Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, September 02, 2011

IAEA concerned over evidence Iran is developing nuclear weapons

From the BBC:

The UN nuclear watchdog says it is "increasingly concerned" that Iran is secretly working on components for a nuclear weapons programme.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) describes its information as "extensive and comprehensive".

In a report seen by news agencies, it also says Tehran is preparing to enrich uranium at a new location - an underground bunker near Qom.

The IAEA says "many member states" had provided evidence for its latest assessment on Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Extracts of the report, published by the AFP news agency, said the IAEA was "increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organisations".

These included "activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile".

Sleep tight.

The NYPD's "mosque crawlers" and "rakers" look for terror intel

The AP came out with this serious piece of investigative journalism last week, revealing an alleged secret NYPD unit that works with the CIA to gather intelligence on potential Muslim terrorists in the area. Excerpts:

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the New York Police Department has become one of the nation's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies, targeting ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government, an Associated Press investigation has found.

These operations have benefited from unprecedented help from the CIA, a partnership that has blurred the line between foreign and domestic spying.

The department has dispatched undercover officers, known as "rakers," into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program, according to officials directly involved in the program. They've monitored daily life in bookstores, bars, cafes and nightclubs. Police have also used informants, known as "mosque crawlers," to monitor sermons, even when there's no evidence of wrongdoing.

Neither the city council, which finances the department, nor the federal government, which has given NYPD more than $1.6 billion since 9/11, is told exactly what's going on.

Many of these operations were built with help from the CIA, which is prohibited from spying on Americans but was instrumental in transforming the NYPD's intelligence unit.

A veteran CIA officer, while still on the agency's payroll, was the architect of the NYPD's intelligence programs. The CIA trained a police detective at the Farm, the agency's spy school in Virginia, then returned him to New York, where he put his new espionage skills to work inside the United States.

The NYPD denied that it trolls ethnic neighborhoods and said it only follows leads. Police operations have disrupted terrorist plots and put several would-be killers in prison.

"The New York Police Department is doing everything it can to make sure there's not another 9/11 here and that more innocent New Yorkers are not killed by terrorists," NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said. "And we have nothing to apologize for in that regard."

AP's investigation is based on documents and interviews with more than 40 current and former New York Police Department and federal officials. Many were directly involved in planning and carrying out these secret operations for the department. Though most said the tactics were appropriate and made the city safer, many insisted on anonymity, because they were not authorized to speak with reporters about security matters.

...

Since 1985, the NYPD had operated under a federal court order limiting the tactics it could use to gather intelligence. During the 1960s and 1970s, the department had used informants and undercover officers to infiltrate anti-war protest groups and other activists without any reason to suspect criminal behavior.

To settle a lawsuit, the department agreed to follow guidelines that required "specific information" of criminal activity before police could monitor political activity.

In September 2002, [NYPD intelligence chief David] Cohen told a federal judge that those guidelines made it "virtually impossible" to detect terrorist plots. The FBI was changing its rules to respond to 9/11, and Cohen argued that the NYPD must do so, too.

"In the case of terrorism, to wait for an indication of crime before investigating is to wait far too long," Cohen wrote.

U.S. District Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. agreed, saying the old guidelines "addressed different perils in a different time." He scrapped the old rules and replaced them with more lenient ones.
It was a turning point for the NYPD.

...

With his newfound authority, Cohen created a secret squad that would soon infiltrate Muslim neighborhoods, according to several current and former officials directly involved in the program.

The NYPD carved up the city into more than a dozen zones and assigned undercover officers to monitor them, looking for potential trouble.

At the CIA, one of the biggest obstacles has always been that U.S. intelligence officials are overwhelmingly white, their mannerisms clearly American. The NYPD didn't have that problem, thanks to its diverse pool of officers.

Using census data, the department matched undercover officers to ethnic communities and instructed them to blend in, the officials said. Pakistani-American officers infiltrated Pakistani neighborhoods, Palestinians focused on Palestinian neighborhoods. They hung out in hookah bars and cafes, quietly observing the community around them.

The unit, which has been undisclosed until now, became known inside the department as the Demographic Unit, former police officials said.

"It's not a question of profiling. It's a question of going where the problem could arise," said Mordecai Dzikansky, a retired NYPD intelligence officer who said he was aware of the Demographic Unit. "And thank God we have the capability. We have the language capability and the ethnic officers. That's our hidden weapon."

The officers did not work out of headquarters, officials said. Instead, they passed their intelligence to police handlers who knew their identities.

Cohen said he wanted the squad to "rake the coals, looking for hot spots," former officials recalled. The undercover officers soon became known inside the department as rakers.

A hot spot might be a beauty supply store selling chemicals used for making bombs. Or it might be a hawala, a broker that transfers money around the world with little documentation.

Undercover officers might visit an Internet cafe and look at the browsing history on a computer, a former police official involved in the program said. If it revealed visits to radical websites, the cafe might be deemed a hot spot.

Ethnic bookstores, too, were on the list. If a raker noticed a customer looking at radical literature, he might chat up the store owner and see what he could learn. The bookstore, or even the customer, might get further scrutiny. If a restaurant patron applauds a news report about the death of U.S. troops, the patron or the restaurant could be labeled a hot spot.

The goal was to "map the city's human terrain," one law enforcement official said. The program was modeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank, a former police official said.

