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The Hijacking of the Truth: Film Evidence 'Destroyed'
Protesters say Israel had an assassination list. Israel says soldiers fired only in self-defence. So what really happened on 31 May?
Jamal Elshayyal, a journalist with al-Jazeera, woke with a start to the opening salvos of an Israeli assault that would transform the decks of the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish vessel bound for Gaza, into a bloodbath.
From the ship's position deep in international waters, satellite images of Israeli speedboats and helicopters approaching the vessel were beamed across the globe before communications were abruptly cut off, leaving the events on the Marmara to unfold away from the eyes of the world.
Six days after the bloody assault that left nine foreign protesters, mainly Turks, dead, nobody can recount with any conviction precisely what happened that night. The convoy of ships, whose passengers included writers, politicians and journalists, had been expected for weeks, with organisers loudly broadcasting their plans to run Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip and draw international attention to the situation there.
From the beginning, it was clear that Israeli forces were concentrating in their largest numbers on the Marmara, a ship carrying some 550 peace activists. The remaining five boats were much smaller and easily commandeered. After the Marmara was subdued, the passengers silenced, and their recording equipment confiscated, Israel disseminated a carefully choreographed account of the events that night that would dominate the airwaves for the first 48 hours.
Only as eyewitnesses, traumatised by their experiences, started to return to their home countries, were serious questions raised about the veracity of the Israeli version of events. Israeli commandos initiated the attack on the Marmara with stun grenades, paintballs and rubber-cased steel bullets. They were met with water hoses as the ship's passengers tried to form a defensive cordon to prevent soldiers from reaching the wheelhouse. Next, the helicopters started their approach, hovering overhead as they tried to disgorge commandos.
From the other ships, passengers looked on helplessly: "The worst thing was seeing the helicopter come up because I knew they were going to invade," said Ewa Jasiewicz, a 32-year-old organiser. "You could hear the screams when they started shooting ... We wanted to stop and go back but there wouldn't have been anything we could have done."
From the moment the helicopters arrived, the sequence of events becomes confused. The dizzying number of claims and counter-claims serves only to present an incomplete account of a military operation that went badly, badly wrong. More than 1.7 million viewers have pored over the edited YouTube footage posted by the Israeli navy since Wednesday. In the dramatic clip, commandos rappel down on to the deck from a helicopter, where they are met by angry activists armed with iron bars and sticks.
This is a critical point, for Israel has rallied domestic opinion on the crucial claim that its soldiers dropped into a meticulously planned riot for which they were completely unprepared. Panicked, they acted in self-defence after they landed, shooting only those who threatened them.
The video is problematic, though. The images of angry protesters are striking, but they lack context. What happened before? What happened next? Had the soldiers started shooting when they descended to the deck? The only account offered by the Israelis of what happened next is left to Staff Sergeant S, a commando who claims he shot six of the protesters.
The last of 15 to arrive on the deck, he said he saw that two of his colleagues had gunshot wounds. Pushing others into a protective cordon around the injured soldiers, he shot at the protesters to force them to fall back. It's a neat account, but several eyewitness accounts tell a very different story.
Mr Elshayyal, a reporter for the Arab channel al-Jazeera, was standing to one side of the ship and had a view of the front and back of the vessel when the fighting started. By his account, soldiers fired down on the protesters from the helicopters before an Israeli soldier had even set foot on the ship. A man next to him was shot through the top of his head, dying instantly.
"What I saw were shots being fired from the helicopter above and moments later from below - from the ships," Mr Elshayyal said. "As far as I am concerned, it's a lie to say they only started shooting on deck."
At least two other eyewitnesses saw soldiers firing from above the ships before they landed on the Marmara's deck. It is possible that this is what prompted the fierce resistance to the soldiers when they dropped down. Several passengers recount how organisers urged their peers to stop hitting the soldiers, aware of how it would harm their claim to be peaceful protesters.
Others on the ship claim they raised a white flag, but say that it was ignored. They also used a loudspeaker to reiterate their message of surrender and requested that the injured be taken off the ship to get medical assistance. Again, they were ignored.
