322 Obama adminn left Israel hanging out to dry three separate times - John Bolton

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Obama adminn left Israel hanging out to dry three separate times - John Bolton

Chomsky is weak on the DIFFERENCES between the US & Israel. On the Jewish Lobby's domination of US Foreign Policy. On US embarrassment over Israel.

eg in item 1, he talks of the role of Elliott Abrams, deputy NSA Adviser, in backing an armed revolt against Hamas, without mentioning that he is a Jewish Neocon.

Chomsky's Israel is always "backed by the U.S."

At least John Bolton (item 2) articulates the discomfort between the Obama administration and the Zionist regime.

(1) Chomsky on the Flotilla: "Israeli plans, backed by the U.S."
(2) Obama adminn left Israel hanging out to dry three separate times - John Bolton
(3) Lift Gaza blockade IF Hamas renounces Protocols of Zion - Christopher Hitchens
(4) Hitchens' new memoir, Hitch-22
(5) Ari Fleischer brought Helen Thomas down
(6) I was directly involved in the disarming of two Israeli Commandos
(7) Huwaida Arraf, chairwoman of Free Gaza movement, describes the attack on the Flotilla

(1) Chomsky on the Flotilla: "Israeli plans, backed by the U.S."

From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: 10.06.2010 03:53 PM

The Real Threat Aboard the Freedom Flotilla

By Noam Chomsky

June 08, 2010 "In These Times" - -Israel’s violent attack on the Freedom Flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza shocked the world.

Hijacking boats in international waters and killing passengers is, of course, a serious crime.

But the crime is nothing new. For decades, Israel has been hijacking boats between Cyprus and Lebanon and killing or kidnapping passengers, sometimes holding them hostage in Israeli prisons.

Israel assumes that it can commit such crimes with impunity because the United States tolerates them and Europe generally follows the U.S.’s lead.

As the editors of The Guardian rightly observed on June 1, “If an armed group of Somali pirates had yesterday boarded six vessels on the high seas, killing at least 10 passengers and injuring many more, a NATO task force would today be heading for the Somali coast.” In this case, the NATO treaty obligates its members to come to the aid of a fellow NATO country—Turkey—attacked on the high seas.

Israel’s pretext for the attack was that the Freedom Flotilla was bringing materials that Hamas could use for bunkers to fire rockets into Israel.

The pretext isn’t credible. Israel can easily end the threat of rockets by peaceful means.

The background is important. Hamas was designated a major terrorist threat when it won a free election in January 2006. The U.S. and Israel sharply escalated their punishment of Palestinians, now for the crime of voting the wrong way.

The siege of Gaza, including a naval blockade, was a result. The siege intensified sharply in June 2007 after a civil war left Hamas in control of the territory.

What is commonly described as a Hamas military coup was in fact incited by the U.S. and Israel, in a crude attempt to overturn the elections that had brought Hamas to power.

That has been public knowledge at least since April 2008, when David Rose reported in Vanity Fair that George W. Bush, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Elliott Abrams, “backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.”

Hamas terror included launching rockets into nearby Israeli towns—criminal, without a doubt, though only a minute fraction of routine U.S.-Israeli crimes in Gaza.

In June 2008, Israel and Hamas reached a cease-fire agreement. The Israeli government formally acknowledges that until Israel broke the agreement on Nov. 4 of that year, invading Gaza and killing half a dozen Hamas activists, Hamas did not fire a single rocket.

Hamas offered to renew the cease-fire. The Israeli cabinet considered the offer and rejected it, preferring to launch its murderous invasion of Gaza on Dec.27.

Like other states, Israel has the right of self-defense. But did Israel have the right to use force in Gaza in the name of self-defense? International law, including the U.N. Charter, is unambiguous: A nation has such a right only if it has exhausted peaceful means. In this case such means were not even tried, although—or perhaps because—there was every reason to suppose that they would succeed.

Thus the invasion was sheer criminal aggression, and the same is true of Israel’s resorting to force against the flotilla.

The siege is savage, designed to keep the caged animals barely alive so as to fend off international protest, but hardly more than that. It is the latest stage of longstanding Israeli plans, backed by the U.S., to separate Gaza from the West Bank.

The Israeli journalist Amira Hass, a leading specialist on Gaza, outlines the history of the process of separation: “The restrictions on Palestinian movement that Israel introduced in January 1991 reversed a process that had been initiated in June 1967.

