More than ten people have been killed after Israeli forces attacked a flotilla bringing aid supplies to the besieged people of Gaza. Details are still sketchy – some sources claim twenty people are dead – but it seems that IDF commandoes stormed the vessels and then opened fire with live ammunition.
The flotilla was part of an international effort bringing goods and supplies barred to Gaza, basic items like building materials and water purifiers. It consisted of three cargo vessels and three passenger ships containing 600 activists, including the Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire. There were also journalists on board, including the Sydney Morning Herald‘s Paul McGeough, who is apparently still missing.
Over the past years, we’ve seen many events in the region that shock the conscience but an armed attack on an aid boat is a new low. Already, there are reports of demonstrations around the world.
On 21 March 1960, South African police fired into a group of black protesters, killing 69 of them. That incident – known to history as the Sharpeville Massacre – sparked the movement that eventually brought down the apartheid state. It may be that this latest atrocity will have similarly far-reaching consequences.
[UPDATE]
Even now, it’s still unclear how many people were killed. Why? As the Guardian says, ‘Israel immediately imposed a communications blackout on the detained activists while simultaneously launching a sophisticated public relations operation to ensure its version of events was dominant.’ So we’re yet to see any of the film taken by the activists as the IDF approached – or even hear from the journalists, like the SMH‘s Paul McGeough, who were on board.
The counter-narrative emerging from the professional Israeli apologists (part-gangsters, part-gramophones, as Orwell quipped in a different context) is that the commandoes acted in self-defence in the face of a ‘lynch mob’ directed by al-Qaida (no, seriously). It’s an oddly apt defence of the indefensible, in that it parrots the rationale for the original Gaza war and the subsequent blockade. No matter how grotesque the disparity in casualties, whether it’s scores of protesters killed and zero soldiers, or 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead, as in the Gaza war, Israel is always already the victim, always engaged in a regrettable course necessitated by the genocidal forces raged against it.
We might note that if an outside observer engaged in the grotesque actuarial calculations of this conflict, he or she might decide that the assault on the flotilla justified a fully-fledged war. After all, as a popular Twitter meme has pointed out, the number of protesters killed in this massacre seems to have outnumbered the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian rockets over the last decade, the statistic quoted in defence of the Gaza incursion.
The other point worth noting about the ‘self defence’ claim is that no-one denies the flotilla remained in international waters at the time of the raid. There is, therefore, a technical term for what took place. It’s called ‘piracy’ – and pirates cannot expect their victims to simply hand over their vessels without protest.
But enough of this. We’re dealing with an episode so blatant and so grotesque that anyone who wants to know will know. In the aftermath of past massacres (Sharpeville or Kent State or Bloody Sunday or whatever) there’s always been an official claim that the sufferers brought their misery upon themselves, that the perpetrators were actually the real victims, that up was down and black was white. But in the end, the facts speak for themselves – and that’s what will happen here.
In any case, let’s not forget the circumstances that made the flotilla so necessary. In Salon, Glenn Grenwald notes:
Regarding the blockade of Gaza itself — about which “Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister [said when it was first imposed]: ‘The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger’” — this post documents just some of the effects, with ample links to U.N. reports, including:
* since the intensification of the siege in June 2007, “the formal economy in Gaza has collapsed” (More than 80 UN and aid agencies [.pdf])
* ”61% of people in the Gaza Strip are … food insecure,” of which “65% are children under 18 years” (UN FAO)
* since June 2007, “the number of Palestine refugees unable to access food and lacking the means to purchase even the most basic items, such as soap, school stationery and safe drinking water, has tripled” (UNRWA)
* ”in February 2009, the level of anemia in babies (9-12 months) was as high as 65.5%” (UN FAO)
In other words, the blockade itself was a crime, a terrible collective punishment that the flotilla was making an attempt to alleviate. Gaza has become a huge prison, and every prison has guards. This massacre illustrates the powers those guards have at their disposal.
It should be noted that the response to the atrocity has been immediate and worldwide. The Age carries the following roundup:
In the [Turkish] capital Ankara about 1,000 people gathered outside the residence of Israeli ambassador Gabby Levy and shouted “Damn the Zionist murderers!” and “Israel will drown in the blood of the martyrs!”.
