Behind the Headlines: The seizure of the Gaza flotilla 31-May-2010

Behind the Headlines: The seizure of the Gaza flotilla 31 May 2010 Israeli naval personnel boarded a flotilla of six vessels attempting to violate the maritime blockage on Gaza. Militants onboard attacked them with live fire and light weaponry including guns, knives and clubs. The attack on the Israeli soldiers was premeditated. Weapons prepared on the Mavi Marmara (Photo: IDF Spokesperson)

Overnight (30-31 May), Israeli naval personnel boarded a flotilla of six vessels attempting to violate the maritime blockage on Gaza. Militants onboard the Mavi Marmara attacked Israeli naval personnel with live fire and light weaponry including guns, knives and clubs. Seven Israeli soldiers were injured as a result of the extremely violent ambush, two of them seriously while three are in moderate condition. Nine militants aboard the ship were killed. Those vessels that reacted peacefully to the operation were escorted unharmed to Israel, as had happened with previous vessels that tried to violate the maritime blockade. - IDF forces: "We came to speak, they came to fight." Weapons recovered on the Mavi Marmara (Photos: IDF Spokesperson) Several facts are already clear: The intent of the militants was violent, the methods they employed were violent, and unfortunately, the result was violent. The attack on the Israeli soldiers was premeditated. The weapons used had been prepared in advance. Huwaida Arraf, a flotilla organizer, foreshadowed the violence with her statement that: "They [the Israelis] are going to have to forcefully stop us." Bulent Yildirim, the leader of the IHH, one of the primary organizers of the flotilla, announced just prior to boarding: "We are going to resist and resistance will win." The militants whipped up the boarding crowd by chanting "Intifada, intifada, intifada!" Video taken by IDF naval boat shows the passengers of the Mavi Marmara violently attacking IDF soldiers who were trying to board the ship after having sent repeated requests for the boat to change course. It should be noted that the Turkish organizing group, IHH, has a radical anti-Western orientation. Alongside its humanitarian activities, it supports radical Islamic networks such as Hamas, and at least in the past has supported global jihad elements, such as al-Qaeda. Israel was justified under international law in acting against the flotilla. A state of armed conflict exists between Israel and the Hamas regime that controls Gaza. Hamas has launched 10,000 rockets against Israeli civilians. At present, it is engaged in smuggling arms and military supplies into Gaza, by land and sea, in order to fortify its positions and continue its attacks. Under international law, Israel has the right to protect the lives of its civilians from Hamas attacks. Consequently, it has undertaken measures to defend itself, including the imposition of a maritime blockade to curb Hamas rearmament. Israel cannot allow a sea-corridor to open to Gaza, a corridor which would allow weapons and terrorists to freely enter the Strip. The flotilla organizers made clear that their primary goal was to target the maritime blockage. Greta Berlin, a flotilla spokesperson, told AFT news-agency on 27 May that "this mission is not about delivering humanitarian supplies, it's about breaking Israel's siege." This fact is demonstrated not only by their words, but by their actions. Flotilla organizers turned down repeated Israeli offers to land the vessels in the Israeli port of Ashdod, and to transfer their aid through the existing land crossings, in accordance with established procedures. Moreover, while the organizers claim to have humanitarian concern for the residents of Gaza they did not have similar concerns for the fate of the abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and when asked, refused to make a public call to allow him to be visited in Gaza by the Red Cross. Under international maritime law, when a maritime blockade is in effect, no vessels - either civilian or enemy - can enter the blockaded area. In line with Israel's obligations under international law, the ships participating in the protest flotilla were warned time and again that a maritime blockade is in effect off the coast of Gaza. When it became clear that the protest flotilla intended to violate the blockade despite the repeated warnings, Israeli naval personnel boarded the vessels of the flotilla, and redirected them to Ashdod. Due to the desire to avoid casualties and operational needs, including the large number of vessels participating in the flotilla, it was necessary to undertake measures to enforce the blockade a certain distance from the area of the blockade. The soldiers who boarded the vessels did not carry arms openly, but were met with a violent ambush. Two soldiers were shot, one was stabbed and others were injured as they were set upon with clubs, knives, axes and heavy objects. They were in mortal danger and had to act accordingly in self-defense. During a search aboard the maritime vessel Mavi Marmara, IDF forces uncovered a cache of weapons including many knives, slingshots, rocks, smoke bombs, metal rods, improvised sharp metal objects, sticks and clubs, 5KG hammers, firebombs and gas masks in case IDF forces fired riot dispersal means at the activists as they violently attacked the soldiers. These weapons were used against Israeli Navy personnel as they attempted to board the ship. The flotilla's cargo was off-loaded in Ashdod and the humanitarian items transferred overland to the Gaza crossings in accordance with standard operating procedures. The participants of the flotilla who need assistance are being treated in Israeli medical facilities. The rest will be subjected to immigration procedures applicable in cases of attempted illegal entry. * * * Flotilla leaders stated on Sunday (May 30) that violence was premeditated: The organizers of the Gaza flotilla announced in advance their intention of using violence against Israeli forces if the latter tried to prevent the ships from reaching Gaza. This intention was expressed in interviews given by the head of the IHH, Bulent Yildirim, to Turkish television stations on the last night of the voyage, as the ships approached the coast. Following are two examples. The interviews can be find in the archive of the IHH website: http://tinyurl.com/IHHViolence Interview on Turkish Television Channel NTV broadcast on the evening of May 30, 2010: Interview with Bulent Yildirim, head of IHH Interviewer: Welcome; we have a small guest as well. Yildirim.: We've now entered the critical hours. What we're really talking about here is humanitarian aid, and this small child will always remember this journey in the future. The boy's picture will certainly pique Israeli public opinion. Interviewer: What makes this voyage so critical? Yildirim: The reason stems from Israel's aggressive position, which has unnecessarily inflated the whole matter. We checked out the place that was declared a firing area; their ships are sailing around freely there. They are deceiving the nation and the entire world. This is the first time that a country has ever announced maneuvers without giving prior notification of the exact date. I am sure that Israel is now headed for many problems. They are using their naval fleet against women, children and elderly people. Civil rights organization representatives are here, and the whole world will see what's happening here. We will definitely resist and we will not allow the Israelis to enter here. (see the first three minutes of the video) 2. Interview on the Turkish state television channel TRT 1, broadcast the evening of 30 May 2010: Bulent Yildirim: The Israelis think that the more soldiers they send, the less casualties there will be among the activists. On this ship there are also women and children. The whole world knows this. We'll show them what is means to board the ship. If Israel wants to board this ship, it will meet strong resistance. (see min. 96:00 of the video)