“Back then, and for the first time since 1948, a large portion of the Palestinian people again lived in the open territory of a single country — to be sure, one that was occupied, but was nevertheless whole. …”

Hass concludes: “The total separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank is one of the greatest achievements of Israeli politics, whose overarching objective is to prevent a solution based on international decisions and understandings and instead dictate an arrangement based on Israel’s military superiority.”

The Freedom Flotilla defied that policy and so it must be crushed.

A framework for settling the Arab-Israeli conflict has existed since 1976, when the regional Arab States introduced a Security Council resolution calling for a two-state settlement on the international border, including all the security guarantees of U.N. Resolution 242, adopted after the June War in 1967.

The essential principles are supported by virtually the entire world, including the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic States (including Iran) and relevant non-state actors, including Hamas.

But the U.S. and Israel have led the rejection of such a settlement for three decades, with one crucial and highly informative exception. In President Bill Clinton’s last month in office, January 2001, he initiated Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Taba, Egypt, that almost reached an agreement, participants announced, before Israel terminated the negotiations.

Today, the cruel legacy of a failed peace lives on.

International law cannot be enforced against powerful states, except by their own citizens. That is always a difficult task, particularly when articulate opinion declares crime to be legitimate, either explicitly or by tacit adoption of a criminal framework—which is more insidious, because it renders the crimes invisible.

(2) Obama adminn left Israel hanging out to dry three separate times - John Bolton

Letting Israel hang

US undercuts ally

By John Bolton

NYP Last Updated: 5:26 AM, June 8, 2010
Posted: 11:40 PM, June 6, 2010

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/letting_israel_hang_F5zJfknQYINIa2q0tBMC1K

In less than a week, the Obama administration left Israel hanging out to dry three separate times.

Media coverage of the "flotilla" incident has ignored this critical shift in US policy. But it's a safe bet that America's adversaries, especially the terrorists, understand it all too well. Worse yet, President Obama's visible discomfort in defending hard-pressed US interests around the world is only growing -- with implications America hasn't experienced since Jimmy Carter's presidency.

Let's recap the Obama "defense" of Israel.

First, in the UN Security Council, the administration succumbed to the rush to criticize Israel in a statement that, albeit watered down, nonetheless greatly intensified international pressure on Jerusalem. The correct approach was to resist the diplomatic peer pressure and bar any council action until tempers cooled and more facts were available -- meaning at most a day or two's delay. This America could easily have done. Failure to withstand the short-term heat only feeds the impression of White House weakness, and will come back to haunt us.

Second, at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, America, joined only by Italy and the Netherlands in dissent, overwhelmingly lost a vote to establish an international investigation of the Gaza incident. Even as the Obama administration touted its success preventing a Security Council investigation, it was losing precisely the same issue in Geneva -- demonstrating why concessions in New York did absolutely nothing to stem the anti-Israeli tide. So much for Obama's idea that he could reform the palpably illegitimate Human Rights Council by having the United States rejoin it.

Third, just a few days previously, at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference, the United States joined the consensus on a statement condemning Israel (which is not even a party to the treaty) and its nuclear program, while failing to condemn Iran, an NPT signatory that has been happily violating its treaty obligations. After the vote, National Security Adviser James Jones condemned the reference to Israel, utterly overlooking the fact that the Obama administration could readily have blocked it.

All three cases demonstrate deep-seated White House weakness. It would be a stunning admission of administration incompetence if diplomats in three separate venues had made these decisions entirely on their own (although that does happen too often at the State Department). Instructions to the US negotiators in all three likely came from either Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, so there is no dodging White House responsibility here, or the unmistakable pattern it represents.

Even more seriously, a potential fourth example of Obama's increasingly anti-Israeli policy now arises: the administration's strongly negative position on Israel's Gaza blockade. Although so far expressed largely in private, with only nuanced statements being leaked publicly, the White House is plainly leaning heavily on Israel to weaken the blockade in potentially fatal ways. Indeed, on Friday, a White House press person said the "current arrangements" were "unsustain- able," a very poorly disguised threat to Israel.

Israel itself is prepared to make some cosmetic changes, so open differences between Tel Aviv and Washington are not currently visible publicly. Beneath the surface, however, the diplomacy is intense.

Ironically, Obama is expending more energy pressuring Israel than he did in the Security Council, the Human Rights Council or the nuclear-review conference to protect US and Israeli equities. This pattern also typifies Obama and his key advisers: They find it is far easier to bend their friends into submission than to stand up to America's determined adversaries.