At some point early on, the activists dragged three, possibly four, injured soldiers to a lower deck, either to keep as hostages or for their own safety. It was then, several passengers say, that the situation quickly deteriorated. Israel has insisted that the protesters took two of the soldiers' pistols and used them, but others claim the pistols were taken away to prove that Israel planned to use live rounds.
Below, the protesters rummaged through captured soldiers' belongings and claimed to unearth a document that they allege is a list of people Israel intended to assassinate. The booklet, written in Hebrew and in English, contained some photographs of passengers on the Marmara, including the leader of IHH, the Turkish charity that provided two of the ships, an 88-year-old priest and Ra'ad Salah, head of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Mr Elshayyal said.
A military spokesman, Lt Col Avital Leibowitz, insisted soldiers acted in self-defence and that she "was not aware" of any list. But one thing is fast becoming clear - many of the dead were shot multiple times at point-blank range. One was a journalist taking photographs. "A man was shot ... between the eyebrows, which indicates that it was not an attack that took place from self-defence," Hassan Ghani, a passenger, said in an account posted on YouTube. "The soldier had time to set up the shot." Mattias Gardell, a Swedish activist, told the TT news bureau: "The Israelis committed premeditated murder ... Two people were killed by shots in the forehead, one was shot in the back of the head and one in the chest."
When Israeli troops had subdued the ship, they rounded up the passengers, bound their wrists, in some cases forcing activists into stress positions, and prevented them from using toilets. Mr Elshayyal said he was given just three sips of water before he was taken off the ship more than 24 hours later.
Their ordeal, of course, was not yet over. Accused of entering Israel illegally, the captives were transferred to an Israeli prison, where many were held in cramped cells and denied phone calls. Furious, Turkey sent three planes to transport the activists out of Israel, threatening to sever all diplomatic ties if they were not all released.
Meanwhile, much of the video footage confiscated from Marmara passengers remains undisclosed, and Israel has sought to undermine some eyewitness accounts by alleging some of the passengers were terrorist sympathisers bent on martyrdom.
Questions remain unanswered on both sides. But without a full and transparent airing of all the evidence, the truth of that dreadful night on the Marmara may never come to light.
In the meantime, the organisers say they will seek again and again to breach Israel's defences. Scottish protester Ali El-Awaisi said: "We sent six ships this time. Next time it will be 30 ships."
80 Comments so far
Show AllOne simple fact puts Israel's lack of integrity beyond question: the confiscation of the cameras and other recording equipment.
Were the IDF commandos telling the truth then why would they want to suppress any recordings of the incidents which would, presumably, prove that the IDF was telling the truth?
This proof of Israeli treachery is undeniable.
q
Good comment.
Israel needs to be exposed for the treacherous monster they have become. Nuclear armed as well! Israel is a terrorist state and needs to be sanctioned, not rewarded. The majority of Americans have been far too stultified to even question the Judeo-American version of events therefore poor Israel was just protecting herself. It just makes me ill as to how willfully uninformed most Americans are.
As opposed to the 'Christo-American version?
Americans, such good folk are we!!!
Just can't help our ignorance. It's in the GM's we willingly keep eating. And the burgers and fries. God Bless the U.S.A.
Those camera images posed a security threat to the Israelis.
They have a right to protect themselves against media scrutiny.
No one has any right to tell these people what they can or cannot do. They are free.
That's right -- all rules and regulations are an imposition, unless they're ours!
Ya, I'm pretty sure qatzelok had his toung very firmly in his cheek. Things seem to fall like iron, rather than irony;-)
Does this right apply to Iran and all the other ME countries? Or only to hypocritical jackasses like you and Israel?
Can you imagine the outrage the US would show if Al-Qaeda did EXACTLY the same thing that Israel did to the people on that boat? They would be called cowards for shooting people in the back and the back of the head.
When Palestinian "terrorists" took over the Achille Lauro in 1985 it was a bad, very bad thing. When Israel's "freedom fighters" take over a boat 25 years later, its no biggie, no problem, they had every right to do it. Pretty hypocritical if you ask me...
