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THE ABSURD TIMES
There is more at the site. Imagine, over five people in the United States who see through all this Zionist "what you would expect to find in the middle of a field where large animals were grazing."
In other words, Bull-shit, horse shit, cow shit, camel shit, elephant shit, boar shit, and ...
Has Israel Declared War on the International Community?
(June 1) – Yesterday, with amazement, many of us around the world witnessed through a live-feed on the Internet how heavily armed sea pirates – dressed in full military combat gear – descended from Israeli military helicopters unto the decks of the Mavi Marmara – a Turkish flagged humanitarian aid ship carrying hundreds of nonviolent peace advocates from around the globe.
These events took place in International waters, 100 kilometers off the coast of Gaza. The nonviolent peace advocates were on a life-saving mission to liberate the people of Gaza, from the open-aired prison imposed on them by Israel under the consent of its ally, the United States. After being surrounded by Israeli military vessels and with helicopters hovering over their heads, these courageous nonviolent peace advocates watched with amazement and terrorized, as Israeli commandos boarded the Mavi Marmara shooting randomly and killing and wounding many of the advocates on board. Following the massacre, the ship was taken to Ashdod port where those who survived have either been arrested awaiting deportation, or are being treated in hospitals across Israel.
As these events have unfolded, popular furor has grown across continents, and demonstrations have been witnessed in front of Israeli embassies around the globe. The UN Security Council has had an emergency meeting to discuss the issue, spokespeople of different states have expressed deep concern about the events, and as Israeli ambassadors stationed in different nations jitter at the possibility of being expelled, the group of elders – the eminent leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela – has condemned the attack as “completely inexcusable.”
It was only a few weeks ago that the Israeli authorities denied entry to professor Noam Chomsky at the Allenby Bridge border crossing from Jordan to Jericho, in the Palestinian West Bank. Professor Chomsky was on his way to speak at Bir Zeit University. To many of us here in the West, at the time, it seemed bizarre that the Israeli government would commit such a foolish act, by barring academic freedom and freedom of speech in such an open and hostile manner. Professor Chomsky is after all, one of the world’s most renowned academics, and without a doubt, a source of inspiration to many who are advocating nonviolently for peace. What was hard to imagine at the time of this incident, was that professor Chomsky’s refusal of entry into the Palestinian Occupied Territories, although in one sense a continuity of Israeli policy against the Palestinian people and all who befriend them, also marked an intensification of Israel’s open assault on the values and rights of the citizens of the broader international community.
As Western citizens, we have become accustomed by now to the brutal treatment of Palestinian people by Israeli security forces through their daily acts of orchestrated state-terrorism. It comes as no surprise to us, when we hear of the continued extermination of the population of Gaza, and its non-stop humiliation and degradation. A crime which is beyond comprehension and which has already tragically led to the 22-day onslaught on Gaza in late 2008 early 2009 – a destruction of such magnitude, that it is now referred to by many around the world as the Gaza Massacre. An event during which, according to the United Nations Fact Finding Mission’s Goldstone Report, Israeli Defense Forces committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.
As Western citizens, we are also used to the ongoing suffering of the people of Gaza, whose physical, psychological, and spiritual hardship is tested on a daily basis as they endure the reality of living in an open-air prison, which their jailers are free to bomb and destroy whenever they please. A situation against which, although condemnation has been strong, international pressure has not succeeded. What we are not accustomed to in the West, however, is to witnessing the Israeli government blatantly attacking hundreds of nonviolent peace advocates from around the globe, congregated on ships navigating in international waters. Peace advocates, whose aid campaign to Gaza has been widely publicized, and who have clearly informed their respective governments of their initiative.
In the West, we have become accustomed to the propaganda machine of the Israeli government filling the global airwaves with fabrications, defamations and outright lies following each crime committed, each violation of international law. Like the Israeli military, the Israeli propaganda apparatus is highly sophisticated. Nevertheless, this latest act seems like a challenge to the world, and I am not sure whether propaganda can bury it. Perhaps in the West, we have become immune to the daily deaths of Palestinians, or to the tragic death of a Western nonviolent peace advocate being shot by the Israeli defense forces while in Palestinian territory. I do not think however, that populations from around the globe can tolerate Israel’s interception of a peaceful convoy in international waters, with its subsequent shootings and killings of citizens from many different nationalities. Parliamentarians, Nobel laureates, spiritual leaders, humanitarian aid workers, and journalists amongst others, forced to endure the terror inflicted upon them by lethal Israeli military commandos.
