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Israel Attacks Gaza Aid Fleet
Israeli forces have attacked a flotilla of aid-carrying ships aiming to break the country's siege on Gaza.
People protest against Israel in front of the Israeli ambassador's residence in the Turkish capital Ankara on May 31. At least 10 activists were killed before dawn on Monday when Israeli navy commandos stormed a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, sparking international outrage and plunging the Jewish state into a diplomatic crisis.(AFP/Adem Altan) At least 19 people were killed and dozens injured when troops
intercepted the convoy of ships dubbed the Freedom Flotilla early on
Monday, Israeli radio reported.
The flotilla was attacked in international waters, 65km off the Gaza coast.
Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military spokeswoman, confirmed that the attack took place in international waters, saying: "This happened in waters outside of Israeli territory, but we have the right to defend ourselves."
Footage from the flotilla's lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara, showed armed Israeli soldiers boarding the ship and helicopters flying overhead.
Al Jazeera's Jamal Elshayyal, on board the Mavi Marmara, said Israeli troops had used live ammunition during the operation.
The Israeli military said four soldiers had been wounded and claimed troops opened fire after "demonstrators onboard attacked the IDF Naval personnel with live fire and light weaponry including knives and clubs".
Free Gaza Movement, the organisers of the flotilla, however, said the troops opened fire as soon as they stormed the convoy.
Our correspondent said that a white surrender flag was raised from the ship and there was no live fire coming from the passengers.
Before losing communication with our correspondent, a voice in Hebrew was clearly heard saying: "Everyone shut up".
Israeli intervention
Earlier, the Israeli navy had contacted the captain of the Mavi Marmara, asking him to identify himself and say where the ship was headed.
Shortly after, two Israeli naval vessels had flanked the flotilla on either side, but at a distance.
Organisers of the flotilla carrying 10,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid then diverted their ships and slowed down to avoid a confrontation during the night.
They also issued all passengers life jackets and asked them to remain below deck.
Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from Jerusalem, said the Israeli action was surprising.
"All the images being shown from the activists on board those ships show clearly that they were civilians and peaceful in nature, with medical supplies on board. So it will surprise many in the international community to learn what could have possibly led to this type of confrontation," he said.
Meanwhile, Israeli police have been put on a heightened state of alert across the country to prevent any civil disturbances.
Sheikh Raed Salah,a leading member of the Islamic Movement who was on board the ship, was reported to have been seriously injured. He was being treated in Israel's Tal Hasharon hospital.
In Um Al Faham, the stronghold of the Islamic movement in Israel and the birth place of Salah, preparations for mass demonstrations were under way.
Protests
Condemnation has been quick to pour in after the Israeli action.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, officially declared a three-day state of mourning over Monday's deaths.
Turkey, Spain, Greece, Denmark and Sweden have all summoned the Israeli ambassador's in their respective countries to protest against the deadly assault.
Thousands of Turkish protesters tried to storm the Israeli consulate in Istanbul soon after the news of the operation broke. The protesters shouted "Damn Israel" as police blocked them.
"(The interception on the convoy) is unacceptable ... Israel will have to endure the consequences of this behaviour," the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement.
Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader in Gaza, has also dubbed the Israeli action as "barbaric".
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists, including a Nobel laureate and several European legislators, were with the flotilla, aiming to reach Gaza in defiance of an Israeli embargo.
The convoy came from the UK, Ireland, Algeria, Kuwait, Greece and Turkey, and was comprised of about 700 people from 50 nationalities.
But Israel had said it would not allow the flotilla to reach the Gaza Strip and vowed to stop the six ships from reaching the coastal Palestinian territory.
The flotilla had set sail from a port in Cyprus on Sunday and aimed to reach Gaza by Monday morning.
Israel said the boats were embarking on "an act of provocation" against the Israeli military, rather than providing aid, and that it had issued warrants to prohibit their entrance to Gaza.
