Eideard

Turks cared more for Furkan Dogan than does the Obama government

Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador and suspended military accords Friday, a day after publication of a U.N. report saying that Israel had used unreasonable force in a raid on a Gaza-bound ship that killed nine Turks.

Stung by Israel’s refusal to meet demands for a formal apology, pay compensation to families of the dead, and end the blockade of two million Palestinians living in the Gaza enclave, Turkey announced it was downgrading ties with the Jewish state further.

“Turkey-Israel diplomatic relations have been reduced to a second secretary level. All personnel above the second secretary level will be sent home by Wednesday at the latest,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told a news conference in Ankara…

Israel Friday said it accepted the findings of the U.N. report, and that it hoped to mend ties with Turkey, but reiterated that it would not apologize for the deaths. Of course not. Arrogance is thematic in Israeli politics.

Immediately after the attack on the aid convoy last year, Turkey withdrew its ambassador to Israel, suspended joint military exercises, and barred Israeli military aircraft from Turkish airspace.

Friday, Turkey went a step further by putting military pacts with its erstwhile ally on ice…

Erdogan’s stand on the Palestinian issue has held Turkey in good stead among Arabs agitating for greater democracy, notably in Egypt and more recently Syria…

Davutoglu also said support would be given to Turkish and foreign victims of the Israeli raid to seek justice from courts. One of the nine Turks killed was a U.S. citizen.

I presume you can guess how much support the United States has offered the family of the American murdered by the Israelis?

Yeah – I couldn’t find any support either from the Obama administration for Furkan Dogan the unarmed 19-year-old who was shot five times by Israeli gunmen. Obama did the usual “regrettable” everyone gets when the Israelis murder civilians. Furkan Dogan’s father has received no reply from requests to Hillary Clinton. And nothing additional that could be taken as criticism of Israel for the nine killings of members of the peace flotilla.

Why am I going on the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza? I ask myself this, even though the answer is: What else would I do? I am in my sixty-seventh year, having lived already a long and fruitful life, one with which I am content.

It seems to me that during this period of eldering it is good to reap the harvest of one’s understanding of what is important, and to share this, especially with the young. How are they to learn, otherwise?

Our boat, The Audacity of Hope, will be carrying letters to the people of Gaza. Letters expressing solidarity and love. That is all its cargo will consist of. If the Israeli military attacks us, it will be as if they attacked the mailman. This should go down hilariously in the annals of history. But if they insist on attacking us, wounding us, even murdering us, as they did some of the activists in the last flotilla, Freedom Flotilla I, what is to be done?

There is a scene in the movie “Gandhi” that is very moving to me: it is when the unarmed Indian protesters line up to confront the armed forces of the British Empire. The soldiers beat them unmercifully, but the Indians, their broken and dead lifted tenderly out of the fray, keep coming.

Alongside this image of brave followers of Gandhi there is for me an awareness of paying off a debt to the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the South in our time of need. I am especially indebted to Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who heard our calls for help – our government then as now glacially slow in providing protection to non-violent protestors-and came to stand with us.

They got as far as the truncheons and bullets of a few “good ol’ boys’” of Neshoba County, Mississippi and were beaten and shot to death along with James Cheney, a young black man of formidable courage who died with them. So, even though our boat will be called The Audacity of Hope, it will fly the Goodman, Cheney, Schwerner flag in my own heart.

Bravo, Sister Walker. Glad to see you have the courage of your convictions.

You face a greater danger, I guess. At that time, in the beginning of my involvement in American civil rights struggles, racist mobs and their cohorts in uniform were only killing a few of those who challenged their evil. I fear the Israeli government truly doesn’t care about how many they maim and kill to defend the arrogance of ethnic superiority and their quest for lebensraum.

Thousands of people gathered along the shores of Istanbul on Sunday afternoon to welcome home the Mavi Marmara, the ship that was raided by Israel as it led a flotilla aimed at breaking the blockade of Gaza.

Nine people were killed in the raid last May, which drew international condemnation and helped lead to the easing of restrictions on Gaza. The raid also created a diplomatic standoff between Turkey and Israel.

Groups waving Palestinian and Turkish flags and chanting anti-Israel slogans stood by the ship, which had been confiscated by Israel. On its return on Sunday, it was decorated with posters of the dead passengers.

