The Lessons of Hanin Zuabi’s Big Lie

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
02 June '10

Yesterday’s press conference by Hanin Zuabi, an Israeli Arab Knesset member who was on the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara when Israeli commandos boarded it on Monday, should be studied by every journalist or human-rights activist who ever believed a Palestinian atrocity tale. Here is Haaretz’s report of it:

According to Zuabi, when the flotilla was 130 miles from shore, 14 naval ships approached and opened fire without warning. Only journalists, nurses and a doctor were on deck; none of them carried weapons. All the other passengers were either in their rooms or fled there as soon as the shooting began. …

Over and over, she insisted that the passengers engaged in no violence, that the soldiers had come with intent to kill and intimidate, that it was all planned in advance.

When reporters confronted her with the video footage released by the army and the soldiers’ testimony, and with the fact that several soldiers were wounded, Zuabi first evaded the questions, then finally insisted, “This is what I saw.”

This is a classic example of the Big Lie: even faced with incontrovertible evidence of her story’s falsity — the video footage of those peace-loving “journalists” and “nurses” attacking the soldiers, the seven hospitalized commandos — Zuabi stuck to it. And without this evidence, most of the world would surely have believed her. As David Horowitz noted in analyzing the army’s scandalous decision to withhold the footage for 12 hours, the claim that civilians overpowered highly trained commandos is not instantly plausible.

The first lesson is that the army must film every encounter with Palestinians or their supporters and make the footage readily available. It should have started doing so long ago; perhaps the success of the Marmara footage — which Haaretz said was the second-most-watched clip on YouTube yesterday, beating the third-place clip, Al-Jazeera’s version of the incident, by 150,000 hits — will finally persuade it.

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"... working to understand ..."

Soccer Dad
02 June '10

Political punch

"The United States deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries sustained and is currently working to understand the circumstances surrounding this tragedy," said deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton in Chicago, where the President Obama and his family have been spending the holiday weekend.

The Washington Post reported the other day, U.S. commander says some Taliban fighters are training in Iran:

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal told reporters in Kabul that Iran -- Afghanistan's western neighbor -- has generally assisted the Afghan government in fighting the insurgent group.

Is President Obama working to understand why a putative friend of the United States has aligned itself with a regime that is fighting against the United States? Is he working to understand why Turkey sent terrorists to attack Israel?

And the New York Times reported, Tehran Moves to Thwart Protests on Election Anniversary:

Moving to thwart any protests on the anniversary of a disputed election, the authorities in Iran have ordered at least two million paramilitary members into Tehran, re-arrested dissident activists furloughed from prison and aggressively enforced public bans on mingling of the sexes and un-Islamic women's clothing.

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In The Great Flotilla Debate, The Facts Are On Israel's Side

Marty Peretz
The New Republic
01 June '10

Look, I wish the Israeli raid on the so-called “Freedom Flotilla” had ended differently. Why, I ask, didn’t Israel’s navy disable the engine of the Mavi Marmara and drag the ship into port? Who knows? The engines of the other boats were apparently disabled—or so reliable sources say.

But, frankly, when some 800 men and women, distributed over six boats after weeks and weeks of preparation, are headed towards Gaza on the wings of slogan and hysteria, you don’t take that many chances. Somebody has trouble in mind.

The first five vessels were steered quietly to the Israeli port city of Ashdod, which means that neither their passengers nor the Israeli commandos were especially provocative. The sixth ship, which had 600 activist Turkish voyeurs on board, is an entirely different story. Sponsored by an organization labeled the Humanitarian Relief Fund (I.H.H.), it is said to have ties to Al Qaeda. Which would be logical since Al Qaeda is an ally of Hamas. An intriguing tripartite liaison.

But I.H.H. is also a satrap of the ever-more-Islamist government in Istanbul, which seems, in turn, to have volunteered itself as a front for jihadism everywhere, most especially in dealing with Iran and its nuclear ambitions. There is hardly a Muslim cause that the Erdogan regime in Ankara has not taken to heart and under its belt. (Recall that Turkey kept U.S. forces from traversing Turkish soil in 2003.)

Turkey was also once an important ally of Israel, which protected it from Syrian ambitions and gave it a non-Arab friend in a sea of Arabism. Israeli commerce and Israeli military cooperation—that is, modernizing Turkish armaments and units—will not continue much longer with this still-backward country. The Israelis will be sad to lose this friend, but, in fact, they have lost it already. And this is a reciprocal loss.

It wasn’t so long ago that Turkey—Erdogan’s Turkey—aspired to membership in the European Union. They can kiss that goodbye. The Turks may now be heroes on the Arab street, but they certainly aren’t heroes in Europe’s chancelleries, which prefer controversies on paper. And, much as some E.U. states have huffed and puffed about Israel, the Union is not anxious to add nearly 80 million Muslims to what would no longer be Europe.

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A P.S. on the Gaza Flotilla Issue

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
01 June '10

A lot of people are criticizing Israel for not handling the operation to stop the Gaza flotilla properly by not being properly prepared, messing up the attack, etc. But there is an important point being missed here.

