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Israel (IDF) versus Gaza aid ships- updates

Reproduced under the Fair Comment provisions of the Copyright Act:

LINK


Worse than a crime 
      By Gwynne Dyer ,  Posted on » Thursday, June 03, 2010

The remark was originally made about Napoleon's decision to kidnap the Duc d'Enghien and have him judicially murdered more than two centuries ago: "It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder." It is often quoted when a government makes a decision, usually involving violence, that obviously harms its own cause. Like, for example, Israel's decision to seize the flotilla of ships bringing aid to the besieged Palestinians of the Gaza Strip.

Imagine that you are the Israeli official charged with recommending the best course of action for dealing with that flotilla. Exactly what position you hold in the government doesn't matter: somebody will have been given that job. So what things will you consider while you ponder your recommendation?

You are well aware that the purpose of the flotilla is mainly propaganda: to highlight the suffering of ordinary Palestinians as a result of Israel's three-year blockade of the Gaza Strip. Some of the organisers doubtless hope that Israel will use violence against the aid ships, as that would give them even more publicity, but they'll settle for just delivering the aid.

Israeli intelligence has its agents among the people organising the flotilla, of course, so you know that there is nothing dangerous in the 10,000 tonnes of cargo. Most of it is concrete and steel to help in the reconstruction of homes and schools destroyed during Israel's "Cast Lead" operation against Hamas militants in the Strip early last year.

Anyway, be realistic: there's all sorts of contraband coming into the Gaza Strip all the time through the tunnels on the Egyptian border. Why don't we just wave these ships through as a "humanitarian gesture"? That will spoil their little propaganda game, and they haven't the resources to do it twice.

True, our military guys say that they can just arrest all the ships en route and take them to one of our own ports in Israel: no muss, no fuss. But what if it goes wrong? We've had one propaganda disaster after another recently, and it's starting to do real damage.

Operation "Cast Lead" was not exactly a propaganda success: even our own official figures say we killed more than 400 Palestinian civilians, and most people outside Israel think the number was closer to 1,000. Then there was that unfortunate announcement about building more Jewish homes in East Jerusalem while US Vice-President Joe Biden was in the country: President Obama hasn't really been speaking to us much since that.

Just last week we had a really damaging revelation about how Israel offered to sell nuclear weapons to South Africa back in the apartheid days. And now we have this flotilla thing, just as Obama has finally invited Prime Minister Netanyahu to Washington for a kiss-and-make-up session. Oh, and most of the people on the flotilla come from Turkey, the one Muslim country that sees Israel as an ally.

Do we really want to risk screwing all that up just to starve the Palestinians of an extra 10,000 tonnes of supplies? Let's just allow the flotilla through, and get the credit for being reasonable and even magnanimous.

I presume that the above is a fair representation of what went through the Israeli official's head as he or she considered what to do about the aid flotilla. But in the end, the decision went the other way. Why? Probably just because Israeli reflexes kicked in: an early resort to force has become the government's default mode of problem-solving in recent years.

So people said things like "We mustn't look weak" and "What could possibly go wrong?", and Israel launched the military operation we saw on Monday, with the results we know: at least 10 dead civilians, another propaganda disaster, and its alliance with Turkey in ruins.

Israeli spin-doctors try to shift the blame to the victims, but they cannot get around the fact that their heavily armed troops illegally boarded a foreign ship in international waters, and that those troops then killed at least nine foreign civilians and wounded about 30 others. Just one Israeli soldier was seriously injured, though nine others apparently suffered scraped knuckles and bloody noses.

Do the Israeli spokespersons even understand that any professional army in the West that carried out such a botched and bloody operation would immediately suspend the commanders responsible and launch a major investigation? No, probably not. They have lost all perspective on themselves.




 
CougarDaddy said:
Why is everyone on this thread so fixated on the CEMENT all the sudden?  ;D


Because apparently people are starving, or so we're told, and what do they want to bring in? Cement.
 
Interesting video of supplies being inspected.  Doesn't look like food to me.

http://www.flix.co.il/tapuz/showVideo.asp?m=3423928

I can't verify it since I don't speak Yiddish.
 
Baden  Guy said:
Reproduced under the Fair Comment provisions of the Copyright Act:

LINK


Worse than a crime 
      By Gwynne Dyer ,  Posted on » Thursday, June 03, 2010

Why? Probably just because Israeli reflexes kicked in: an early resort to force has become the government's default mode of problem-solving in recent years.

