Terror in the name of the God of Israel...

The standing military of the United States most ardent ally, Israel has killed 9 peaceful humanitarian workers in international waters on ships carrying aid to starving gentiles in Ghaza. It was all done in the name of God as the Israeli soldiers storming the ships prayed to God for the success of their mission to stop food reaching the hungry people under the blessings of their priests.

Pro-Israeli organizations in America and all over the world are silent, the same way as Christians were silent when Jews were massacred by Hitler\'s mainly Christian soldiers in Germany. Those who claim to champion the cause of justice among the Israelis are justifying the killing and the strongest ally of the Jewish state is still studying the situation. What a shame.

What was done is inhumane and among the ugliest form of terrorism. It is terrorism sponsored by the state. No ifs and no buts. But some refuse to see this as inhumane. Probably it is because a gentile has no value in the eyes of those who claim that God has given them all the wisdom to decide and determine the status of everyone else.

The so called holy land, today, offers the most unholy scene. Everything, the divine guidance inspires humans to accomplish is violated. Peace, human dignity, human life has no meaning. What is even more ironic is that the conflict is among people who claim that they have the most comprehensive divine guidance for justice, peace and love.

Only a sick mind can see the other human suffer. For almost 60 years, a people have been kicked out of their land and placed in holes not even fit for insects. At will they have been killed, humiliated and tormented. Only a sick mind will let the people die in hunger and face starvation. And only a sick mind will stop relief reaching the injured and wounded.

That sick mind, in our world, today is represented by those who claim to be the defenders of the Jewish state. Jews in America owe it to Americans to distance them from this thinking. Palestinians have the same human rights that Jews and Christians have and they have the same right to live in peace and security as the Israelis have.

In the last 60 years the Israelis have created a myth of insecurity to their existence. They have always argued that their tiny state is surrounded by Muslims who pose a constant threat to them. Well, in the 2,000 years of their existence, Jews have found them selves on the verge of annihilation either by Christian Romans or Christian Europe. Never, in their presence among Muslims, they ever felt that their religious existence was ever under threat. This myth is perpetuated by their sympathizers all over the world. In the US, their lobbies propagate lies and use all tactics including intimidation and coercion to influence the opinion of the so called people\'s representatives.

From Aslam Abdullah's article in Radiance. More Here

"Israel cannot get away with it...", asserts Kuldip Nayar

America is the only nation which can put pressure on Israel. But every US president assesses how much he can do without annoying the powerful Jewish lobby in America. President Barack Obama appears to be different but his reaction is lukewarm. He may not prove to be a Bill Clinton who got Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat to shake hands and come to an understanding which had the makings of a settlement.

Obama has to start all over again and emphasise to Israel that peace or security in the region can be achieved through conciliation, not by force. The Security Council’s resolution was too tepid to be taken seriously.

The attack on the flotilla indicates how power has become the arbiter in the world. Countries in a region have to come together to withstand pressure from outside. This is yet another reminder to South Asia that unless it puts its act together, it may expose itself to outside interference. The manner in which the US is enhancing its presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan is ominous. The region must wake up to the danger.

Israel has reintroduced gunboat diplomacy. Colonisation belongs to an age when there was no UN, no forum to discuss aggression and no lobby to seek peace. What has happened recently cannot be taken lightly.

The entire international community has to sit up and take note. Israel cannot get away with it as it has so far by reducing the people of Palestine to a commodity that Tel Aviv can use in the manner it likes.

Israel is not the face of the Jews who are generally known as a peace-loving community. It should not be allowed to blacken their faces.

From Kuldip Nayar's article in Dawn. More Here.

Today we are all Palestinians

 

I wonder how many of you remember the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship the Achille Lauro way back in October 1985?

 
Four members of the Palestine Liberation Front took control of the liner off Egypt as she was sailing from Alexandria to Port Said.

It was a bungled operation in which the hijackers killed disabled Jewish-American passenger Leon Klinghoffer and then threw his body overboard.

The incident created headlines around the world and polarized people over the Palestinian cause.

It also prompted lawmakers to create new legislation making it an international crime for anyone to take a ship by force.