They threw eggs and plastic bottles into the garden of the residency. Reports said demonstrations were held in dozens of cities across the country.
In London more than 1,000 people — some of whom had friends on the ships carrying aid to blockaded Gaza — protested outside the residence of British Prime Minister David Cameron and the Israeli embassy.
Chanting “Free Palestine” and brandishing the Palestinian flag and banners condemning Israeli “war crimes”, activists blocked a major route through the capital.
“We have close friends on the boat on which people were killed and we are here waiting for news,” said Kate Hudson, the chairwoman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
In Paris about 1,200 people joined a noisy protest near the Israeli embassy, waving Palestinian flags and shouting “Palestine will survive”. Some through stones at police and tried to break through barriers around the building.
Scuffles broke out when rival protestors waving Israeli flags approached, prompting police to fire tear gas. Officers also fired tear gas at protesters in Strasbourg while there were rallies in cities including Marseille and Lyon.
Greek police used tear gas to force back around 1,500 protesters outside the Israeli embassy in Athens, while another 2,000 people rallied in the northern city of Thessaloniki.
In Lebanon thousands of Palestinian refugees and activists waving Palestinian flags and banners marched in the country’s 12 refugee camps.
“Where is the international community? Where are human rights?” they chanted in the Al-Bass camp in the southern coastal city of Tyre.
In Beirut hundreds called on Israeli embassies in the Arab world to be shut down and for Israeli ambassadors to be expelled.
At a demonstration of about 3,000 people at the Beddawi camp in the northern city of Tripoli, anger also turned on Israel’s traditional ally, the United States.
“God is great and America is the greatest evil,” they chanted. “Give us weapons, give us weapons and send us on to Gaza.”
There were even demonstrations inside Israel, where hundreds of protestors flooded the streets of the Arab city of Nazareth as Israeli police raised the level of alert across the country and deployed reinforcements.
Several thousand Egyptians, mainly supporters of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, demonstrated in Cairo and other cities. Egypt is one of only two Arab states to have peace agreements with Israel, along with Jordan.
More than 2,000 people in Amman protested what Jordan’s Information Minister Nabil Sharif dubbed a “heinous crime” and demanded that Jordan shut down the Jewish state’s embassy and expel the Israeli ambassador.
In Iran’s capital Tehran, dozens of people pelted stones at the UN office chanting: “This savage regime of Israel must be wiped out.” They burnt the Israeli flag and tore up pictures of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In Pakistan politicians, lawmakers and journalists staged a peaceful protest in Islamabad, denouncing the killings and calling on the United Nations and the United States to intervene.
Around 6,000 people rallied in Stockholm and others protested outside the Israeli embassies in Belgium, Copenhagen and The Hague.
In Geneva around 200 people rallied outside the UN’s European headquarters demanding an inquiry into the raid, and hundreds of Bosnians marched through Sarajevo, brandishing Palestinian flags.
Around 2,000 people protested in Morocco while several hundred rallied in the capital of the Saharan nation of Mauritania, where parliament called on the International Criminal Court to intervene.
Details of the Australian protests are below:
Melbourne: Tuesday June 1, 4.30pm, Bourke St Mall, CBD
Sydney: Tuesday June 1, 5.30pm, Town Hall, CBD
Brisbane: Tuesday June 1, 5pm, Brisbane Square (cnr George and Queen sts)
Perth: Tuesday June 1, 5pm, Wesley Church, cnr William & Hay Sts, Perth
Adelaide: Details coming soon – keep checking back here!
Canberra: Tuesday June 1, 5pm, outside Israeli Embassy, 6 Turrana St, Yarralumla. Plus also a rally in Garema Place on Thursday 3 June at 4.00 pm (organised by Australians for Justice and Peace in Palestine)
Newcastle: Tuesday June 1, 4pm, Sharon Grierson’s office, Hunter St
Dream on, sweetheart. Your fantasy of eliminating Israel will remain just that.
Here’s al Jazeera’s report. Note that the Israelis have acknowledged that the flotilla was attacked in international waters, not in Israeli territorial waters.