It sure is lucky that the UK and France didn't take early military action with the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland, and Czeckoslovakia.  Then we might have missed WWII.  Maybe Gwynne could use some Viagra in his old age.
 
Baden  Guy said:
Israeli intelligence has its agents among the people organising the flotilla, of course, so you know that there is nothing dangerous in the 10,000 tonnes of cargo.
While Mossad certainly benefits from having a reputation of omnipresence, Dyer's unsubstantiated assertion may be a bit of a stretch.
 
Trinity said:
Interesting video of supplies being inspected.  Doesn't look like food to me.

http://www.flix.co.il/tapuz/showVideo.asp?m=3423928

I can't verify it since I don't speak Yiddish.

You don't need to speak Yiddish to understand what they are unloading......


Watch the sheep bleat that the Israeli's staged it.....sure did...they showed what the "peace activists" were shipping...
 
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0605/breaking1.htmlTEHRAN - Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards are ready to provide a military escort to cargo ships trying to break Israel's blockade of Gaza, a representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday.

"Iran's Revolutionary Guards naval forces are fully prepared to escort the peace and freedom convoys to Gaza with all their powers and capabilities," Ali Shirazi, Khamenei's representative inside the Revolutionary Guards, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency.

Any intervention by the Iranian military would be considered highly provocative by Israel which accuses Iran of supplying weapons to Hamas, the Islamist movement which rules Gaza.
            ___________________________________________________________

More to read on the link.
 
Perhaps you are all unaware, but recent developments in the building trades have revealed that mortars, 106mm rounds and the like, are ideal for expedited excavation of basements for large structures such as schools and hospitals.  Honestly, guys, this conspiracy theory is beneath you all.
 
Israel resumes supplying building materials to two Gaza projects http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-06/06/c_13336096.htm

GAZA, June 6 (Xinhua) -- Israel on Sunday reopened commercial crossing points with Gaza after weekend's brief closure, allowing construction materials into Gaza for two projects carried out by international organizations, a Palestinian official said.

From 95 to 105 truckloads are scheduled to enter Gaza today through Kerem Shalom crossing in southeast Gaza Strip, said Ra'ed Fattouh, a liaison official.

The majority of the trucks carry food and fruits. Cement, iron and gravel will also be entering to go for a major housing project the United Nations is building in Khan Younis city and for the rebuilding of Al-Quds hospital which was badly damaged during Israel's war here last year.

In March, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited the location of the housing project and called on Israel to let materials in to resume the project after three years of suspension. As for the hospital, which is run by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRC)'s hospital, France, which funds the reconstruction, pressed Israel to allow the materials for the hospital.

Israel has barred raw materials as part of its blockade since June 2007 in a bid to weaken Islamic Hamas movement which took over Gaza that year.

The shipments to the two projects, that began arriving last month, were the biggest amounts to be delivered since the end of Israel's Operation Cast Lead in January 2009. Tens of thousands of houses, factories, workshops and governmental buildings were destroyed or damaged in the three-week offensive.

In an interview with Xinhua last week, an official from the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said that 50,000 people from the refugees that the UNRWA sponsors became homeless and the agency still unable to repair their houses or rebuild the destroyed ones due to the lack of construction materials
 
Israel rejects international inquiry into lethal raid:

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Israel+rejects+international+inquiry+into+lethal+raid/3119475/story.html
 
hmmm so Hamas has building resources & options enough to build Olympic sized pools, restaurants etc, while thousands of their own people are said to be homeless.

So maybe Hamas is doing it on purpose for anti-Israeli propaganda.

Or maybe Gazans are homeless because Hamas is destroying their houses.

"Hamas destroys dozens of homes in Gaza

Strip's rulers say buildings knocked down with bulldozers were constructed illegally on government land. 'They promised reform and change – instead they've destroyed our homes," shouts newly homeless resident

Associated Press
Published: 05.17.10, 00:07 / Israel News

Hamas police wielding clubs beat and pushed residents out of dozens of homes in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on Sunday before knocking the buildings down with bulldozers, residents said.



Gaza's militant Hamas rulers said the homes were built illegally on government land. Newly homeless residents were furious over Palestinians on bulldozers razing Palestinian homes. "

Hamas . . .  the government the Gazans voted for.