And this is the reason for the brief history lesson -- under Article 3 of the Rome Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation of 1988, it is an international crime for any person to seize or exercise control over a ship by force, and also a crime to injure or kill any person in the process.

The treaty necessarily adopts a strict approach. One cannot attack a ship and then claim self-defense if the people on board resist the unlawful use of violence.

In other words, according to international law, the actions of the Israeli military were beyond the law and those involved should be treated no differently than, say, the Somali pirates who are also in the habit of boarding ships by force.

Any right to self-defense in such dramatic circumstances rests purely with the passengers and crew on board. Under international maritime law, you are legally entitled to resist unlawful capture, abduction, and detention.

What those on board the Freedom Flotilla did was perfectly legal. I believe they acted with great courage in the face of heavily armed Israeli Defense Forces commandos, while others might have thought their actions reckless.

Whatever your view, a number paid the ultimate price for their international right to resist and hundreds more were locked up in the Zionist regime, including my Press TV colleague Hassan al Banna Ghani, who still has of been freed.

Israel now stands virtually alone, having exposed itself as a pariah state.

I wrote an article last year calling them the Pirates of the Mediterranean after they had illegally boarded other aid ships, kidnapping crew and passengers.

Now I want you to ask yourself this question: If a group of Somali pirates had forced their way onto half a dozen humanitarian aid ships from the West, slaughtering around nine or 10 people and injuring scores more, what do you think the international reaction would have been?

Let me tell you. A NATO task force would by now be steaming toward the Horn of Africa, accompanied by a couple of drones and various members of the press to record the occasion.

(On a point of interest, the Achille Lauro sank in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia in 1994.)

So why is Israel allowed to get away with murder? In a premeditated act, the Zionist regime showed once again its total disregard for human life -- and international law.

There were pensioners, women, and children on board those ships, which were carrying bags of cement, electric wheelchairs, toys, medicines, and water purifiers for Gaza's people.

Realizing Israel had shot itself in the foot, the vile state's leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, then started shooting from the lip.

He asked us to believe that his troops were acting in self-defense. And then, 24 hours later, given time to come up with more lies, he told the world that the soldiers were armed with paintballs and had not expected to use their weapons. Not content with insulting our intelligence, he said his nice, cuddly IDF folk had only boarded the boats to carry out an inspection and inventory.

Then Mark Regev, the Zionist regime's political Pinocchio, backed him up. He reckons these evil-doers on board the boats grabbed the IDF's real guns and used them to fire on the soldiers.

These are the same soldiers that come from an elite, highly trained, crack squad… hmm. Mr. Regev, if that's the case, why would you send in the A-Team if they were just going to do an inventory?

And if they were such a hot squad how did a bunch of civilians manage to overpower them and give them a good slap?

Either Israeli soldiers fight like a bunch of old women -- which Hezbollah says they do -- or they intended to massacre those on board to make sure that no other peace activists get involved in trying to help the Palestinian people of Gaza.

Well if that was the aim, then it has failed. As I write this, some heroic friends of mine from the Free Gaza Movement are bound for Gaza now on board the appropriately named ship the Rachel Corrie.

In our thousands in our millions… today we are all Palestinians. 

From Yvonne Ridley's article in Tehran Times. More Here

Journalist Yvonne Ridley is also the European president of the International Muslim Women's Union and a committed peace activist who was on board the first boat to successfully break the siege of Gaza in 2008.

Furqan Dogan and me

Who is Furkan Dogan you may ask?

He was the lone US citizen of the nine activists killed by the Israelis during the Flotilla Massacre. I was horrified to read about his execution-style killing and the even more horrifying, but not surprising, silence by the US on one of its citizens being murdered abroad.

What does this 19-yr old martyr have to do with me?

Well, besides his obviously extraordinary act of courage and sacrifice, I didn’t give any extra thought to him over the others who died at the hands of the IDF.

But when I read that he was born in a small town located in upstate New York named Troy, I immediately sat up.

You see, Troy, NY is known for nothing - absolutely nothing. The weather is dreary, the social life is non-existent, and the locals are aloof. Those living in this ex-industrial town are infamously known as Troilets.

