NOVANEWS
Dear All,
Zionist supposedly left Gaza in 2005, but did not give Gaza its freedom. The siege on Gaza did not begin after Hamas was elected. It began in 2005 when Zionist presumably departed, but retained control over land, sea, and air accesses to the Strip. But never in all this time has Gaza received so much recognition of its plight as since Zio=Nazi’s attack on the flotilla.
We have not yet heard the last of this attack, nor of Turkey’s long-range intentions, nor of flotillas, because the purpose of these is not merely to bring in humanitarian aid. The purpose is to end the blockade. More about this with item 2.
Item 1 (of 6) is here to show Nazi’s attitude, which the concluding sentence well expresses. But then Zionist propaganda of course as usual makes Zionist the victim, the participants of the flotilla the victimizers.
But the truth will out, and in this case, though few Zionist hear the eye witness reports (and wouldn’t believe them if they had), others in this world of ours are exposed to the flotilla’s side of the story, which does not by any means improve Zionist’s image. Zionist’s are due for a rude awakening, I fear.
The last 2 items are part of it. Item 5 is a late update that says that President Obama is considering an international investigation of the attack on the flotilla. Item 6 is an example of the growing number of boycotts against Zionism.
In item 3, Henry Siegman argues that Zionist’s greatest loss is its moral imagination. Well, that presumes that it had a moral imagination at one time. Perhaps some Zionist’s did, but the leadership always had its eyes on colonization inclusive of expansion and ethnic cleansing.
Nothing has changed. Still, the article is worth reading for its comparisons and for the direction that Siegman believes that Zionist regime is in the process of becoming.
Item 4 is by a personal experience by a participant in the flotilla, albeit not on the MM. Paul is a close friend. In our telephone conversation yesterday evening he described the brutality that was used against him. He is an expert at non-violent non-cooperation. So when he refused to walk, he had to be carried. While 4 men (presumably border police) carried him down stairs, they got back at him by making sure that his head hit every stair.
Item 5, as I said, is President Obama’s possible intention of calling for an international investigation, and 6 is the boycott.
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1.Ynet Friday, June 11, 2010
16:16 , 06.11.10
Bad taste
Shayetet 13 fighter on Gaza-bound ship Photo: AFP
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3903747,00.html
IDF-hired driver: ‘Why did they kill so few?’
Driver hired by IDF to transport soldiers posts sign on font of bus criticizing commandos who took part in Gaza flotilla takeover for small number of casualties
Hanan Greenberg
Patriotism, or very bad taste? Civilians driving on the Trans-Israel Highway 6 on Friday could not ignore a sign posted on a bus driving on the road, which conveyed a controversial message to the commandos who took park in the interception of the Gaza-bound flotilla: “Shayetet 13, shame on you. Why did you kill so few?”
Even more surprising is that the bus itself was hired by the Israel Defense Forces and was driving soldiers home for the weekend.
A closer look revealed that the questionable display of support was the initiative of the driver himself, who saw a similar sign while on the road and decided to place it on the front of his bus, in order to “express support of the naval forces”.
“Shayetet 13, shame on you. Why did you kill so few?”
The IDF agreed that this was an inappropriate form of protest, and after a talk between the soldiers’ commanders and the driver, the latter quickly apologized, removed the sign, and continued on his route.
While the driver is not an IDF employee and was only hired by the military to transport the soldiers, the incident evoked uneasiness among many who came across the bus.
“It is in bad taste that at a time when the entire incident is under investigation, when the whole world’s eyes are on Israel, which continues to suffer form criticism, such an incident happens with a bus that services the military,” a woman at a nearby gas station said.
Several of the soldiers who were on the bus were also unimpressed with the driver’s initiative. They said that, contrary to what the sign said, they were proud of their comrades’ work at sea, and said anyone who took part in the takeover should be supported.
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Ha’aretz
June 11, 2010
[Ladies and Gentlemen, please understand what Bibi apparently does not want to or refuses to: the flotillas are not about bringing humanitarian aid. The function of the flotillas are to break the blockade, to allow Gazans to live normal lives, to enter and exit when they need medical care, to study at universities abroad, to visit friends and family, and to just plain live normal lives! Siegman in item 3 compares what Israel is doing to Gaza to Nazi attitudes towards Jews.
Indeed, the main difference between the ghettos during the Nazi period and Gaza is that today there are relief organizations that prevent mass starvation. Bibi, try as he may, to divert attention from the truth will in the end be forced to face it, and hopefully that day is not too far in the offing. Dorothy[
‘Israel seeks global support to improve flow of goods to Gaza’
Netanyahu and Tony Blair meet in Jerusalem to discuss Gaza blockade, means to increase import of civilian goods, end weapons smuggling, PM’s office says.