Life's a bitch when it is a self inflicted wound.

 
Is Israel prepared to fire on Turkish warships that are trying to force a bloackade ? NATO's only muslim nation seems to have thrown its lot in with Iran and Syria. Would other NATO countries come to their aid against Israel ? If so the destruction of Israel is not far off.
 
tomahawk6 said:
Is Israel prepared to fire on Turkish warships that are trying to force a bloackade ? NATO's only muslim nation seems to have thrown its lot in with Iran and Syria. Would other NATO countries come to their aid against Israel ? If so the destruction of Israel is not far off.

One last look before it's cinders.

hagia-sophia-02.jpg


Israel isn't going down alone.
 
Technoviking said:
This wasn't about Humanitarian Aid: this was about breaking the blockade. 

Exactly. And that is where the true crime is. Molding "Aid and Breaking" together.
They simply use the "Humanitarian" terminology as a lever to gather sympathy on the world stage.
There is absolutely nothing humanitarian in trying to break a blockade. After this ordeal, they should
have the decency of sending all other shipments to the designated port,where they can liase with the
competant UN authority in the true spirit of humanitarianism.
 
Israeli patrol kills 4 militants in diving gear:

GAZA - An Israeli naval patrol killed at least four Palestinian militants in diving gear off the Gaza coast on Monday, Hamas security officials and the Israeli army said, and Israel claimed it had thwarted a planned attack.


"An Israeli naval patrol spotted a boat with four men in diving suits on their way to carry out a terror attack and fired at them," an Israeli army spokesman said, adding that the patrol had confirmed hitting its targets.


The spokesman did not say what the army thought was the intended objective of the divers.


Hamas security sources said four bodies had been found and a fifth man was missing and was presumed dead.


The incident comes eight days after Israeli marines killed nine Turks on the deck of a Turkish passenger ship which was part of a six-vessel convoy that set out to challenge a Israeli-led blockade of the Gaza Strip.


A second attempt by activists to break the blockade on Gaza was stopped on Saturday without incident.


Israeli media said Monday's sea patrol was carried out by naval commandos from the same unit that boarded the Gaza-bound ships last week although the military spokesman declined to comment on this.


In a second incident in the Gaza Strip on Monday, Hamas security and medical officials said an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at a group of militants in an open area near Gaza City, seriously wounding one man.


The Israeli army spokesman declined to comment but said he was checking details of the report.


Palestinian militants in Gaza frequently try to attack Israeli border patrols and sporadically fire rockets and mortar bombs at Israel. Attempts to attack from the sea are rare, however.


In February, Palestinian militant groups in Gaza sent explosive devices, thought to be primitive sea mines, out to sea intending to hit naval vessels. At least three devices washed up on Israeli beaches and were detonated by sappers.

© Copyright (c) Reuters


Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Israeli+patrol+kills+militants+diving+gear/3121213/story.html#ixzz0qACpboEY
 
This from the IDF - highlights mine:
The following passengers on board the Mavi Marmara are known to be involved in terrorist activity. The Mavi Marmara attempted to break the maritime closure on the Gaza Strip on Monday, May 31st 2010, and was boarded by Israel Navy forces.

Fatimah Mahmadi (born 1979), is a United States resident of Iranian origin, and an active member of the organization "Viva Palestine",  she attempted to smuggle forbidden electronic components into the Gaza Strip.

Ken O'Keefe (Born 1969), an American and British citizen, is a radical anti-Israel activist and operative of the Hamas Terror organization. He attempted to enter the Gaza Strip in order to form and train a commando unit for the Palestinian terror organization.

Hassan Iynasi (born 1982), a Turkish citizen and activist  in a Turkish charity organization, is known of providing financial support to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Terror organization.

Hussein Urosh, a Turkish citizen and activist in the IHH organization, was on his way to the Gaza Strip in order to assist in smuggling Al-Qaeda operatives via Turkey into the Strip.

Ahmad Umimon (born 1959), is a French citizen of Moroccan origin, and an operative of the Hamas Terrorist organization.
 
Israel to conduct own probe of Gaza ship raid

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Israel+conduct+probe+Gaza+ship+raid/3122140/story.html#ixzz0qCpDUkPz


JERUSALEM - Israel said on Monday it would investigate a deadly raid on a Gaza aid flotilla on its own, after rejecting a UN proposal for an international probe.


