Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: flotilla

Showing posts with label flotilla. Show all posts

Monday, August 16, 2010

BBC looks at Mavi Marmara

The BBC will have a documentary on the Mavi Marmara incident tonight.

Two clips are on its website:

Turk Cevdet Kiliclar, one of nine activists killed on a Gaza-bound aid mission, was prepared to become a martyr for the Palestinian cause, his wife has said.

Mr Kiliclar's widow, Derya, said: "He was crying his eyes out over Gaza. He wanted to be a martyr there."

Israel's elite commando unit which raided a Turkish aid flotilla sailing to Gaza in May has given Panorama exclusive access to its top secret operatives.

Some of the Israeli special forces took off their balaclavas to talk to me and show me the wounds they received the night nine people were killed and 50 were wounded on board the Turkish ship the MV Mavi Marmara.

"I saw a knife in my abdomen and pulled it out," Captain R said.

"The beating was continuous - and the cries of Allah Akbar."

(h/t Islamo-Nazism blog)

IDF Chief of Staff: IHH shot first

From the New York Times:

Israel’s top military chief said Wednesday that activists on a Turkish ship were the first to open fire as Israeli naval commandos raided the vessel, part of a six-boat flotilla bound for Gaza, fomenting a bloody confrontation on board that left nine activists dead.

Testifying before an Israeli commission of inquiry, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli Army chief of staff, gave the most detailed description yet of the military’s version of the events in late May.

General Ashkenazi said that mistakes had been made. The main one, he said, was that the soldiers, who rappelled onto the ship from a helicopter one by one, lacked the manpower to create a sterile area quickly enough. They were immediately set upon by the activists, some wielding axes, knives, iron bars and clubs, he said.

Though stun grenades were fired first, from the air, they failed to disperse the dozen or so activists on the roof of the boat. What was lacking, according to the army chief, was preparation for the use of “precise fire,” by which he appeared to mean snipers, “to neutralize those preventing the soldiers from boarding the boat.”

The army chief staunchly defended the actions of his soldiers. He said that they had displayed “cool-headedness, courage and morality,” opening fire only when necessary, and that the Israeli use of force was proportionate.

According to the general, the second soldier who fast-roped onto the roof of the boat, the Mavi Marmara, was shot in the abdomen and fired back. Activists who were on board have given very different accounts, saying the soldiers opened fire as soon as they came on board, or even before.

An Israeli military investigation of the episode concluded a month ago that Israeli soldiers most likely fired only after having been fired upon. A video in two separate parts, produced by the army and shown to the commission, stated that the shot fired at the second soldier was “probably” the first shot fired on the ship.

But General Ashkenazi said it was “clear and established” that flotilla participants opened fire first.

The weapon used may have been snatched from the first soldier who landed on the ship.

A gun belonging to one of the soldiers was later found on board, empty of bullets. In addition, the military said it found ammunition, cartridges and bullets that were not from the Israeli Army, suggesting that there might have been at least one other gun on the ship. According to the general, the boat’s captain told the Israelis that it might have been thrown overboard.

General Ashkenazi stated that the army had prepared for the possibility that the activists could open fire, though the military “did not assess correctly the strength of the resistance” the commandos would meet when they came down the rope. According to the video, soldiers trying to approach the Mavi Marmara on rubber lifeboats said they were fired on from both sides of the ship. As clashes broke out on the boat, commandos fired at the feet of their “attackers.”

When the commandos met resistance as they tried to rush the bridge, they responded with fire. And at one point, at least 15 minutes into the struggle for control of the ship, the force commander allowed the soldiers to use accurate and precise live fire against violent activists, to permit more soldiers to climb aboard from the lifeboats.

The stun grenades from the helicopter, which I hadn't heard of before, would explain why the passengers thought that the IDF was shooting at them from the air.

Of course, the "activists" have no problem telling their lies to the world. Here's their graphic of the events, from the Free Gaza page:

Somehow, they must have forgotten to draw their prepared axes, knives, clubs, chains and slingshots. Must have been an oversight.

The Flotilla Farce (Danny Ayalon)

Danny Ayalon, writing in the Wall Street Journal, touches on many of my blog themes - the hypocrisy of the flotilla activists, the plight of Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon, and how Gaza's poverty is hugely exaggerated.

A couple of years ago, a Palestinian refugee camp was encircled and laid siege to by an army of tanks and Armored Personnel Carriers. Attacks initiated by Palestinian militants triggered an overwhelming response from the army that took the life of almost 500 people, including many civilians. International organizations struggled to send aid to the refugee camps, where the inhabitants were left without basic amenities like electricity and running water. During the conflict, six U.N. personnel were killed when their car was bombed.

While most will assume that the events described above took place in the West Bank or Gaza, they actually took place in Lebanon in the summer of 2007...

At the time, there was little international outcry. No world leader decried the "prison camps" in Lebanon. No demonstrations took place around the world; no U.N. investigation panels were created and little media attention was attracted. In fact, the plight of the Palestinians in Lebanon garners very little attention internationally.

Today, there are more than 400,000 Palestinians in Lebanon who are deprived of their most basic rights. ...Unlike all other foreign nationals in Lebanon, they are denied access to the health-care system. According to Amnesty international, the Palestinians in Lebanon suffer from "discrimination and marginalization" and are treated like "second class citizens" and "denied their full range of human rights."

In view of the worsening plight of the Palestinians in Lebanon, it is the height of irony that a Lebanese flotilla is organizing to leave the port of Tripoli in the next few days to bring aid to Palestinians in Gaza. According to one of the organizers, the participants are "united by a feeling of stark injustice."

This attitude exposes the dishonesty of the whole flotilla exercise. Whether it is from Turkey, Ireland or Cyprus, those that participate in these flotillas reek of hypocrisy. There are currently 100 armed conflicts and dozens of territorial disputes around the world. There have been millions of people killed and hundreds of millions live in abject poverty without access to basic staples. And yet hundreds of high-minded "humanitarian activists" are spending millions of dollars to reach Gaza and hand money to Hamas that will never reach the innocent civilians of Gaza.