Clearly, the attack on the Mavi Marmara is a premeditated act, and one for which the Israeli propaganda machine has been preparing for a while. Professor Norman Finkelstein has described Israel as a lunatic state, and has warned of the risk of such a state having hundreds of nuclear weapons. Watching through the Internet live-feed, Israel’s attack – in international waters – on global citizens brought together by a call to civic duty, all one can hope for as a member of the global nonviolent peace advocacy community, is that the pressure we exert on our governments forces an end to Israel’s ongoing crimes against humanity. If Israel is not stopped following this tragedy, it will become clear to us, that just like the Palestinians we have all become targets for the Israeli military, and thus, are no longer protected from Israel’s lunacy.
The world has failed to defend the Palestinians for years, but yesterday Israel made a geopolitical turn by declaring war on the citizens of the world. It made all of us Palestinian, and now it is the responsibility of our governments to respond. Will the nations of the international community defend the rights of their citizens as well as the rights of the Palestinians? Will the siege on Gaza end, and those who have repeatedly broken international law, committed war crimes and crimes against humanity be tried and punished? Or has Israel just declared war on the citizens of the world with the implicit consent of its international allies? One cannot predict the outcome of this massacre; nevertheless, there are clear signs pointing to the potential beginning of a new epoch, for Israel, for Palestine, for the Middle East, and for the citizens of the world. Defining this epoch will revolve around determining whether Israel’s latest act, is an act of war against numerous members of the International community.
| From: | Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives |
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| URL: | http://www.zcommunications.org/has-israel-declared-war-on-the-international-community-by-pablo-ouziel |
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2
“Those Responsible Must Be Held Criminally Accountable”
This incident should serve as a wakeup call for a complicit international community. There are three political imperatives that need to emerge with a sense of urgency: condemnation of the Israeli attack and an accompanying demand for the immediate end of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, appropriately by a decision in the UN Security Council; an authoritative launching of an investigation of war crimes allegations against Israel by the International Criminal Court; the widest possible endorsement and strengthening of the already growing worldwide boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign directed at Israel’s occupation policies in Palestinian Territories.
GENEVA – The UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, urged Monday the international community to bring to justice those responsible for the killing of some 16 unarmed peace activist, when Israeli armed commandos stormed a convoy of ships carrying aid to Gaza.
“Israel is guilty of shocking behavior by using deadly weapons against unarmed civilians on ships that were situated in the high seas where freedom of navigation exists, according to the law of the seas,” Mr. Falk said. “It is essential that those Israelis responsible for this lawless and murderous behavior, including political leaders who issued the orders, be held criminally accountable for their wrongful acts.”
There are confirmed reports of lethal interference by Israeli military units on the high seas with the Freedom Flotilla of six ships carrying some 10,000 tons of medicine, food, and building materials to the civilian population of Gaza. Preliminary reports suggest as many as 16 unarmed activists were killed, and dozens more wounded.
“This peaceful humanitarian initiative by citizens from 50 countries is an urgent response to the continuation of an unlawful blockade that has been maintained for almost three years causing great physical and mental harm to the whole of the 1.5 million people entrapped within Gaza,” the UN independent expert said. “Such a massive form of collective punishment is a crime against humanity, as well as a gross violation of the prohibition on collective punishment in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”
“As Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, familiar with the suffering of the people of Gaza, I find this latest instance of Israeli military lawlessness to create a situation of regional and global emergency. Unless prompt and decisive action is taken to challenge the Israeli approach to Gaza all of us will be complicit in criminal policies that are challenging the survival of an entire beleaguered community.”
Mr. Falk urged the world community “to take urgent action in response to this flagrant flouting of international law. It is time to insist on the end of the blockade of Gaza. The worldwide campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel is now a moral and political imperative, and needs to be supported and strengthened everywhere.”