Behind the Headlines: The seizure of the Gaza flotilla 31-May-2010

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 The MasterBlog

"Vive la FRANCE!"

On est en 2010 ou au debut des annees 40...? http://www.slate.fr/story/22669/juifs-cinemas-utopia-israel-interdits-france

Bientôt en France des cinémas interdits aux juifs?

Les réalisateurs israéliens ne sont plus les bienvenus dans les salles Utopia. Ils financent leurs films en shekels et forcent leurs acteurs à s'exprimer en hébreu, respectivement devise et langue du régime sioniste.

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Mardi 8 Juin 2010

• boycott
• FRANCE
• Israël
• sionisme
• cinéma
• CULTURE

Partager sur: 

Utopia, un réseau de salles de cinémaintelligent - au sens où il ne programme que des films susceptibles de faire réfléchir un public qui ne l'est pas moins -, a décidé qu'il n'était plus question de programmer de films israéliens jusqu'à ce que le blocus sur Gaza soit levé.

Anne-Marie Faucon, responsable de l'association gérant ces salles implantées dans une quinzaine de villes en France (dont la Filmothèque de la rue Champollion à Paris), justifie cette initiative de la manière suivante: «Notre démarche est un appel à la réflexion et à la liberté. C'est aussi un message aux réalisateurs israéliens, pour les inciter à réfléchir à ce qui se passe dans leur pays. Les cinéastes qui travaillent avec des fonds israéliens cautionnent, dans un sens, la politique de leur pays. »

Non contente d'intégrer, sans prendre cinq minutes pour leur demander leur avis, quelques uns des metteurs en scène les plus intéressants du moment aux services de communication de Tsahal, l'intransigeante distributrice pourrait d'ailleurs, emportée dans son élan, interdire l'accès de ses salles aux spectateurs munis d'un passeport israélien: «Il faut arrêter d'imaginer que les peuples sont impuissants face aux politiques. Les Israéliens votent, ce sont eux qui ont élu un gouvernement d'extrême-droite. Ils sont donc partie prenante de ce qui se passe. Les individus peuvent réagir, c'est d'ailleurs ce que nous faisons en déprogrammant le film. Si tout le monde tire le signal d'alarme, ça peut avoir une incidence. Les peuples ne sont pas impuissants face aux gouvernements ».

Bah, pourquoi pas... L'idée n'est pas si mauvaise et peut-être l'heure est-elle venue d'interdire la publication d'auteurs israéliens, la préparation de plats israéliens, la diffusion de disques israéliens, l'exposition de peintres israéliens, bref, la circulation de tout ce qui peut, de près ou de loin, être relié au régime politique le plus cruel de la planète...