By Reuters and Barak Ravid
Benjamin Netanyahu Tony Blair Israel said on Friday it wants to enlist global support to improve the flow of civilian goods to the blockaded Gaza Strip, while seeing to it that weapons do not reach the Hamas-ruled territory.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under rising pressure to ease Israel’s three-year siege on Gaza since a deadly raid on a Turkish-backed aid ship destined for the enclave last month, held talks on the issue with Middle East envoy Tony Blair.
“The aim of the meeting was to recruit international support behind the principle that weapons and military supportive material will not reach Gaza or Hamas, while humanitarian and civilian goods may reach the area and its residents via additional means,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.
Israel further eased restrictions on goods to Gaza this week by announcing it would permit additional food items such as snack foods and carbonated beverages to be imported via Israeli-controlled crossings, starting next week.
The announcement was made on Wednesday as U.S. President Barack Obama and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held talks in Washington about the Gaza embargo, as highlighted by the lethal May 31 raid, and ways to advance Middle East peace talks.
In the seaborne incident, Israeli soldiers shot dead nine Turkish protesters after being assaulted with knives and clubs when they boarded the humanitarian aid vessel to prevent it from breaching the blockade to reach Gaza’s coast.
A variety of goods enter Gaza from neighboring Egypt as well, but aid groups have warned of a looming humanitarian disaster in the area, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, due to Israel’s restrictions on goods transiting its crossings.
Israel says the embargo it imposed when Hamas wrestled power over the Strip in a bloody coup in 2007is aimed at preventing weapons from reaching the Iranian-backed Islamists who have refused peace initiatives with Israel.
Israel has also largely banned cement imports into Gaza, which has limited efforts to rebuild homes damaged in a three-week war launched in late 2008 with the stated aim of curbing cross-border rocket fire.
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3. Haaretz Friday, June 11, 2010
Israel’s Greatest Loss: Its Moral Imagination
If a people who so recently experienced such unspeakable inhumanities cannot understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions are inflicting, what hope is there for the rest of us?
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/israel-s-greatest-loss-its-moral-imagination-1.295600
By By Henry Siegman
Following Israel’s bloody interdiction of the Gaza Flotilla, I called a life-long friend in Israel to inquire about the mood of the country. My friend, an intellectual and a kind and generous man, has nevertheless long sided with Israeli hardliners. Still, I was entirely unprepared for his response. He told me—in a voice trembling with emotion—that the world’s outpouring of condemnation of Israel is reminiscent of the dark period of the Hitler era.
He told me most everyone in Israel felt that way, with the exception of Meretz, a small Israeli pro-peace party. “But for all practical purposes,” he said, “they are Arabs.”
Like me, my friend personally experienced those dark Hitler years, having lived under Nazi occupation, as did so many of Israel’s Jewish citizens. I was therefore stunned by the analogy. He went on to say that the so-called human rights activists on the Turkish ship were in fact terrorists and thugs paid to assault Israeli authorities to provoke an incident that would discredit the Jewish state. The evidence for this, he said, is that many of these activists were found by Israeli authorities to have on them ten thousand dollars, “exactly the same amount!” he exclaimed.
When I managed to get over the shock of that exchange, it struck me that the invocation of the Hitler era was actually a frighteningly apt and searing analogy, although not the one my friend intended. A million and a half civilians have been forced to live in an open-air prison in inhuman conditions for over three years now, but unlike the Hitler years, they are not Jews but Palestinians. Their jailers, incredibly, are survivors of the Holocaust, or their descendants. Of course, the inmates of Gaza are not destined for gas chambers, as the Jews were, but they have been reduced to a debased and hopeless existence.
Fully 80% of Gaza’s population lives on the edge of malnutrition, depending on international charities for their daily nourishment. According to the UN and World Health authorities, Gaza’s children suffer from dramatically increased morbidity that will affect and shorten the lives of many of them. This obscenity is a consequence of a deliberate and carefully calculated Israeli policy aimed at de-developing Gaza by destroying not only its economy but its physical and social infrastructure while sealing it hermitically from the outside world.
Particularly appalling is that this policy has been the source of amusement for some Israeli leaders, who according to Israeli press reports have jokingly described it as “putting Palestinians on a diet.” That, too, is reminiscent of the Hitler years, when Jewish suffering amused the Nazis.