Israel's error was precisely to assume what the foreign media, governments, and its critics generally are still claiming: Oh, this is just a bunch of peaceful humanitarians so they certainly won't attack us and have weapons.

In other words, Israel's critics can take no comfort from the mess-up because they still believe in the very same idea that led to the clash in the first place.

Also remember that on five ships where Israel used precisely the same methods there was zero violence. That tells something important, too: the sixth ship was loaded with the organizers and they were determined to have violence. That was a large part of the purpose of the whole operation.

Indeed, here is a statement made over the Hamas television station, al-Aqsa, May 30, the day before the confrontation:

"The [Gaza] flotilla commander said yesterday: 'We will not allow the Zionists to get near us and we will use resistance against them.'How will they wage resistance? They will resist with their fingernails. They are people who seek Martyrdom for Allah, as much as they want to reach Gaza, but the first [Martyrdom] is more desirable."

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Nice Countries Finish Last

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
02 June '10

If Israeli soldiers had boarded the Mavi Marmara armed with assault rifles instead of paintball guns, would the Turkish Islamists on board have been just as eager to attack them? The odds are against it. In order to attack soldiers, you have to believe that they won't be able to turn you into a smear on the deck. And it's not hard to see why they would have believed that.

Not only did Israeli soldiers come on board armed with paintball guns, but the Islamists and their left wing allies had every reason to believe that Israel would retreat again. Because two weeks earlier, Israel had backed off and allowed Noam Chomsky in after a storm of left wing protest. That fateful decision made Israel look weak and easily maneuvered, which helped set the stage for what followed. The Islamists could reasonably believe that if Israel retreated before one elderly left wing academic, their accompanying elderly left wingers would be just as effective.

But the flotilla encounter is a useful model, not only of Israel's own weak response toward terrorism, but that of the Western world toward Islam as a whole.

Going in with paintball guns to stop people who genuinely want you dead, does not deescalate the situation-- it escalates it. There are after all two kinds of violence. Violence that occurs as a misunderstanding and can be talked out. And violence that is the result of people who want to kill thinking they've got a shot at accomplishing their goal. And there's no better way to insure violence than to give those kinds of people the idea that this is their moment.

But Israel has been responding with metaphorical paintball guns to terrorism for too long now. How many times has Israel bombed empty buildings or sent tanks on pointless raids with no strategic objective except to show the flag. How many times has Israel arrested terrorists, only to let them go as a "confidence building" measure. For that matter the entire Gaza blockade, in which Israel reacted to the Hamas takeover of Gaza with a partial blockade (accompanied by large doses of aid) in order to isolate Hamas. Instead Hamas has used the blockade to isolate Israel even further. That you see is the problem with paintball guns. Not only aren't they of much use, but they actually invite further conflict, and when you finally have to use real guns, more people will die as a result.

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Israel's Critical Security Needs for a Viable Peace

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
JCPA.org
02 June '10

In light of a widening range of threats to Israel's security, for the first time a group of senior Israeli generals has come together to outline the basic principles of a defense policy - rooted in a consensus spanning past and present Israeli governments - which is focused on Israel maintaining defensible borders.



The crisis over the Hamas flotilla to Gaza illustrates how some of Israel's critical alliances in the Middle East are changing, especially its relationship with Turkey, and the importance of designing a defense policy that takes into account the uncertainties that Israel faces with many of its neighbors.

Recent events only underscore that it is critical for Israel to preserve the principle of defending itself by itself.

Restoring a Security-First Peace Policy
Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon

Defensible Borders to Secure Israel's Future
Maj.-Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan

The U.S. and "Defensible Borders"
Dr. Dore Gold

Key Principles of a Demilitarized Palestinian State
Maj.-Gen. (res.) Aharon Ze'evi Farkash

Control of Territorial Airspace and the Electromagnetic Spectrum
Brig.-Gen. (res.) Udi Dekel

The Risks of Foreign Peacekeeping Forces in the West Bank
Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror

Israel's Return to Security-Based Diplomacy
Dan Diker

(Click here for full study, videos,and maps.)

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NGO Involvement in the Gaza Boat Flotilla

NGO Monitor
01 June '10

Charities, NGOs, and other groups claiming human rights and humanitarian aid goals have been deeply involved in the demonization of Israel. The “Free Gaza Flotilla” highlights this façade of morality exploited for this political warfare.

In particular, NGO Monitor notes:

• The flotilla was endorsed by EU-funded Israel Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), EU- and European-funded Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), NIF-funded Coalition of Women for Peace, European-fundedAlternative Information Center (AIC), and Israeli groups New Profile, Bat Shalom, Yesh Gvul, and Zochrot.
• Jeff Halper, executive director of ICAHD, is on the board of advisors of the Free Gaza Movement.
• Turkish group IHH (Insani Yardim Vakfi) purchased three of the flotilla ships, including the Mavi Marmaris.
• IHH is a member of the Union of the Good, an umbrella of 50+ Islamic organizations, which was designated by the US government as “an organization created by Hamas leadership to transfer funds to the terrorist organization.” According to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center(ITIC), during Operation Defensive Shield the Union of the Good transferred money, via Hamas charities, to families of suicide bombers. (The ITIC report contains photos of IHH leaders embracing Haniyeh and Mashaal.)
• According to a Danish research institute, the Turkish authorities began investigating IHH in 1997, after receiving info that senior figures had purchased weapons from Islamic radicals. A Turkish raid on the organization’s bureau turned up weapons, explosives, and instructions for making IEDs.