...The NYPD declined to make Cohen available for comment. In an earlier interview with the AP on a variety of topics, Police Commissioner Kelly said the intelligence unit does not infringe on civil rights.

"We're doing what we believe we have to do to protect the city," he said. "We have many, many lawyers in our employ. We see ourselves as very conscious and aware of civil liberties. And we know there's always going to be some tension between the police department and so-called civil liberties groups because of the nature of what we do."

...Undercover agents like the rakers were valuable, but what Cohen and Sanchez wanted most were informants.

The NYPD dedicated an entire squad, the Terrorist Interdiction Unit, to developing and handling informants. Current and former officials said Sanchez was instrumental in teaching them how to develop sources.

For years, detectives used informants known as mosque crawlers to monitor weekly sermons and report what was said, several current and former officials directly involved in the informant program said. If FBI agents were to do that, they would be in violation of the Privacy Act, which prohibits the federal government from collecting intelligence on purely First Amendment activities.

...To identify possible informants, the department created what became known as the "debriefing program." When someone is arrested who might be useful to the intelligence unit — whether because he said something suspicious or because he is simply a young Middle Eastern man — he is singled out for extra questioning. Intelligence officials don't care about the underlying charges; they want to know more about his community and, ideally, they want to put him to work.

Police are in prisons, too, promising better living conditions and help or money on the outside for Muslim prisoners who will work with them.

...NYPD's intelligence operations do not stop at the city line.

Cohen's undercover squad, the Special Services Unit, operates in places such as New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, officials said. They can't make arrests and, if something goes wrong — a shooting or a car accident, for instance — the officers could be personally liable.

But the NYPD has decided it's worth the risk, a former police official said.

With Police Commissioner Kelly's backing, Cohen's policy is that any potential threat to New York City is the NYPD's business, regardless of where it occurs, officials said.

[T]he NYPD's out-of-state operations have had success.

A young Egyptian NYPD officer living undercover in New Jersey, for example, was key to building a case against Mohamed Mahmood Alessa and Carlos Eduardo Almonte. The pair was arrested last year at John F. Kennedy Airport en route to Somalia to join the terrorist group al-Shabab. Both pleaded guilty to conspiracy.

Cohen has also sent officers abroad, stationing them in 11 foreign cities. If a bomber blows himself up in Jerusalem, the NYPD rushes to the scene, said Dzikansky, who served in Israel and is the co-author of the forthcoming book "Terrorist Suicide Bombings: Attack Interdiction, Mitigation, and Response."

"I was there to ask the New York question," Dzikansky said. "Why this location? Was there something unique that the bomber had done? Was there any pre-notification. Was there a security lapse?"

All of this intelligence — from the rakers, the undercovers, the overseas liaisons and the informants — is passed to a team of analysts hired from some of the nation's most prestigious universities. Analysts have spotted emerging trends and summarized topics such as Hezbollah's activities in New York and the threat of South Asian terrorist groups.

There's a lot more. Although the tone of the report is very negative, it does not appear that any of this is illegal. It also looks like the NYPD is going as close to the line as it can without crossing it.

Will Amnesty accuse Palmer of a "whitewash"?

A day after Israel released the Turkel Report on the 2010 flotilla incident, Amnesty International called it a "whitewash" - before they even read the report.

A few days later, they made that accusation clearer, writing a report officially calling the Turkel report a "whitewash." This is not only them disagreeing with the conclusions; it is Amnesty impugning the objectivity and methodology of the Turkel Commission, with no evidence on their part.

Among their charges of Turkel:

The Commission’s failure to account for the deaths reinforces the view that the Israeli authorities are unwilling or incapable of delivering accountability for abuses of international law committed by Israeli forces.

...Amnesty International also contests the Commission’s findings that the purpose of Israel’s naval blockade on Gaza was “primarily a military-security one”....The naval blockade must be assessed in the context of the closure policy implemented by the Israeli government since June 2007 – a siege that constitutes collective punishment and violates the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Finally, Amnesty International rejects the Turkel Commission’s conclusion that the closure policy is lawful.

All of these points are considered and repudiated in the Palmer report.

Will Amnesty call Palmer a "whitewash" as well? Will they claim that the Zionist lobby infiltrated the UN? Will they continue to pretend that somehow the biased UNHRC report is fair and Palmer is not? Or will they apologize to the Turkel Commission for being largely vindicated by Palmer?

Turkey's temper tantrum

Turkey, which claims that they denied an Israeli request to push off the release of the Palmer report, is outraged that the New York Times released that same report a day early.

And they are downgrading relations with Israel:

Turkey on Friday downgraded its diplomatic relations with Israel to the lowest possible level, expelling the Israeli ambassador and canceling all military agreements with Israel, Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters, a day after The New York Times published a leaked U.N. report into the May 2010 Gaza flotilla incident.

The report backed Israel's legal right to impose a naval blockade on Gaza, but said Israeli commandos used "excessive and unacceptable force" when they commandeered the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in the Gaza-bound flotilla, in international waters. The report slammed Turkey for not doing enough to ward off the deadly confrontation at sea. Turkey has rejected the report's conclusions and is sticking to its demand that Israel apologize for the incident, which left nine of its citizens dead, and compensate the victims' families.