They would be labelled supporters of a terrorist state and been declared enemy combantants which is exactly what some pea brain in the US Congress is demanding. Hey didn't Obama go after those pirates in Somolia? What's the difference here?
RR
Your argument applies to any action legal or illegal by any entity.
Ann Wright said, when interviewed last week,that she speculated the cellphones, computer, plus clothes, shoes, etc. that the Israelis confiscated will appear on the black market, where they could fetch a cool million dollars in all.
That, my Zionist friends, is effectively an act of piracy in itself.
The Israeli authorities must return all personal items to their rightful owners or lose what shred of credibility they may have that this was not an act of piracy.
"The images of angry protesters are striking, but they lack context. What happened before? What happened next?"
Uh, a ship full of peacefully sleeping people sailing in international waters was attacked by armed pirates. Some of those passengers (angry for some strange reason?) attempted to resist that armed piratical attack with whatever makeshift means were at hand.
Is there some other significant detail missing from that equation? Are armed robbers excused and exonerated on grounds that they may or may not have been firing wildly as they broke into your bedroom? If they kill you and members of your family, are they to be awarded medals of heroism because you attempted to resist their armed invasion with a broom handle or a kitchen carving knife?
Jeez, this "benefit of the doubt for poor Israel" reporting really is infuriating. What doubt?!
RV,
Thanks for your support yesterday.....Anyway,
I also wonder about something else. I was in DC when this happened. A woman i know had just gotten back from living in Gaza for several months. She had also gone with Code Pink (never mind how i feel about them), earlier. More than once.
This woman was the first to tell me about the flotilla attack late sunday evening. She had gotten the message from someone who was involved. But. The day before we were talking and she talked about how many of her friends in Gaza wanted the blockades lifted, and not charity from the flotillas, etc. And i could understand that sentiment.
She also said that the Turkish activists were very, "over the top". She said it quietly and with a smile. So.........My theory is that this was taken into consideration by IDF. That they wouldn't take an attack 'lying down' so to speak. And that may be one reason they went after them.
Although i think that the Iranian uranium issues are very connected and the u.s. was part of this whole thing.
You're welcome. I think you were just an innocent victim of someone else's "disappearance", as was I myself later. Anyhow, 'nuff said,
I'm sure there were many considerations involved in both the planning and execution of the attack on the Mavi Marmara and other ships of the flotilla. The fact remains, however, that no justice system worth its name excuses murder (and especially not murder involved in the commission of a felonious assault) on grounds that its victim or victims belong to some organization disliked and disapproved by the murderers.
And, yes, I have no doubt that the U.S. was involved in various ways, but I'm inclined to the view that it probably counselled more caution than was actually employed. The imperialists may be completely ruthless, but they aren't totally blind and stupid -- at least not all of them.
RV, not all of them. Indeed. But a few.
As i have said since last monday. Dick Cheney dreams of being Netanyahu.
I really do believe that israel is the neocon's neocon. They go further than the u.s. would dare to go........In public. That is why they get the big bucks. In my opinion.
They are paid for their chutzpah. And. I have also posited my own (i think it is original, perspective). Israel is of course, showing it's own self destructive idiocy. And they are being used the ways the Jews were the money lenders in 'olden' times, by good old Christendom. This is the current day version of same, in my opinion.
They are willing to do our dirty work. And to the u.s. and israel, it looks like a win/win. As i have also said, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", is a profoundly destructive non-truism. But that is the thinking, i believe, in the american-israel alliance. Both ways.
Stephen Harper dreams of being Netenyahu.
RR
They are still the money changers they ended up in commerce as it was considered somewhat profane to deal with money and they let the Jews take it over and now they really do control the world I am sorry but that is the way it is.
RR
The undeniable tampering with evidence! The fact that the event took place in International waters, should be a crime in itself!
All the evidence was taken from International Waters to the perpetrator's home; YOU CAN'T TRUST THIS EVIDENCE!
What more is there to understand about that?