(Read full NGO report)

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1-Jun-10: Heating up down there... again

Frimet/Arnold Roth
This Ongoing War: A Blog
01 June '10

Islamic Jihad, which operates under Hamas sponsorship from the Gaza Strip, fired off two more Qassam rockets today. Other than being pointed in the general direction of Israel where there is some chance they will kill, maim or destory something Jewish, the rockets had no strategic target. Being terrorists, their operators care not one bit for the outcome, as we repeatedly point out in this blog.

Fortunately the outcome today was that the Qassam rockets landed in open areas, according to the Jerusalem Post quoting the IDF. And an immediate and substantial response by Israeli forces - an airstrike on a certain spot in the northern part of the Gaza Strip - brought an immediate and permanent end to three jihadist careers.

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Flotillas and Falsehoods

Don’t members of the press ever resent being so used?


Mona Charen
National Review Online
01 June '10

The effort to destroy the Jewish state has many fronts. One front is in Iran, where the maniacal regime that has repeatedly promised to “wipe Israel off the map” marches inexorably toward a nuclear bomb. Another is in Gaza, from which Hamas has lobbed 10,000 missiles into Israeli cities. Yet another front, the most insidious, is comprised of the propaganda arm of the Palestinian movement. And this front thrives for only one reason — the complicity of the world press and the so-called “international community.”

It was the propaganda arm that staged the “Freedom Flotilla.” But there have been many previous productions: The propaganda arm was responsible for the photo-shopped images of damage to Lebanon during the 2006 war, the staged “death” of twelve-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah, the “massacre” at Jenin, and the “war crimes” in Gaza.

In each and every case, the “news” of Israeli atrocities was broadcast far and wide by organizations such as Reuters, AP, CNN, and AFP. The United Nations has offered its imprimatur to every libel. The truth seemed always to have a case of laryngitis.

Today, in the wake of the confrontation between Israeli soldiers and the provocateurs aboard the Gaza flotilla, the remarkably incurious world press is providing exactly the sort of headlines on which the organizers knew they could count. “Flotilla Attack Is Israel’s Kent State” screamed the Huffington Post. Agence France Presse carried a banner quoting the Turkish foreign minister to the effect that “Israel has lost all legitimacy.” Every news outlet I checked docilely described the flotilla as “humanitarian.”

Don’t members of the press ever resent being so used?

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More documentation of flotilla planning violence against Israel

Itamar Marcus/Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Palestinian Media Watch
01 June "10

A day before the confrontation with Israel a university lecturer revealed on Hamas TV that the Gaza flotilla's commander had announced that the participants were planning to use "resistance," the Palestinian euphemism for violence, against "the Zionists." He added that the participants sought to die as Martyrs, even more than they wanted to reach Gaza.



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'Peace convoy'? This was an Islamist terror ambush

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
31 May '10

As the international community rushes to condemn Israel for the violence on board one of the ships in the Gaza flotilla, which left a reported 10 people dead and dozens injured, it is now obvious that the real purpose of this ‘armada of hate’ was not merely the further delegitimisation of Israel but something far worse.

Gaza’s markets are full of produce, thousands of tons of supplies are travelling into Gaza every week through the Israeli-controlled border crossings, and there is no starvation or humanitarian crisis. It was always obvious that the flotilla was not the humanitarian exercise it was said to be. Here is footage of the IDF offering to dock the Marmara -- the main flotilla ship -- at Ashdod and transfer its supplies and being told ‘Negative, negative, our destination is Gaza’.

And now we can see that the real purpose of this invasion -- backed by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a radical Islamic organization outlawed by Israel in 2008 for allegedly serving as a major component in Hamas’s global fund-raising machine -- was to incite a violent uprising in the Middle East and across the Islamic world. As I write, reports are coming in of Arab rioting in Jerusalem.

The notion – uncritically swallowed by the lazy, ignorant and bigoted BBC and other western media – that the flotilla organisers are ‘peace activists’ is simply ludicrous. This research by the Danish Institute for International Studies details the part played by the IHH in Islamist terror in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya. According to the French magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere testifying at the Seattle trial of would-be al Qaeda Millenium bomber Ahmed Ressamin, the IHH had played ‘[a]n important role’ in the al Qaeda Millenium bomb plot targeting Los Angeles airport. It was also involved in weapons trafficking, and played in addition a key role in galvanizing anti-Western sentiment among Turkish Muslims in the lead-up to the 2003 war in Iraq. ‘Peace activists’ these people most certainly are not.