A visibly angry Davutoglu told reporters at a press conference that since Israel had not apologized for the incident, Ankara was embarking on a series of steps against Israel, including scrapping all military agreements between the two once-close allies, and downgrading diplomatic ties to the level of second secretary. Davutoglu said that Israel's ambassador in Ankara, Gaby Levy, will leave Turkey by Wednesday.

Davutoglyu said Turkey would initiate legal action against the Gaza blockade in international courts, as well as aid families of those killed in the Gaza flotilla raid in seeking litigation against Israel.

The five measures Turkey is taking against Israel:

1. Downgrade diplomatic ties between the two countries to level of second secretary, effectively expelling diplomats above the said level.

2. All military agreements will be put on hold.

3. Turkey will take measures for freedom of maritime movement in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

4. Turkey will no longer recognize the Gaza blockade and will take the issue to the International Court of Justice.

5. Turkey will support all flotilla victims, Turkish and foreign, in court.

Also:

Turkish President Abdullah Gül on Friday termed a leaked United Nations panel report on the Mavi Marmara incident “null and void” for Turkey, saying a series of decisions taken by the Turkish government in the face of the report are only initial steps, signaling further measures.

Turkey may be outraged, and Israel upset, but Hamas is happy.

So are Israel's Arab MKs. (h/t Sophie)

One more video of the BBC Proms audience reaction

From Richard Millett, who was there and wrote about it:

I don't know about the protocol of classical concerts, but wouldn't it have been great if Mehta had anticipated this and gone into a loud, rhythmic British march piece that could have gotten the audience clapping along each time he was interrupted?

(h/t Silke)

JPost editor says why he fired Derfner

From Steve Linde at the JPost:

Larry Derfner, a veteran journalist who penned a weekly column and reported for our Magazine, crossed the line into the territory of hate speech when in a personal blog last week he sought to justify Palestinian terrorism against Israelis.

His egregious posting came in response to the August 18 terrorist murder of Israeli citizens on the Egyptian border.

“Whoever the Palestinians were who killed the eight Israelis near Eilat last week, however vile their ideology was, they were justified to attack,” Derfner wrote. “Palestinians have the right to resist – to use violence against Israelis, even to kill Israelis.”

These comments are exceptionally offensive to most Israelis, and especially hurtful to those who have been victims of terror. They endorse and encourage, if not incite and inflame, terrorism against Israel.

When Derfner asked that we run the piece in the Post, we rejected it and dissociated ourselves completely from his comments, to which we object in the strongest possible terms.

Even though his column did not appear in the paper, we came to the conclusion that we could no longer provide a stage to someone who openly promulgates such venomous views.

Derfner later wrote an apology that we chose not to run. In it, he expresses deep regret for his blog post, saying: “My intention was to shock people into recognition, but I ended up shocking many of them into revulsion, and twisting what I wanted to say into something I didn’t and don’t mean at all.

“I regret what I wrote [last] Sunday. I apologize to everyone who was offended by it, and I apologize to my countrymen. The post is no longer on my blog; I’ve taken it down.”

The substance of Derfner’s apology itself was not convincing. He used ludicrous logic to defend his position, repeating the same obscene sentiments that made many readers sick to their stomachs in the first place.

He had meant, he said, “to shock Israelis and friends of Israel into seeing how badly we’re hurting the Palestinians by denying them independence: It’s so bad that it’s helping drive them to try to kill us.”

If you saw Oren Kessler’s article in the paper this week about the anti-Israel coverage in the Arab media following the attacks on the southern border, you may have noticed that their commentaries were not significantly different from Derfner’s.

Abdel Bari Atwan, editor-inchief of the London-based pan- Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, wrote that Israel bore direct responsibility for the terrorist attack on its soil.

“This attack put the spotlight back on the most important struggle – that for the honor of the Arab and Islamic nation,” Atwan argued. “Resistance is a legitimate right as long as land is occupied and the people and holy places are humiliated.”

Derfner’s blog later appeared on a Hamas website, giving succor to Israel’s enemies.

By trying to rationalize the murder of his fellow Jews by terrorists, Derfner – who has always been the consummate journalist for the Post – went beyond the pale. Consequently we terminated his employment.

We are certainly not silencing the Left, and will continue to feature columnists of all political stripes. Freedom of speech has its limits, however, and Derfner clearly overstepped them.

Derfner is a fine writer but a loose cannon. His column in the Post was titled “Rattling the Cage.” There is a huge difference between rattling the bars and letting the tiger out.

Quick survey of how media framed Palmer report in headlines

The Palmer Report was almost completely in line with Israel's own Turkel Report with one notable exception, that they felt that Israeli actions on the Mavi Marmara were "excessive." clearly its major point was that the blockade on Gaza is legal and that Israel has the legal right (actually, obligation) to maintain it. It also said the organizers were reckless and that the IDF faced significant, organised and violent resistance. In addition, it showed clearly that it was not a humanitarian mission.

Many newspapers, however, emphasized the relatively small part that was critical of Israel. And the identity of some of those is surprising.