America's Western European allies, by and large, already are happy to agree that the Gaza blockade violates "international law." This view in part explains why even Britain and France failed to join the US in the Human Rights Council, and negotiated too closely with Turkey in its efforts to slam Israel in the Security Council.

Third World radicals will doubtless build on Europe's position in their ongoing, decades-long efforts to delegitimize Israel entirely. There is equally little doubt that Obama himself is susceptible to these kinds of foreign pressures, especially when withstanding them might cause his own international image to suffer. Here, Israel is merely collateral damage in guarding the cult of our first post-American president.

The harm caused by US weakness on the Gaza blockade issue will reach far beyond the Middle East. Worldwide, America's friends and allies increasingly realize that President Obama won't stand with them in controversial circumstances. Accordingly, those closest to us will calibrate their own interests more carefully to hedge against US weakness, step by step distancing themselves from us.

That will inexorably accelerate the pace of our debilitation -- thus actually further increasing Obama's self-imposed weakness, undermining US positions worldwide.

The really grim news is that we face at least 2? more years of such Obama policies.

John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the UN, is author of "Surrender Is Not an Option."

(3) Lift Gaza blockade IF Hamas renounces Protocols of Zion - Christopher Hitchens

From: chris lenczner <chrispaul@netpci.com> Date: 09.06.2010 11:00 PM

http://www.slate.com/id/2256168/

Israel and Turkey: It's Complicated

The flotilla foul-up pits former friends against each other.

By Christopher Hitchens

Posted Monday, June 7, 2010, at 11:01 AM ET

...
The near-incredible stupidity of the Israelis airborne descent on the good ship Mavi Marmara, by troops well-enough equipped to shoot when panicked but not well-enough prepared to contain or subdue a preplanned riot, has now generated much more coverage and comment than Erdogan's cynical recent decision to become a partner in the nuclear maneuvers of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It has also generated much more coverage and comment than Erdogan's long-term design to de-secularize Turkey, a design in which his recent big-mouth grandstanding on Gaza is a mere theatrical detail. What on earth are self-proclaimed humanitarian activists—as they will soon enough be called at this rate—doing in such an open alliance between one cruel and bankrupt Iranian theocracy, one religio-nationalist Turkish demagogue, and Hamas?

Israeli self-pity over Gaza—"You fire rockets at us! And after all we've done for you!"—may be incredibly unappetizing. An occupation that should never have been allowed in the first place was protracted until it became obviously unbearable for all concerned and then turned into a scuttle. The misery and shame of that history cannot be effaced by mere withdrawal or healed by the delivery of aid. It can only really be canceled by a good-faith agreement to create a Palestinian state. But Hamas is a conscious obstacle to this objective, as it shows by its dependence on foreign dictatorships and by the criminal and violent methods it has used against Fatah and the PLO.

Let me give another case in point: Hamas' charter and many of its official proclamations announce that it endorses the so-called Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a dirty anti-Semitic fabrication produced by Christian and czarist extremists and adopted by the Nazis. Would you, if you wanted to help Gaza and the Gazans, knowingly augment the power of such a flat-out racist organization by helping make it the proud and exclusive distributor of food and medicine?

Staying with this fascinating point for a moment: What if the international community put one simple question to the Hamas leadership? We will consider lifting the sanctions if you will renounce a barbaric and discredited concoction of lies that identifies all Jews everywhere as targets for murder. (The name notwithstanding, the Protocols have nothing to say about Palestine.) And what if the journalistic community—just once—was to ask a similar question of the "activists"? Do you endorse the Protocols: Yes or no? We would instantly be much closer to understanding what was meant by humanitarian.

While we wait for this puncturing of the current balloon of propaganda, we might as well savor the ironies. As well as being the two most intimate allies of the United States in the region, Turkey and Israel possess large and educated populations that want in their way to be part of "the West." They also both suffer from mediocre and banana-republic-type leaders, who are willing prisoners of clerical extremists in their own second-rate regimes. Turkey cannot be thought of as European until it stops lying about Armenia, gets its invading troops out of Cyprus, and grants full rights to its huge Kurdish population. Israel will never be accepted as a state for Jews, let alone as a Jewish state, until it ceases to govern other people against their will. The flotilla foul-up, pitting former friends against each other, only serves to obscure these unignorable facts.