Defence Minister Ehud Barak told Israel's Parliament in response to a no-confidence motion over the May 31 raid which lawmakers later rejected, that "we intend to carry out an investigation of the events."


Barak gave no details of the format of such a probe, which Israeli media reports said was still being worked out, partly in co-ordination with Washington to ensure it would satisfy Western demands for a look at how nine were killed in the raid.


State-owned Channel One television said members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's senior cabinet forum wished to avoid naming a full-fledged inquiry commission as Israel has done after past crises.


Barak suggested Israel was also looking at ways to amend its four-year blockade on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, though it was intent to maintain restrictions it sees as essential to preventing Iranian missiles from reaching the Palestinian territory.


He said the probe Israel was planning would be in addition to a separate military investigation, and would seek to establish whether Israel's blockade of Gaza and its raid "met with the standards of international law".


"We will draw lessons at the political level, (and) in the security establishment," Barak said.


'MOUNTAINS OF QUESTIONS'


"Since the event, we have heard and read mountains of talk and questions and without a doubt in the coming months we shall discuss lessons . . . perhaps additional ways to achieve the same goals of the blockade, by reducing as far as possible the potential for friction," he added.


Barak rejected Western criticism that the Gaza blockade was creating any hardship in the coastal zone packed with 1.5 million people. "There is no humanitarian crisis or hunger in Gaza," he said.


In moving no confidence, former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni, head of the centrist Kadima party, said Netanyahu's government wasn't acting swiftly enough to probe the raid, and was following a "dangerous course" that increasingly isolated Israel diplomatically.


British Foreign Secretary William Hague suggested the quartet of Middle East peace negotiators could play a role in any inquiry and that the UN was not the only option.


"It's very important that an inquiry is established with an international presence," Hague told a news conference in Rome.


Hague's Italian counterpart, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, said Italy had proposed having observers appointed by the quartet — which comprises the United States, the European Union, United Nations and Russia — involved in the probe.


In further Israeli fallout over the flotilla, a parliamentary panel voted to remove diplomatic privileges from an Israeli Arab lawmaker who rode one of the ships, a motion that still requires a full plenum vote before taking effect.

© Copyright (c) Reuters


 
Anti-Israel rallies draw tens of thousands in Europe

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Anti+Israel+rallies+draw+tens+thousands+Europe/3118795/story.html#ixzz0qE9m9Taz

 
Several hundred show support for Israel

MONTREAL - Several hundred people were present on the plaza of Westmount Square at lunch Monday to show solidarity with Israel in light of recent condemnations of the recent violent blockade incident.

On May 31, nine activists on board a boat that claimed to be bringing aid to Gaza were killed when Israeli commandos stormed the vessel.

Video tapes have shown a fierce battle on board. Israel maintains the activists on board attacked the soldiers with knives and metal bars.

Many countries have made public statements that Israel used excessive force in the raid.

Monday's gathering of Montrealers standing behind the government was held in front of the General Consulate of Israel and attracted supporters of all ages, from students of the Hebrew Academy all the way to seniors with canes.

With flags flapping in a stiff breeze, the crowd listened to speakers like Mount Royal MP Irwin Cotler, who reminded the assembled that the cause of Israel "is not a just a Jewish cause but a just cause."

Wearing her Star of David flag like a cape, Goreth Xethalis was adamant that the flotilla incident was a clear case of "Israel defending itself."

"If this happened in Canada and Canada's waters were invaded ... well there's a double standard," said Xethalis.

Trevor Reef came to the rally to show his "solid support" for Israel.

"Israel wants peace and is always at the forefront of human rights and there is a double standard in the world (about Israel) that doesn't go away," Reef said.

"We are pacifists but we will continue to defend ourselves, because if we don't stand for ourselves, no one else will do it," Xethalis said.

"The main message here today is that people stand with Israel and those who seek to pursue peace," Cotler said shortly after the rally broke up.


© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette


Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/Several+hundred+show+support+Israel/3123655/story.html#ixzz0qEAsO6Sr
 
Regional countries condemn Israel over deadly ship raid

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Mideast+condemn+Israel+over+deadly+ship+raid/3127754/story.html#ixzz0qIg2Cud4

And also:

Israelis to consider British plan to ease blockade of Gaza

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Israelis+consider+British+plan+ease+blockade+Gaza/3127925/story.html#ixzz0qIgX8CPe
 
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