“Welcome to your soil,” said Ahmet Dogan, father of Furkan Dogan, a 19-year-old Turkish-American citizen who was killed in the raid. “Dear Mavi Marmara, hold your head high, you’ve done your duty, acted as the shield for the innocent…”

Turkey, which had long been a close ally of Israel, has demanded an apology and compensation for the deaths of the activists killed in the raid and recalled its ambassador. Israel has refused to apologize…as usual.

The Obama government, like every preceding government for the past 60 years, babbled a few criticisms of the Israelis – and returned to doing nothing for the dispossessed victims of Israeli expansionism.

A group of Jewish activists set sail for the Gaza Strip on Sunday, intent on defying an Israeli blockade and highlighting the suffering of Palestinians who live in the territory. Nine activists from Israel, Britain, Germany and the United States left Famagusta port in northern Cyprus with a small quantity of aid aboard their British-flagged catamaran, “Irene…”

“I want to raise my voice against evil and draw attention to 1.5 million people under siege. This is inhuman,” said Rami Elhanan, an Israeli peace activist who lost his 14-year-old daughter Smadar to a Palestinian suicide bomber in 1997.

Israel, whose Gaza policies have been under international scrutiny since its marines killed nine Turkish activists in brawls aboard an aid ship on May 31, dismissed the Irene mission as a “provocation…”

“Israel doesn’t have moral borders,” said Reuven Moskovitz, who at 82, is the oldest member of the group and a Holocaust survivor.

“I’m going because I am a survivor. When I was in a ghetto and almost died I hoped there would be human beings who would show compassion and help.”

Moral borders don’t mean a hell of a lot to Israel – or that nation’s patron saints in the White House and Congress. Not in a long, long time.

Would the Israelis attacks Jews on a mission of mercy? They already have done so plenty of times inside that nation’s borders, inside the borders of the lands they occupy. There have always been Jewish activists opposing Israeli imperial dreams. You just don’t get to see them in our obedient media sources.

Everything is an assault craft to the Israeli Navy

A Palestinian fisherman has been shot dead by the Israeli navy off the Gaza Strip.

“Fisherman Mohammed Bakr died by a bullet by the Israeli navy today in the sea north of the Gaza Strip,” Adham Abu Selmiya, heading the Palestinian territory’s medical services, said on Friday.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the fisherman was in restricted waters “heading towards Israel”…

Hundreds marched in the funeral for the 20-year-old fisherman in Beit Lahiya, shooting in the air and chanting slogans.

Israeli navy vessels enforcing a naval blockade on the Palestinian territory regularly fire at Palestinian fishermen to prevent them from venturing more than a few kilometres from shore.

Cossacks think it’s great fun to use the serfs for target practice.

Seems to me I recall a legend about a fisher of men being killed in the same region by imperial overlords.

Israeli border guards demonstrate their respect for civil dissent
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has described Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip as a violation of the Geneva Conventions and called on the Israeli government to lift it.

The organisation called the blockade “collective punishment“, a crime under international law. It described Gaza as a territory plagued by frequent power cuts, a ruined economy, and a collapsed health care system…

“Gazans continue to suffer from unemployment, poverty and warfare, while the quality of Gaza’s health care system has reached an all-time low…”

Beatrice Megevand-Roggo, the head of the ICRC’s Middle East operations, told Al Jazeera that the organisation – which traditionally remains neutral – was reluctant to publicly criticise the blockade. But she said three years of quiet efforts to ease the embargo did not result in any progress.

“The result has not been what we expected, and we thought that after three years the situation was dire enough, serious enough, to speak out publicly to try to break this closure of Gaza,” she said…

In Luxembourg on Monday, foreign ministers from the European Union condemned the Gaza blockade as “unacceptable and counterproductive,” and called for immediate and unconditional opening of crossings for humanitarian aid…

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation, released its own report on Monday documenting dire conditions in the Palestinian territories. The group noted that 95 per cent of Gaza’s factories have closed, that 98 per cent of residents suffer from blackouts, and that 93 per cent of Gaza’s water is polluted…

Meanwhile, Congress and the White House works to maintain a special relationship founded in guilt from 3 or 4 generations ago.