Richard Falk , Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and author of “Crimes of War: Iraq” and “The Costs of War: International Law, the UN, and World Order after Iraq” Also, current UN Rapporteur for Palestine.
| From: | Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives |
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| URL: | http://www.zcommunications.org/those-responsible-must-be-held-criminally-accountable-by-richard-falk |
3
Raid on the Gaza Flotilla
Israel's Attack on Us AllIt is quite astounding that Israel has been able to create over the past 12 hours a news blackout, just as it did with its attack on Gaza 18 months ago, into which our main media organisations have willingly allowed Israeli spokespeople to step in unchallenged.
How many civilians were killed in Israel’s dawn attack on the Gaza-bound flotilla of aid? We still don’t know. How many wounded? Your guess is as good as mine. Were the aid activists armed with guns? Yes, says Israel. Were they in cahoots with al-Qaeda and Hamas? Certainly, says Israel. Did the soldiers act reasonably? Of course, they faced a lynch, says Israel.
If we needed any evidence of the degree to which Western TV journalists are simply stenographers to power, the BBC, CNN and others are amply proving it. Mark Regev, Israel’s propagandist-in-chief, has the airwaves largely to himself.
The passengers on the ships, meanwhile, have been kidnapped by Israel and are unable to provide an alternative version of events. We can guess they will remain in enforced silence until Israel is sure it has set the news agenda.
So before we get swamped by Israeli hasbara let’s reiterate a few simple facts:
* Israeli soldiers invaded these ships in international waters, breaking international law, and, in killing civilians, committed a war crime. The counter-claim by Israeli commanders that their soldiers responded to an imminent “lynch” by civilians should be dismissed with the loud contempt it deserves.Today Israel chose to direct its deadly assault not only at Palestinians under occupation but at the international community itself.
* The Israeli government approved the boarding of these aid ships by an elite unit of commandoes. They were armed with automatic weapons to pacify the civilians onboard, but not with crowd dispersal equipment in case of resistance. Whatever the circumstances of the confrontation, Israel must be held responsible for sending in soldiers and recklessly endangering the lives of all the civilians onboard, including a baby and a Holocaust survivor.
* Israel has no right to control Gaza’s sea as its own territorial waters and to stop aid convoys arriving that way. In doing so, it proves that it is still in belligerent occupation of the enclave and its 1.5 million inhabitants. And if it is occupying Gaza, then under international law Israel is responsible for the welfare of the Strip’s inhabitants. Given that the blockade has put Palestinians there on a starvation diet for the past four years, Israel should long ago have been in the dock for committing a crime against humanity.
Will our leaders finally be moved to act?
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
| From: | Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives |
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| URL: | http://www.zcommunications.org/raid-on-the-gaza-flotilla-by-jonathan-cook |
4
International Solidarity And The Freedom Flotilla Massacre
June 01, 2010
By Electronic Intifada (EI)
Source: Electronic Intifada
Electronic Intifada (EI)'s ZSpace Page
By Electronic Intifada (EI)
Source: Electronic Intifada
Electronic Intifada (EI)'s ZSpace Page
Early this morning under the cover of darkness Israeli soldiers stormed the lead ship of the six-vessel Freedom Flotilla aid convoy in international waters and killed and injured dozens of civilians aboard. All the ships were violently seized by Israeli forces, but hours after the attack fate of the passengers aboard the other ships remained unknown.
The Mavi Marmara was carrying around 600 activists when Israeli warships flanked it from all sides as soldiers descended from helicopters onto the ship's deck. Reports from people on board the ship backed up by live video feeds broadcast on Turkish TV show that Israeli forces used live ammunition against the civilian passengers, some of whom resisted the attack with sticks and other items.
The Freedom Flotilla was organized by a coalition of groups that sought to break the Israeli-led siege on the Gaza Strip that began in 2007. Together, the flotilla carried 700 civilian activists from around 50 countries and over 10,000 tons of aid including food, medicines, medical equipment, reconstruction materials and equipment, as well as various other necessities arbitrarily banned by Israel.
As of 6:00pm Jerusalem time most media were still reporting that up to 20 people had been killed, and many more injured. However, Israel was still withholding the exact numbers and names of the dead and injured. Passengers aboard the ships who had been posting Twitter updates on the Flotilla's progress had not been heard from since before the attack and efforts to contact passengers by satellite phone were unsuccessful. The Arabic- and English-language networks of Al-Jazeera lost contact with their half dozen staff traveling with the flotilla.