The Independent: UN censures Israel for raid on flotilla that killed nine Turks
MSN News India: Israel used excessive force on flotilla: UN inquiry
Irish Times: UN says Gaza ship raid 'excessive'
The Telegraph: UN inquiry calls Israel flotilla raid 'excessive'
Washington Post: U.N. calls Israeli raid ‘unreasonable’
WSJ: U.N. Calls Israel Force on Flotilla 'Excessive'

Other news outlets had headlines that were either "evenhanded" or more accurate:

Radio Free Europe: UN Panel Faults Both Sides In Gaza Flotilla Clash
San Francisco Chronicle: Israel justified, hit in U.N. report on blockade
Boston Globe: Israel blockade of Gaza legal, UN review says; Force against Turkish flotilla called excessive
TVNZ (New Zealand): Israeli blockade deemed legal by UN

Most interestingly, RTE/Ireland originally had a headline that said "UN report says Gaza blockade was legal" but it then changed it to Israel used "excessive force" on Mavi Marmara.

A British arts review of the BBC Proms debacle

From Igor Toronyi-Lalic at The Arts Desk:

Police. Placards. Protests. And bag checks. It meant only one thing. Jews were performing at the Proms. Here we were in the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2011 witnessing a stage of musicians being barracked and abused for having the gall to be Jewish. Last year, four more Jewish musicians, the Jerusalem Quartet, had the cheek to perform and broadcast a recital at the Wigmore Hall. They were again heckled and hounded off air. No, not a portrait of Europe in the early 20th century, but Britain in the 21st. I wonder. In a few years, will Jews be able to make music publically in Britain at all?

If it wasn't all so depressingly shameful, it might have been amusing, such was the pathetic absurdity of the protests. The evening certainly started with comedy. A small bedraggled bunch of Palestinian protesters (all white, middle class and bearded of course) were scowling by a side entrance of the Royal Albert Hall. Opposite them an Irish Zionist, sporting the tricolour of Eire and the star of David, was goading them with an Irish jig. That was where the whole farce that is the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign's (PSC) boycott of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra should have remained: in the realms of risibility.

But it didn't stop there. A few minutes into a fuzzily luxuriant performance (even the triangle was being vibbed) of Webern's Passacaglia, Op 1, a bunch of protesters in the choir stands got to their feet and began to barrack. To the strains of Beethoven's Ode to Joy, they sang their anti-Israeli chants. I imagine a few of the audience and orchestral members would have been familiar with this sort of public abuse, from when they were children in mainland Europe.

They made it difficult to concentrate on the Webern, though Mehta made sure some of their fortissimos sliced through the taunts. They returned to dog the start of the Bruch Violin Concerto in G minor. Zubin Mehta, the Israel Philharmonic and Gil Shaham (pictured right) stood still, silent and calm, while the ushers and security swept out the protest. Amid this maelstrom, Mehta and Shaham, their patience wearing thin, tore into the opening bars. The work achieved a level of meaning and fury that no one will ever witness the like of again.
But while it was all sparks and springs in the outer movements, in the slow, both soloist and orchestra bowed to the softest, gentlest, most tender sound imaginable, as if they were reaching down to plant a kiss on a baby's crown. Not even the Neanderthals dared break this spell. Nor dared they interrupt Shaham's elegantly sculpted performance of the Preludio from Bach's Third Partita.

The BBC had by now switched off their live Radio 3 broadcast after the audience began barracking the barrackers at the beginning of the Bruch. It was understandable - no point giving the protesters publicity - but disappointing, considering that, if the listeners had been given an opportunity to hear the whole Prom, they would have heard the Prommers shouting down the protests, and the Israeli Phil ploughing on valiantly through their programme, to repeated standing ovations. That is, they would have heard us win.

...For some, something else had also been violated last night: the freedom of artistic expression. With qualifications, I am with them. I am not one of these people who thinks politics is above art. If people insist art and artists have the power to change lives for the better (and, boy, do music marketing people, with one eye on dwindling funds, keep insisting on this), they must also have the ability to change lives for the worse. Art, artists and musicians are, therefore, not sacrosanct. Break the law, rape a girl (yes, that's you I'm talking about, Polanski) and you should not be given a free ride simply because you are endowed with creative talent.

Cultural boycotts have their place. One cannot have anything but sympathy with the Holocaust survivors who set up pickets outside concert halls in 1950s America, demonstrating against the visit of Herbert von Karajan, a man who had joined the Nazi party not once, but twice. I bow to the rights of the PSC to protest peacefully outside the Royal Albert Hall. I bow to their right to try to convince us that the Israeli Phil is evil. Of course, one could legitimately ask, why, if they felt so keenly about human rights and democracy, they have never protested to the frequent visits by the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra, who perform clothed in the symbols of an authoritarian state, or the East-Western Divan, whose Arab members proudly represent some of the most vile dictatorships on earth.

But that's by the by. They had a right to stand outside and propagate their views. And they were granted that right. But then they went beyond this right. They imposed their protest on us to the extent that we were restricted in our freedom to do what we wanted. This is exactly the form of authoritarianism that the PSC claim to be attempting to end.

What do we do now? What can we do now? The protesters have all now walked free to hound some more Jews. The recorded concert - what's left of it - will be salvaged and aired next week. One thing, we do know: the Israel Phil won't be coming back to these shores in a hurry. And that's where things start becoming troubling. When we get into a position where programmers and arts organisations are forced to think twice about giving a platform to certain nationalities and races lest they incur the wrath of hooligans, we are in real danger of no longer being able to call ourselves civilised. The protesters didn't win last night. But they certainly did raise the stakes.

