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Defying international law seems to be what Israel does best. The International Committee of the Red Cross recently released the following (from Al Jazeera):
“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.
In a statement released on Monday, 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.”
Collective punishment is illegal. There are no qualifiers to this statement, the actions being taken against the people of Gaza are illegal.
“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.
“The most important part of what we can do is to try and provide support to actually get the crossings open and to … help people rebuild their homes, to provide for businesses, to try to support everyday things,” Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign affairs chief, said.”
Sounds like a reasonable starting point to me.
quag·mire
1.
an area of miry or boggy ground whose surface yields under the tread; a bog.
2.
a situation from which extrication is very difficult: a quagmire of financial indebtedness.
3.
anything soft or flabby.
Sometimes it is good to get back to basics when dealing with complex issues like our ongoing colonial occupation war in Afghanistan. The CBC reports:
“A dramatic increase in the number of homemade bomb attacks is part of an “alarming trend” in Afghanistan, a UN report released Saturday said.
The report to the UN Security Council said bombings and assassinations have soared in the past four months amid ramped-up military operations in the Taliban-dominated south.
The number of attacks involving improvised explosive devices increased by 94 per cent over the same period in 2009, while assassinations of Afghan officials rose by 45 per cent.
“The rise in incidents involving improvised-explosive devices constitutes an alarming trend,” the report said.
Suicide attacks occurred at a rate of about three a week, half in the restive south. Such bombings have tripled this year compared with 2009.”
Is any of this really surprising? I mean, Afghanistan is the anvil on which Imperial armies go to be smashed. It has happened before, and will happen again. So why is Canada still there? Are we really preserving freedom and democracy? Fighting terror? It is all rather nebulous.
“Nevertheless, the UN found the number of security incidents had “increased significantly compared to previous years,” in large part because of more military operations in the south early this year. NATO spokesman Brig. Gen. Josef Blotz told reporters in the capital on Saturday that despite negative assessments, the international force was making steady strides.
“Tough fighting is expected to continue, but the situation is trending in our favour as more forces flow into the area,” Blotz said.
“It has to be tougher perhaps before it goes easier,” Blotz said.”
I think the only statement that contains a grain of truth is Blotz’s final one. It will get tougher and I highly doubt it will get easier as time passes.
Canada’s military commitment in Afghanistan ends in 2011. Not a moment too soon.
Iraq has dropped off of the news cycle in North America. We’re finished with the whole thing. The American presence in Iraq is still costing billions of dollars and hundreds of innocent lives on the ground. A shaky measure of stability has been achieved but nothing resembling a stable safe nation has yet been established.
“A suicide car bomber has killed at least four policemen and injured 10 outside a police station in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, an official in the interior ministry has said.
The attacker drove a vehicle packed with explosives into a gathering of police during a shift change at a station in the mainly Shia Amil district, in the southwestern area of Baghdad, the source said on Sunday.
This is the latest in a series of attacks on official buildings, including those to do with crime and punishment.”
Iraq is now fractured along sectarian lines. Bombings, shootings, kidnappings are all par for the course in America’s hub of Freedom and Democracy in the middle east. I’m thinking though that the oil is now flowing into the correct hands and the correct people are now in power. The people of Iraq can now squabble and kill each other as much as their inane religion dictates them to do because it will not effect the important people in Iraq.
Glenn Greenwald over at Salon.com has a great take down of the swirling pool of Israeli propaganda and lies that have engulfed the media coverage of the Gaza Convoy debacle.
Gems include:
“This campaign of suppression and propaganda worked to shape American media coverage (as state propaganda campaigns virtually always work on the gullible, authority-revering American media). The edited IDF video was shown over and over on American television without question or challenge. Israeli officials and Israel-devoted commentators appeared all over television — almost always unaccompanied by any Turkish, Palestinian or Muslim critics of the raid — to spout the Israeli version without opposition. Israel-centric pundits in America claimed, based on the edited IDF video, that anyone was lying who even reported on the statements of the passengers that Israeli fired first. In sum, that the Israelis used force only after the passengers attacked the commandos became Unquestioned Truth in American discourse.”
and…
Nobody’s claims are entitled to an automatic assumption of truth, including these passengers. But as Mackey argues, all of this compellingly underscores the need for an independent — not an Israeli-led — investigation. Mackey quotes Israeli journalist and blogger Noam Sheifaz:
Israel has confiscated some of the most important material for the investigation, namely the films, audio and photos taken by the passengers [and] journalists on board and the Mavi Marmara’s security cameras. Since yesterday, Israel has been editing these films and using them for its own PR campaign. In other words, Israel has already confiscated most of the evidence, held it from the world and tampered with it. No court in the world would [trust] it to be the one examining it.
Just as is true for the U.S. on so many occasions, Israel has made unmistakably clear that it is interested only in propagandizing and obfuscating. The very idea that they can be trusted to reveal what actually happened is ludicrous on its face […]
I recommend going to Salon.com to read the full article, it is both lobe blowing and informative.
Update( 19/06/2010): I recommend going to Fillibluster to see how Canadian politicians will twist and turn trying to avoid the ire of the Jewish lobby. Libby Davies is the most recent victim of daring to hold dangerous opinion that there are human rights violations being perpetrated in Gaza.
A map depicting levels of military spending.