This is the same Gaza that just opened a sparkling new shopping mall that would not look out of place in any capital in Europe. Gaza, where a new Olympic-sized swimming pool was recently inaugurated and five-star hotels and restaurants offer luxurious fare.

Markets brimming with all manner of foods dot the landscape of Gaza, where Lauren Booth, journalist and "human rights activist," was pictured buying chocolate and luxurious items from a well-stocked supermarket before stating with a straight face that the "situation in Gaza is a humanitarian crisis on the scale of Darfur."

...The latest flotilla preparing to leave from Lebanon fully exposes not only the hypocrisy but the danger of these provocative vigilante flotillas. The Lebanese flotilla, whose organizers claim injustice while ignoring the dire human rights situation of the Palestinians in Lebanon, amply demonstrate that these flotillas have nothing to do with humanitarian concerns and everything to do with delegitimizing Israel.

Read the whole thing.

Lebanese "flotilla" might sail this week

Israel's Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has a brief paper that analyzes the latest on the Lebanese women's and reporters' ships that were supposed to have sailed a month ago. They agree with my reporting that Hezbollah is behind the ships and that the purpose of these ships may be to provoke a deadly Israeli response:

1. Yasser Qashlaq, chairman of the Free Palestine Movement and organizer of the Lebanese flotilla to the Gaza Strip, said the ships would leave within a few days. Qashlaq asked Lebanese politicians not to make difficulties, but rather to cooperate so the flotilla might succeed (DayPress news website, July 20, 2010). His previous declarations about its sailing were not realized, but nevertheless it is possible that this time the ships will set sail, despite a large number of international objections.
2. The current situation of the flotilla is as follows:
A. The ship called Maryam reached Tripoli and is currently participating in the routine processes required by law before a ship set sail. Rima Farah, ship spokesperson, said that contacts had been made with a number of countries to acquire authorization for the ship to be received at their harbors, because it cannot sail directly from Lebanon to the port of Gaza. Samar al-Hajj, coordinator for the organizing committee, is the director of the ship's logistic activities. Note: The ship will carry only women passengers (Al-Diyar website, July 21, 2010).
B. The ship called Nagi al-Ali (formerly Julia) is ready to set sail, and according to the organizers all that remains to be done is to load the cargo. Most of the passengers will apparently be correspondents.
C. The organizers may have another ship, but they are not divulging any information about it.
3. Yasser Qashlaq said he did not rule out the possibility that Israel would try to halt the flotilla because "there is no limit to the crimes of the entity of the occupation." He also said that there would be peace activists aboard the ships and that the cargos would include humanitarian equipment, and that any attempt to stop them would be "a terrorist action" (DayPress news website, July 20, 2010).
4. In our assessment, the ships were purchased and the flotilla organized with the involvement and support of Syria and Hezbollah, although both do not want to expose their roles and use organizations like the Free Palestine Movement as fronts for their activities.
5. Qashlaq revealed his position in an interview with Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV on June 19, 2010. He said that "the day will come when the ships [which arrive at the Gaza Strip] will take the remainder of the European garbage which came to my country [i.e., Israel] back to their homelands, Gilad Shalit will return to Paris and they [the leaders of Israel will return to Poland. Let the murderers go home. After they return we will pursue them everywhere all over the world and try them in court for the slaughters they have carried out from Dir Yassin to this day."
6. Considering the stated positions of Qashlaq and some of those involved in the flotilla, and especially their close ties with Syria and Hezbollah, he apparently wants a violent confrontation between the passengers and the Israeli Air Force and Navy with a lot of media coverage. His intention is to defame Israel, even if his agenda is not necessarily that of the other passengers aboard the ships.
7. More proof that this flotilla, like that of the Mavi Marmara, is meant mainly to create a media circus and incite anti-Israeli propaganda, and not to bring humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip was made public by an Al-Jazeera TV investigative report.
8. The Al-Jazeera TV's Gaza Strip correspondent, revealed that the Gazans responsible for the ministry of health of the de facto Hamas administration were resentful because 70% of the medicines which arrived in the Gaza Strip from the aid convoys from various countries, especially Arab countries, could not be used. They were either unfit for use or their expiry dates had passed by months and sometimes years. They said that one of the convoys had brought dialysis machines which could not be used. The report was also quoted by a daily paper affiliated with the de facto Hamas administration (Al-Jazeera TV, July 20, 2010).

Left: Useless dialysis machines. Right: Drugs whose expiry dates have passed
(Al-Jazeera TV, July 20, 2010).

(h/t Israel Matzav)

UN against "flotillas" to Gaza. Pigs fly.

This has to be one of the most astounding diplomatic victories ever for Israel at the UN:

The United Nations said Friday that groups seeking to deliver aid to Gaza should do so by land, after Israel warned it would intercept two ships seeking to break a blockade of the Palestinian enclave.

"There are established routes for supplies to enter by land. That is the way aid should be delivered to the people of Gaza," UN spokesman Martin Nesirky told a press briefing.

"Our stated preference has been and remains that aid should be delivered by established routes, particularly at a sensitive time in indirect proximity (peace) talks between Palestinians and Israelis," he added.

He made the comments after Israel served notice its forces would prevent a planned Lebanese aid flotilla from reaching the Gaza Strip.

"We have received information in recent days about a plan to send a new flotilla to break the blockade around Gaza," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Israeli television.

"This is an unnecessary provocation and we believe that preventing such a flotilla is the responsibility of the Lebanese government."

"If this flotilla does leave Lebanon and refuses to be led by our navy to the (Israeli) port of Ashdod, we will have no other choice than to arrest it at sea," the minister added.

"There exists a way of transferring goods, which are not weapons or material for war-like purposes, to the Gaza Strip through the port of Ashdod."