Though the activists and the people of Gaza know that their cause is just, it may not hurt for them to take solace in these lyrics:
"They will try and make you crawl
cause they know what you're saying makes sense at all"
Sly and the Family Stone-1969-from their album Stand
These lyrics also pertain not only to the Palestinians but also to the Afghans and the Iraqis:
"There's a midget standing tall
with a giant beside him about to fall"
Sly and the Family Stone-1969-from their album Stand.
Oppressed peoples of the world-resist American and Israeli aggression.
One of my favorite albums of all time, can't find the original songs on the net very easy. A lot of remakes, but the original album; S'got that SOUL! & ROCKS!!!
While I agree that the song certainly has a great beat and melody, the lyrics, as I mentioned, are what can truly be used in relevance to what the Palestinians are going through with the Israelis as well as the Afghans, the Iraqis and the Pakistanis with the Americans.
I saw them when I was in Grade 8....very poor venue, but great experince...my first foray...
Cheers,
RR
Interview of Kevin Ovenden by Lee Sustar. Kevin Ovenden is an organizer of the Viva Palestina solidarity group and veteran of two convoys to Gaza. He was on the Mavi Marmara where the massacar tool place.
http://www.zcommunications.org/an-act-of-state-terrorism-by-kevin-ovenden
“At about 4:25 a.m., the assault began.
It began with percussion grenades. They are an explosive, and they can injure people badly when they go off next to them. They were designed to create panic, which itself is an extremely reckless and violent act when you consider that this was a civilian passenger ship carrying over 500 people from 32 different nationalities.
The youngest participant was not yet one year old. The oldest was 88 years old. We were carrying, among others, parliamentarians, including two members of the German Bundestag, and the exiled Eastern Catholic archbishop of Jerusalem, Archbishop Hilarion Capucci, who is 85 years old and has the use of only one leg. This is an indication of the kinds of people who were aboard the ships.
To fire percussion grenades and generate panic on a boat moving at a speed of about 22 knots in pitch darkness in the open sea in the Eastern Mediterranean at night is itself a violent act.
Israeli attack dinghies, called Zodiacs, moved up very quickly on the side of the boat. They were carrying fully armed Special Forces--full commando attack units.
By fully armed, I mean something like five pieces of firepower or knives--rifles, sidearms, commando knives, balaclava-covered faces, Kevlar helmets and so on. In other words, something akin to the U.S. Navy Seals people see in the movies in a glamorized way.
A helicopter moved in over the ship, and people began to file down. There was, of course, massive commotion aboard the ship. In that commotion, some people responded quite instinctively and with good cause--and with all legal and moral authority on their side. They pushed back, fought back with their hands and with whatever was to hand on the top of the ship where the first soldiers landed. Two soldiers were pushed from the top of the ship onto the next deck down.
They had already opened fire with what I thought to be rubberized bullets. These are not bullets that are made of rubber. They have a steel core, but are surrounded by rubber, and can themselves can be lethal. But almost immediately, we heard the different noise of live rounds being fired--but not indiscriminately or wildly. Rather, it was carefully targeted from both sides of the ship--which was surrounded--from the helicopter, and from those Israeli attack forces who were landing on the ship itself.
I can give you some examples of what happened--one from another colleague who was also on the Viva Palestina delegation aboard the ship, Nicci Enchmarch. She was next to one of the very first people to be killed. He was a Turkish man who was holding a camera--that's all he had in his hands. He was shot directly through the center of the forehead. The exit wounds through the back of the head took away the back third of the skull. He fell to the ground and experienced his last few seconds of life. This is the nature of the attack from the Israelis.”
He goes on to talk about the treatment the activists received for the Israeli military after the capture.
The headline is pretty misleading.
Not really.
q
The truth is not important any more. Israel attacked a ship in international waters, thereby giving the attacked to right to self-defence, so no story from Israel is anything but a weak excuse. And as long as the UN is being held hostage by the permanent members of the Security Council, some countries get more leeway than others in their dealings.
I wonder what would have happened had there been a Turkish navy-vessel around.
Turkey is a NATO member Israel is not. At the time that the Flotilla operation was taking place our Prime Minister was on TV saying that an attack against Israel is an attack upon Canada. Now that is power. Dave Letterman was wrong, it ain't Oprah that's got all the money, it's Israel or at least members of the tribe in the advanced countries Like France England Canada...so much for NATO and what it has become.