Thank you very much for this Jeff. That’s quick work. I was about to suggest the same and write one myself.
The details from tweets at witnessgaza.com are saying that the Israeli’s opened fire while people were asleep. It’s not just that the act is criminal, but so blatant in its brutality. As if the Israelis are thumbing their noses at everyone and saying ‘Fuck you. We will kill whoever we want whenever we want.’
Butterly’s video is a pretty electrifying though.
I am worried about the retaliation and crackdown on Gazans. JPost earlier reported that the IDF and Israeli police were preparing for ‘unrest’, but this has now being upgraded to ‘ready for possible Arab riots’.
And this was the Age with their up to the minute reporting late this afternoon:
So that explains the collective punishment of 1.5 million people.
To quote Caoimhe Butterly: it’s time to up the ante. We’re at a time that demands action and mobilisation, through local representatives, trade unions, and supporting a BDS movement.
As Gideon Levy wrote in Haaertz last week, the world has been complicit in a boycott of Gaza and Palestine for long enough. It’s now time to boycott the boycotters:
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Yes the Levy report was prescient I thought. When the convoy left Cyprus I expected stupidity from the Israeli’s – Levy’s comments made me uneasy, but I had other things on my mind – but not this bare-faced. I think some kind of engineered revenge on Gaza is inevitable. Mainstream press is traveling a but slowly on this, but so far I’ve seen one reference to the flotilla’s crews as ‘pro-Islamic activists.’ I await with bated breath (whatever that is) Obama or Rudd’s “appeal for calm and restraint on both sides.”
I do not believe that a single person in the entire world buys anything that comes out of Mark Regev’s mouth:
Actually, while Mark Regev appears to be some kind of weird alien android, and I would love to believe that even Donald Duck can tell that what comes out of Regev’s mouth is utter bullshit, I think that many of the Israeli Govt’s powerful friends will be very thankful that Mark can make up the lies for them. Saves them having to write a press release. Also avoids any unpleasant moral anguish. Should there be any.
Anyone heard anything from Margaret Attwood yet?
Fair call. I should have said ‘actually believes’, rather than buys. There are clearly many who buy his words.
But even (especially) consummate professional liars make revealing slips of the tongue sometimes, ie:
“Live fire was used against our forces. They initiated the violence, that’s 100% clear,” he said.
The footage of Israeli forces storming the Gaza flotilla appears to have vanished from YouTube.
Liberal wiseacres sometimes condemn the Palestinians for not adopting a Gandhian strategy. This appalling tragedy illustrates how glib such reproaches (usually made from perfect safety in the west) actually are.
That is, the flotilla did represent a new emphasis by campaigners in recent times on mass civil disobedience, an orientation that in my opinion is politically and morally much sounder than randomly firing rockets. But you have to be incredibly courageous to continue with such methods in the face of an opponent willing to so casually just open fire.
Yes, agreed in spades. There will surely be another flotilla though. There must be.
The YouTube video was no sooner up than it was gone.
Seems apt:
From Haaretz:
I suspect we’ll soon learn that bin Laden was captaining one of the ships.
It’s very interesting how the depiction of the flotilla’s passengers and crew has escalated throughout the day.
First they ‘grappled’ with the soldiers. Then they attacked them with sticks. Then they attacked them with sticks knives and axes. Then they apparently used pistols. Now they are actually terrorists, and the flotilla of old slow vessels ‘violent and provocative.’
The mainstream media have been incredibly slow to follow this story. Fairfax just following other people’s press releases, nothing at all at the Independent Uk, the Guardian doing a ‘live’ blog – which just appears to be some dude cut and pasting press releases. Plenty of time for Israeli Govt spin doctors to get on top of the story. I have been chasing tweets at various places all day which is where the story has been breaking.
Catherine Ashton(of the EU) ‘regrets’ the loss of life. Jolly good.
My head is starting to hurt. I need to go and lie down or take up drinking. Thanks again for being so quick with this Jeff. It saved my sanity.
Look it up on youtube. Israel has shot Mairead Maguire before. No one noticed. Except an interview on democracy now.
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I have been wondering about the ‘why’ for the whole horrific episode.