(4) Hitchens' new memoir, Hitch-22

From: Josef Schwanzer <donauschwob@optusnet.com.au> Date: 10.06.2010 03:04 AM

http://www.observer.com/2010/culture/me-and-hitch-how-we-split-booze-jews

Me and Hitch: How We Split on Booze, Jews

By Lee Siegel

June 8, 2010 | 10:18 p.m

I first met Christopher Hitchens about eight years ago, at a party in Arianna Huffington's Brentwood manse. Months before, I had given a mostly rave review to his volume of essays Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere. He introduced me to his then-dear friend Gore Vidal, who rose to his feet, threw his arms around me and excitedly declared, "The great Lee Siegel!" (he had no idea who I was) and returned with serpentine contentment to his stone bench under a palm tree on the crowded patio. Mr. Hitchens was feeling warmly toward me. I had compared him to Shelley, Prince Kropotkin and (natch) Orwell. I had excused his inexcusable defense of David Irving, one of the most tenacious and influential Holocaust deniers still unfortunately in existence. I had called Mr. Hitchens "an Achilles who writes with his heel. A truth-compulsion is the poultice that he applies to whatever is inflaming him from within. He is gorgeously and eternally pissed-off."

I meant that and I still mean it. The rest-the elevated comparisons, the excuse for Irving-were a result of the sudden closeness to all kinds of people that had descended on me in the weeks after 9/11, and also the sense of relief that comes from piling praise on someone in order to bury your unease about him.

He went about male bonding with a twinkling, conspiratorial quality that was also strange and ancient, as if friendship between men was the elemental social arrangement.

Mr. Hitchens was gracious and grateful; charming, and curious, and kind; and determined to give me a memorable night. He and his lovely wife, Carol, treated me to dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel, after which we returned to their room there, where Hitchens and I kept drinking Scotch, talking as his wife lay asleep in the bed a few feet away. He went about male bonding with a twinkling, conspiratorial quality that was also strange and ancient, as if friendship between men was the elemental social arrangement. It was playful and pre-adult. By dawn I was semi-conscious, and he half-carried me down the stairs and gently deposited me in a taxi. We exchanged a few friendly emails after that and ran into each other once, pleasantly, at a party in New York. Still, something made me keep my distance. Following he invasion of Iraq, I began to tweak Mr. Hitchens' obstreperous warmongering in my writing. After I attacked him viciously online for a column he wrote ripping a drunken, slur-spewing Mel Gibson, he published a stunned reply, as if betrayed by a friend, and we never communicated after that.

I bring all this up on the occasion of Hitchens' new memoir, Hitch-22. It is a fascinating, absorbing book: the rare contemporary memoir that it is the record of a life of true accomplishment and authentic adventure, not a souped-up account of sensational affliction. Mr. Hitchens is bravely, or at least defiantly, candid about qualities detractors might use to undermine or perhaps explain his love of war and his rabid hatred for religious people, even the most decent and unfanatic among them.

He makes allusions to sexual impotence, and insinuates throughout the book that he is gay, while also denying it, and at the same time asserting about sex and love that "repression is the problem in the first place." He admits, several times, that he finds other people "boring" and "tedious." And he allows himself to express a blunt woman-hatred - he and Martin Amis have fun speculating that "there is a design flaw in the female form, and that the breasts and the buttocks really ought to be on the same side." There are entire chapters devoted to Mr. Amis, James Fenton and Salman Rushdie, beloved friends and celebrated figures. Does Mr. Hitchens have similarly worshipful friendships with the uncelebrated? Or is it simply too boring, too tedious, to write about them? He likes to compare himself to Orwell, but Orwell lived alone in a rural town, while Mr. Hitchens has become the Sally Quinn of Washington journalists. His after-party following the White House Correspondents Dinner has conferred on him a precious potency protecting him against the slightest public criticism from his peers.

There goes my exasperation again, suddenly rising out of my admiration. For Mr. Hitchens has come through so triumphantly. His mother introduced him to her lover when he was a young man and shortly afterward killed herself in a double suicide with her paramour in a hotel room in Athens. About his naval-officer father, he sadly writes that "I am rather barren of paternal recollections." He tells us that his motto, drawn from Zola, is "Allons travailler!-Get on with it!"-and that is what he has done, stoically. But there is the alcohol. Mr. Hitchens is like the hero of Balzac's The Wild Ass's Skin, who acquires power through a magical shagreen that shrinks and saps his will every time it allows him to victoriously assert himself. He has tried to turn the drinking into an arch, refined joke, into the insouciant habit of an unflappable dandy, and the result is a loyal audience that feels reassured by weakened, buffoonish figures.