Israel's UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev earlier delivered a similar warning in a letter addressed to UN chief Ban Ki-moon.

This is especially notable since UNRWA's head John Ging said the exact opposite only two months ago:

Ging, speaking with a Norwegian newspaper earlier in the week, urged the world to send ships to the shores of Gaza, saying "We believe that Israel will not intercept these vessels because the sea is open, and human rights organizations have been successful in similar previous operations proving that breaking the siege of Gaza is possible."

Hamas, of course, says this this is proof that the UN is Zionist:

Hamas has said the United Nations call for aid groups to send supplies to the Gaza strip over-land rather than by sea amounts to "collaboration with the Israeli occupier".

"The UN call to international organisations to use the over-land road to Gaza instead of the sea is unacceptable and illegal," Sami Abu Zahri, a Hamas spokesman, said on Saturday.

Hamas, which is not participating in proximity talks, said that most Gaza residents "are still banned from leaving the territory and this is why this call [by the UN] is considered a contribution to the [Israeli] blockade".

This last part is especially humorous because the people who restrict Gazans from leaving Gaza are often Palestinian Arabs themselves, as Ha'aretz noticed today. Belatedly.

Israel may be slowly learning a lesson that her Arab neighbors have known for a long time: there is great diplomatic power in saying no. When one side in a dispute is adamant and the other is wishy-washy, diplomats will naturally pressure the side that appears to be wavering. Israel is saying very clearly that if the point of the "aid" is to help Gazans, they will help. If the point is political, it will be stopped. The UN will try to avoid supporting a plan that will force a showdown - as long as there is an alternative.

Gazans disgusted at flotilla, Arab "aid"

From JPost:

Palestinians claim that most of the medicines sent into Gaza are past their expiration date, Al-Jazeera reported on Wednesday.

"They're bringing more harm than good," the article explained, describing expired medicines and broken supplies sent by different countries and organizations.

Mounir el-Barash, director of the donations department in Gaza's Ministry of Health told al-Jazeera that only 30% of the aid sent into the Gaza Strip is used.

Gaza officials also expressed anger at receiving burial shrouds for children from Arab countries.

The Al Jazeera article adds that some of the dialysis equipment sent by an aid convoy was useless, that despite calls for specific types of medicines the donors have not responded, and that the many tons of expired medicines must be buried in landfills - but they don't have the equipment to do so properly, and these landfills can therefore become an environmental problem.

As I've mentioned in the past, Arab donors have consistently reneged on their pledges to help Gaza.

I could be cynical and say that they do this deliberately in order to make Israel look bad, but I think the reason is simpler: Arab nations are no fans of Hamas and they (the Gulf states especially) like to donate money where their investments have a chance of paying dividends - and in Gaza, their money is wasted because there is no way for it to help solve the problems permanently.

(h/t Vicious Babushka and Jameel)

Flotilla timeline video from IDF with English subtitles

This was just released with English subtitles:

Lots of footage from Israeli helicopters and boats that we hadn't seen before the release of the Eiland report.

The IDF timeline on the Mavi Marmara

The IDF put out videos (Hebrew only so far) and an English description of the events that happened on the Mavi Marmara, based on the results of the Eiland team investigation:

The IDF forces were divided and each group boarded a different ship. The soldiers arrived at the Mavi Marmara at 4:28 AM, but could not board the ship due to metal objects being thrown at them, and electric buzz saws used by the demonstrators to slice the ladders IDF soldiers needed to board the Marmara. After an unsuccessful attempt to board the ship by smaller boats, a helicopter arrived at 4:30 AM with 15 IDF soldiers. The first rope dropped by the helicopters was tied by the demonstrators to the deck of the ship in order to prevent the soldiers’ descent.

Soldiers that descended down the second rope were met by 2-4 demonstrators each who wielded knives, axes, and metal poles. The second soldier to descend was shot in the stomach by a demonstrator. The soldiers who were in danger of their lives were forced to use their live weapons. Five soldiers were injured by stabbing, blows and live fire by the demonstrators. Within seconds of boarding the ships, three soldiers were thrown off the deck by demonstrators. The injured were dragged to the hull of the ship.

A reinforcement of soldiers arrives from a second helicopter, which is also attacked by demonstrators, and the soldiers are met with violence when they attempt to access the lower deck of the ship.

At 4:46 AM a third helicopter arrives to the Mavi Marmara, and the two groups of soldiers combine forces on the ship roof and descend to the other parts of the ship, where they are also met with lethal violence, and thus respond with live fire.

Many of the demonstrators enter inside of the ship as the smaller boats arrive at the side of the ship, however some still violently attack the incoming boats and the soldiers respond with live fire.

The Commander of the Special Navy Forces boards the ship, and while evaluating the forces, it is discovered that three soldiers are missing. The missing and injured soldiers are discovered to have been abducted by a number of violent demonstrators, who abandon the soldiers and run back into the ship when fired at.

Two of the injured soldiers jump off the ship so that they can be picked up by the IDF boats. The third injured soldier is on the bow of the boat and slipping out of consciousness. IDF soldiers remaining on the boat come to his aid.

At 5:17 AM the situation is evaluated and some of the findings: live fire was used by demonstrators towards IDF soldiers who were on the ship, including one soldier who descended down the rope and was shot in the abdomen. Live fire by the demonstrators was also aimed at the soldiers on the small Israeli Navy boats next to the Marmara. The first occurence of live fire was that used by the demonstrators. In addition, a gun with emptied magazines was found in the hull of the ship.

IDF forces had boarded the other ships without incident. Treatment and evacuation was carried out for the injured soldiers and demonstrators alike. 38 injured were airlifted, 7 of them soldiers.

The three soldiers who had been attempted to be kidnapped and were taken to the hull of the ship were witness to an argument between the violent demonstrators, and other passengers of the Marmara who asked the violent demonstrators to cease their violent activity.

24 of the injured passengers were diagnosed at the Ashdod Port and treated in hospitals in Israel.