(h/t Jonathan)

Palestinian Authority honors terrorism (video)

You can't blame Palestinian Arabs for treating terrorists like heroes. It's a cultural thing, as old as the Palestinian Arab people themselves.

Cultural terrorism at the Royal Albert Hall (updated with video)

From the BBC:

Protesters have disrupted Thursday night's BBC Proms concert by the Israel Philharmonic at the Royal Albert Hall.

The soloist, Gil Shaham, was about to play Bruch's violin concerto conducted by Zubin Mehta when some people in the audience began booing and shouting.

BBC Radio 3 interrupted its live broadcast before returning later.

Earlier, London's Evening Standard newspaper reported that the audience would have their bags searched to try to weed out political protesters.

The BBC Proms Team tweeted: "We're sorry that the concert was taken off air following hall disturbance. Glad both pieces were heard by the audience in the RAH."

It later added: "We regret that as a result of sustained audience disturbance tonight's concert was taken off BBC Radio 3."

The performance was interrupted at about 19:45 BST and coverage was cut off again an hour later after more protests.

From listening to the audio on the BBC page, it sounds like the protesters started chanting "Free Palestine" and were immediately drowned out by boos from the majority of the audience who wanted to listen to good music. Then the protesters started up again, and the radio broadcast ended.

The tweets after this incident are enlightening. Those who hate Israel are ecstatic; those who like music are angry.

The ecstasy is what is interesting.

They managed to knock a radio broadcast off the air. They are considering this a great victory.

What did they accomplish?

They managed to get publicity. They managed to force the BBC to switch away from a broadcast. And they managed to upset a lot of music fans. They certainly did not convert anyone to their cause; if anything, they pushed people away.

Palestinian Arab terrorists are at their most proud when they gain a reaction from Israel. That reaction can be fear, or a change in policies, or a new defense system, but what makes them happy is the idea that they elicited a reaction from their enemy.

More than anything else, they want to feel relevant, like they made a difference. They are proud that their actions were noticed. This is why even unsuccessful terror attacks are reported so widely in the terrorist websites - if they succeeded in getting a reaction, they consider it a win. Killing someone is of course their preferred method, but their many photos of Israelis running to bomb shelters or finding out that children in the Negev are having psychological problems also makes them proud. They think they made a difference.

And this puerile way of thinking is what drives the Israel haters. Like children throwing a temper tantrum, they just want attention; whether that attention is positive or not does not enter their thinking.

Just as in terrorism, attacking a cultural event is asymmetric: it takes much less effort, money and intelligence to disrupt many people's daily lives than it takes to enrich them.

Fundamentally, this is what BDS is all about. They use the same kind of thinking that drives terrorists, with the same goal: to feel relevant. Their sense of self-importance comes from knowing that they can successfully create noise. And somehow they are proud that they can accomplish the same thing that a screaming baby can. If they are very lucky they can dissuade people from wanting to hear good music because of the chance that it will be interrupted, and one's evening will be ruined. Just as Israelis must go through checkpoints to enter a mall, so will British classical music lovers need to go through checkpoints to listen to orchestras. And this thrills the BDSers to no end.

Which means that these sort of incidents are, in the end, just a mild form of terrorism.

(h/t jzaik for video)

Derfner "explains" and I respond

Larry Derfner writes in The Forward about what he thinks he did wrong:

As an opinion writer, I want to provoke thought, to take arguments as far as they’ll go, to break new ground on every outing. I also have a secondary, political goal, even though I know it’s fanciful to think I can advance it by writing — to change Israel, mainly by ending the occupation. Lots of Israeli opinion writers share that political goal, and we are a very frustrated bunch.

When the eight Israelis were killed near Eilat, I was in Sweden on vacation with my family. I came back a couple of days after and wanted to write a strong blog post. I have a lot of thoughts about the use of terrorism in a good cause — Palestinian independence, Jewish independence, anti-colonialism, anti-apartheid — but I always told myself not to treat this subject in a column because I wouldn’t have the space to fully explain myself, to put in all the caveats, to make a point that covered all the pros and cons and conditions in the right proportions. If I tried to write about something so big and so raw as terrorism in the abbreviated, narrow way a column demands, a lot of people could get the wrong idea, and in Israel that could be a real problem.

God, I wish I hadn’t forgotten that resolution. When I came back from vacation after the Eilat attack, the strongest blog post I thought I could write was to challenge the taboo against suggesting that Israel bore any responsibility at all for Palestinian terrorism.

But how could I make my point in a way I hadn’t before? What could I write that would be new and thought provoking? I was sitting in my workroom at home. I didn’t want to spend too long on it. And I jumped right into the post by taking an extremely large, easily-misunderstood idea — that the stifling of freedom breeds rebellion, which I believe — and expressed it in a way that was so crude that it conveyed something I don’t believe at all. It took me a few days to realize, but what I wrote in that August 21 blog, “The awful, necessary truth about Palestinian terror,” grossly oversimplified what I think of Palestinian terror in a way that was, as some critics said, “obscene.” It also stood in head-on opposition to my allegiance to Israel....