And this flotilla was but the latest jihadi attack, deploying the Islamists’ signature strategy of violence and media manipulation. Here from MEMRI (via Just Journalism) is a clip showing the hysteria against Israel being whipped up on board before the ships set sail, with the chanting of intifada songs about ‘Khaybar’ – the iconic slaughter of Jews by Muslims in the 7th century which is used as a rallying cry to kill the Jews today -- and threats of ‘martyrdom’. This was not merely a propaganda stunt, but a terrorist attack.

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The Non-Violent Murder of Jews

A Non-violent Gaza Flotilla Activist

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
01 June '10

"The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."

Al Bukhari, quoted in the Hamas Charter

Let there be no mistake about it. This is about genocide. This is what it has always been about generations back, when Hamas forefather, Hassan al Banna was writing fan letters to Hitler.

This in a single paragraph is Hamas. This is what it stands for. And this is what anyone who talks about "the People of Gaza" really supports. The "People of Gaza" is a euphemism for Hamas which won the last PA election and rules with popular support in Gaza. Israel responded to this takeover by a genocidal terrorist group by closing its border with Gaza. Hamas cynically responded by lying and claiming to be out of power and starving. That allowed their supporters to try and pass off their pro-Hamas agenda as a humanitarian agenda.

But real humanitarians don't sympathize with only one side in a conflict where civilians on both sides are dying. Real humanitarians don't bring guns and knives on a humanitarian mission. And real humanitarians don't chant calls for the murder of Jews calling themselves "The Army of Mohammed". That's what the pack of racist Islamist killers hiding behind their Western useful idiots did. And the Western useful idiots conducting a propaganda mission on behalf of a terrorist organization are no better than the murderers who exploited them.

The Hamas charter begins with a quote from Hassan al Banna calling for the destruction of Israel. Hassan al Banna was an ally of Hitler whose movement distributed Arabic translations of Mein Kampf to its followers. Al Banna's organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, played a key role in creating Hamas and Al Queda. The guiding idea of Hamas, like every other arm of the Brotherhood, is to impose a totalitarian Islamic state by force. The Gaza Flotilla was as cynical an expedition as if a bunch of Nazi supporters had gotten in a boat to bring supplies to Berlin in 1944.

The Hamas supporters on board the Gaza flotilla called themselves the Freedom Flotilla. A brilliantly Orwellian name, considering that they were headed to support an organization that had eliminated what little freedom there had been in Gaza. Hamas had banned music, outlawing the piano, the flute and the violin because they weren't in the Koran. It banned mixed sex music festivals and jeans. It imposed a curfew on public gatherings It banned male hairdressers and women riding on motorcycles. Its morality police have carried out brutal murders of women they decided were immoral. The lack of freedom in Gaza had one common denominator. Hamas. And the Anti-Freedom Flotilla were there to give Hamas a propaganda victory.

(Read full article)

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'Paranoia from Press Harms Israel'

Yoni Kempinski
israelnationalnews.com
01 June '10

Matthew Kalman, a Jerusalem based foreign correspondent, spoke at the Anti-Defamation League's conference in Tel Aviv about Israel and the foreign media.

As seen in the following video, Kalman explained that there are three "P"s that affect the foreign news coverage of events in Israel – policy, parachutes, and paranoia. Policy refers to Israeli policies that are sometimes not understood or accepted by the foreign correspondents. The word 'parachutes' refers to journalists who 'drop' into Israel without even knowing the language. Paranoia is how Kalman refers to the attitude of the Israeli authorities towards the media, and he explained how this paranoia was felt during the most recent events of the Gaza flotilla.



Summing up the conference, Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, came to Israel's defense in response to Matthew Kalman's complaints.

Matthew Kalman has been a foreign correspondent and filmmaker based in Jerusalem since 1998. He has reported for TIME, Newsweek, the Boston Globe, London Sunday Times, and other many newspapers, as well as PBS television in the United States, Channel 4 News in Britain and CTV in Canada. He is a frequent contributor to radio news programs in Canada and Britain.

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The Problem with Playing Defense

Noah Pollak
Commentary
01 June '10

(This is probably the best and strongest article to date. Hats off to Noah on the effort he's invested on this issue.)

Given past performances, I'd say that Israel and its supporters are doing a better-than-average job of quickly beating back the international lynch mob that loves nothing more than propagating lies about Israel. The key weapon in this fight for truth has been this particular video of the IDF commandos descending onto the deck of the Mavi Marmara and into a hornet's nest of murderous "peace activists."

This kind of after-the-fact truth-telling is good as far as it goes, but it actually doesn't go very far: it is restricted to responding to lies, exaggerations, and accusations. Israel is on the receiving end of a viciously negative political campaign, and as any campaign strategist knows, you don't respond to a negative campaign by expending all your energy trying to explain why the lies aren't true -- you go negative and play offense in return.