After the operation ended, the ships arrived at the Ashdod Port accompanied by Israeli Naval forces. An intelligence investigation following the flotilla incident found that 40 of the IHH activists previously boarded the Marmara ship from Istanbul before joining the others.

The 8 of the 9 demonstrators killed were members of the IHH or other allied groups. Around half of those killed had declared in front of their families their aspiration to die as martyrs (“shahids”). Footage on the Marmara shows that the violence had been prepared: metal poles and chains were prepared, slingshots, buzzsaws, gas masks, tear gas, bulletproof vests, knives, and more. A briefing had taken place before the IDF had boarded the ship, with the leader of the violent demonstrators telling the group to attack the IDF soldiers at any cost.

There were 718 total passengers of the flotilla ships. Most were released without undergoing any investigation. The last passenger left on June 6th.

The Eiland report on the Mavi Marmara, plus more

Maj. Gen. (Res.) Giora Eiland had the task of examining, from a military perspective, the conduct of the IDF in the Mavi Marmara incident. He gave his report today, and here are some highlights - not only from the IDF report on his debriefing but also some details given by a senior IDF official that I received via email.

In terms of the intelligence effort, the team concluded that not all possible intelligence gathering methods were fully implemented and that the coordination between Navy Intelligence and the Israel Defense Intelligence was insufficient. At the same time, the team emphasized that it is not certain that an optimal intelligence effort would create a complete intelligence picture. The team also pointed out that the anticipated level of violence used against the forces was underestimated.

In terms of situation assessments towards the flotilla, the team clarified that the operation relied excessively on a single course of action, albeit a probable one, while no alternative courses of action were prepared for the event of more dangerous scenarios.

Regarding technological alternatives, the team determined that on the day of the incident, decision makers were not presented with alternative operational courses of action other than a full boarding of the flotilla. The team emphasized the fact that as far as is currently known, no country in the world holds the ability to stop a vessel at sea in a non hostile manner. Therefore statements made on this matter following the incident are unfounded and irresponsible. At the same time, the team determined that alternative courses of action could have existed had the process of preparation begun enough time in advance, and recommended to accelerate the process of examining alternative methods....

The team determined that the Navy Commando soldiers operated properly, with professionalism, bravery and resourcefulness and that the commanders exhibited correct decision making. The report further determines that the use of live fire was justified and that the entire operation is estimable.

The additional points I have found out are perhaps more interesting:

* Nine IDF soldiers were injured in all, 3 of them seriously
* There were at least four and perhaps as many as six separate incidents where IDF soldiers were fired upon by "peace activists". In one case a soldier shot in the knee was shot by a weapon which was not IDF issued, and shell casings were found on the ship of bullets that did not come from Israeli weapons.
* In every situation where IDF soldiers used their weapons they were in life-threatening situations.
* The first Israeli soldier shot was the second one who rappelled down. This was almost certainly the first use of live fire by anyone in the incident - in other words, Mavi Marmara passengers shot first. The bullet that hit him came, apparently, from an Israeli gun that had been stripped off one of the other soldiers. He was not shot while going down the rope but soon thereafter.
* 3 soldiers were taken hostage. All of them were taken to the lowest deck. Two of them managed to escape and jump overboard where they were rescued; the third one was too badly injured and was rescued later.

The Istanbul Declaration and the Mavi Marmara (ITIC)

Brilliant research from ITIC:

1...The Gaza flotilla initiative was a step in implementing the jihadist "Istanbul Declaration," issued at a conference called "Gaza Victory" and held in Istanbul on February 14-15, 2009. The conference was attended by 200 Arab and European Sunni sheikhs and clerics as well as members of Hamas, and bore the signatures of 90 participants (See Appendix). According to a BBC reporter who attended the event, "speaker after speaker called for jihad against Israel in support of Hamas."²

The Istanbul Declaration provided the ideological background for the future violent implementation of its decisions, as demonstrated by the flotilla to Gaza. The events have to be understood within a radical pan-Islamic context and the mindset of their proponents, and in light of the Istanbul Declaration and the 90 radical Muslim scholars and clerics who publicly sanctioned the legitimacy of Hamas and their support for its military actions.

The Istanbul Declaration affirmed "the obligation of the Islamic Nation to find a just reconciliation formula for the Palestinian people, who will be responsible for forming a legitimate authority that will fix norms and attend to legitimate and national rights, and will continue with jihad and resistance against the occupation until the liberation of all Palestine." It also affirmed "the obligation of the Islamic Nation to open permanently the crossings—all crossings—in and out of Palestine to allow all the Palestinians to satisfy their needs for money, clothing, food, medicine, weapons and other essentials, so that they can live and carry out jihad in the path of Almighty Allah." The Declaration also noted that "We affirm that the victory Allah accomplished by means of our brothers the Mujahidin, our defiant and steadfast kinsfolk in Gaza, was indeed achieved through His favor and help -- exalted be He! It was also achieved through fulfilling the religious obligation of jihad in His path."

According to the Istanbul Declaration, there is an obligation for "the Islamic Nation to regard sending foreign warships into Muslim waters, claiming to control the borders and preventing the smuggling of arms to Gaza as a declaration of war, a new occupation, sinful aggression and a clear violation of the sovereignty of the Nation." It continues, "This must be rejected and fought by all means and ways."³

The list of passengers on board the Mavi Marmara revealed the names of two conference participants who had signed the Istanbul Declaration. Their personal involvement in the flotilla demonstrated their commitment to the jihadist cause and their desire to represent themselves as models.

Muhammad Kazem Sawalha -- a fugitive, high-ranking former Hamas Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades commander in Judea and Samaria, currently residing and active in the UK (signature number 72).4 He was involved in launching the previous aid flotilla (Lifeline 3). At the time he noted that the next aid convoy would avoid an "unwanted confrontation" with the Egyptian authorities and that "the confrontation will be directly with the Zionist enemy itself on the high seas" (Al-Intiqad, Hezbollah's website, January 17, 2010). Sawalha, one of the prominent organizers of the flotilla, did not board the ship. Known to Israeli security services and wanted for his notorious Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades activities in Judea and Samaria in the past, it can be assumed he feared being arrested and tried in Israel.