The blog post was a disaster in every possible way. It deeply offended and outraged many people. The apology I published last Friday, however, softened many people’s feelings, convinced them that I’d at least meant well. To my own reading and that of many other readers, my decent intentions were apparent in the original post. But in Israel and the Diaspora, this view has been drowned out in the uproar.

I’ve read that some of my fellow leftists think this affair may actually help make it easier to talk with Israelis about the connection between the occupation and terror. Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve been talking to Israelis about that connection for many years, and what this affair teaches me is how not to do it. I’ve been taking the argument further and further and further, and now I’ve crashed into the wall. I don’t think my opinions have changed, but I have to find new ways to articulate them, ways that reconcile my principles of justice with my allegiance to Israel, instead of sacrificing one or both out of recklessness.

Derfner understands why people are upset, but he is utterly clueless as to what he did wrong. He thinks it was simply using incorrect terminology, using the words "justified" and"rights" which normally have a positive connotation. But that wasn't it.

I commented there:

The fundamental point that Derfner still cannot understand is that people are responsible for their own actions. Choosing to attack civilians is in no way, shape or form the responsibility of the government of those same civilians. No matter what you think about occupation, it does not cause terror nor make it inevitable.

In 1947 Palestine, the Stern Gang did unfortunately attack some civilians. Those acts of terror were widely criticized by the Zionist leadership, and the precursor to the Jerusalem Post regularly referred to them as "outrages." Does Derfner believe that the group was as justified in perpetrating those attacks as Islamic Jihad is when they kill Israeli civilians? Somehow, I doubt it.

The idea that Palestinian Arab terrorists do not have the ability to take personal responsibility for their actions, and that Israel's actions justify terror, is what is so offensive. In fact, the idea that Arabs cannot control themselves from violent actions (while, presumably, Jews can) is close to racist.

Argue against Israel's actions based on the inherent morality of those very actions, not based on the twisted idea that somehow they force oppressed Arabs to kill Jews.

Everyone has free will, Larry - even Arabs.

Palmer Report: Israel and Turkey's responses

Israel's response to the Palmer Report (in an appendix):

As the Representative of Israel to this Panel, I join the Chairman and Vice Chairman in adopting this report. Israel appreciates the important work of the Panel and thanks Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Mr. Alvaro Uribe for their leadership. Their efforts should send a message to the international community about the need to engage with all sides to a dispute and to avoid prejudging an incident before all of the facts are known.

Israel has reservations to a few aspects of the report, which are expressed below, but appreciates that the report concurs with Israel’s view that the “naval blockade was legal,” that it "was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea,” that the blockade’s implementation “complied with the requirements of international law,” and that Israel had a “right to visit and search the vessel and to capture it if found in breach of a blockade”, including in international waters. The Report rightly finding serious questions about “the conduct, true nature and objectives of the flotilla organizers, particularly IHH,” notes that they planned “in advance to violently resist any boarding attempt” and classifies the decision to breach the blockade of Gaza as a “dangerous and reckless act,” which “needlessly carried the potential for escalation.” Israel also notes the importance of the Panel’s support for Israel’s long-standing position that “all humanitarian missions wishing to assist the Gaza population should do so through established procedures and designated land crossings in consultation with the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority.”

At the same time, Israel does not concur with the Panel’s characterization of Israel’s decision to board the vessels in the manner it did as “excessive and unreasonable.” The Panel was provided evidence of the repeated warnings it gave the vessels regarding its intent to board them. Israel feels that the Panel gave insufficient consideration to the operational limitations which determined the manner and timing of the boarding of the vessels and to the operational need for a covert takeover in order to minimize the chances for resistance on board.

As to the actions of Israel’s soldiers, given the panel’s conclusions regarding the resistance that they encountered when boarding the Mavi Marmara, it is clear that the soldier’s lives were in immediate danger. For example, the Panel notes that “Israeli Defense Forces personnel faced significant, organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers when they boarded the Mavi Marmara.” The Panel confirmed that video footage showed that passengers were wearing "bullet proof vests, and carrying metal bars, slingshots, chains and staves” and that this information “supports the accounts of violence given by IDF personnel to the Israeli investigation.” The Panel further confirms that “two soldiers received gunshot wounds,” “three soldiers were captured, mistreated, and placed at risk” and that “seven soldiers were wounded by passengers, some seriously.”

Given these circumstances, Israel’s soldiers clearly acted in self-defense and responded reasonably, proportionally and with restraint, including the use of less-lethal weapons where feasible. The Panel's characterization of the circumstances which led to the nine deaths on board the Mavi Marmara does not adequately take into account the complexities of what was clearly a chaotic combat situation. In such a situation, reconstructing the exact chains of events is extremely difficult, if not impossible. Given the close range combat that clearly took place aboard the vessel, wounds sustained at close range do not in themselves suggest wrongdoing by Israeli soldiers.

Israel’s treatment of the hundreds of participants following the takeover of the ships was reasonable and compatible with international standards. Reliance on some passenger statements presented in the Turkish National Report as evidence of wrongdoing was particularly problematic. Israel raised serious concerns regarding the veracity and credibility of some of these statements.

Still, Israel cherishes the shared history and centuries old ties of strong friendship and cooperation between the Jewish and Turkish peoples and hopes that the Panel's work over the past few months will assist Israel and Turkey in finding a path back to cooperation.