What would it look like if the Israeli government played offense? First and foremost, this would require some serious criticism of the Islamist government of Turkey, which masterfully created this crisis and is now denouncing Israel for it. Turkey's thuggish prime minister certainly understands the benefits of being on offense. He says that Israel committed a "massacre" and is guilty of "state terrorism," "piracy," has struck "a blow to world peace and against international law," threatens that "if Israel does not immediately free all the detainees and wounded, the rift in relations with it will widen," and thunders that "Israel will not be able to show itself in the world until it apologizes for what happened and undergoes self-criticism."

Quite a performance! Wouldn't it be remarkable if the Israelis had gotten ahead of the story by making their own accusations and demands? Here are a few ideas of the kind of concrete action the Israelis could take -- if they had the stones to really take a stand.

1. Expel the Turkish ambassador and declare his return contingent on a full, credible, and public Turkish investigation of the terrorist organization that planned and funded the "aid flotilla."

(Read full article)

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DemoCast.TV: A Daniel walks boldly through lions' den - spurring pro-Palestine demonstrators to reveal their fangs - & true intent: Jihad war to conquer Israel from Jewish rule

Democast
01 June '10

A Daniel walks boldly through lions' den - spurring pro-Palestine demonstrators to reveal their fangs - & true intent: Jihad war to conquer Israel from Jewish rule



The true agenda of the self-proclaimed, Palestinian peace-proponents seeking to embarrass Israel for having to shoot its way out of an Islamist lynch-mob ship on Sunday - was revealed on Monday in Los Angeles. One courageous, Israeli-born, American high-school student stood-up for his right to publicly support Israel - and a rally of hundreds of Muslim and far-leftist, pro-Palestine demonstrators nearly turned-into the lynch-mob they sought to downplay.

Outside of the Israeli Consulate to L.A. on Memorial Day, Daniel a Jewish high-school student defiantly waved the Israeli flag through a crowd of Israel-haters - to defend what he perceives as the Israeli Marines' justified handling of the Flotilla blockade when they came under attack.

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Gaza: What does International Law Say?

Joshua Rozenberg
standpointmag.co.uk
31 May '10

The BBC has provided space on its website for readers to complain that the Israeli naval raid off Gaza was "piracy" because it took place in international waters. A rather better use of the page would have been a piece informing its readers of the position in international law.

I am no expert in this field and I know that international law is open to interpretation. But here's an account posted anonymously in response to this excellent piece. I have retained the US spellings, perhaps the only clue to the identity of the author, "George".

1. A maritime blockade is in effect off the coast of Gaza. Such blockade has been imposed, as Israel is currently in a state of armed conflict with the Hamas regime that controls Gaza, which has repeatedly bombed civilian targets in Israel with weapons that have been smuggled into Gaza via the sea.

2. Maritime blockades are a legitimate and recognized measure under international law that may be implemented as part of an armed conflict at sea. (Examples: USA blockaded Cuba, UK blockaded The Falklands, the EU blockaded Yugoslavia)

3. A blockade may be imposed at sea, including in international waters, so long as it does not bar access to the ports and coasts of neutral States.

4. The naval manuals of several western countries, including the US and England recognize the maritime blockade as an effective naval measure and set forth the various criteria that make a blockade valid, including the requirement of give due notice of the existence of the blockade.

5. In this vein, it should be noted that Israel publicized the existence of the blockade and the precise coordinates of such by means of the accepted international professional maritime channels. Israel also provided appropriate notification to the affected governments and to the organizers of the Gaza protest flotilla. Moreover, in real time, the ships participating in the protest flotilla were warned repeatedly that a maritime blockade is in effect.

6. Here, it should be noted that under customary law, knowledge of the blockade may be presumed once a blockade has been declared and appropriate notification has been granted, as above.

7. Under international maritime law, when a maritime blockade is in effect, no boats can enter the blockaded area. That includes both civilian and enemy vessels.

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Ending Israel's losing streak

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
31 May '10

These words are being written before the dust has had a chance to settle on Monday night's naval commando raid of the Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla of terror supporters. The raid's full range of operational failures still cannot be known. Obviously the fact that the mission ended with at least six soldiers wounded and at least ten Hamas supporters dead makes clear that there were significant failures in both the IDF's training for and execution of the mission.



The Navy and other relevant bodies will no doubt study these failures. But they point to a larger strategic failure that has crippled Israel's capacity to contend with the information war being waged against it. Until this failure is remedied, no after-action investigation, no enhanced training, no new electronic warfare doodad will make a significant impact on Israel's ability to contend with the next Hamas flotilla that sets sail for Gaza.

In the space of four days, Israel has suffered two massive defeats. A straight line runs between the anti-Israel resolution passed last Friday at the UN's Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference and the Hamas flotilla. And in both cases, Israeli officials voiced "surprise," at these defeats.

Given the months-long build-up to the NPT review conference, and the weeks-long build-up to the Turkish-Hamas flotilla, that surprise cannot be attributed to a lack of information. What it points to rather is a cognitive failure of Israel's leaders - from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu down - to understand the nature of the war being waged against us. And it is this fundamental failure of cognition that has landed six soldiers in the hospital, Israel's international reputation in tatters and Israeli spokesmen - from Netanyahu down - searching for a way to describe a reality they do not understand and explain how they will cope with challenges that confound them.

