediterranean with the other ships.

But it is on its way now, and another confrontation with the Israeli Navy in international waters is likely, given the stupidity that just led to the massacre of peace activistis on the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish IHH humanitarian ship.

The ship is named after Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old human rights activist, who was killed in 2003 by an Israel Defense Forces bulldozer while attempting to block the demolition of a house in Rafah. The ship was purchased by the Free Gaza Movement.

Video of the MV Rachel Corrie loading in dock.

The Irish Times this morning reported:

The MV Rachel Corrie   is ploughing ahead with its attempt to deliver aid to Gaza despite yesterday’s attack by the Israeli navy on Gaza-bound ship the Mavi Marmara. The cargo ship, which has five Irish nationals and five Malaysians aboard, is due to arrive in Gazan waters tomorrow, a spokeswoman for the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign said. Nobel laureate Maireád Corrigan-Maguire, former UN assistant secretary general Denis Halliday, film maker Fiona Thompson and husband and wife Derek and Jenny Graham are the Irish nationals on board.

The vessel became separated from the main aid flotilla after being delayed for 48 hours in Cyprus due to logistical reasons.

Speaking from the ship today, Mr Graham said the vessel was carrying educational materials, construction materials, medical equipment and some toys. “Everything aboard has been inspected in Ireland,” he said. “We would hope to have safe passage through.” Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Pat Kenny , Ms Maguire said none of the aid ships carry arms and are “purely humanitarian”. She said it was necessary for the vessel to complete its mission to assure the people of Gaza the world does care.

Free Gaza Movement activist Greta Berlin, based in Cyprus, said: “We are an initiative to break Israel’s blockade of 1.5 million people in Gaza. Our mission has not changed and this is not going to be the last flotilla.”

It has already been reported via Israel’s Army Radio that Israel was prepared to block the MV Rachel Corrie . Athough the vessel could reach Gazan waters by tomorrow, Berlin said it might not attempt to reach Gaza until early next week.

Irish Labour foreign affairs spokesman Michael D Higgins today called upon the Government to demand safe passage for the MV Rachel Corrie.

We are staying tuned.