A. Walid Al-Tabtabai -- a prominent Kuwaiti activist who is known to support armed resistance in Palestine and Iraq (signature number 88). At a press conference in Antalya the flotilla organizers asked all the participants to "write their wills." Following the press conference, Walid Al-Tabtabai reportedly "did not hesitate to write his will, in defiance of Israeli threats."5

B. Sheikh Muhammad al-Hazimi -- a member of the Yemeni Parliament and Al-Islah (the Yemini reform bloc) was photographed on the deck of the Mavi Marmara brandishing his large curved dagger (signature number 66).

Jihadist, peace activist - what's the difference, really, as long as you hate Israel?

It is notable that to date, the "anti-violence" Free Gaza movement has not said a word against the violence done by the IHH members aboard the Mavi Marmara. On the contrary, they have consistently defended it.

Hamas claims that new cement will not benefit the "ordinary citizen"

Hamas' coordinator for goods from Israel, Raed Fattouh, said that the cement that is now coming into Gaza both from the flotilla and from others is all earmarked for "international projects" and will not benefit ordinary Gazans.

Which is strange, because while UNRWA is also saying that the cement and other building materials it plans to bring into Gaza is meant for "international projects," it defines them as including rebuilding the houses destroyed during Cast Lead - which is specifically for ordinary citizens.

Given that UNRWA has a track record of building houses for Gazans, seems to be a bit more believable.

Another wrapup on the legality of the blockade

Excerpts of a new article from the Carnegie Council:

Putting aside overheated rhetoric and pseudo-legal analyses, I asked a group of international law experts about the blockade of the Gaza Strip and the methods employed by Israel to enforce it. These are their answers:

Q. Did Israel commit piracy?
The short answer is no, states U.S. Navy Commander James Kraska, who teaches international humanitarian law (IHL, otherwise known as the Law of War) at the U.S. Naval War College. Article 101 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea defines piracy as "a private act, typically with some sort of pecuniary interest. And by private, that means it's not going to be a governmental act," he explains.

Q. Are naval blockades a legal form of warfare?
Though it has a negative impact on enemy civilians and neutral third parties, blockading a state is a "legitimate method of naval warfare," says Marko Milanovic, a legal scholar at Cambridge University. However, the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea (1994), considered to be the consensus view of customary law on the issue, does contain a few caveats.

Q. Can Israel blockade a foreign, non-state entity like Gaza?
In August 2005, Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip. However, since then, no independent state of Palestine has emerged—leaving the small evacuated territory in a weird legal limbo. This, in turn, makes adjudicating the Israeli naval action tricky because, while blockades clearly apply in the case of two states at war, the law falls silent with regard to non-state combatants like Hamas, notes Milanovic.

Now, were Gaza still under military occupation (as the UN considers it to be), there would be no problem blockading it. Indeed, Common Article 2 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that IHL extends to undeclared wars and occupied territory, says Wolff Heintschel von Heinegg, a law professor at the Viadrina European University. This being the case, the IHL rules governing naval blockades also apply to Gaza.

However, if Gaza is not occupied, as Israel claims, things get messy again......

...Just as it is not a foreign state, Gaza is also not an Israeli province in rebellion. Still, he says one could argue that if a state can employ a naval blockade in such radically different cases, then "you must also be able to blockade territory that is somehow in the middle..."

Q. Is the Israeli blockade a form of collective punishment?
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross have all decried the Gaza blockade as collective punishment. In doing so, they all look to Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states, "No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited…"

This prohibition has its roots in the experience of German reprisal killings during World War II, Bell notes. Keeping that in mind, to then argue that Article 33 applies to the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza is "bizarre," he says, adding that there "has never even been a claim in any legal forum … that economic sanctions of any kind or blockades of any kind constitute collective punishment."

The collective punishment argument is likewise critiqued by other academics. Von Heinegg, for example, contends that it "has no basis in the law" because the only limits set for blockades are in San Remo. To be illegal, the Israeli blockade would have had to be instituted—not to stop the importation of rockets—but just to starve Gazans. Or, if, intentions aside, the blockade were to kill hundreds of innocent Palestinians.

Neither is the case, he explains.

Q. Can Israel intercept a blockade-runner in international waters?
Speaking in a private capacity, Major John Dehn, a law professor at the West Point Military Academy, says that, if a state has instituted a legal blockade, then it can board neutral ships in international waters. However, there must also be a reasonable belief that "the vessel is trying to breach a blockade, and after prior warning they intentionally and clearly refuse to stop, or intentionally and clearly resist visit, search or capture."

In radio exchanges with Israeli navy personnel on May 30, the flotilla crew made it clear that they intended to run the Gaza blockade. Therefore, Israel was well within its rights to stop the boats.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t Yaakov Lozowick)

Bald-faced lies by IHH

The IHH, the terrorist-supporting group that was primarily behind the violence on the Mavi Marmara, has released a glossy PDF file filled with lies about what happened on the flotilla. It doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny but the Free Gaza movement is publishing and disseminating it happily, because truth is apparently not a virtue to these virtuous "humanitarians."

I can't do a word-for-word fisking because the IHH did not save the file in such a way that the text can be copied, and optical character recognition is pretty much useless. But here are some lowlights:

"The sole aim of these ships was to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza and break the siege"

Well, that's two aims! And as we know from Free Gaza, humanitarian aid is used a cover for the political goal of delegitimizing Israel. In fact, the Mavi Marmara contained no humanitarian aid whatsoever.

The IHH claims that Israel blocked their communication to the Turksat satellite at 22:30 at the same time that the Israeli boats began to follow them. However, live broadcasts continued up until IDF soldiers boarded the ship, as the initial video of beating and stabbing Israeli soldiers was broadcast in real time.