It asserted that the flotilla would be breaking international law by landing in Gaza, a claim the organisers rejected.
Source: Al Jazeera and agenciesComments
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402 Comments so far
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Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
The U.S. and Israel are now acting completely outside international law in these State-sponsored terror wars and armed ghetto-izations when the U.S. was the nation most responsible for creating international law after WWII. Time to cut Israel loose from our annual $3 Billion dollar handout. When the second economic collapse comes later this year or early next year I hope Israel will face our existential budget ax.
Agree much, will add:
This - the main conflicts in the world, including the multiple Israeli attacks - is now a war of lay-people globally against rulers - state-level politicians and corporations.
It's getting clear. Politicians-corporations, the Pol-corps, have control of most of the material resources and communication channels, while lay people have "control" of the moral right. The borders between the warring parties are fluctuant, any of US may find our activities one moment on the side of Polcorps, the next siding with lay people, as our needs for consumption and activities fluctuates during any day.
We, as sufficiently rich to have internet-access and writing skills in English, are trapped in an exploitative level of the global class-divided society, being presented minimal choices to opt out of e.g. eating explotatively produced food to survive or using such clothes and other equipment.
This is NOT as confusing as it's made out to be, in the msm. The defining line of which side is which is the standard ethical rules, starting with The Golden Rule of Ethics, Reciprocity: be as we'd want others to be to us. The rest is defined in e.g. the UN charter and Human Rights. As well as classic religio-philosophical commandments: Don't kill, don't steal, don't lie, don't sex-misuse, don't drug-abuse - live reciprocity. Not hard to know at all. Not only is it "in our hearts" - reciprocity is a basic natural law of how exchanges work. The law's balance may be skewed for a while by force, but not broken. When the use of force ceases, reciprocity snaps back into balance like an elastic.
The war between rulers and ordinary people will last until the dominant groups of people on earth learn to live (it's actually a skill) with reciprocity in our hearts and minds. "I hope some day all will join up" - even Isreal killers too - "And the world will live as one".
Never happen.
The entire population in the US could be starving, homeless, and stricken with the plague and US aid to israel will keep right on.
If anyone thinks Israel will suffer serious repercussions from this, think again.
In the end, nothing will change. Israel will continue to kill foreign nationals from every country on earth, as well as the ritual thrill of murdering innocent Palestinians with greater efficiency, and Gaza will starve to death.
This is another step towards the most frightening truth. Israel WILL detonate a nuclear bomb soon, and world leaders will do nothing to stop them.
Obama will do NOTHING. Just like he is doing NOTHING about BP's destruction of the Gulf of Mexico.
Truly disgusting.
I'm sure he'll issue some strong words of disappointment in our partner in crime, but you're right--he'll do nothing.
Israel majority hates Naziism: we become what we think about!!!
Sod you and the pessimism you rode in on. - That's the kind of thinking which enables exactly what you describe to happen and to go on. Lots of bad occurences in the world are stopped or reduced by people protesting. Lots of good things happen because individuals start doing them. Nothing of human social events is predetermined, WE are all together the determinators. Get that now!
With almost all of that $3 billion coming right back to the U.S. because it's used primarily to purchase weapons from our friends at Boeing, etc.:
2006 total aid: $2.5 billion
Of that, $2.2 billion was for military
2007: $2.5 billion
Of that, $2.3 billion was for military
2008: $2.4 billion
Of that $2.3 billion was for military
Sources: CRS Report RL33222: U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel, updated Jan. 2, 2008
U.S. military aid to Israel, 2009: $2.55 billion
2010: $2.7 billion
Proposed 2011: $2.85 billion
Note: This does NOT include money for joint development of missile defense systems.
Source: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/foreign_aid.html
You said it!
The more I learn about my nation and Israel the more uneasy I become.
Boy was I ever wrong about both!
Israel must be condemned and isolated with real sanctions but I am positive that America will come to the rescue and veto any such proposal.