The only thing of real value located in Troy is my Alma mater, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Yes, that makes me the only human being in the world who has the ignominy of being both a Troilet as well as a Baltimoron (being from Baltimore). Yay for me!

Anyways, so when I read that he was born in Troy 19 years ago, the story became a bit more personal. I was there in Troy from 1990 to 1994, the exact time of his birth.

And since I know that the only Turkish residents of Troy are RPI postgrads, I immediately started racking my brain for any Turkish brother with the last name Dogan, in the off chance that I actually may have known Furkan’s father. Seeing that it was almost 20 years ago, many names and faces have begun to blur, so I wasn't having much luck there.

And then when I finally found a picture of the good brother whose son was killed in the Flotilla Massacre, my heart dropped.

His name is Ahmet Dogan and I knew him from the local masjid at RPI. While he was pursuing his PhD, I was an undergrad youngling. I remember him for two things, his extremely quiet demeanor and his sweet jump shot. Our paths regularly crossed in many places during my four years there – at the masjid, at social gatherings, at Juma’a, on campus.

And it is not beyond the realm of possibility that I actually held little Furkan in my arms, during one of the countless encounters with dear Ahmet.


And for the mere possibility of having met modern-day martyr Furkan Dogan, I am humbled and honored.

From Naeem's Blog. More here.

Thomas Friedman on the Flotilla attack : It was definitely a "setup"

No question! No question, at all, that this flotilla was a setup, designed to trick the Israeli commandos into boarding it, from a helicopter. That is why those "humanitarian" activists were so well-armed with... poles and chairs and sticks and things one would find on a boat. They had set a trap, for Israel, to trick Israel into killing between 9 and 20 people. (But because Friedman is very balanced he admits that it was very stupid of Israel to fall for this trap and kill those people.)

You must always remember that while reasonable people consider Thomas Friedman to be a joke -- a barely literate cartoon mustache of oversimplification whose understanding of global politics is slightly less comprehensive than a USA Today infographic and who possesses about as much insight into world events as a lightly vandalized Wikipedia stub entry -- the sort of people who ineptly manage and run the nation take him very seriously and look to him to form their opinions about important subjects outside (and sometimes relating to) their immediate expertise, be that foreclosing on families or running the Defense Department for the Bush Administration.

From Alex Parene's article in Salon. More here.

After Rachel Corrie, Furkan Dogan is the second US citizen murdered by Israel

Furkan Dogan was struck by five bullets shortly before dawn on Monday while aboard the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara ship. His US citizenship was highlighted at the funeral of eight of the nine Turks who died during the incident.

"Furkan was my friend," said Ali Yunusoalu, who had accompanied his friend during pre-dawn prayers on the top deck of the Mavi Marmar on Monday.

Dogan's father told how his son had been shot in the forehead, but he also mentioned how the family took comfort in believing that Furkan had died in an honourable manner. "I feel my son has been blessed with heaven," he said. "I am hoping to be a father — worthy of my son."

American activist Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli military bulldozer, as she tried to stop it from destroying a Palestinian home in Gaza.

From a report in Gulf News. More here.

Attack on Freedom Flotilla and the hypocrisy of the western media

The people of the Western world have been given a jaded perspective on the unprovoked Israeli attack on an unarmed, six-ship relief flotilla on the high seas, some 130 km off the Gaza coast in international waters.

The assault by marauding commandos has drawn condemnation from the United Nations, the European Union and NATO-member Turkey, but US and British media outlets for the most part have opted to broadcast the Israeli government’s official line, branding the foreign nationals as terrorists.

The Israeli naval forces disrupted maritime communication from the flotilla before the combined air-and-sea assault, and less critical newsgathering organizations are settling for handouts from the Israeli government.

A good comparison is the coverage between the British Broadcasting Corp. and Qatar-based Al-Jazeera News.

At the noon (Saudi time) bulletin BBC ran the story as its lead and continued to air Israeli version of the gruesome attack. Not just that, it gave precious airtime to the Israeli spokespersons with little interruption or questioning from the anchor. One missed Nik Gowing in the newsroom. The Israeli spokesperson and Israeli sympathizers waxed eloquent on how the organizers of the flotilla were responsible for bringing the tragedy upon themselves. There was little or no mention about the fact that the attack had taken place in international waters.