We would be shocked if any other country, from Iran (where it most definitely would be considered a declaration of war) to Australia, had done this, but is anyone genuinely surprised by Israel’s behaviour here?
As you point out Jeff:
And for so long, many other nations have condoned and encouraged this conduct and psychology. Maybe we are seeing a sociopathic state that does not realise when it has finally gone too far.
Or maybe this is more akin to the stolen passports and assassinations, with Israel trying to determine just how far it can push those other nations. So I return to the question ‘why’. Why do they need to know how far they can push everybody?
Gaza’a response:
Well, that’s the UN emergency session dealt with.
The US is ‘deeply concerned by the suffering of civilians in Gaza, and the deterioration of the situation there, including the humanitarian and human rights situation’, yet claims that there is no problem getting aid into Gaza.
And says that, really, the flotilla was just a bit too provocative and confrontational.
Why did they do it?
It’s possible it wasn’t very well thought through. You get a bunch of Special Forces all ginned up about stopping a boat full of terrorists in the open ocean — and then they do what Special Forces are trained to do, which is to kill people.
More generally, though, there might well be a calculation that they can ride out the protests and thus set a new precedent. If you can get away with massacring an international aid convoy, you can pretty much get away with anything.
I’ve been thinking about Anna Akhmatova.
The foul wounds include the Iraq war and the Gaza war. Because no-one was ever held accountable, the political culture has continued to fester, and now we’re plumbing new depths.
I agree that things within Israel have gone pretty sociopathic. Because Israel exists in a state of extreme paranoia, even unarmed boats of civilians carrying medical aid become a threat. When a paranoid mind gets to those levels, everything is a threat and must be destroyed before it gets any closer. Israel’s paranoia is so enormous that its boundaries now extend out into international waters, and indeed into the territories of other states. That is why it pushes everybody else. If Israel does indeed get away with this – as in many ways it will – then yes, anything becomes possible. And we all happily go along with Israel’s paranoid fantasies because it suits us, because we also like them, tend to see threats where there are none, and so forth. Having hyped-up special forces who will shoot unarmed people asleep, or waving white flags is what a paranoid sociopathic entity needs. We have entered a new phase I think.
Russian women poets seem to have a lot to say about contemporary suffering of this kind:
\In my own twentieth century
where there are more dead than graves
to put them in, my miserable
forever unshared love
among those Goya images
is nervous, faint, absurd,
as, after the screaming of jets,
the trump of Jericho.\
- Natalya Gorbanyevskaya
The best way to honor those killed and to all peace activists, as best you can do is to bring humanitarian aid rather than 750 people and three ships, now 10,000 people and 30 boats in humanitarian aid to Gazans
And it looks like there will be another flotilla too. A few ships didn’t make the flotilla for various reasons. The ‘Rachel Corrie’ got left behind, as it was a bit slow getting out of Ireland, So looks like we may be on again soon.
Thanks Jeff and others,
The process of dehumanising the activists is in full flight. The process of misinformation can be mapped by the steady change in facts designed to justify a slaughter as self defence. The official supposedly ‘independent’inquiries will take years. Those seeking the truth will be undermined or worse. We need to reveal these tactics for what they are and keep looking for the real information. This attack on a humanitarian aid project is unspeakably sad and destructive.
It will be interesting to see how the Rudd government handles this in the light of the recent ‘diplomatic fallout’ over forged passports. Maxine McKew was guarded in her comments on Q&A last night. Expect the same from others. Calls for ‘restraint on both sides’, ‘regret’ and ‘sadness’ can be expected in bucketloads but it is very unlikely that Australia will formally condemn the Israeli action, especially if the Americans remain lukewarm.
The Israelis have destroyed the peace process and I can’t help but think that it was intentional, again. Pre-emptive escalation to violence is a standard Israeli tactic followed by waves of hysterical, entirely unbelievable hasbara.
I find the use of language extraordinary. Regev and other Israeli foreign office representatives have portrayed the armed commandos as the victims. The agressors, apparently, were the reportedly unarmed occupants of the boats. Orwellian indeed. Clearly, the flotilla was more than a humanitarian exercise and was designed to draw attention to the effects of the blockade on the people of Gaza. But the killing of these activists is just despicable and entirely unwarranted.