Could you imagine Saddam Hussein occupying Kuwait, blockading it for 60 years, and every time he kills or imprisons another few thousand Kuwaitis or someone tries to bring them humanitarian relief they are repulsed by overwhelming and lethal force while a UN Security Council permanent member, lets say like Russia, repeatedly and without fail vetoes any action against Iraq. If you think that is far fetched, ask yourself why and what is the difference.
I'm sorry but do you really think condemnation, sanctions, make the slightest difference? Do you think that will be enough to change the scene and bring justice to the Palestinian people?
Once you understand why this is happening in Tel Aviv and Washington you have to understand why regime change in both Israel and the USA is needed. Once you get your gray cells around that you will realise that it ain't going to happen by "peaceful" demonstration or non violent civil disobedient action. Hitler, Pol Pot, and these Zionists running the show don't give a flying whatever about public opinion unless it gives them further power or leverage through propaganda or confusion, and they have and will use every means to inflict suffering on anyone they want including nuclear weapons, and they'll use those bombs too saying they needed to protect your and their shared values and had no alternative under the circumstances.....
You cannot get them into court or keep them in a jail. They have proved themselves to be above and beyond the law. The only way to stop these murderers is by killing them before they kill you, and why not indeed? Because for their part they have decided anyone who goes against them is without question or due process a legitimate target for their killing machine; that's me and I would hope you too, anyone of us who is working for their demise, and as I said there is no peaceful way, I can see anyway, to effectively get rid of this vermin and prevent the escalation of the suffering they cause.
BTW understand this has nothing whatsoever to do with Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam, this is just simple evil. When you see it, if you cannot cure it, you have no alternative but to remove it just like gangrene or cancer. Sometimes you may die in the process, but that is just how serious this is.
Oh my god.
The Zionists are suffering the same insanity the Corporitistas are.
Well, that's because the Zionists are the money behind the Corporations.
It's a straight line from politicians, to Corporations, to Bankers, to The Zionists.
The psychopathic insanities of GR E E D and H A T R E D.
This is very, very serious. It may even prove to be a watershed event (among so many!). Like the Gaza Christmas slaughter, it shows that the Israelis have dropped all pretense to any last remaining shred of decency. But it also symbolizes the age of tyranny we live in. Peaceful protest has become impossible. Charity has become a threat to the state. International opinion has become something to be killed. People ask, "Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?" Now we know where, if we didn't already. Six feet underground, or at the bottom of the sea.
Apparently Israel has also moved two nuclear subs into the Persian Gulf.
Take cover, friends. I have the feeling things are going to get very nasty very soon.
remember the Liberty? yeah, no one else does either.
obama is forming a commission to investigate what happened right now. there'll be 3 appointees from AIPAC, two from the ADL, and Joe Lieberman.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Re: The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty:
"On October 22, 2003 the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, resulting in the deaths of 34 US crew members and the wounding of 173, issued its report on Capitol Hill. Among its findings:
"There is compelling evidence that Israel's attack was a deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew; evidence of such intent is supported by statements from Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Undersecretary of State George Ball, former CIA director Richard Helms, former NSA directors Lieutenant General William Odom, USA (Ret), Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, USN (Ret)." The crew, the report said, were "abandoned by their own government... fearing conflict with Israel, the White House deliberately prevented the US Navy from coming to the defense of USS Liberty... due to the influence of Israel's powerful supporters in the United States, the White House deliberately covered up the facts of this attack from the American people... there has been an official cover-up without precedent in American naval history."
