The facts about what actually happened on the “Mavi Marmara” in the early hours of this morning won’t in any way affect the tidal wave of hate and self-righteous condemnation that is descending on Israel but if it interests you then you should read Ron Ben Yishai’s account of events here.
Continue reading ‘The Gaza Flotilla: Slaughter Without Victory’
As I write this the BBC is reporting that up to 19 people have been killed during the seizure of the Free Gaza Flotilla by the Israeli Navy. It also says that the “Mavi Marmara”, the flotilla’s flagship, is still not fully under Israel’s control so it’s not impossible that there will be further casualties. Some quick points…
1.
Turkey will probably break diplomatic relations with Israel over this. The convoy was supported by the Turkish government, the main charity behind the convoy is Turkish and most of the people on board the “Mavi Marmara” are Turkish. This will culminate the cooling in Israeli-Turkish relations that has been going on since the AK Party came to power in the latter country.
2.
I watched the live feed from the “Mavi Marmara” in the hours leading up to the arrival of the naval commandos. Judging from the pop-eyed rage expressed by some of those aboard towards the yahudiler I am not surprised matters have come to this. Some of the passengers were evidently longing for martyrdom. You can see one of them saying so before she left Istanbul:
Regardless of this, the deaths represent a PR disaster for Israel and it remains to be seen whether it was worth taking the inevitable risks associated with such an operation in order to keep Hamas isolated. And there’s also the question of what approach Israel will take to the next convoy, and the one after that.
3.
A number of European politicians were denied permission to board the convoy in Cyprus by that country’s legitimate government. Showing their profound concern for human rights, justice and equality they made their way to the part of the island under Turkish military occupation since 1974 - a zone which has been heavily settled by mainland Turks and from which the Greek population has been ethnically cleansed in its entirety - in order to join the flotilla from there.
1.
Writing in Haaretz, Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff point to an aspect of the Free Gaza Flotilla that hasn’t received the attention it should,
Riad Malki, the PA’s Foreign Minister was in Buenos Aires yesterday and gave an interview to Pagina/12. With regard to the Hamas regime running Gaza he said the following,
Michael Mansfield is a renowned British criminal lawyer and in an open letter to Nick Clegg, Britain’s new Deputy Prime Minister, in today’s Guardian he writes,
Neve Gordon is not happy that Richard Goldstone’s alleged past as a hanging judge in apartheid South Africa has come to light. He calls it “character assassination” and identifies it as part of a “a well-orchestrated delegitimisation campaign by Israel”. At least he doesn’t say that it’s well-funded too…
I received an e-mail circular from B’Tselem today about Israel’s policies towards Gaza. The first substantial argument offered is this:
“The siege of Gaza is causing enormous suffering among innocents, and it’s hard to see how that deprivation can be justified,” said Uri Zaki, B’Tselem’s USA Director. “International law, as well as basic human and Israeli values, demands that Israel do its utmost to address its legitimate security concerns without inflicting unnecessary harm to the civilians of Gaza. The current policy doesn’t come close to meeting that standard.” Gazans’ rights to minimal standards of food security, shelter, health, education and to travel are protected under international law. These needs should not be held hostage to security and political issues.
Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff have a piece here in which they assess Operation Cast Lead a year after its conclusion. They acknowledge that,
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) penetrated to the heart of the strip — the center of Gaza City, where most of Hamas’s major compounds are located. The organization’s defensive infrastructure, which had been painstakingly built over three years and included hundreds of booby-trapped houses, tunnels, landmines, and smuggled anti-tank rockets, was destroyed.
Hamas fighters had no answer for the IDF’s technological and military edge. Their attempts to kidnap Israeli soldiers failed and, though Hamas fired hundreds of rockets into Israeli territory, only a few civilians were killed. More than a year after the fighting, the strip is still under siege by both Israel and Egypt. Most Gazans are forbidden from traveling abroad, while their supply of goods depends primarily on smuggling through tunnels from Egypt.
1.
As readers of this blog will be well aware, Juan Miguel Muñoz, is a man of constant sorrow. He’s the Jerusalem correspondent of El País and over the last couple of years it has fallen to him to report on the daily outrages against the conscience of humanity committed by Israel.
However, in this piece in today’s edition of Spain’s most popular serious newspaper he seems a bit more cheerful. The world, as he sees it, is finally waking up to the reality of the many evils that allowing the Jews to govern themselves has brought upon the world. His analysis, however, doesn’t resist serious consideration.
War, when practised by Israel, is frequently seen as having paradoxical consequences. The more often it inflicts damage and defeat on its enemies the stronger they are held to become. Never mind that Egypt and Jordan long since grew sick of defeat and signed peace treaties with the Jewish state, never mind that Syria, with the partial exception of the First Lebanon War, hasn’t risked a direct confrontation with Israel since 1973 and never mind that part of the leadership of the Palestinians accepts Israel´s existence; victory is still seen as making Israel weak and its enemies strong.
Just a couple of lines to recommend a lecture on the question of proportionality in war by Professor Jeff McMahan of Rutgers University. It’s worth the full hour and twenty four minutes of your time but in case you need a couple of teasers to tempt you I’ll throw you these; he thinks that certain classes of Israeli and Palestinian civilians are not entitled to complain if they are harmed by enemy action and that the idea of proportionality in unjust wars makes no sense. I found the lecture here.
Honest Reporting has a useful summary of media coverage of the news that Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, is already considering a war crimes investigation of one IDF reserve officer, Lt. Col. David Benjamin. It’s called “lawfare:” harassing Israeli politicians and military figures with dubious, politically-loaded charges of war crimes.
Meanwhile, Ocampo, Richard Goldstone and others jumping onto the “Israeli war crimes” bandwagon would do well to read Richard Cohen’s take on the context of the Gaza operation in the Washington Post:
Here are a couple of key passages from the report on the Gaza conflict commissioned by the UN’s utterly discredited Human Rights Council:
“While the Israeli Government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right to self defence, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole…deeds by Israeli forces and words of military and political leaders prior to and during the operations indicate that as a whole they were premised on a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed not at the enemy but at the ’supporting infrastructure.’ In practice, this appears to have meant the civilian population.”
Continue reading ‘UN Human Rights Council Report Distorts Gaza War’
You remember all the fuss at the start of the year about Israel’s supposedly disproportionate use of force in Gaza, no? Well, unless you are a close student of Afghan affairs it may have escaped your attention that last Thursday Spanish forces killed 13 members of the Taliban without suffering so much as a scratch on their own side.
“One thing is certain: In a six-hour telethon loaded with Israel bashing, the Greek public was deceived that money contributed would go to rebuild a Christian hospital destroyed by the army of the Jewish state.”
Jean Cohen in Athens with an extraordinary story - a scam which took advantage of the fact that so many people really are prepared to believe the worst about Israel.
Hat-Tip: Eddie.
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