Obama kills Osama: This is not Justice, it was an extra-judicial execution

As the news of Osama bin Laden’s death filtered out onto the streets of the United States it triggered unsightly scenes of undiluted hysteria, chest-thumping and back-slapping which has sadly become a trademark of the vengeful ‘hang’em high’ lobby that emerged from the rubble of 9/11.

And just like George W. Bush did on that horrific day way back in 2001, U.S. President Barack Obama unashamedly wallowed in a flag-waving, nationalistic wave of emotion, crowing about national unity and everyone pulling together as he revealed the manhunt for the world’s most wanted man had finally been concluded.

It mattered not the Al-Qaeda leader was unarmed -- that detail was kept back as hugely distorted stories zoomed around the globe about how the evil Arab used his wife as a human shield while firing off rounds at the heroic soldiers who risked their all for Uncle Sam.

The naked display of uncontrollable gung-ho emotion was bad enough but then a smug-looking Obama began sounding like Glenn Ford in a scene from High Noon as he lectured the world about ""justice being done"".

To quote my favorite journalist Gary Younge: “This was not justice, it was an extra-judicial execution. If you shoot a man twice in the head you do not find him guilty. You find him dead. This was revenge. And it was served very cold indeed.”

Mercifully, in this sea of madness another sane voice in America also drowned out the hate-filled chorus and it came from an unlikely source - 9/11 survivor Harry Waizer.

If anyone had a right to jump up and down like a lunatic at the show of a full moon it was him, but instead of adding to the hatefest he said: ""I just can’t find it in me to be glad one more person is dead, even if it is Osama Bin Laden.""

I hope now that America’s Number One Bogeyman is no more the USA returns to some semblance of normality that has been absent from its landscape since the now discredited War on Terror began.

Yvonne Ridley in Tehran Times. 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.