Car Israël est bien, n'est ce pas, le régime le plus cruel de la planète. Enfin, il faut bien qu'il le soit si l'on en est désormais à interdire à ses artistes de s'exprimer au pays de la liberté de conscience. Enfin, en tout cas plus cruel que celui des Américains (ils ont juste envahi l'Irak illégalement, pas de quoi fouetter un chat), des Iraniens (ils n'ont que légèrement massacré et emprisonné les manifestants qui protestaient contre une élection truquée), des Cubains, des Algériens, des Chinois... (insérez ici le régime crapuleux qui vous sied le mieux au teint compte tenu de vos détestations de prédilection).

Toute cinéphile qu'elle soit (vraisemblablement), Anne-Marie Faucon semble avoir oublié de jeter un coup d'œil aux films qu'elle souhaite désormais déprogrammer. Elle aurait pu constater à quel point le cinéma israélien, avec ses Amos Gitai, ses Uri Barbash, ses Ari Folman, ses Avi Mograbi, ses Assi Dayan est cent fois, mille fois plus critique de son contexte politique que ne l'a jamais été le cinéma français.

Si punir les artistes israéliens, avant de punir les simples citoyens israéliens, pour l'absence de vision, de compassion et d'intelligence de leur gouvernants est désormais un moyen de pression légitime («Gare à toi, Netanyahou, l'Utopia de Toulouse ne programmera plus «Valse avec Bachir»! Tu vas voir ce que tu vas voir!»), on se demande s'il ne sera pas bientôt imaginable d'interdire l'accès des cinémas aux juifs tout court - dont l'attachement à Israël est vraisemblablement aussi criminel que le fusil-mitrailleur des commandos arraisonneurs.

Hum, j'arrête-là: on va m'accuser de faire de l'amalgame...

Hugues Serraf

Image de Une: dans une salle de cinéma Desmond Boylan / Reuters

Our World: Ending Israel's losing streak

Our World: Ending Israel's losing streak 

By CAROLINE B. GLICK

01/06/2010

A straight line runs from the anti-Israel UN resolution passed last Friday and the Hamas flotilla. 
These words are being written before the dust has settled on Monday morning’s naval commando raid on the Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla of terror supporters. The raid’s full range of operational failures still cannot be known. Obviously the fact that the mission ended with at least six soldiers wounded and at least 10 Hamas supporters dead makes clear that there were significant failures in both the IDF’s training for and execution of the mission.

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

IN THE space of four days, the country has suffered two massive defeats. A straight line runs between the anti-Israel resolution passed last Friday at the UN’s Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference and the Hamas flotilla. And in both cases, officials voiced “surprise” at these defeats.

Given the months-long build-up to the NPT review conference, and the weeks-long build-up to the Turkish-Hamas flotilla, that surprise cannot be attributed to a lack of information. What it points to, rather, is a cognitive failure of our leaders to understand the nature of the war being waged against us. And it is this fundamental failure of cognition that has landed six soldiers in the hospital, the nation’s international reputation in tatters and its spokesmen searching for a way to describe a reality they do not understand.

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

The Hamas abetting Free Gaza Web site published a list of some 222 organizations that endorsed the terror-supporting flotilla. The listed organizations from the four corners of the earth include Jewish anti-Israel groups as well as Christian, Islamic and nonreligious anti-Israel groups. It is hard to think of any cause other than Israel-bashing that could unite such disparate forces.

The second indicator of the scope of the war is far more devastating than the list of groups that endorsed the pro-Hamas flotilla. That indicator is the fact that at the UN on Friday, 189 governments came together as one to savage Israel. There is no other issue that commands such unanimity. The NPT review conference demonstrated that the only way the international community will agree on anything is if its members are agreeing that Israel has no right to defend itself. The conference’s campaign against Israel shows that the 222 organizations supporting Hamas are a reflection of the will of the majority of the nations of the world.

This war is nothing new. It has been going on since the dawn of modern Zionism 150 years ago. In many ways, it is just the current iteration of the eternal war against the Jewish people.

The red-green alliance’s aims are twofold. It seeks to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist and it seeks to make it impossible for Israel to defend itself. If these aims are met, Israel’s destruction will become an inevitability.

UNTIL US President Barack Obama took office, Israel’s one steady asset in this war was the US. Until last year, the US consistently refused to join the red-green alliance because its leaders recognized that the alliance’s campaign was part and parcel of its campaign against US superpower status. Indeed, some US leaders recognized that the alliance’s animus toward Israel stemmed from the same source as its rejection of American exceptionalism.