The grotesque irony is that Israeli military operations against civilians in Gaza and the rest of Palestine are unpunished yet somehow the world has to take time to digest the retaliation of a civilian population against a military force? THis is Kafkaesque.
I'm getting tired of seeing Israel commit atrocities and get away with it. I'm getting tired of the US protecting them from international outrage and from prosecution. I more than tired of our tax dollars funding these atrocities.
This incident, as much as any other, seems to have driven a wedge between Israel and the rest of the world.
If the Palestinian peace movement were determined and well funded, they would keep sending one ship after another with media and high profile passengers until Israel is forced to concede.
Palestinian supporters and friends of peace and justice need to make certain the world understands the Israelis acted as thieves and murderers. They need to push for an international investigation and track the personal possessions and aide the Israelis stole.
The Turkish navy offered assistance. There must be way to get better technology so that the Israelis can't get away with manipulating the truth. Keep up the pressure in the name of those that were murdered and abused.
We may be “getting tired of seeing Israel commit atrocities and get away with it.” But our elected officials are definitely not.
“Harry Reid statement defends Israel, essentially blames activists for their deaths”.
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0604/reid-statement-defends-israels-essentially-blames-activists-deaths/
“Following the lead of the Obama administration, and nearly all elected US politicians on both sides of the aisle, Reid is firmly defending Israel's interception of a "freedom flotilla" headed for Gaza, which resulted in the death of at least nine activists, including a US citizen, based on the grounds that the country has a right to defend itself.”
This position and statement are almost identical to the ones during the Israel’s brutal attach on Gaza in 2009.
Here it is Sunday, and I am feeling like I'm in a state of constant shell shock between the dying Gulf, the dying peace activists, the dying and starving Palestinians... Sunday, bloody, Sunday. I think I will just go into James Joyce mode and see what my consciousness streams out.
Who still remains in Israeli jails? WHY? Why do we have all these agreements that nobody listens to?
Where will the aid supplies really end up? I would like to follow this statement of Israel that THEY will deliver the supplies.
Please reconcile what was sent and where it goes. Not only WHERE it goes, but how long it took for supplies to get there. WHO in Israel is in charge of these supplies, their military?
The Rachel Corrie trial is set to resume in September. Well, Israel, 7 years after her murder. 7 is supposed to be a mystical number for you, isn't it? Oh, apparently 7 is for this nation too, as the Statue of Liberty has seven spires coming from her crown. Are those spires of light, or missles? I never thought about that before.
Dear Commander in Chief: Ask for some volunteer pilots ( that might never come back) to fly in air relief of supplies into Gaza. ( Those would be pilots with life threatening diseases which are being ignored by the Veteran Admin.) They should have a long list of candidates. you know, in case Israel shoots them down for invading what they think is their air space. Their claimed water space seems to be so.... large...how far does their air space go ...to the exosphere?
If Israel want to create another USS Liberty attack, then, there's your out. Mr. Obama. I mean ignoring Americans who might be in those jails...yes, well Rachel Corrie's death didn't seem to make a dent in the U.S. mindset, or the media. I was really dumbfounded when the play about her life was stifled in New York. Does the State Dept. have a warning out about no travel to Israel... it sounds like a scary place.
If their military attacks ours, isn't that war? Really you need to find out if Mr. Netanyahu is a psycho. Why would we keep giving him money when our citizens are having trouble surviving? Why don't you just stop the money and see what happens. Maybe he would be come hubris-less then.
How hard is it for the government to turn its back on agreements anyway? We've done it all over South America. Israel doesn't listen to your words, Mr. Obabma, so maybe it's time to throw down the gauntlet, no? Yes, I know that violence begets violence, but your talking doesn't seem to help anything, and a PEACE flotilla gets the same violent response. You need to cut Mr. Netanyahu's really big allowance, right now, Mr. Obama
Actually, you know what? Create a Cyman Island account for GAZA. There are plenty of American banks who are qite experienced with this. Then, just let Gaza buy its own needed supplies. You really can't let those homeless, nationless, foodless people of Gaza starve, can you? Besides we would be helping the economy of Egypt. too. Why should all the U.S. taxpayer money go to U.S. military corporations? Spread it around.