And the unholy obsession with Jews: Mr. Hitchens had spent years defending certain details of the "historical research" Mr. Irving used to deny the existence of the Holocaust. But there he was, those many years ago, damning Mr. Gibson for being the son of a Holocaust-denying father! We are all ultimately in the dark about ourselves, but seeing the manner in which Mr. Hitchens had projected his own inner monsters onto someone else was like, well, suddenly realizing that your priest was guilty of all the things he was so passionate about condemning.

Mr. Hitchens learned about what he claims is his mother's Jewishness after her death and conveniently revealed his half-Jewishness to all the world in a 1988 essay, after years of frenziedly attacking Israel in the pages of The Nation and alienating just about every powerful Jewish figure in American intellectual life. Yet his very own brother, who has scrutinized the family genealogy, has concluded that he and Christopher could not be more than 1/32 Jewish-a drop of water in a quart of Scotch. In the memoir, this militant atheist spends an entire chapter simultaneously insisting that he is Jewish; denying the validity of Judaism as a religion, once again using the fact of some Jews' complicity with evil - i.e. Jewish Stalinists in Poland - to tar Judaism as a religion; and continuing to argue with his sentimentally Zionist mother about the right of Israel to exist. The rabbis call this mishegoss.

I saw Mr. Hitchens once more, at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales. Sitting in the cafeteria as the rain poured down outside, I watched him speaking to an audience about the indignities of religion. Holding a glass of wine in his hand, he mocked the idea that faith could be consoling: Can you imagine, he sneered, lying on your deathbed and being told that someone was speaking to you out of a burning bush? I thought of Milosz's beautiful lines: If there is no God/Not everything is permitted to man/He is still his brother's keeper/And he is not permitted to sadden his brother/By saying that there is no God. When I glimpsed Hitchens in a makeshift corridor later, I wanted to touch his arm, to ask him why he kept saddening his brothers. But he looked too sad and tired, so I walked on by. Allons travailler.

editorial@observer.com

(5) Ari Fleischer brought Helen Thomas down

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: 10.06.2010 08:54 AM

Ari versus Helen

By David Weigel | June 8, 2010; 8:43 AM ET

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/06/ari_versus_helen.html

Howard Kurtz and Dana Milbank both write up the end of Helen Thomas's career today, and both have an angle that was not obvious in the strange weekend news cycle that doomed her. It was the role of former White House spokesman, now sports marketing consultant, Ari Fleischer.

Kurtz:

Ari Fleischer, who was Bush's first press secretary, led the campaign for her ouster over the weekend, e-mailing journalists who might have missed her remarks.

Milbank:

[I]t's not surprising that one of the first to push Thomas out the door was Bush's former press secretary, Ari "Watch What They Say" Fleischer, who temporarily left his sports marketing business to hustle over to the Fox News set and demand Thomas's firing.

I'm told that Fleischer emailed numerous journalists about the video of Thomas talking about Israel, and gave quotes to anyone who asked -- a simple gesture that poured rocket fuel on the story. This is the point I was making yesterday -- Thomas had been making conservatives, especially pro-Israel conservatives, angry for years. A lot of the trouble went back to her 2000 resignation from the collapsing UPI and hiring by Hearst Newspapers. Thomas's seat in the front row came because she worked for UPI; out of generosity and respect, she was allowed to keep it even as she lobbed opinionated questions, often from the left on foreign policy. She spent eight of her years as a columnist irritating the Bush administration and supporters of Israel. That built up the reservoir of ill feeling that led, over the weekend, to an effort to oust Thomas. Fleischer's role in that campaign -- acting as countless conservatives would have wanted him to act -- should not come as a surprise.