The reality is simple and stark. Israel is the target of a massive information war that is unprecedented in scale and scope. This war is being waged primarily by a massive consortium of the international Left and the Arab and Islamic worlds. The staggering scale of the forces aligned against Israel is demonstrated by two things.

(Read full article)

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Observation: Israeli investigation should focus on gross failure of Turkish inspection of vessel

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
01 June '10

The world calls on Israel to investigate the events that lead to the loss of life when Israeli forces boarded the Mavi Marmara.

And indeed it should.

And, in the interest of the “peace process”, this investigation should focus on a development that could have the most serious ramifications vis-à-vis the viability of various proposed future arrangements for a Palestinian state: the gross failure of Turkish inspectors to prevent the loading of massive quantities of weapons on the ship.



Here is what the Turks say:

“Customs officials at the Port of Antalya have denied Israeli claims that weapons were detected on a ship taking humanitarian aid to Gaza that took off from Antalya on Sunday.

Officials from the Customs Directorate said all passengers that boarded the Mavi Marmara ship were screened and that not a single passenger was in possession of any weapon. “Forty-two passengers boarded in Istanbul and 504 passengers got on the ship here. They were screened. We spotted no weapons and there is no such record in our logs. We did not notice anything suspicious about the Mavi Marmara. Had our officers had any suspicions, they would have reported it,” an official, speaking under the condition of anonymity, said. “

Today's Zaman (Turkey) 31 May 2010

We need to find out at what level the Turkish inspection broke down:

1. Was this simply a matter of inept inspectors at the scene?
2. Did the inspectors actually see the weapons but ignored them?
3. At what level in the Turkish chain of command – if any – were they aware that weapons were being loaded?
4. At what level in the Turkish chain of command was a decision made to ignore the weapons.

Again, this is not a matter of trying to gain debater’s points.

We have here a situation that the Turks solemnly assured us that there would be no weapons aboard and we relied on their information.

And it is an undeniable fact that this was not the case.

Any agreement to create a sovereign Palestinian state would be loaded with various security arrangements that rely on the efficacy of third parties such as Turkey.

It is thus critical for the success of the “peace process” to get to the bottom of Turkey’s inspection failure in order to avoid a repeat of it should a sovereign Palestinian state be formed.

Israel should interview the passengers on the Mavi Marmara regarding the security inspection and follow up with Turkish officials.

Anyone who is truly interested in advancing the peace process should support this move.

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Does Israel Have a Right to Defend Itself?

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
01 June '10

The flotilla interdiction raises the same issue as Israel’s original response to Hamas’s rocket attacks into Israel. The fundamental question that Richard Goldstone, the UN, the J Street crowd, and the chorus of international critics have answered in the negative is whether Israel has the right to defend itself and its territory against threats to its citizens. In both cases, Israel attempted to use proportionate force and to avoid casualties.

In Gaza, extensive measures were undertaken to avoid killing innocents, behind whom Hamas hid. And in the flotilla, as others have noted, “the Israeli navy first sought to warn the ships off verbally, then sent in commandos armed with paintball guns, according to Israeli media reports. It was only after the humanitarians aboard the ship assaulted the commandos with clubs and knives that the Israelis used live fire.” When the Israeli commandos were set upon as they were lowered from a helicopter, they acted to defend themselves.

The rule set for Israel, which applies to no other nation in the world, is an intentionally impossible one to meet:

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Analysis: Gaza aid deaths: how could it happen?

Anshel Pfeffer
The Jewish Chronicle
31 May '10

Flotilla 13, the IDF's naval commandos, were the toast of Israel's military - until yesterday. The recipients of a rare citation for the entire unit from Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, only last month, the "Shayetet" are credited with numerous secret missions far away from the country's shores. According to the non-Israeli press, these missions included interdiction of ships bearing arms from Iran to Israel's enemies in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

So how were they humiliated by a bunch of club-wielding Turks and literally forced to use live-fire, causing nine deaths and an international crisis of unforeseeable dimensions?

The simple answer was that they were unprepared for the level of violence used by a small group in a contingent that claimed to be peace-seeking. They went into battle holding paintball guns designed for situations of minimal confrontation, harmless stun-grenades and their hand-guns holstered. After 40 minutes of hand-to-hand combat, their commander felt that after one officer had been stabbed, two more knocked and kicked senseless and a third thrown off the deck by a crazed mob, his men's lives were at risk if they didn't use firepower. Only then did he give the order to shoot.

But that is an insufficient excuse. The reality is that despite its much-vaunted intelligence capabilities and the most advanced aerial drones and surveillance systems in the world, the IDF failed to detect the fact that the group standing on the Turkish ferry's top-deck were equipped with an arsenal of metal clubs, catapults, flick-knives and Molotov cocktails and what's more, they were prepared to used them to kill.