"Signing these emphatic conclusions were some of America’s best known military men: Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen Raymond G. Davis, former assistant commandant of the Marine Corps; Rear Admiral Merlin Staring, former Judge Advocate General of the Navy, and Ambassador James Akins (Ret), former United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. And how were these categorical conclusions dealt with in the press? Reviewing the record four years later, Alison Weir, executive director of If Americans Knew, reported here on the CounterPunch website that a review of the hundreds of newspapers indexed by Lexis-Nexis "does not turn up a single US newspaper that mentioned this commission, a single US television station, a single US radio station, a single US magazine. "While it was mentioned in an Associated Press report focusing on one of the commission's most dramatic revelations, Lexis reveals only a sprinkling of news media printed information from this AP report, and those few that did failed to mention this commission itself, its extremely star-studded composition, and the entirety of its findings."
"And who, in the case of the Liberty, conducted the initial, cursory Navy Court of Inquiry in the immediate aftermath of the attack? None other than Admiral John S. McCain, father of Arizona's senior US senator, preparing the hasty cover-up under the supervision of Johnson's White House and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara."
[Source: Schanberg, Sydney. McCain and the POW Cover-up, The American Conservative, May 26, 2010]
Thanks for the information. It will be useful against Israeli's online trolls who are on every website right now hurling B.S. at the truth.
Thanks. Excellent source material.
'metal' - yr presenting the excerpt is laudable, but pls be fair in yr quotes: all of that - including the report-quotes - is from Alexander Cockburn's May 28, 2010 article at Counterpunch. It's his intro and outro paragraphs in yr excerpt (although he heavily and with correct crediting quotes "The American Conservative"). Cf. http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn05282010.html
Yr real source is not "conservative" but quite the opposite and radical.
Keep spreading the good words. But credit sources correctly, out of courtesy and encouragement to the fine radical writers like Cockburn. Pls.
I do. The media dropped it like a hot potato.
Well what did you expect? This is suppose to surprise someone? This has been going on for decades.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Really? Please cite another occasion where Israel's navy, operating in international waters, ordered its commandos to storm a vessel whom they knew to be carrying peaceful civilian activists where said commandos, using live ammunition, killed many of those activists for merely trying to bring food and medicine to struggling Palestinians under Israel's fascist heel.
The IDF slaughters civilans by the thousands. They used their air power to blow Lebanon's civilians up; women, children, everyone in the last invasion. In Gaza the massacre of civilians is nonstop. Did you think that these people would be treated any better?
We will not forget!
Not Jenin. Not Beirut. Not Gaza. Never.
I hope my fellow American citizens, who consider themselves citizens of Israel also, will come to realize what it has come to mean to support unconditionally a violent pariah state that clearly has no regard for non-Jewish life. Consider the contempt the German-American Bund has been held in all these decades. Please don't disregard the parallel.
Tony Vodvarka
Shades of the U.S.S. Liberty?
The boats were not armed and were carrying 10,000 tons of medical supplies and equipment... Give me a break! Israel should be kicked out of the U.N.
USS Liberty mentioned in lead article this weekend in Counterpunch.
The commission investigating that attack said, "The crew, the report said, were "abandoned by their own government... fearing conflict with Israel, the White House deliberately prevented the US Navy from coming to the defense of USS Liberty... due to the influence of Israel's powerful supporters in the United States, the White House deliberately covered up the facts of this attack from the American people... there has been an official cover-up without precedent in American naval history."
According to the BBC's "Dead in the Water" (YouTube), it was my understanding that as a reconnaissance ship, the Liberty was not armed.
A 'research' vessel, meaning that they surveyed the sea floor, made maps of ports and said floor, oh and looked for Soviet submarines... Lightly armed with .50 Cal machine guns...
Still, it was considered a USN warship. In the same manner that a recon aircraft would be considered a USAF warplane.
Absolutely Despicable !
Perhaps the US feels that it must continue to support the barbaric practices of the Isralis, invading and displacing a pre-existing people living on lands they desire to claim for their own. Once we call Israel on this behavior, our own early success in North America is much less defensible...
Barbarians supporting barbarians.
Invading and displacing a people living where they always have IS the way the US operates.
Cut from the same cloth.