(6) I was directly involved in the disarming of two Israeli Commandos

From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: 10.06.2010 04:01 PM

http://warincontext.org/2010/06/06/all-i-saw-in-israel-was-cowards-with-guns/

"All I saw in Israel was cowards with guns." These are the words of Ken O'Keefe a former US Marine who was just deported from Israel after surviving the Mavi Marmara massacre...I said this straight to Israeli agents, probably of Mossad or Shin Bet, and I say it again now, on the morning of the attack I was directly involved in the disarming of two Israeli Commandos. This was a forcible, non-negotiable, separation of weapons from commandos who had already murdered two brothers that I had seen that day. One brother with a bullet entering dead center in his forehead, in what appeared to be an execution. I knew the commandos were murdering when I removed a 9mm pistol from one of them. I had that gun in my hands and as an ex-US Marine with training in the use of guns it was completely within my power to use that gun on the commando who may have been the murderer of one of my brothers. But that is not what I, nor any other defender of the ship did. I took that weapon away, removed the bullets, proper lead bullets, separated them from the weapon and hid the gun. I did this in the hopes that we would repel the attack and submit this weapon as evidence in a criminal trial against Israeli authorities for mass murder...

In 2002, O'Keefe initiated what some would regard as a quixotic endeavor: an effort to prevent the war in Iraq by positioning Western volunteers as human shields at strategic sites in Iraq. The Truth Justice Peace action failed, but O'Keefe's passion to follow the dictates of his own conscience has continued unabated.

This is part of a statement O'Keefe made upon arriving in Istanbul on Friday after his expulsion from Israel:

I remember being asked during the TJP Human Shield Action to Iraq if I was a pacifist, I responded with a quote from Gandhi by saying I am not a passive anything. To the contrary I believe in action, and I also believe in self-defence, 100%, without reservation. I would be incapable of standing by while a tyrant murders my family, and the attack on the Mavi Marmara was like an attack on my Palestinian family. I am proud to have stood shoulder to shoulder with those who refused to let a rogue Israeli military exert their will without a fight. And yes, we fought.

When I was asked, in the event of an Israeli attack on the Mavi Mamara, would I use the camera, or would I defend the ship? I enthusiastically committed to defence of the ship. Although I am also a huge supporter of non-violence, in fact I believe non-violence must always be the first option. Nonetheless I joined the defence of the Mavi Mamara understanding that violence could be used against us and that we may very well be compelled to use violence in self-defence.

I said this straight to Israeli agents, probably of Mossad or Shin Bet, and I say it again now, on the morning of the attack I was directly involved in the disarming of two Israeli Commandos. This was a forcible, non-negotiable, separation of weapons from commandos who had already murdered two brothers that I had seen that day. One brother with a bullet entering dead center in his forehead, in what appeared to be an execution. I knew the commandos were murdering when I removed a 9mm pistol from one of them. I had that gun in my hands and as an ex-US Marine with training in the use of guns it was completely within my power to use that gun on the commando who may have been the murderer of one of my brothers. But that is not what I, nor any other defender of the ship did. I took that weapon away, removed the bullets, proper lead bullets, separated them from the weapon and hid the gun. I did this in the hopes that we would repel the attack and submit this weapon as evidence in a criminal trial against Israeli authorities for mass murder.

I also helped to physically separate one commando from his assault rifle, which another brother apparently threw into the sea. I and hundreds of others know the truth that makes a mockery of the brave and moral Israeli military. We had in our full possession, three completely disarmed and helpless commandos. These boys were at our mercy, they were out of reach of their fellow murderers, inside the ship and surrounded by 100 or more men. I looked into the eyes of all three of these boys and I can tell you they had the fear of God in them. They looked at us as if we were them, and I have no doubt they did not believe there was any way they would survive that day. They looked like frightened children in the face of an abusive father.

But they did not face an enemy as ruthless as they. Instead the woman provided basic first aid, and ultimately they were released, battered and bruised for sure, but alive. Able to live another day. Able to feel the sun over head and the embrace of loved ones. Unlike those they murdered. Despite mourning the loss of our brothers, feeling rage towards these boys, we let them go. The Israeli prostitutes of propaganda can spew all of their disgusting bile all they wish, the commandos are the murders, we are the defenders, and yet we fought. We fought not just for our lives, not just for our cargo, not just for the people of Palestine, we fought in the name of justice and humanity. We were right to do so, in every way.

While in Israeli custody I, along with everyone else was subjected to endless abuse and flagrant acts of disrespect. Women and elderly were physically and mentally assaulted. Access to food and water and toilets was denied. Dogs were used against us, we ourselves were treated like dogs. We were exposed to direct sun in stress positions while hand cuffed to the point of losing circulation of blood in our hands. We were lied to incessantly, in fact I am awed at the routineness and comfort in their ability to lie, it is remarkable really. We were abused in just about every way imaginable and I myself was beaten and choked to the point of blacking out… and I was beaten again while in my cell.