Another feature of that dark era were absurd conspiracies attributed to the Jews by otherwise intelligent and cultured Germans. Sadly, even smart Jews are not immune to that disease. Is it really conceivable that Turkish activists who were supposedly paid ten thousand dollars each would bring that money with them on board the ship knowing they would be taken into custody by Israeli authorities?
That intelligent and moral people, whether German or Israeli, can convince themselves of such absurdities (a disease that also afflicts much of the Arab world) is the enigma that goes to the heart of the mystery of how even the most civilized societies can so quickly shed their most cherished values and regress to the most primitive impulses toward the Other, without even being aware they have done so. It must surely have something to do with a deliberate repression of the moral imagination that enables people to identify with the Other’s plight. Pirkey Avot, a collection of ethical admonitions that is part of the Talmud, urges: “Do not judge your fellow man until you are able to imagine standing in his place.”
Of course, even the most objectionable Israeli policies do not begin to compare with Hitler’s Germany. But the essential moral issues are the same. How would Jews have reacted to their tormentors had they been consigned to the kind of existence Israel has imposed on Gaza’s population? Would they not have seen human rights activists prepared to risk their lives to call their plight to the world’s attention as heroic, even if they had beaten up commandos trying to prevent their effort? Did Jews admire British commandos who boarded and diverted ships carrying illegal Jewish immigrants to Palestine in the aftermath of World War II, as most Israelis now admire Israel’s naval commandos?
Who would have believed that an Israeli government and its Jewish citizens would seek to demonize and shut down Israeli human rights organizations for their lack of “patriotism,” and dismiss fellow Jews who criticized the assault on the Gaza Flotilla as “Arabs,” pregnant with all the hateful connotations that word has acquired in Israel, not unlike Germans who branded fellow citizens who spoke up for Jews as “Juden”? The German White Rose activists, mostly students from the University of Munich, who dared to condemn the German persecution of the Jews (well before the concentration camp exterminations began) were also considered “traitors” by their fellow Germans, who did not mourn the beheading of these activists by the Gestapo.
So, yes, there is reason for Israelis, and for Jews generally, to think long and hard about the dark Hitler era at this particular time. For the significance of the Gaza Flotilla incident lies not in the questions raised about violations of international law on the high seas, or even about “who assaulted who” first on the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, but in the larger questions raised about our common human condition by Israel’s occupation policies and its devastation of Gaza’s civilian population.
If a people who so recently experienced on its own flesh such unspeakable inhumanities cannot muster the moral imagination to understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions—and even its legitimate security concerns—are inflicting on another people, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Henry Siegman, director of the U.S./Middle East Project, is a visiting research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Program, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is a former Senior Fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations and, before that, was national director of the American Jewish Congress from 1978 to 1994.
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4. Thanks to Elana for forwarding
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-larudee/the-price-of-defying-isra_b_607977.html
The Price of Defying Israel
By Paul Larudee
I was one of those who chose to defy Israeli forces when they attacked and took our Freedom Flotilla ships that were trying to deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid to civilian organizations in the Israeli blockaded Gaza Strip. Most of us resisted, to varying degrees, for which we paid a price — in my case multiple beatings in two days of captivity in Israel.
At least nine paid with their lives. My multicolored skin and twisted joints are healing, even at age 64, but my colleagues are gone forever, and some of the dozens of wounded may never fully recover. All of us were unarmed. I chose to resist by jumping overboard from the Sfendoni soon after we were captured, far out at sea.
I took the calculated risk that Israel would find it hard to explain its failure to rescue me, and that the act might disrupt their operations to at least some extent. Later, I continued to protest by refusing to speak or walk, forcing my captors to carry me. Pain was used to force me to comply, and of course, when pain didn’t work, they applied more pain, with the same result.
I practice nonviolence, so that is the way I resist, but it’s not necessarily for everyone. A number of passengers aboard the Mavi Marmara, who were from thirty-two different nations, responded with their hands, feet, and whatever objects were at hand. I admire them for doing so; they knew that Israel has a reputation for disproportionate response. It also seems increasingly probable that the Israeli soldiers killed some of the victims at close range before any resistance had begun.
Let us please not try to justify Israeli actions by appealing to security arguments or “self defense.” Self-defense is for those who are being attacked, not those who are attacking. Furthermore, there were no arms of any kind aboard our humanitarian aid ships. Most if not all of us would have refused to participate in the voyage otherwise.
Let’s not be duped into buying the snake oil that Israel is trying to peddle. If the attackers of our ships had been Iranian, would anyone be making the absurd excuses we are now hearing for Israeli actions? Centcom Commander General David Petraeus has said that our unhealthy relationship with Israel is undermining U.S. interests in the region and the rest of the world.