Jewish citizens of Israel, I know how hard it is to get rid of crazy people; we had Bush/Cheney for 8 years, and in many of our government offices, it appears that we still do. I despair, as Bush had that crazy gog and magog thing going on; maybe Obama does too. Oh, I had to check that book of yours, and yeah in Joshua, it does say that he gets the land up to the Tigris- Euphrates... Oh darn, some people are already there. Oh, we're there too. Maybe your book is wrong; you know how hard ancient translation is...
Oh, and don't worry about that Cyman island money going for guns. The Palestinians are starving, and butter makes more sense than guns. They are only throwing rocks..oh wait, didn't Einstein say that WW III would be fought with rocks? Never mind, WW III has already started. This stream of consciousness thing is painful, and not very helpful at all, is it?
When any military thugs engage in piracy on the high sears, they don't have any right of self defense as they're engaged in a major crime at that point. It doesn't matter if the solidarity people kicked their booties. Once a person engages in a crime, the other person doesn't have to be non violent in the least and most especially in this outrageous instance. When the Royal Navy press ganged US seaman on unarmed ships forcing them into the Royal Navy to fight France in the Napoleonic Wars, that was piracy pure and simple.
AD
We Americans need to realize that we support a concentration camp in the middle east. We're more than happy keeping this knowledge from ourselves. We're all attuned to the idiot box which paints every story in the colors that big business wants them painted. The result is public outrage that people being shot at with guns might get angry or scared if they don't do something to try and stop the impending slaughter which, did, in fact, occur. In the meantime, I will continue to watch the news so I can have my heartstrings tugged watching those poor Israeli soldiers being hit with sticks. There is some serious Jewish money going round in America and, once again, the innocent and dying will bear the brunt of this fact. America used to represent good. It now stands proudly behind money, its one and only true god. Perhaps the American experiment has failed.
Israel = Apartheid
and I might crudely add: USA + Israel = Imperalism, racism, war crimes and crimes against humanity. One cannot separate Dr. Evil from Mini Me.
Something that often gets left out of the equation when discussing state violence, regardless of which states are involved - the effect of wars, sanctions and violence on children. The mother of the child on the Mavi Marmara reported that her baby, even at one year old, was traumatized by the ordeal.
The collective traumatization of children perpetuates the cycle of violence and must be broken.
"Children of Gaza" is a great documentary shot after the 2008-2009 attack on Gaza.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=children+of+gaza+documentary&aq=5
Very strongly recommended for anyone who wonders about the human face of Israel's wonderful "humanitarian aid" to Palestine and its children.
I watched all of the segments once some time ago. I don't think I can bear to watch it again right now. The suffering of innocent kids tears me right up. And my feelings of rage aren't very pleasant either. I can scarcely imagine how the people who must live with it daily feel.
Why do they hate us? Take a look, if you can stand it.
I too find t5his to be a very despicable--any power that does not care for children and their welfare before bombs and their warfare sucks and should not be supported
And I really believe that parents that love their kids should never let them serve the dogs of war.
"But without a full and transparent airing of all the evidence, the truth of that dreadful night on the Marmara may never come to light."
Which is precisely why we will never have a full and transparent airing of all the evidence.
It is really a shame in so many ways that the US corporate media oligopoly and US govt. merely cut and pastes the official Israeli storyline. Israel is allowed to fabricate evidence and destroy any evidence that contradicts their propaganda.
Just to mention one small aspect of what could be: I really wish that we would see Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu on every channel during prime time denouncing these attacks and describing the racist Apartheid in Israel/Palestine.
Of course some foreign press have reported this to some degree, however I have seen no reference to Mandela or Tutu on US MSM (for obvious reasons I'm sure)
Here in America and around the world where zionism controls the media the truth will not be on the evening news.