In all this what I saw more than anything else were cowards… and yet I also see my brothers. Because no matter how vile and wrong the Israeli agents and government are, they are still my brothers and sisters and for now I only have pity for them. Because they are relinquishing the most precious thing a human being has, their humanity.

In conclusion; I would like to challenge every endorser of Gandhi, every person who thinks they understand him, who acknowledges him as one of the great souls of our time (which is just about every western leader), I challenge you in the form of a question. Please explain how we, the defenders of the Mavi Marmara, are not the modern example of Gandhi's essence? But first read the words of Gandhi himself.

"I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence…. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour." – Gandhi

And lastly I have one more challenge. I challenge any critic of merit, publicly, to debate me on a large stage over our actions that day. I would especially love to debate with any Israeli leader who accuses us of wrongdoing, it would be my tremendous pleasure to face off with you. All I saw in Israel was cowards with guns, so I am ripe to see you in a new context. I want to debate with you on the largest stage possible. Take that as an open challenge and let us see just how brave Israeli leaders are.

I doubt that there is a single Israeli official who would have the guts to take up O'Keefe's challenge. Instead, the IDF has issued a laughable claim:

Ken O'Keefe (Born 1969), an American and British citizen, is a radical anti-Israel activist and operative of the Hamas Terror organization. He attempted to enter the Gaza Strip in order to form and train a commando unit for the Palestinian terror organization.

The IDF spelled his name correctly and the year he was born — thereafter, the errors and deceptions follow. O'Keefe renounced his US citizenship in March 2001. He is now an Irish and Palestinian citizen, though describes himself as "in truth a world citizen."

If the IDF had a shred of evidence that O'Keefe was heading to Gaza to train a commando unit for Hamas, I guarantee he would not now be in Istanbul. He would be in an Israeli jail awaiting trial. (In an interview with Al Jazeera appearing below, he does indeed dismiss Israel's claims.)

But when O'Keefe says that all he saw in Israel was "cowards with guns" he points to a fundamental truth that reveals the character of the Jewish state.

As a nation that revels in its willingness to crush its opponents, Israel operates with the mindset of every bully: it only feels convinced of its strength when facing a weak opponent.

Lacking the courage to hold its own among equals, Israel operates in a world defined by dominance and oppression.

(Thanks to Ann El Khoury at Pulse for reporting on O'Keefe's statement.)

(7) Huwaida Arraf, chairwoman of Free Gaza movement, describes the attack on the Flotilla
From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: 10.06.2010 04:01 PM

'We'll be back - with bigger flotillas'

By Mel Frykberg

June 10, 2010, Asia Times

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LF10Ak02.html

RAMALLAH - In an exclusive interview with Inter Press Service, Huwaida Arraf, the chairwoman of the Free Gaza (FG) movement that tried to break Israel's blockade on Gaza, explains what happened on the night of May 31 when Israeli commandos raided the FG humanitarian flotilla, shooting nine people dead and injuring dozens more.

Controversy surrounds the events following the deadly commando raid with survivors from among the 700 activists on board the flotilla giving a very different version of events from that of the Israeli government.

Inter Press Service: Critics have accused FG of deliberately provoking a confrontation with the Israelis and argued that the attempt to break the siege was political and not just a humanitarian relief operation.

Huwaida Arraf: They are correct to say that FG's aim was more than just bringing humanitarian relief. We are deeply disturbed by Israel's deliberate and calculated creation of a humanitarian crisis in the coastal territory and we intended to draw international attention to this.

We are not interested in simply perpetuating the siege and the humanitarian crisis by bringing in aid alone. Gazans are not interested in being aid dependent either. Eighty percent of Gaza's population is dependent on food aid. This is not the result of a natural disaster but a deliberate and cruel Israeli policy. We are concerned that the human rights of Gazans be respected and they are allowed to live a normal life as human beings.

IPS: Did the activists provoke the Israeli commandos into using deadly force?

HA: This is nonsense. We went out of our way to inform the Israelis that we were an unarmed civilian boat delivering aid, that we presented no threat to them and there was no need to board our vessels. We explained repeatedly who we were and what our mission was. Our boats were checked by different security at the various ports of departure and we also hired independent security personnel to verify that we were arms-free.