Dismally, what the US’s vote in favor of the NPT review conference’s final anti-Israel (and by default pro-Iranian) resolution makes clear is that under Obama, the US is no longer Israel’s reliable ally. Indeed, what the US’s vote shows is that the Obama administration’s ideological preferences place it on the side of the red-green alliance. No amount of backpedalling by the Obama administration can make up the damage caused by its act of belligerence.

If Israel’s leaders were better informed, they would have recognized a number of things in the lead-up to the conference. They would have realized that Obama’s anti-nuclear conference in April, his commitment to a nuclear-free world, as well as his general ambivalence – at best – to US global leadership rendered it all but inevitable that he would turn on Israel. The truth is that Egypt’s call for the denuclearization of Israel jibes with Obama’s own repeatedly statedviews both regarding Israel and the US’s own nuclear arsenal. Armed with this basic understanding of Obama’s inclinations, Israel should have taken for granted that the NPT conference would target it. Consequently, in months preceding the conference, it should have stated loudly and consistently that as currently constituted, the NPT serves as the chief enabler of nuclear proliferation rather than the central instrument for preventing nuclear proliferation. North Korea exploited its status as an NPT signatory to develop its nuclear arsenal. Today Iran exploits its status as an NPT signatory to develop nuclear weapons. Unless the NPT is fundamentally revised, it will continue to serve as the primary instrument for nuclear proliferation.

Had this been Israel’s position, it would have been able to undercut US arguments in favor of signing onto the final resolution. So too, such a position would have prepared Israel to cogently explain its rejection of the final resolution.

And that is the thing of it. The red-green alliance’s aim at the NPT conference was to discredit Israel’s deterrent capacity while delegitimizing its right to take preemptive action against Iran. Now, due to Israel’s failure to make its case against the NPT in the months leading up to the conference, as our enemies use the US-supported final resolution to claim that our opposition to Iran’s nuclear weapons program is hypocritical, we lack a cognitive framework for responding.

The fact that the government still doesn’t get the point is made clear by its response to the decision. Its denunciation of the resolution makes no mention of the fact that the NPT regime itself has become the chief enabler of nuclear proliferation. So too, disastrously, in a clear bid to pretend away Obama’s treachery, Israel actually applauded him for emptily criticizing the resolution he voted for. This response compounds the damage and ensures that the assault will continue.

AS TO the flotilla, the challenge it presented was nothing new. Israel has been confronted by suicide protesters for a decade now. The fact that these pro-Hamas activists intended to commit suicide to discredit Israel on camera was made clear by the fact that the Turkish organizers named the lead ship Rachel Corrie.

So too, the fact that IDF forces boarding the ships would be met by trenchant, violent opposition was knowable simply by looking at Turkey’s role in the operation. First of all, the Turkish government-supported NGO behind the operation is IHH. As the US government, the Turkish government in the 1990s, the Investigative Project on Terrorism and countless other sources have proven, IHH is a terrorist organization with direct links to al-Qaida and Hamas. Its members have been involved in terrorist warfare from Chechnya and Bosnia to Iraq and Israel. The notion that IHH organizers would behave like radical leftist anti-Israel demonstrators on university campuses is simply ridiculous.






Moreover, there is Turkey’s behavior to consider. Since Obama took office, Turkey’s gradual slide into the Iranian axis has sped up considerably. Turkey’s leading role in the flotilla, and the Erdogan government’s ostentatious embrace of IHH – which just a decade ago Turkey banned from earthquake relief efforts in light of its violent, jihadist mission – made clear that the Erdogan regime would use any violence on board the ships as a way to strike a strategic blow at Israel’s international standing.

In view of all of this, it is clear that the information strategy for contending with the flotilla was ill-conceived. Rather than attack Turkey for its facilitation of terrorism, and openly prepare charge sheets against the flotilla’s organizers, crew and passengers for their facilitation of terrorism in breach of both domestic law and international law, the information efforts were largely concentrated on irrelevancies. Officials detailed all the humanitarian assistance Israel has provided Hamas-controlled Gaza. They spoke of the navy’s commitment to use nonlethal force to take over the ships.

And now, in the aftermath of the lethal takeover of the flotilla, Israel’s leaders stammer. Rather than demand an apology from the Turkish government for its support for these terrorists, Defense Minister Ehud Barak called his Turkish counterpart to talk over what happened. Rather than demand restitution for the terrorist assault against IDF troops, Israel has defended its troops’ training in nonviolent crowd control.