Al Jazeera English brought in everything. In its 1 p.m. bulletin, the anchor led the story by mentioning that 14 people had died in the Israeli attack on the lead ship called Mavi Marmara. It then showed dramatic footage right from the ship that was under attack. Al Jazeera’s Jamal Al-Shayyal was on board the main ship — a sharp contrast to Tia Goldenberg of The Associated Press filing her reports from the Israeli missile boat INS Kidon, which took part in the attack.

“Two people have been confirmed dead,” Al-Shayyal reported. “The organizers of the aid flotilla have now asked all passengers to go inside. Israeli commandos have descended upon the ship. The ship is still in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The Marmara has been surrounded on all sides by armed boats. We can still hear shots being fired — even after the white flag has been raised. There are all civilians on this ship. They include women, children and the elderly.”

Al-Shayyal’s reports and the dramatic shipboard footage explained it all. It was there in images. Al Jazeera then took the viewers to the Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon who was reading a statement.
“We were attacked by those on board the ship. We regret the loss of life but the responsibility for this tragedy lies with the organizers of the flotilla. We told them not to enter Gaza. We told them to deliver the aid through appropriate channels. The organizers of the aid flotilla are the supporters of Al-Qaeda and Hamas. They were armed and trying to lynch our soldiers, and that is why we acted in self defense,” he said.

Al Jazeera then brought in Murat Mercan, chairman of the Turkish Parliament commission of foreign affairs. “Ayalon is a liar,” he said. “The ships were cleared by the Turkish authorities. There were no arms of board. Only people. There were so many ways of stopping the ship. Obviously, Israel wasn’t interested in merely stopping the ship. This will have consequences. No country has the right to attack any ship, armed or unarmed, in the international waters. This is a serious violation. In the coming days, you will see how Turkey will respond,” he said.

Al Jazeera took the viewers to Ayman Mohyeldin in Umm Al-Fahm which is where Sheikh Raed Salah, a prominent theologian from Palestine, came from. He was also on the ship and was shot in the head by the Israeli commandoes. He also gave a sense of the people’s feeling saying, “All the images being shown from the activists on board those ships show clearly that they were civilians and peaceful in nature, with medical supplies on board. So it will surprise many in the international community to learn what could have possibly led to this type of confrontation.”

Anita McNaught, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Istanbul, was out in the streets of Istanbul gathering people’s reactions. Turkish protestors carrying Palestinian and Hamas flags were swelling up in the town square to register their protest. "The Turks had a constructive military alliance and for many years they saw the issue of domestic terrorism as one they had to share information about,” she said. “But since the Gaza war relations have nose-dived and it would be absolutely fair to say that this attack is the lowest point."

The best part of Al Jazeera coverage was the soundbyte from the erudite Palestinian leader Nabil Shaath. Very methodically, he called the Israeli bluff. “This is a murderous attack,” he said. “All this talk about there being arms on the ship is absolute nonsense. One is reminded of the American drugs police who sometimes plant drugs on somebody just so they can arrest him. Nobody is going to believe Israel. Such excessive use of force indicates their nefarious designs. They went in to kill, and they did.”

So far, Western news outlets seem content to take statements and press releases from the Israelis; the rest of the story remains unreported.

From Siraj Wahab's article in Arab News. It is a telling comment on the hypocrisy of the western media. More Here.

"Israel is the biggest threat to the peace loving world" asserts Jamaat-e-Islami Andhra Chief

Jamaat-e-Islami Hind AP alongwith SIO, IYM and MPJ staged a protest against the cruel Isareli attack on flotilla. Moulana Malik Moatasim Khan, Zonal President, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Andhra Pradesh condemned Israel in unequivocal terms. He declared Israel as the biggest threat to the peace loving world. He termed the brutal attack on Flotilla as barbaric. Moulana Malik Moatasim Khan urged the Indian government to severe diplomatic relationship with Israel immediately. He also asked Arab world to come forward and condemn Israel and put diplomatic pressure to end Gaza siege.

From a report in Jamaat-e-Islami Hind's website. More here.