George W. Bush used the false report that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to do a military preemptive strike against Iraq. Germ Warfare is a war crime equal to that of weapons of mass destruction. In Iraq relief officials reported after the first gulf war that electrical, water, sewage, and irrigation, systems,had been destroyed and outbreaks of typhoid, cholera, meningitis and even bubonic plague among the children resulted because the embargo prohibited the people of Iraq to rebuild the systems. The post war embargo of Iraq caused a disease epidemic for children and babies that was tantamount to biological germ warfare. This was a war crime. I believe that a similar situation exist in the post war embargo of Gaza. The U.S. cannot bring charges against Israel without exposing the war crimes of the U.S. officials. The U.N. Security Council's "Iraq Oil For Food Program" was riddled with corruption therefor none of those countries can charge Israel with germ warfare. This is horror reality without end.Stop the wars and blockades.
From the article:
"Their ordeal, of course, was not yet over. Accused of entering Israel illegally, the captives were transferred to an Israeli prison, where many were held in cramped cells and denied phone calls."
Well don't that take all! Assaulted in international waters, hands tied, towed to the Israeli port, and then accused of trespass on Israeli territory and thrown in jail.
Now that's Kafkaesque!
Arthur Koestler must be twisting in his grave.
-30-
Please don't omit the fact that they wuz robbed!
Ann Wright and others have credibly asserted that the IDF cleaned out the flotilla passengers' professional and personal possessions on the pretext of inspecting and cataloguing the items. Some luggage and suitcases were returned-- empty.
Here's another robbery victim:
"I Was Robbed! They Took My Money My Passport & My Credit Cards! Gaza Flotilla Member"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn9feZjKeaY&feature=player_embedded#!
Maybe if enough of a stink is made about it, the Israeli government will recover and return such of the loot that hasn't been sold into oblivion on the black market, or is sitting in the confiscators' cars and garages.
And they'll pretend that they intended to return passenger property all along.
I doubt it, though.
Bring America Back !!!!
**Well, according to Glen Beck and the rest of the FOX TV war cheerleaders, this was just a bunch of friendly Jewish folk looking for an interactive game of paintball, at 4AM,
on the high seas, storming the boat from helicopters above, and dressed in full swat-team regalia !!
**Beck says the Zion Boat Invaders had every right to raid
the boat even if the peace activists had not read the obligatory book: Ship Invasions for Dummies; nor had they watched the popular DVD=='Firing Upon the Flotillas' !
**Netanahu agrees with Glen Beck !
Wouldn't you think that among all those experienced journalists, at least one would have hidden his camera's tiny memory card somewhere on the Marmara--or swallowed it, like the Jews in Krakow swallowed their jewels?
I'll bet there's something somewhere that escaped the commandos' searches.
Well here we are a week after a horrific event that should have given Israel a permanent black eye and overwhelming international censure, and as I feared that single piece of video - passengers swinging pipes - has handed Netanyahu the excuse he needs to claim that the flotilla was loaded with pro-Hamas terrorists and that his soldiers walked into a lethal trap. It isn't true of course. The resistance was justified of course. But the video gives crucial players like Clinton and Obama the wiggle room they need to equivocate and defer judgement until after an inquiry - in other words to let the furor die down and go away. I said on this blog that I thought that should have been foreseen by the Free Gaza movement. There was no possibility that the flotilla would get through to Gaza, and it was a certainty that Israel would hijack the ships. So it was a media event and a potentially very good one. It was flawed by that highly visible passenger resistance. It was not unjustified, It was unwise. There should have been better training. There should have been no way for anybody to doubt that the commandos committed cold blooded murder.
The few of us who hazarded that single criticism were buried under an avalanche of justifications for self defense of the passengers, with which I personally agree and which was beside my point. A lot of it was hysterical and immature and abusive. Like suddenly I'm a zionist shill. The Free Gaza people will make the best of what they got, but I'll bet if they ever try this again they will get a lot smarter about how violence vs non violence plays on tv. If you are too righteous to handle a bit of criticism from friends you are going nowhere.
Vox, i don't think you are a shill at all!
And nothing being said about Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq now. Interesting.....
rita
Thanx Rita, and yes, interesting. Guess there's only so much room in the collective brain.