These efforts are worse than worthless; they
make Israel appear whiny rather than indignant. And more depressingly, they expose a dangerous lack of comprehension about what has just occurred, and a concomitant inability to prepare for what will most certainly follow.

Israel is the target of a massive information war. For it to win this war, it needs to counter its enemies’ lies with the truth.

The NPT has been subverted by the very forces it was created to prevent from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Hamas is a genocidal terrorist organization ideologically indistinguishable from al-Qaida. International law requires all states and non-state actors to take active measures to defeat it.

Israel is the frontline of the free world. Its ability to defend itself and deter its foes is the single most important guarantee of international peace. A strong Israel is also the most potent and reliable guarantor of the US’s continued ability to project its power in the Middle East.

This is the unvarnished truth. It is also the beginning of a successful campaign to defang the massive coalition of nuclear proliferation- and terrorism-abettors aligned against Israel. But until our leaders finally recognize the nature of the war being waged against our country, these basic facts will remain ignored as we move from one stunning defeat to the next.

caroline@carolineglick.com

www.CarolineGlick.com



Our World: Ending Israel's losing streak




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Yalla Peace: Stupid, stupid, stupid

Yalla Peace: Stupid, stupid, stupid 
jpost.com

By RAY HANANIA
01/06/2010

Rather than bring relief to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, all the flotilla brought was death, violence, and int'l condemnation of Israel.

The activists leading the flotilla carrying medicine, food and building supplies to the suffering civilians in the Gaza Strip got exactly what they wanted. The IDF, stained by the indictment of the Goldstone Report, obliged them without hesitation.

Both sides are at fault in this confrontation. The activists are against peace, and want Israel to turn the clock back to 1948, while Israel wants to pretend the Palestinians don’t exist.

The flotilla was a bad idea from the start – not that supplies shouldn’t be brought in, but because the organizers knew full well that the purpose was to embarrass Israel politically. They knew that Israel might attack the convoy, and that’s why they chose to attempt to break the blockade rather than even try to negotiate.

But that’s always been the problem. People like that don’t want negotiations. When Palestinians and Israelis were negotiating, they were opposing the Oslo Accords, doing everything they could to stop them. And they stood by while Hamas, a terrorist organization which is also partly to blame for the suffering of the citizens of the Gaza Strip, used suicide bombings and brainwashed teenagers to kill themselves and to take innocent Israeli civilians with them.

As it stands, nine civilians aboard the flotilla were killed, although that number is not definite.

Israel’s military stormed the ship and for Israelis to claim they didn’t expect violence under those circumstances is ridiculous.

What could and should have been done?

First, the civilians should have negotiated with Israel rather than staging this dramatic PR drive. But Hamas refuses to do so, and the 1.5 million Palestinian civilians living in the Gaza Strip are as much a prisoner of Hamas’s distorted religious oppression as they are of Israel’s blockade.

Negotiation, not confrontation, is the answer. Discussions with Israel would have worked because Israel will never bend to the failed pressures of the Palestinian extremists. The activists who openly denounce Israeli military excesses are silent when it comes to Hamas excesses.

IT IS this hypocrisy that creates such tragedies. The activists have always been willing to have civilians die to make their case against Israel because the Arab world has been a huge failure from the start. The Arab League is a bad joke. It couldn’t argue its way out of a paper bag, but it sure knows how to act after the fact.

Meanwhile, innocent people die, including many of those who joined the flotilla believing, wrongly, that confronting Israel at sea would be the right strategy to break the blockade. But we know history, and confrontations with Israel always end up badly for the Arabs, and even worse for the Palestinians.

The extremists point to the fact that Turkey, Israel’s largest Muslim ally, is breaking off relations with Israel, but the truth is that this shift began long ago.

Rather than bring relief to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the flotilla brought more death and violence. It achieved the international condemnation of Israel it sought, remaining silent when Hamas terrorists attack and murder Israelis.






The Israelis, too, should be ashamed of their policies, which have abandoned moral principles and instead exploit Palestinian extremism. This Israeli practice of using Palestinian extremism to justify excessive brutality is shameful.

Israel claims it wants peace, but the government seems to prefer confrontations, and the oppression of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Let’s face it folks, the people of Europe can scream all they want about Israel’s actions, but until the United States steps up to become a true arbiter of peace, this conflict will continue to rage.

And the activists who knowingly play into the hands of Israel’s military responses are doing nothing to achieve peace.

These activists do not want peace based on compromise, and it is clear this Israeli government does not want peace based on compromise either. Both find it far easier to continue the carnage and spin their stories.

The writer is an award-winning Palestinian columnist. He can be reached at
www.YallaPeace.com.
Yalla Peace: Stupid, stupid, stupid

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