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Sympathy for the Devil and the Gaza Sea Confrontation: How Can Helping a Repressive Fascist, Genocide-Intending Hamas Regime be Noble?

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
1 June '10

“Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game.”


--The Rolling Stones, “Sympathy for the Devil”

Is it so hard to guess the name? Is it so difficult to understand the nature of the game? Apparently so.

“Israeli assault complicates efforts to improve relationship with U.S.,” says the Washington Post. “Israeli Raid Exacerbates Regional Tensions and Threatens Peace Process,” claims a report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Scotsman, not interested in the details, called it a "massacre."

And so the blame is placed. Yet why should either claim be true? After all, neither the U.S. government nor the Palestinian Authority is friends of Hamas and its reign in the Gaza Strip. Both have had their people murdered by Hamas and that group, an ally of Iran, wants to drive the former out of the region and overthrow the latter.

Hamas has oppressed the people of the Gaza Strip, murdered Palestinian Authority supporters in hospitals and thrown them off roofs, driven the Christians out, taken relief supplies for its own soldiers, launched a war on Israel in December 2008 that caused avoidable death and destruction, used civilians as human shields and mosques for ammunition dumps, indoctrinated children to be suicide bombers, and repeatedly announced its antisemitic views and an intention to wipe out Israel and massacre its people.

For some, none of this makes any difference though--to be fair--the media they get information from may not have presented these facts. For those on the left, Hamas should be considered as a fascist organization which they passionately oppose. For those sympathetic to human rights or women’s rights, or many other good causes, Hamas should be anathema.

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A brutal ambush at sea

Ron Ben Yishai recounts bloody clash aboard Gaza-bound vessel: The lacking crowd-dispersal means, the brutal violence of ‘peace activists,’ and the attempt to bring down an IDF helicopter


Ron Ben-Yishai
Israel News/Ynet
31 May '10

Our Navy commandoes fell right into the hands of the Gaza mission members. A few minutes before the takeover attempt aboard the Marmara got underway, the operation commander was told that 20 people were waiting on the deck where a helicopter was to deploy the first team of the elite Flotilla 13 unit. The original plan was to disembark on the top deck, and from there rush to the vessel’s bridge and order the Marmara’s captain to stop.

Officials estimated that passengers will show slight resistance, and possibly minor violence; for that reason, the operation’s commander decided to bring the helicopter directly above the top deck. The first rope that soldiers used in order to descend down to the ship was wrested away by activists, most of them Turks, and tied to an antenna with the hopes of bringing the chopper down. However, Flotilla 13 fighters decided to carry on.



Navy commandoes slid down to the vessel one by one, yet then the unexpected occurred: The passengers that awaited them on the deck pulled out bats, clubs, and slingshots with glass marbles, assaulting each soldier as he disembarked. The fighters were nabbed one by one and were beaten up badly, yet they attempted to fight back.

However, to their misfortune, they were only equipped with paintball rifles used to disperse minor protests, such as the ones held in Bilin. The paintballs obviously made no impression on the activists, who kept on beating the troops up and even attempted to wrest away their weapons.

One soldier who came to the aid of a comrade was captured by the rioters and sustained severe blows. The commandoes were equipped with handguns but were told they should only use them in the face of life-threatening situations. When they came down from the chopper, they kept on shouting to each other “don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” even though they sustained numerous blows.

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France's chutzpah

Soccer Dad
31 May '10

From NRO:

France's President Sarkozy termed Israel's conduct "disproportionate"; Chancellor Angela Merkel's administration noted that Israel's actions did not conform to proportionality; the European Union's high representative for foreign affairs, Catherine Ashton, demanded that Israel end its blockade of the terrorist entity Hamas, which controls Gaza, without any preconditions such as the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit and the cessation of Hamas rocket attacks on Israel.

I don't know how many of you recall France's greatest military adventure of the past generation:

The Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior has been blown up in Auckland Harbour, New Zealand.

One of the 11 crew members on board has been killed. He has been named as Portuguese photographer Fernando Pereira, 33.

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Why Gaza aid flotilla is a media success

Anav Silverman
Sderot Media Center
31 May '10

It was exactly the kind of coverage that pro-Palestinian activists behind the Gaza aid flotilla were aiming for: "Deaths as Israeli forces storm Gaza aid ship." Associated Press, BBC, Fox News, CNN and countless other media outlets across the world and even in Israel, carried such headlines, reporting the ensuing diplomatic crisis and worldwide condemnation that quickly followed.

Not surprisingly, this typical knee-jerk reaction by the media and international community to such Mideast confrontations, failed to report the outside circumstances that lead to the unfolding events at sea.

First, allowing the illegal flotilla to reach Hamas would have opened another corridor of weapons smuggling into Gaza, a strategy already in full operation thanks to the tunnel infrastructure between Gaza and Egypt where arms, many originating from Iran, are smuggled through intensively. Under international law, Israel has taken measures to defend its civilians from Hamas terrorism by placing a maritime blockade off the coast of Gaza to prevent such arms smuggling to Palestinian terror groups by sea route.