IHH claims that two Israeli submarines were involved in the operation. This is the first I have heard that claim, and so far no evidence has been found to that effect. I am not sure what a submarine would accomplish, unless IHH is implying that Israel was ready to torpedo the boats.

The videos show that the IHH attackers had finished their morning prayers some time before the IDF arrived, and that they had plenty of time to prepare their iron batons, slingshots, and broken bottles to attack the soldiers. The IHH also does not say a word about the IHH throwing items on the soldiers alongside the boat, including one percussion grenade. All of this is on video.

Machine-gun fire? We don't hear that on any of the videos smuggled from the ship.

Shooting as they were descending? Unless the soldiers had three arms, that is impossible.

Geared directly towards killing? Then why were there no deaths on the other boats?

People defending themselves only with items they could find? Um, no, they were prepared a bit ahead of time (especially second video on that link.)

The IHH report goes on to detail more lies, each more fantastic than the one before (for example, that an IHH doctor handed over the injured Israeli soldiers - and then they shot him!) but those lies cannot be refuted with video evidence, merely common sense. Obviously, IHH is not going to mention their own exhortations to throw the soldiers overboard.

Then again, if a "humanitarian" organization has no compunction about preparing to attack humans with iron batons, why would one thing that they have any problem with lying to the world about it?

Who is funding the Lebanese ships?

Even Arab journalists who are known for their hatred of Israel are getting uncomfortable with the Hezbollah-backed "flotilla" of a women's ship and a reporters' ship that have been announced to leave from Lebanon. From Asharq al-Awsat's Diana Mukkaled:

Initially I believed that the mechanisms used to publicize the Freedom Flotilla in support of the Palestinians in Gaza were justified because of the nobility of the cause of breaking the blockade. The cause deserves our efforts to be creative in mobilizing public opinion....

However, with the increase in Arab and international division over the Palestinian cause and in light of the extent to which this cause is being exploited, it is difficult to turn a blind eye to the ambitions of local and regional parties that explicitly expressed their positions and their superficial ambitions – something the organizers of the “Mariam” and “Naji al Ali” freedom flotillas could not distance themselves from.

The Journalists Without Limits organization paid $100,000 US dollars in outstanding fines to the Lebanese government so that it could lift the restraints on the "Naji al Ali" ship and the organization could set sail [for Gaza], although the ship has a seating capacity of only 16 persons.

An organization in possession of this sum should reveal the source of this money to journalists as it is an organization that speaks on their behalf. The transparency of NGO activity requires disclosure of financial sources especially as this organization is new and this sum of money may raise questions that might harm the enthusiasm, zeal and sincerity of many of those who are part of it.

[E]very time I saw the organizers of the two voyages on television or heard their statements and read about their positions, I realized that some former journalists fell into the traps sets by others who have achieved nothing in supporting the Palestinian cause but have achieved other feats that I do not want to be part of.

She doesn't want to say the word "Hezbollah" but it is obvious that she knows who is paying the bills for these ships, and even she sees that these ships have nothing to do with aid or even helping Gaza but everything to do with politics.

Of course Free Gaza is not a humanitarian group

Barry Rubin, and some other blogs, have been talking about the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center's finding documents on the flotilla ships that indicate that Free Gaza's aims were not humanitarian, but political, and that they seemed to be instructing their members not to explicitly show that they are de facto supporters of Hamas in order to avoid apparent ties to terror.

The documents are almost certainly legitimate. Documents released by ITIC are, for all intents and purposes, the same as if the IDF sent them out. They work together and ITIC often publishes things before the IDF does, but it does not do so without at least the IDF's tacit approval.

The thing is that we don't need these documents to know Free Gaza's aims. Even though they are registered as a "humanitarian organization," in their own mailings they have made it very clear that they are not - and they say this explicitly on their own web site:

GOALS
There is a time when silence is complicity and inaction is unacceptable. Free Gaza is neither a "protest group" nor an aid agency. Our mission and our work are political. We are a Palestinian and international effort dedicated to the principle of non-violent direct action. We are engaged in active, civil resistance against the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine, and the violence this occupation uses to sustain itself.

We do bring medicine, supplies, and doctors to besieged Gaza as we can, but this is utterly insufficient. Although humanitarian aid is very much needed, especially now in Gaza, focusing on humanitarian efforts alone is a form of complicity in Israel's malevolent quest to destroy the Palestinian people.

They have said, in an email to their supporters, that they are against humanitarian aid!

While many potential funders recognize the significance of our work, for various reasons they have not come through with funding. Most prefer their financial contributions go toward to humanitarian aid for Palestine. But Palestine is not a charity case! There are hundreds of millions being pumped into Palestine by aid agencies that are unable or unwilling to address the political issues, or by donor countries that shirk their political, legal, and moral obligations, by throwing money at Palestine.

This aid is paying for Israel’s occupation by alleviating Israel of the responsibility to care for the people it occupies. We firmly believe that activists and people who care about Palestine should not be raising money for humanitarian aid but should focus on direct action to confront the Israeli policies that leave Palestinians in need of this aid.

So, yes, Free Gaza had already admitted to its own members a number of times that it was not a humanitarian aid agency.

In fact, it does nto even advocate peace! In another mailing sent out to members, Free Gaza said that they support a "third intifada":

The third Intifada being urged now has to be our intifada too. As Israel steps up its destruction of the Palestinian people, we need to step up our reconstruction of our resistance, our movements, of our communities in our own counties, where so many of us live in alienation and isolation. We need to be the third intifada - people here need more and say repeatedly that they need more than the demonstrations, because they are not stopping the killing here

....The third intifada needs to be a global intifada.

Even though it may be possible to read this last article as merely a call to nonviolent resistance, the usage of the term "intifada" indicates that Free Gaza had no problem with the methods of the first two.