News of the massacre on board the Freedom Flotilla began to emerge around dawn in the eastern Mediterranean first on the live feed from the ship, social media, Turkish television, and Al-Jazeera. Israeli media were placed under strict military censorship, and reported primarily from foreign sources. However, by the morning the Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli soldiers who boarded the flotilla in international waters were fired upon by passengers. Quoting anonymous military sources, the Jerusalem Post claimed that the flotilla passengers had set-up a "well planned lynch." ("IDF: Soldiers were met by well-planned lynch in boat raid")
The Israeli daily Haaretz also reported that the Israeli soldiers were "attacked" when trying to board the flotilla. ("At least 10 activists killed in Israel Navy clashes onboard Gaza aid flotilla")
This narrative of passengers "attacking" the Israeli soldiers was quickly adopted by the Associated Press and carried across mainstream media sources in the United States, including the Washington Post. ("Israeli army:
More than 10 killed on Gaza flotilla")
Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon stated in a Monday morning press conference that the Israeli military was acting in "self-defense." He claimed that "At least two guns were found" and that the "incident" was still ongoing. Ayalon also claimed that the Flotilla organizers were "well-known" and were supported by and had connections to "international terrorist organizations."
It is unclear how anyone could credibly adopt an Israeli narrative of "self-defense" when Israel had carried out an unprovoked armed assault on civilian ships in international waters. Surely any right of self-defense would belong to the passengers on the ship. Nevertheless, the Freedom Flotilla organizers had clearly and loudly proclaimed their ships to be unarmed civilian vessels on a humanitarian mission.
The Israeli media strategy appeared to be to maintain censorship of the facts such as the number of dead and injured, the names of the victims and on which ships the injuries occurred, while aggressively putting out its version of events which is based on a dual strategy of implausibly claiming "self-defense" while demonizing the Freedom Flotilla passengers and intimating that they deserved what they got.
As news spread around the world, foreign governments began to react. Greece and Turkey, which had many citizens aboard the Flotilla, immediately recalled their ambassadors from Tel Aviv. Spain strongly condemned the attack. France's foreign minister Bernard Kouchner expressed "profound shock." The European Union's foreign minister Catherine Ashton called for an "enquiry."
What should be clear is this: no one can claim to be surprised by what the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights correctly termed a "hideous crime." Israel had been openly threatening a violent attack on the Flotilla for days, but complacency, complicity and inaction, specifically from Western and Arab governments once more sent the message that Israel could act with total impunity.
There is no doubt that Israel's massacre of 1,400 people, mostly civilians, in Gaza in December 2008/January 2009 was a wake up call for international civil society to begin to adopt boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel similar to those applied to apartheid-era South Africa.
Yet governments largely have remained complacent and complicit in Israel's ongoing violence and oppression against Palestinians and increasingly international humanitarian workers and solidarity activists, not only in Gaza, but throughout historic Palestine. We can only imagine that had former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni indeed been arrested for war crimes in Gaza when a judge in London issued a warrant for her arrest, had the international community begun to implement the recommendations of the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report, had there been a much firmer response to Israel's assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai, it would not have dared to act with such brazenness.
As protest and solidarity actions begin in Palestine and across the world, this is the message they must carry: enough impunity, enough complicity, enough Israeli massacres and apartheid. Justice now.
| From: | Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives |
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| URL: | http://www.zcommunications.org/international-solidarity-and-the-freedom-flotilla-massacre-by-electronic-intifada-ei |
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Badri Raina's ZSpace Page
Tweet: “Yes, unarmed activists attacked Israeli commandos—RIGHT! With bread, eggs, and bananas; it surely was an onslaught.”
I
And you thought the Somalians had a monopoly on piracy. Think again.
They are still but neophytes next to the Zionists.
65 kilometres beyond Israel
“A warlike attack against aid ships and deadly shooting at peace and humanitarian activists” by a “crazy government” (Uri Avnery of the Gush Shalom organization, and former Knesset member, in a press release).
19 killed; the rest abducted. The fate of the abducted “is in their own hands” (Zionist spokesman). To wit, cooperate and be freed, or else.
Some ten years ago I wrote a poem on Netanyahu. Two quatrains hereunder:
Netanyahu is no funny name—
It means the Zionist Jew;
He does not mind the Arabs much,
If elsewhere they remove.