If the U.S. government, today, lived up to the standards it admits to selling out – when 20 million Jews and Slavs, Eastern Europeans and Russians were being slaughtered by Nazi Germany – unconditional support of the Israeli government would come an immediate halt.

Children peering through hospital walls smashed in the last Israeli putsch
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Aid agencies have strongly criticised the international community for failing to help bring an end to Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

The charities made the accusation in a report published just ahead of the anniversary of Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip. They…condemn not just Israel, but the world community.

In the words of Oxfam’s director, Jeremy Hobbs, “world powers have failed and betrayed Gaza’s ordinary citizens“.

The charities call for more pressure to be exerted on Israel to end what they describe as its illegal collective punishment of Gazans.

A spokesman for the Israeli prime minister told the BBC that Israel remains committed to humanitarian supplies of food, medicine and power.

Just not committed to an adequate quantity – of those supplies. They starve the Gaza ghetto as the Nazis did to Warsaw.

But he said that sanctions will remain in place as long as Hamas is, as he put it, committed to destroying Israel and killing Israelis.

A “logic” that is equally offensive to anyone examining those sections of Zionist politics calling for the extermination of Arabs.

This 2-year-old is an obvious danger to Israel
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Israel must investigate the “unlawful” killing of 11 civilians carrying white flags during its Gaza operation earlier in 2009, Human Rights Watch has said.

Five women and four children were among those killed in seven incidents detailed by the US-based rights group. Researchers said the soldiers at best failed to protect civilians, and at worst deliberately shot at them…

In one incident, east of Jabalya, HRW said Israeli soldiers fired at two women and three children, three of whom were holding pieces of white cloth.

Two girls, aged two and seven were killed, and another, now aged four, was left paralysed below the waist.

The five were standing outside their home after an Israeli soldier had ordered them to leave it, HRW said.

“We spent seven to nine minutes waving the flags, and our faces were looking at them [the soldiers],” HRW quoted the girls’ grandmother as saying.

“And suddenly they opened fire and the girls fell to the ground…”

In five of the seven incidents, Israeli soldiers shot at civilians who were walking down the street with white flags, trying to leave the areas of fighting, HRW said.

“All available evidence indicates that Israeli forces were in control of the areas in question, no fighting was taking place there at the time, and no Palestinian forces were hiding among the civilians or using them as human shields,” the report said.

I realize that reports of Israel committing war crimes are nothing new – and I expect as little to come from this as usual – within the land and territory controlled by Israel. But, their continued violation of norms of civilized nations – while claiming to be one – puts the lie to all the rationales for military and fiscal aid delivered without question by Western nations. Like, the United States.

A human rights group founded by Israeli veterans has collected what it says are damning testimonies from soldiers who took part in the offensive in January against Hamas fighters in Gaza. BBC correspondent Paul Wood looks at the anonymous claims presented by Breaking the Silence.

Standing by the ruins of his home in Gaza, Majdi Abed Rabbo explained how Israeli troops had used him as a human shield.

“The Israeli soldiers handcuffed me and pointed the gun at my neck,” he said. “They controlled every step.”

In this manner, Mr Abed Rabbo said, he was forced to go in ahead of Israeli soldiers as they cleared houses containing Palestinian gunmen.

This same incident was described by one of the Israeli soldiers who spoke to Breaking the Silence…

The Israeli Supreme Court outlawed the so-called “neighbour policy”, of using Palestinians to shield advancing troops, in 2005.

Gosh. That was Mighty White of them.

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Daylife/AP Photo by Sebastian Scheiner

The Israeli navy boarded a freighter trying to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip on Thursday and escorted it to the port of Ashdod where 20 passengers were being questioned, the military said.

It was the first apparent attempt by a foreign ship carrying aid to reach the Palestinian coastal enclave since Israel ended its 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip two weeks ago.

A military official said humanitarian aid found on the ship would be transferred to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Video footage released by the army showed boxes piled up in one corner of the ship and no weapons were found.

Israel Radio said those aboard the Tali, a cargo vessel flying the flag of the West African state of Togo, would be returned by land to Lebanon, from where the ship sailed. The military official said the ship’s 20 passengers, including 10 journalists, were being questioned.

“Once the questioning is completed we will make a decision on their fate,” a military spokesman said.

The Israelis have plenty of experience at deciding the fate of civilians.

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