I also noted an Israeli official referring to the Australian policy of intercepting boats at sea as a precendent for their action. Nice one, Australia.
Can’t wait for Paul McGeogh’s reports on this.
I kept hearing the word ‘provocation’ this morning used as a justification for the dropping of Israeli soldiers onto the decks of these boats. Then I saw the footage which showed a crutch (presumably one of the so-called weapons on board) and banner poles strewn about between the people who did look like ‘protestors’ or to say it more clearly, ordinary people. In my mind the word ‘provocation’ suddenly became synonymous with the recently-removed defence to murder in domestic violence cases in Australia. And that was all about perpetrators not wanting to hear certain things being said which seems, now, spookily like the Israelis in their quest to demonstrate ‘right’ is on their side.
Thanks Jeff, Jacinda and all. Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire and her colleagues are clearly no actual threat to Israel’s military (except in a symbolic sense)- so why an act of war? Tragic and inexcusable, I hope it is the catalyst for action the article proposes.
I read Golda Meir’s autobiography and I think she must be rolling in her grave with shame at what Israel has become.
For some telling commentary on conflicting opinions on the legality or otherwise of the Gaza blockade see this Reuters piece
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65133D20100602
and this countervailing opinion
http://opiniojuris.org/2010/06/02/why-is-israels-blockade-of-gaza-legal/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+opiniojurisfeed+%28Opinio+Juris%29
For anyone who hasn’t seen this awe-inspiring clip, here is Glenn Greenwald (from Salon.com) vs Eliot Spitzer (former NYC Governor) on MSNBC, dissecting the current state of Israel (article here):
I am constantly astounded by the absolute dehumanisation of Palestinians in the media. This is Jeremy Scahill vs Ed Koch, again from msnbc.
My sister is in America at the moment – she says Fox News makes the Herald Sun look like a Communist newspaper.
Hannan Ashrawi and Gideon Levy on Gaza, interviewed on Late Night Live today.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2010/2917661.htm
The Guardian commenting on the unfair portrayal of Israel’s actions in the media – http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/04/israeli-pr-machine-gaza-flotilla-media-battle
Israeli fabrication of audio transcript with Mavi Marmara
http://aliabunimah.posterous.com/proof-emerges-idf-audio-of-radio-communicatio
If you’re following this story, Live Station gives you the English language version of Al Jazeera on your computer. Try http://livestation.com/channels/3
Israeli government office apologizes for mock flotilla video
The video was created by JPost columnist, Caroline Glick, who remarks, ‘We think this is an important Israeli contribution to the discussion of recent events and we hope you distribute it far and wide’.
And Mark Regev, in his typically paradoxical way, says, ‘I called my kids in to watch it because I thought it was funny. It is what Israelis feel. But the government has nothing to do with it. The GPO distributes non-government items, things that we think that show our side of the story.’
I have included the video below. It is disturbing and filled with racial hatred – and reveals, yet again, the attitudes of those controlling the media and PR in Israel.
Great interview with US/Palestinian lit critic/writer Saree Makdisi this morning on Al Jazeera. He pointed out, among other things, that the actions of ordinary people – the freedom flotilla and the boycott movement – have managed to achieve what decades of ‘peace talks’ haven’t, and that he thought that this would continue.
Thanks Stephen, I’ll try and find it.
Personally, I think something has shifted – tangibly shifted. I went to the rally in Melbourne again yesterday and people are talking about mobilisation and strategies, and there is a much more open dialogue about the bds campaign.
And, of course, in Sweden and the UK (and at least the Trades Hall Union in Melbourne), unions are taking official positions. It would be good to see a full list of unions taking action. And to see some Australian universities calling for divestment.
I agree. It’s like the beginning of the final period of apartheid in South Africa, when it became increasingly controversial for anyone to have anything to do with the regime.
it just keeps getting more and more sinister…
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20100606&articleId=19573
The Lede blog at the NYT is waging a war against the Israeli flotilla PR campaign:
Dr Uysal goes onto describe his treatment at the hands of the IDF:
argh!