Turkey's response:

I hereby register my disagreement with the Chairmanship on the following issues contained in the report:

- The question of the legality of the blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel.
- The actions of the flotilla
- Naval blockades in general
- Appendix: The applicable International legal principles.

This, for the following reasons:

- On the legal aspect of the blockade, Turkey and Israel have submitted two opposing arguments.International legal authorities are divided on the matter since it is unprecedented, highly complex and the legal framework lacks codification. However, the Chairmanship and its report fully associated itself with Israel and categorically dismissed the views of the other, despite the fact that the legal arguments presented by Turkey have been supported by the vast majority of the international community. Common sense and conscience dictate that the blockade is unlawful.

- Also the UN Human Rights Council concluded that the blockade was unlawful. The Report of the Human Rights Council Fact Finding Mission received widespread approval from the member states.

- Freedom and safety of navigation on the high seas is a universally accepted rule of international law. There can be no exception from this long-standing principle unless there is a universal convergence of views.

- The intentions of the participants in the international humanitarian convoy were humanitarian,
reflecting the concerns of the vast majority of the international community. They came under attack in international waters. They resisted for their own protection. Nine civilians were killed and many others were injured by the Israeli soldiers. One of the victims is still in a coma. The evidence confirms that at least some of the victims had been killed deliberately.

- The wording in the report is not satisfactory in describing the actual extent of the atrocities that the victims have been subjected to. This includes the scope of the maltreatment suffered by the passengers in the hands of Israeli soldiers and officials.

In view of the above, I reject and dissociate myself from the relevant parts and paragraphs of the report, as reflected in paragraphs ii, iv, v, vii of the findings contained in the summary of the report and paragraphs ii, iv, v, vii, viii and ix of the recommendations contained in the same text.

Every one of Turkey's points - the legal justification, the law of a blockade on the high seas, the clear intent of the flotilla participants to make a political statement and not for humanitarian aid (in fact, the impossibility of bringing serious amounts of humanitarian aid to Gaza via boat altogether) was addressed and answered fully in the Palmer report itself. The Turkish response, rather than addressing the report, instead restates what its own flawed internal report said.

Notice also that Israel's response is as polite as Turkey's is rude.

Palmer Report: The blockade is legal

Here is a slightly condensed version of the legal reasonings of the Palmer Report as to how they concluded that Israel's naval blockade of Gaza is legal.

70. ...The naval blockade is often discussed in tandem with the Israeli restrictions on the land crossings to Gaza. However, in the Panel’s view, these are in fact two distinct concepts which require different treatment and analysis. First, we note that the land crossings policy has been in place since long before the naval blockade was instituted. In particular, the tightening of border controls between Gaza and Israel came about after the take-over of Hamas in Gaza in June 2007. On the other hand, the naval blockade was imposed more than a year later, in January 2009. Second, Israel has always kept its policies on the land crossings separate from the naval blockade. The land restrictions have fluctuated in intensity over time but the naval blockade has not been altered since its imposition. Third, the naval blockade as a distinct legal measure was imposed primarily to enable a legally sound basis for Israel to exert control over ships attempting to reach Gaza with weapons and related goods. This was in reaction to certain incidents when vessels had reached Gaza via sea. We therefore treat the naval blockade as separate and distinct from the controls at the land crossings. ...

71. The United Nations Charter, Article 2 (4) prohibits the use of force generally, subject to an exception under Article 51 of the Charter for the right of a nation to engage in self-defence. Israel has faced and continues to face a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza. Rockets, missiles and mortar bombs have been launched from Gaza towards Israel since 2001. More than 5,000 were fired between 2005 and January 2009, when the naval blockade was imposed. Hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians live in the range of these attacks. As their effectiveness has increased some rockets are now capable of reaching Tel Aviv. Since 2001 such attacks have caused more than 25 deaths and hundreds of injuries. The enormity of the psychological toll on the affected population cannot be underestimated. In addition, there have been substantial material losses. The purpose of these acts of violence, which have been repeatedly condemned by the international community, has been to do damage to the population of Israel. It seems obvious enough that stopping these violent acts was a necessary step for Israel to take in order to protect its people and to defend itself. ...

72. The Panel notes in this regard that the uncertain legal status of Gaza under international law cannot mean that Israel has no right to self-defence against armed attacks directed toward its territory. The Israeli report to the Panel makes it clear that the naval blockade as a measure of the use of force was adopted for the purpose of defending its territory and population, and the Panel accepts that was the case. It was designed as one way to prevent weapons reaching Gaza by sea and to prevent such attacks to be launched from the sea. Indeed there have been various incidents in which ships carrying weapons were intercepted by the Israeli authorities on their way to Gaza. While the attacks have not completely ceased since the time of the imposition of the naval blockade, their scale and intensity has much decreased over time.While this decrease might also be due to other factors, a blockade in those circumstances is a legitimate exercise of the right of self-defence. ....