The Netanyahus like Palestine
Kosher and occupied;
So peace demands that they revile
Those they have exiled.
And Uri Avnery agrees that the Israeli disclaimer of having “disengaged” from Gaza Oslo accords which said a deep water port would be built in Gaza
So it is not just the exiled and the occupied who are reviled, but whoever stands up against the “siege, starvation, and massacres in Gaza
And it does not matter who they are. In this case, among the abducted is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Mairead Corrigan, 1976, several European Union legislators, and, yes, even a Holocaust survivor! Real hero of our times.
II
And Mairead Corrigan must be whispering in her own ear—since the abductors have cut off all communications—how this mightily indefensible act of war, following on the certified war crimes of 2007 (certified by the Goldsmith Commission) must offer the last Nobel Peace Prize winner, name of Obama, a golden opportunity to show that he deserved the honour.
Ha! Pity the innocence of the peacemaker. Corrigan forgets why the Zionist is so oblivious of punishment in the first place. Because, Obama or no Obama, and the Nobel regardless, every President of America
And remember, the redneck part of America
And then there is the pro-Israel lobby. And the next election is never too far.
Thus, this round too shall pass.
As to world-wide obloquy, the Zionist skin is far too thick to worry about suchlike. They have seen it all before.
So, when the noise is over, it will be back to business as usual.
But consider, just for a minute consider, that not the Zionists but the Iranians had stopped, only stopped, a flotilla in the straits of Hormuz. Baby, it would have been war on the instant, and Teheran burning.
And to think that them Iranians have never attacked anyone yet, and do not even have a nuke.
That privilege belongs to the god’s chosen tribe of Israel
As does the other honour of having been the originators of “terrorism”. Surely the world has not forgotten the Stern and Irgun gangs—to which such stalwarts as Moshe Dayan, Begin, Sharon and other worthies belonged, and who wrecked havoc in the David hotel in Tel Aviv long before Palestine was divided, blasting some 90 or more Britishers and others to holy smithereens.
But shout all you can, and the gods are deaf. And just about dumb as well. Don’t you know, they have expressed regrets, but will not accept an international enquiry into the attack. That is for the Israeli government to do. After all, the booty belongs to the thief.
III
And what of India
, the land of ideals, of Gandhi and Nehru?
That was then.
Now it belongs to Manmohan Singh and the RSS. For them no country as marvelous as Israel America
Alas, that poor India Israel remains more puissant than the emerging world power, India
Next to all that, ideals are a sissy. Neo-Liberalism has no use for them. The world will always be unjust and unequal—men will always count for more than women (Taliban and the Hindu right wing agree), Jats more than Dalits (witness Mirchpur in Haryana), and Hindus, Christians, and the Jews more than the Muslims. Plain enough. Your problem if you can’t see that much.
And, lest we forget, the haves more than all the have-nots, flotilla or no flotilla. To them belongs the land, the forest, the mines, the water, the food, the hospital, the university, the job-market, the perks, the ports, the airposts, the swanky hotels, corporate conglomerates, technology, creature comforts, the law, the police, the government, the state. All in one destined swoop.
And do you know why? Because of their karma in births of yore. So, if ye be woman, low-caste, dark-skinned, illiterate, diseased, hunted, dispossessed, and mightily hungry, compelled to eat mud, blame your karma. What does policy have to do with such things?
Remember, there are elections, and there are the Elect. So, elections or no elections, it will always be the Elect who rule.
And who more Elect than the children of Moses who were promised their land?
So when Obama, the colour of his skin and his middle name notwithstanding, made that speech in Egypt
, seeking like Moses, to cut a way through to Muslims, what he did not mean at all was that justice would prevail.
Only that the Zionists would continue to ride rough shod over the Arabs, come what may. And, if the Muslims acquiesced, the next attack (after Iraq and Afghanistan
And even Egypt and Saudi Arabia
But then, they are only Shias, and no real Muslims. Surely the Sunnis will understand, as they have always done.
Netanyahu, yahoo! Have fun.
Cozy up to Manmohan.
You are much loved in Washington
| From: | Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives |
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| URL: | http://www.zcommunications.org/the-zionist-state-at-it-again-by-badri-raina |