Our unreasonable defense of Israel’s unreasonable and disproportionate actions is making us a target and destroying our credibility as a defender of democracy and human rights. The wrath of other nations might be a reasonable price for us to bear if Israel were pursuing a policy of peace with justice. It is not. Israeli policy is and always has been to apply pain and suffering to get what it wants, whether by torturing and killing humanitarian aid volunteers, by maintaining its cruel blockade against 1.5 million Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, or by making millions of Palestinians homeless, confiscating their lands, and destroying lives.
Neither Americans nor Israelis would stand still for such treatment, so why should Turks, Greeks, Palestinians or anyone else? Why should Israeli thugs be allowed to push around and abuse ordinary citizens anywhere? It is not wise for Americans to be accomplices to Israeli crimes through our veto in the UN or our massive foreign aid, for which we have greater need at home. It is time to take off the rose colored glasses and recognize Israel for what it is: a rogue nation that we need to stop coddling.
Paul Larudee is a human rights volunteer and a founder of the Free Gaza and Free Palestine Movements. He works as a piano technician in El Cerrito, California. For more information, go to www.freepalestinemovement.org
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5. Haaretz Friday, June 11, 2010
Report: U.S. supports UN investigation into Gaza flotilla raid
White House officials say not concerned UN probe would be one-sided and focus on IDF alone, excluding Turkey and Hamas, The Weekly Standard reports.
By Natasha Mozgovaya
Tags: Israel news Gaza flotilla UN US Israel US Barack Obama
Senior White House officials told foreign governments that U.S President Barack Obama’s administration would support a United Nations effort to erect an independent inquiry committee investigating the Gaza flotilla raid, U.S. journal The Weekly Standard reported on Friday.
According to the U.S. journal, the White House has shrugged off concerns that such an investigation would be singling out Israel while worse incidents took place around the world on a daily basis.
The report also stated that the U.S. was not concerned the investigation would be one-sided, and would focus on the behavior of the Israeli Defense Forces alone, leaving out Turkey and Hamas’ part leading to the fatal raid on the Turkish-flagged ship Mavi Marmara, in which nine activists were killed.
Meanwhile, Israel and the U.S. agreed Thursday on the nature of an Israeli investigative committee that will look into the events surrounding the takeover of the Gaza-bound aid flotilla nearly two weeks ago.
An official announcement on the committee has yet to be made.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to make the announcement; he will also say who will be on the committee and discuss its powers.
Channel 2 reported Wednesday that the committee will be headed by a retired Supreme Court justice. It appears that the Prime Minister’s Office has approached former Justice Yaakov Tirkel to fill the position.
Contacts with the United States on forming the panel have been handled by the prime minister himself and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Their main contact has been U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. It was the Americans who proposed the nature of the committee – similar to the one that investigated the sinking of a South Korean ship by the North Koreans.
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6. British firm cuts ties with Israeli company
RedRat decides due to Israel’s Gaza policy, can no longer work with long-standing clients Disk-In Pro; hope to renew cooperation in future
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3903429,00.html
For the full text of the RedRat letter see
http://www.av.co.il/?CategoryID=120&ArticleID=15411
[thanks to Israel Putterman for calling attention to this boycott]
Meirav Crystal Published: 06.11.10, 07:59 / Israel Business
British company RedRat announced to Israeli company Disk-In Pro that despite years of cooperation, it would no longer work with the Israeli company because of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip.
“A few days ago we received an email from RedRat which said they would not continue to work with us because of the flotilla events,” Dana Levinger, marketing manager at Disk-In Pro, told Ynet. “We are a planning company which also sets up visitors centers. RedRat sells us external cards that enable control of televisions and projectors, and we have worked with them for seven years.”
“We contacted them to order equipment about two weeks ago and didn’t get any reply,” she continues. “Then we get this mail, written by someone whom we don’t usually work with. In reply, we sent a mail expressing our regret that they mix politics and business and see only one side. We can easily buy their equipment, even now, from a sister company in France, but in light of that email, we don’t want them to profit from us.”
Can a conscience-stricken Brit boycott an Israeli company? After all, Israel has a free trade agreement with Britain, and a company cannot just decide independently to drop all connections with Israel for political reasons. Disk-In Pro can turn to the trade attaché in Britain, but this is a small family company, and the owner was the one who sent the letter.
‘Happily do business with you in future’
The mail, which reached Disk-In Pro acquisitions manager, was sent by Dr. Chris Dodge, technical manager and owner of RedRat. In the mail, Dodge says that at present he fears they cannot sell their products to a company working in Israel.