And, indeed, they have explicitly supported violent resistance too! As yet another of their articles says,

On the Right of Resistance

We are often told that resistance is either unwarranted or impossible. Liberal apologists for Israel, such as Thomas Friedman, are constantly demanding that Palestinians lay down their arms, all the while exhorting Israelis to pick them up in ever increasing acts of violence and degradation.

...But even mainstream “peace” movements in the West try to delegitimize resistance by calling on both Palestinians and Israelis to renounce overt acts of violence, equating Palestinians who commit suicide bombings with Israelis who send F-16s, D9 military bulldozers, and Apache attack helicopters to level entire neighborhoods.

The problem is that the usually random and individual acts of violence by Palestinians against Israelis are not equal to the myriad structural oppressions and cruelties imposed on Palestinians through Israeli government policies. No Palestinian fighter jets bomb Israeli cities - because Palestine has no fighter jets....

Even immoral and self-defeating acts of violence against Israeli civilians (such as some suicide bombings are) cannot be equated with the daily humiliations, terror, and death that Israel inflicts on Palestinians by deliberate policy.

This is not to say that any and all acts of resistance are acceptable. Clearly they are not. But it grows tedious to continually hear well-meaning, but otherwise clueless, Westerners try to equate the two sides of this conflict. I am past tired of hearing white people passively whine, or shrilly demand, “Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?”

With respect, just because some people have chosen to remain ignorant of the long and deep history of Palestinian nonviolent resistance - from the 1936 Boycott to Bil’in today - does not mean that it does not exist.

The 1936 "boycott" resulted in the deaths of hundreds - it was hardly non-violent, and Free Gaza knows that very well as they extol how wonderful it was. Not to mention that they say here that some suicide bombings are acceptable!

(Now would be a good time to take screen shots of these postings before Free Gaza erases them.)

Of course Free Gaza is not a humanitarian group. It is explicitly political; and it tacitly supports violence. These facts should be brought up to every nation that has recognized it as a charity - and given it tax benefits that charity agencies normally get.

Flotilla 2: Where is Mariam?

I believe the Free Gaza movement deliberately tries to add confusion to their next Gaza mission. Either to try to mislead the Israeli authorities, or to hide the fact that they cannot find or afford a bigger ship and/or volunteers to go on these ships.

While searching the web for traces of a ship called Maryam, I encountered this article which sheds some light on the possible plans of the next Flotilla:

The voyage has been encumbered by bureaucratic and political obstacles from the start. UN resolution 1701 bars any attempts to enter Israeli territory directly from Lebanon, so Lebanon’s minister of transportation has only given permission to a French-registered ship, the Julia, to embark for Cyprus. But authorities in Nicosia have barred the ship from entering Cypriot waters, so the vessel – to be renamed the Naji al Ali after a famed Palestinian cartoonist – is expected to leave for Cyprus but change course for the Gaza Strip.

The organisers of the endeavour said they had been authorised to depart Lebanon immediately, but they were unwilling to announce the exact time of the departure, apparently in the hope of confusing the Israeli military about their intentions.

....

The exact time of the ship’s departure was not the only secret yesterday. Organisers of a group of women activists led by the wife of a former Lebanese general once held in an Israeli jail, Ali al Hajj, said they would be leaving Lebanon in a ship named the Mariam. This group claims it will have more than 50 women aboard, but it was not immediately clear that the ship even exists.

Lebanon’s transportation minister, Ghazi Aridi, emphatically denied the existence of a second ship and insisted that no permission had been requested or given for a second ship to join the Julia on the voyage. “There is a campaign called ‘Mariam’, and the organisers of the campaign to lift the Gaza blockade did not say there was a vessel carrying that name,” a local newspaper quoted Mr Aridi as saying. “I do not know anything about a second aid ship”, he added. Earlier, he was quoted as saying that the Julia and the Mariam were the same vessel.

Whether two ships or one, the Israel military has already declared that the Islamic militant group Hizbollah is behind the effort, and that the boats were likely to be filled with weapons intended to help Hamas, their allies in Gaza. Israeli officials have said that Lebanon is an especially unwelcome collaborator in the effort to break the siege because it remains hostile towards the Jewish state.

Hizbollah has denied any association with the effort, although Mr Hajj joined the group after his release from an Israeli prison in 2008.

The Lebanese government has responded to Israel’s warnings about aid ships leaving Lebanese shores with a warning of its own. The Associated Press quoted an unnamed Lebanese official as saying that the Lebanese government had sent Israel a letter saying it would hold Israel responsible for any violence befalling ships departing its shores, although it did not specify how it plans to do so.

Let there please be just a natural hot summer.

Who's preparing the Second Flotilla?

The main donor of the two Second Flotilla ships, "Free journalists ship" (dubbed as the Naji Al-Ali ship) and the Mariam-ship, is no-one else than PalArab businessman Yasser Qashlaq, who recently bragged that the Second Flotilla will include more than fifty ships.

Who is Yasser Qashlaq? (also more in this video on Samar Hajj and general Mustafa Hamdan (although I could not find out what his role would be in this second flotilla event):)

And I found another video on the martyrdom wish of some of the Flotilla passengers in May (the first scenes you might have seen already):

Flotilla fallout (Neville Teller)

A British author and blogger, Neville Teller, does a very nice job updating the last few days of flotilla news in one nice package, including some things I was not aware of. For example, after detailing a large number of announced new flotillas this coming summer, he writes:

It seems as though the Mediterranean will be crowded with flotillas this summer, though one Israeli official is reported as saying: “We don’t know how much of the threats are real and how much are bravado.”

One factor apparently overlooked or discounted by all these enthusiastic potential blockade busters is that Gaza’s port is not large enough to accommodate cargo ships. Even before Israel imposed a naval blockade on Gaza, no cargo ships sailed there. Historically, all goods that entered the Gaza Strip in bulk did so by land.