Grabbed from Worldmapper.org – many neat maps to look at there if you have the time.
Bringing aid to starving people, a crime according to Israel.
The black hole that is Middle East coverage had better not suck this particular story down its greedy maw. Israel can pretty much murder at will in the occupied territories and international media will give them a pass. The media had better not slink to its usual spineless standards when Israeli commandos board a ship laden with humanitarian aid and kill nine innocent people. It just had better not happen. The CBC and Al-Jazeera report:
“Netanyahu said the Israeli soldiers had boarded one of the floatilla’s six ships to check it for weapons when they were attacked by activists with knives and clubs.
“They literally attacked the first soldiers on the ship, they were mobbed,” Netanyahu said in Ottawa, where he was meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper. “They were clubbed, they were beaten, stabbed, there was even a report of gunfire.
“And our soldiers had to defend themselves, defend their lives or they would have been killed,” he said.”
Ah yes, the favourite method of denying culpability. We were only acting in self-defence. Bullshit. You boarded a ship with no probable cause ,in international waters no less, and in the ruckus YOU caused had to respond with deadly force and kill nine innocent people. Wake up you murderous bastards, this is not the occupied territories where you can kill on a whim.
“The aid convoy was organized in part by the Free Gaza Movement, an international group of pro-Palestinian activists that claims the Gaza blockade is a violation of international law.
Audrey Bomse, the legal co-ordinator for the Free Gaza Movement, called claims the passengers had planned to provoke the soldiers “absurd.”
“It was clearly an attack — probably a premeditated attack — by Israel upon civilians,” she told CBC News.
“These are supposed to be crack military forces. I can only assume that they wanted to intimidate people from doing this in the future.”
Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian government spokesman, said the government “condemns the brutality in which the Israeli government treated this peaceful attempt to break the siege on Gaza.”
Absolutely. The World should be in an uproar about this gross violation of international law. Some are already taking steps:
“The United Nations Security Council was to meet on Monday afternoon for an emergency session to discuss the matter.
Turkey, Spain, Greece, Denmark and Sweden have all summoned the Israeli ambassadors in their respective countries to protest against the assault.”
There are mass protests in Turkey over the murder of its citizens in international waters:
Protesters take part in a demonstration at About 10,000 people gathered in the Turkish capital to protest Israel's military assault on a convoy of six aid ships. (Thanassis Stavrakis/Associated Press)
I am outraged at the audacity of Israel and the spineless response of our Western leaders.
Harper:
“Canada deeply regrets this action, the loss of life and the injuries that have occurred and obviously we’ll be looking in the days that follow to get all the information we can get to find out exactly what has transpired,” Harper said following a meeting with Netanyahu.
Obama:
Obama expressed “deep regret at the loss of life in today’s incident and concern for the wounded,” according to a White House statement. He also expressed “the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances” surrounding the event, it said.
If this had been Iran boarding a ship in International waters and killing people, it would have been like World War 3 had just started. Instead we get this jellyfish piffle of mindless palavers. Inexcusable.
Intransigentia has also written cogently on this topic, catch up with her here.
Sorry son, we cannot let the terrorists win.
The illegal and unjust occupation of Palestine continues on as usual. The Israelis, under the pretense, of security are withhold vital supplies and services from the people of the Gaza Strip. However, and aid convey dispatched from Turkey aims to break the illegal siege with a shipment of humanitarian aid. Al Jazeera reports:
“The biggest attempt by international aid groups to break the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip has gotten underway.
Nine ships under the banner, Freedom Flotilla, began their journey to Gaza on Saturday, despite warnings from Israel that they will be stopped for “breaching Israeli law”.
The vessels are carrying 5,000 tonnes of reconstruction materials, school supplies and medical equipment.”
Despite the virtual news blackout about the atrocities being perpetuated in Gaza people still know about the injustice and are making bold moves to stop it.
“Mohammad Sawalha, the vice president of the international committee to break the siege of Gaza, one of the organisers of the mission, told Al Jazeera that a global movement, made up of people who want to send the message that the situation in Gaza is unacceptable, was growing.
“We are trying to send a message to everybody that the situation in Gaza will not go on,” Sawalha said.
“No one can accept what is going on now in Gaza – preventing people from having the food and medicine they need. This is a crime.”
The convoy is from the UK, Ireland, Algeria, Kuwait, Greece and Turkey, and is comprised of 800 people from 50 nationalities. It is made up of three cargo ships and five passengers boats.”
The response from Israel is predictable:
“Naor Gilon, a deputy director general at the foreign ministry, said the action would be a “provocation and breach of Israeli law”.
Ah yes, law and order becomes a priority only when it serves Israeli interests. Like the US and international law, which is followed only when it mirrors imperial policy.
“Israel should not be under any illusion whatsoever that their threats or intimidation will stop us or even that their violence against us will stop us,” Huwaida Arraf, from the Free Gaza Movement, said.
Kahel Mazen, from EGESG, added: “If they [the Israelis] choose to resort to destruction and death, our mission is to try to open a window of hope for the people of Gaza.”
Quite the pickle indeed for the Israelis. Blowing up Turkish and European ships with aid for civilians will most definitely put them back on the negative press radar. What is galling is that it takes this dramatic action to evoke even the smallest of ripples in the Western media.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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