This is a gigantic black eye (or two?) for the Obama administration which should have warned Israel of dire consequences if these ships were attacked. That might not have prevented the rabid Israelis but it would at least have made it clear where we stand.
the non-condemnation & inaction make clear where "we" stand.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
The Israelis know Obama is a toothless, spineless weakling. Obama is now between a hornet's nest and a fire ant mound, precisely where he deserves to be.
If they ever had the "moral high ground", the Israelis have lost it now; doesn't matter what kind of "confiscated weaponry" they show the world media to justify this atrocity.
Israel has never had the "moral high ground." And whatever scraps of the illusion thereof they may still have had, they lost a very long time ago.
"Israel Attacks Gaza Aid Fleet" - "This happened in waters outside of Israeli territory, but we have the right to defend ourselves."
Nonsense. That claim is a stark contradiction in terms: Israel has NO "right" to "defend" themselves or attack anyone in international waters. That is the point of "international" waters.
Isreal killers.
Horror. Murder on the high seas. Food and medical supplies a threat. u.s. citizens pick their noses and watch. Disgusting culture. Disgusting society. Hung over this morning after partying to honor military might. Wave a flag. Watch a game. Eat the leftovers.
OK, NOW do we all understand Israel's role in world affairs? The USS Liberty, 9/11, genocide on Palestinians, war crimes by the truckload. C'mon you cowardly Teabaggers. Where are you on this one? I don't see any street demonstrations against Israel, you rotten little sniveling yellow-belly loudmouth dummies...and its all being done with your (our) tax dollars you morons. WW III is about to begin folks. Israel has nuclear submarines in the Persian Gulf.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Many of the Tea Bagger groups are replete with Christian fundamentalist and Christian Identity goons--the two largest Zionist groups outside Israel. They pump millions of dollars of special aid into Israel every year because they believe Israel plays a central role in 'The Great Rapture' and that it is their Christian duty to convert as many Jews to their virulent strain of fundamentalist Christianity before Armageddon. The ones who resist conversion are expendable, of course. Israeli right-wing Zionists milk these cornfed Amurkan tits for all they can get out of them. Sarah Palin will be crowing over this attack like a victory as will all of our far-right media and some in the "mainstream" corporate media as well. Look for Jewish war profiteers like Dick Perle to pop up like bubonic pustules to give their support to Netanyahu.
Allow me to restate the obvious.
OK, NOW do we all understand USA's role in world affairs? The USS Liberty, 9/11, genocide on Iraqis & Afghans, war crimes by the truckload. C'mon you cowardly Teabaggers. Where are you on this one? I don't see any street demonstrations against the USA, you rotten little sniveling yellow-belly loudmouth dummies...and its all being done with your (our) tax dollars you morons. WW III is about to begin folks. The USA has nuclear submarines everywhere..
No military or financial aid to Israel.
Joe
I continue to wonder how the Congress can continuously ignore The Symington Amendment when giving Israel financial/military aid:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symington_Amendment
This smacks of the Congress' ignoring of The Boland Amendment when they were circumventing it to give aid to the Contras.
I'd love to hear everyone's take on this here at Commondreams.
Piracy on the high seas! Israelis have forfeited the regard of every person of principles in the modern world. No excuse can be offered to cover over this atrocity.
Israel was most decidedly not defending itself but "enforcing" its own Nazi-like embargo against Gazans' right to the humanitarian materials contained in these boats.
Nothing can justify or excuse this international war crime.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is right about Israel after all. Now their threat is nuclear. Those submarines and their nuclear-MIRVed warheads were made in and paid for by the United States. This insanity is Made in the USA.
People can be awfully cruel to one another.
i am so sad today for all peace actvist.Pakistani news director Talat hussain and his teem is also in ship.prey for him. he is brave man working for Pakistanis student those blamed on planned bombing but released because they never find even single proof.
still these students and Pakistani blamed by western media and got bed name.