The head of the Palestinian Federation of Industry in Gaza, Amr Hamad, is reported as saying that the business sector has separately proposed a plan by which, should the shipping lanes be opened, ferry boats would meet the cargo ships close to the shore, and bring the cargo into the port. He said that such a plan was discussed this week with Quartet special envoy Tony Blair, who was in the region.

He stressed that the business community in Gaza at present preferred the goods to head first to Ashdod, so as to maintain a relationship with Israeli customs. The business sector in Gaza, he added, is not ready to break its economic ties with Israel.

Definitely worth reading.

Newest terror group: "The Flotilla Martyrs"

From YNet:

A group by the name of "The Freedom Flotilla's Martyrs" claimed responsibility for Monday's Hebron shooting attack, in which Command Sergeant Major Yehoshua (Shuki) Sofer was killed, and three other police officers were injured.

The group, which is unknown, issued a statement saying the attack was pat of a series of steps it plans to take in response to what it called "the Israeli crime" of the deadly raid on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

"Our mujahedeen group in south Hebron ambushed an Israeli police car near Beit Hagai at 7:15 am and opened heavy fire at it from close range," the statement said.

The statement went on to say, "Our fighters managed to withdraw from the scene peacefully. Our response will continue, we will not forsake our weapons as long as the Zionist military is in our lands, and we will not acknowledge any ceasefire."

Command Sergeant Sofer served in the Hebron District Police for 14 years, and planned to wed this September. He was hit by three bullets that were fired at him. Another officer was seriously injured and two others sustained lights wounds in the incident.

Will the organizers of the flotilla dissociate themselves from this act of terror?

By the way, this attack came just a couple of weeks after Israel dismantled a checkpoint in the area - one that would have blocked the attackers' escape route. And, as David Bogner notes, every single time a checkpoint is removed, terror attacks increase. Not that you would hear about most of them in the media. (The PA never condemns these attacks.)

Newest videos shed more light on Mavi Marmara raid (part 2)

The Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center showed once again how closely aligned it is with the IDF, as it has posted two videos and one transcript of interrogations with the captain and the chief officer of the Mavi Marmara.

Here is their synopsis:

1. The videotaped statements of two Mavi Marmara crew members show that preparations for a violent confrontation with IDF forces were put in motion about two hours before the boarding began, when the Israeli Navy hailed the ship and told it to halt.

2. According to the statements, the atmosphere aboard the Mavi Marmara was tense and the crew noticed a gathering on the main deck. When they checked the upper deck they discovered that IHH operatives were cutting the ship’s railings with metal disks they had brought with them into lengths suitable to be used as clubs. The crew members said the activities worried them and that they tried to stop the operatives but were unsuccessful.

I put the two videos together; the captain is speaking English and the chief officer is subtitled:

Here's the transcript from the chief officer:

Statement: I was on the bridge after dark, before anything happened, the third captain and I were sent in the direction of the life boats, where there were a lot of people and a lot of noise. The captain told me something was happening down there, there are noises, go see what’s going on. There were a lot of people. I told the third captain, you are more senior than I, come with me.”

Q: When did that happen?

A: Around eight o’clock, I don’t know exactly when, but around eight. I went down the stairs with the third captain. We saw a senior person [from IHH]

Q: Who?

A: That guy.

Q: What guy?

A: That guy. Maybe the third captain knows his name.

Q: The guy from IHH?

A: Yes, from IHH.

Q: Whose name does he know? The name of the guy from IHH who cut the railings?

A: No, the third captain knows him from IHH. We [the third captain and I] went together, we saw a lot of people milling around and we asked what was going on.

Q: Did you see them cutting [the railings]?

A: They [the iron rods] were already cut. It was all over.

Q: Who did the cutting?

A: I didn’t see.

Q: Who was holding the disk?

A: The disks were lying in a corner of the stairs and the senior guy [apparently a reference to Bülent Yildirim] was next to them.

Q: The senior guy from IHH?

A: Yes.

Q: Who did the disks belong to?

A: I don’t know, they didn’t belong to the ship. We don’t have equipment like that on board. On deck there were metal poles with clips for cables, when I got there they had been cut.

Q: When did this happen?

A: When it was getting dark. I asked one of them who cut the poles, and he said he didn’t know.

Q: Was the man you asked a crew member?

A: No.

Q: Did he belong to IHH?

A: Of course.

Q: You seem to be saying that the people from IHH were in control of the ship. Did the crew need their permission to move around the ship?

A: Definitely, they [i.e. IHH operatives] didn’t let people they didn’t know move around.

Q: Did they prevent anyone they didn’t know from moving freely around the ship?

A: Yes, definitely.

Q: And was that from the first moment they went up on deck?

A: Yes, definitely.

Q: How did the IHH operatives communicate with one another?

A: When they [the IHH operatives] got on board in Istanbul they brought walkie-talkies with them. They were handed out to the IHH operatives and the crew.

Q: Did you [the crew] get them as well?

A: Yes, each one worked on a different frequency.

Q: I don’t understand, they didn’t let the passengers and crew go from one deck to another?

A: They could go anywhere except to the control center they set up on the bridge.

Q: How many IHH operatives were there on the upper deck.

A: Forty.

Q: The same forty all the time or did they change?

A: More of less the same forty.

Q: You’re referring to the group that joined the ship in Istanbul?

A: yes.

So it seems more and more clear that most of the passengers of the Marmara didn't know what the IHH plans were and possibly wouldn't have approved; yet they must have known that the IHH had taken control of the ship and was calling the shots - co-opting the European and American flotilla organizers.

It also appears that the passenger/witnesses have closed ranks around IHH, not willing to say anything bad about a group that had violent intent. Keep in mind that the crew here is saying that the IHH was already cutting iron bars and chains at nightfall; they say two hours before the IDF was visible but probably some 6-8 hours before the helicopters arrived (at around 4 AM.)

This brings up the question of, if the boats already saw the passengers with the chains and iron bars from the boat, why the first wave of soldiers still came only armed with paintball guns.

(h/t OR)