Indeed, the term 'peace-activists' which was used to describe those on board the Gaza aid flotilla fleet, was a strategic guise for those planning to employ violence against the Israeli soldiers once the fleet was stopped. Similar to Hamas's mode of human shield tactics, where terrorists will fire against Israeli troops while hiding among women, children, and civilian populated areas, the pro-Palestinian protesters also brought along small children on the boats.

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J Street Weighs In

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
31 May '10

You knew this was coming, didn’t you? Jeremy Ben-Ami:

With details still emerging and propaganda spinning furiously on all sides — one simple truth stands clear to us: today’s events are the natural outgrowth of the larger, ongoing failure to resolve this conflict peacefully through a two-state solution. …

J Street is deeply shocked and saddened by reports that at least 10 civilians have been killed and dozens more wounded (including Israeli soldiers) this morning as Israel intercepted a naval convoy bringing humanitarian supplies and construction materials to the Gaza Strip.

We express our condolences to the families of those killed and we wish the injured a full and speedy recovery. …

This shocking outcome of an effort to bring humanitarian relief to the people of Gaza is in part a consequence of the ongoing, counterproductive Israeli blockade of Gaza. [Emphasis added]

I am puzzled — what exactly is Ben-Ami referring to as “propaganda”? There are claims that the Islamist lynch mob aboard one of the ships is actually a group of “peace activists.” Mahmoud Abbas says that the IDF “slaughtered” the “peace activists.” J Street should explain precisely which claims made by the Israeli government are “propaganda.” When the Gaza war started in 2008, J Street said that there was no difference between terrorists trying to murder Israeli civilians and the Israeli military trying to stop those attacks. Here we have another easy slide into moral equivalence.

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Reconnecting with reality

NOW Lebanon
New Opinion
31 May '10

Last week, the London Times reported that Hezbollah had been transferring weapons from secret arms depots in Syria to the party’s bases in Lebanon. It was the latest installment in a story that has been running since April and which has highlighted not only the heightened tension in an already-bristling region, but the voracity with which Hezbollah has rearmed after its 2006 war with Israel and the apparent inability of the Lebanese state to curb the party’s appetite for confrontation and conflict.

The ongoing story, along with NOW Lebanon’s constant editorials arguing that Hezbollah’s non-state activities are not only criminal but that they will ultimately visit death and destruction upon the nation, have created an ongoing cyber polemic. The debate is occurring among those who oppose Hezbollah’s activities because they lie outside the state and yet have consequences that will involve the state up its national hilt, and those who, for political, moral or religious reasons, believe in the party’s right to keep Lebanon teetering on the edge of an apocalyptic cauldron.

“It doesn’t matter if the decision of war was taken in the parliament building or in Damascus or Tehran since the majority of the Lebanese citizens and the majority of the parliament will back Hezbollah's militarism,” commented one NOW Lebanon reader. Another declared “Those who support the resistance will die for Sayyed Hassan. You will have to kill us all, before Hezbollah is gone.”

It is easy to lose touch in cyberspace, to get enmeshed in political and sectarian one-upmanship and forget of the dangerous reality of the times in which we live.

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Nice Guys Finish Last

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
31 May '10

To my mind, the most astonishing thing about the flotilla disaster is that the IDF sent its elite naval commandos into a highly charged potential combat situation that was being closely scrutinized by the world media — armed with paintball guns.

The intent, of course, was to show that Israel wished to avert escalating the confrontation and merely sought to bring the ships to port, transfer their cargo to Gaza, send the “peace activists” home, and bring this mini-drama to a close. But the results were catastrophic.

Instead of proving Israel’s good intentions, the commandos found themselves unable to take control of the terrorist blockade runners, who knew, of course, that any bloodshed and violence that followed the Israeli boarding party would be laid at the feet of the Israelis. Armed with the proper equipment, the naval commandos could have done precisely what they are trained to do — take command of a ship decisively and with great speed. This can only be done when the men boarding the ship are able to immediately neutralize their opponents and establish complete control.

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Free Gaza lies caused the deaths

Elder of Ziyon
31 May '10

There is an important facet of the events of last night that has not been emphasized.

The IDF soldiers went on board the ship with the expectation that they would be met with "non-violent resistance." The reason that they had those expectations was because the flotilla organizers made very clear that this is what they planned to do - as they said, "The only resistance that there might be would be passive resistance such as physically blocking the steering room, or blocking the engine room downstairs, so that they couldn't get taken over. But that was just symbolic resistance."

Because the IDF foolishly believed them, they dropped onto the Turkish ship armed with just riot-dispersal paint guns, plus personal handguns as a last resort.

And they fell into a well-planned ambush.

It is still unclear how many people were killed - the initial reports of 16 seem to have exaggerated, another likely Free Gaza lie - but the IDF had zero interest in killing anybody. The IDF only opened fire after first suffering from merciless, life threatening beatings and asking permission from their commanders.

At least some of the flotilla organizers, on the other hand, made clear that they wanted to become "martyrs."



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