We were attacked in international waters, in the middle of the night when most people were asleep. The Israelis used a highly-trained naval force, not the coastguard, against unarmed civilians.

IPS: But videos show activists beating Israeli navy seals with bars.

HA: Let's not forget the Israelis confiscated all equipment from the media and released selective video footage so as to try and justify their extreme violence.

Furthermore, this was the response of a small number of individuals out of nearly 700 people. The FG organizers specifically held workshops for passengers prior to departure to explain how to respond in a non-violent way to an attack on the boat. However, the Israelis attacked first by shooting even before the commandos had boarded.

When such unjustified violence is used against a civilian vessel, in international waters, which poses no threat to Israel's security it is not always possible to control the response of some people who are scared, angry and who may wish to defend themselves.

IPS:You were not on board the Mavi Marmara where the violence took place. How do you know the Israelis attacked first?

HA: I was on board Challenger One which was sailing right next to Mavi Marmara. I saw the Israeli dinghies surrounding the Mavi Marmara. I heard the explosions as they started shooting. They were unable to board because activists trained hoses on them. This was before the helicopters arrived and the navy seals succeeded in boarding. It was after this that people were shot dead.

IPS: Reports are coming out that a number of the dead were shot several times in the head from above.

HA: I've heard this too from eye-witness accounts but am awaiting further information.

IPS: Activists have also claimed that during the first few hours after the assault the dying and seriously injured were deliberately denied medical treatment.

HA: This is true.

IPS: The Israelis state that violence was only used against the passengers on the Mavi Marmara who resisted. Do you agree with this?

HA: This is a lie. The Israelis used excessive force and violence on all the boats even when no resistance was offered. Journalists were attacked, some activists were beaten so badly that they needed to be hospitalized when they arrived in Ashdod.

An Israeli commando stood on my head with his boot and ground my head into the deck until I screamed. I was handcuffed and a hood was put over my head. Later on in Ashkelon I was hit on the face by a policeman, elbowed in the jaw and dragged by my hair when I refused to get into a police car.

IPS: The Israelis claim that some on board were "terrorists" and had ties to "terrorist" organizations, including al-Qaeda and Hamas. What is your response?

HA: This is part of their propaganda and an attempt to discredit FG. They can't de-legitimize the hundreds on board, who included European Union parliamentarians, international journalists and ordinary citizens from over 40 countries as "jihadists", so they focused on a few individuals. I don't know all of the activists personally so I don't know what their political views are, but the FG is not connected to any political organization.

The Turkish charity Isani Yardim Vakfi or IHH which helped organize the flotilla, and had volunteers on board, provides humanitarian aid all over the world. It has an office in Gaza and probably has to deal with the Hamas authorities there as they are in charge. So do all the other international NGOs [non-governmental organizations] including the Red Cross and the United Nations. It is just a fact of life in Gaza. There is no military association.

IPS: The Israelis distributed doctored videos which they confiscated from journalists on board, as well as an edited audio tape which they later retracted and corrected. In the audio an "activist" is alleged to tell the Israelis, amongst other slurs, "to go back to Auschwitz". What are your comments?

HA: I was near the VHF radio the entire time the captains communicated with the Israelis. The captains were the only people who spoke with the Israelis apart from myself. They spoke in a professional manner and I can confirm none of those slurs were made. The so-called "activist" who made the alleged slurs spoke in a phony American accent from the south. We had no Americans on board from the south. They also said I was on board the Mavi Marmara, but I was on the Challenger One.

Furthermore, the Israelis were forced to retract and correct the original tape. A new one was released five days later but there are still discrepancies.

IPS: Do you believe that despite the bloodshed and loss of life that the FG campaign has helped highlight the humanitarian situation in Gaza?

HA: I believe increased international attention has been drawn to Israel's inhumane siege of Gaza and that there will be more pressure on Israel to ease the blockade. This is part of an overall snowball effect to Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories in general following campaigning by grassroots activists. This in turn has led to political involvement on an international and diplomatic level.

IPS: The Israelis possibly hoped that the extreme force they used would prevent future FG boats trying to reach Gaza. Have they succeeded?

HA: Quite the opposite actually. We have been inundated with people from all over the world, from various organizations, wanting to participate in future flotillas. People everywhere are outraged by Israel's behavior.

IPS: What are the future plans of GF?

HA: More boats and bigger flotillas until we break the siege on Gaza completely. We will be back.