73. The Panel now turns to consider whether the other components of a lawful blockade under international law are met. Traditionally, naval blockades have most commonly been imposed in situations where there is an international armed conflict. While it is uncontested that there has been protracted violence taking the form of armed conflict between Israel and armed groups in Hamas-controlled Gaza, the characterization of this conflict as international is disputed. The conclusion of the Panel in this regard rests upon the facts as they exist on the ground. The specific circumstances of Gaza are unique and are not replicated anywhere in the world. Nor are they likely to be. Gaza and Israel are both distinct territorial and political areas. Hamas is the de facto political and administrative authority in Gaza and to a large extent has control over events on the ground there. It is Hamas that is firing the projectiles in Israel or is permitting others to do so. The Panel considers the conflict should be treated as an international one for the purposes of the law of blockade. This takes foremost into account Israel’s right to self-defence against armed attacks from outside territory. In this context, the debate on Gaza’s status, in particular its relationship to Israel, should not obscure the realities. The law does not operate in a political vacuum and it is implausible to deny that the nature of the armed violence between Israel and Hamas goes beyond purely domestic matters. In fact, it has all the trappings of an international armed conflict. ...

74. Israel was entitled to take reasonable steps to prevent the influx of weapons into Gaza. With that objective, Israel established a series of restrictions on vessels entering the waters of Gaza. These measures culminated in the declaration of the naval blockade on 3 January 2009. There were a number of reasons why the previous restrictions were inadequate, primary among them being the need for the measures to be legally watertight.

75. As required, the naval blockade was declared and notified. The Israeli authorities issued a “Notice to Mariners” through the appropriate channels, setting out the imposition of the blockade and the coordinates of the blockaded area. In addition, the notice was broadcast twice a day on an emergency radio channel for maritime communications. There is no contest about this. The suggestion that because the blockade was stated to be imposed “until further notice” means that the notification’s content is insufficient and the blockade thus invalid does not seem to us to be persuasive. The notice does specify a duration. Given the uncertainties of a continuing conflict, nothing more was required. Likewise, a limitation to certain groups of prohibited items in the blockade’s notification was not necessary. It lies in the nature of a blockade that it affects all maritime traffic, given that its aim is to prevent any access to and from a blockaded area.

76. There is nothing before the Panel that would suggest that Israel did not maintain an effective and impartial blockade. Ever since its imposition on 3 January 2009, Israeli authorities have stopped any vessel attempting to enter the blockaded area. At the same time, there is no suggestion that Israel has hindered free access to the coasts and ports of other countries neutral to the conflict.

77. Important humanitarian considerations constrain the imposition of a naval blockade. For one, it would be illegal if its imposition was intended to starve or to collectively punish the civilian population. However, there is no material before the Panel that would permit a finding confirming the allegations that Israel had either of those intentions or that the naval blockade was imposed in retaliation for the take-over of Hamas in Gaza or otherwise. On the contrary, it is evident that Israel had a military objective. The stated primary objective of the naval blockade was for security. It was to prevent weapons, ammunition, military supplies and people from entering Gaza and to stop Hamas operatives sailing away from Gaza with vessels filled with explosives. This is regardless of what considerations might have motivated Israel in restricting the entry of goods to Gaza via the land crossings, an issue which as we have described above is not directly related to the naval blockade. It is also noteworthy that the earliest maritime interception operations to prevent weapons smuggling to Gaza predated the 2007 take-over of Hamas in Gaza. The actual naval blockade was imposed more than one year after that event. These factors alone indicate it was not imposed to punish its citizens for the election of Hamas.

78. Perhaps a more difficult question is whether the naval blockade was proportional. This means to inquire whether any damage to the civilian population in Gaza caused by the naval blockade was excessive when weighed against the concrete and direct military advantage brought by its imposition. As this report has already indicated, we are satisfied that the naval blockade was based on the need to preserve Israel’s security. Stopping the importation of rockets and other weapons to Gaza by sea helps alleviate Israel’s situation as it finds itself the target of countless attacks, which at the time of writing have once again become more extensive and intensive. On the other hand, the specific impact of the naval blockade on the civilian population in Gaza is difficult to gauge because it is the land crossings policy that primarily determines the amount of goods permitted to reach Gaza. One important consideration is the absence of significant port facilities in Gaza. The only vessels that can be handled in Gaza appear to be small fishing vessels. This means that the prospect of delivering significant supplies to Gaza by sea is very low. Indeed, such supplies were not entering by sea prior to the blockade. So it seems unrealistic to hold the naval blockade disproportionate as its own consequences—either alone or by compounding the restrictions imposed by Israel on the entry of goods to Gaza via its border crossings—are slight in the overall humanitarian situation. Smuggling weapons by sea is one thing; delivering bulky food and other goods to supply a population of approximately 1.5 million people is another. Such facts militate against a finding that the naval blockade itself has a significant humanitarian impact. On the contrary, it is wrong to impugn the blockade’s legality based on another, separate policy.

...80. As a final point, the Panel emphasizes that if necessary, the civilian population in Gaza must be allowed to receive food and other objects essential to its survival. However, it does not follow from this obligation that the naval blockade is per se unlawful or that Israel as the blockading power is required to simply let vessels carrying aid through the blockade. On the contrary, humanitarian missions must respect the security arrangements put in place by Israel. They must seek prior approval from Israel and make the necessary arrangements with it. This includes meeting certain conditions such as permitting Israel to search the humanitarian vessels in question. The Panel notes provision was made for any essential humanitarian supplies on board the vessels to enter Gaza via the adjacent Israeli port of Ashdod, and such an offer was expressly made in relation to the goods carried on the flotilla.

81. The Panel therefore concludes that Israel’s naval blockade was legal.