Murder on the high seas

[Chief Editor]

Murder on the high seas


Trigger-happy Israeli soldiers gear up for another offensive in waters off the Gaza coast. Below, the video grab of the sequence of Monday’s raid. (Agencies)


By AGENCIES
Published: Jun 1, 2010 00:46 Updated: Jun 1, 2010 01:34





Israeli attack on aid flotilla leaves 10 dead; world condemns act of piracy and terrorism

JERUSALEM: Israeli marines stormed aid ships bound for Gaza on Monday and at least 10 rights activists were killed, triggering a diplomatic crisis and an emergency session of the UN Security Council.

European nations, as well as the United Nations and Turkey, voiced shock and outrage at the bloody end to the international campaigners' bid to break Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli Navy stopped six ships ferrying 700 people and 10,000 tons of supplies toward the Palestinian enclave, but the unprecedented raid on ships in international waters and the massacre of unarmed civilians left Israel isolated and condemned.

Once-close Muslim ally Turkey said Israel has "lost all legitimacy". "A state that committed these crimes has lost all legitimacy in the international community," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the Security Council at an emergency session called to discuss the raid. "It is murder committed by a state. It has no justification whatsoever."

US President Barack Obama said he wanted the full facts soon and regretted the loss of life. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also voiced regret as he cut short a visit to Canada and rang Obama to call off a White House meeting planned for Tuesday. His White House meeting was intended to soothe ties with Obama, which have been strained by differences over Jewish settlement construction that had delayed a revival of peace talks with the Palestinians.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas seemed unlikely to hold further sessions soon of US-mediated peace talks that began three weeks ago. He said: "What Israel has committed on board the Freedom Flotilla was a massacre."

As the captured foreign vessels were escorted into Israel's port of Ashdod, accounts were sketchy of the pre-dawn operation, some 120 km out in the Mediterranean. Black-clad commandos can be seen rappelling down from helicopters then pointing assault rifles, in some of the dramatic footage. Israel says the troops returned fire after they were attacked with live rounds, knives and clubs, but the organizers of the Gaza blockade busting bid insist the soldiers started shooting the moment they hit the deck.
"They fired directly into the crowd of civilians asleep," the Free Gaza Movement said.

Only selective footage of the confrontation has been broadcast as communications with the six ships participating in the flotilla appeared to have been scrambled during the operation.

Three choppers and several commando boats approached the flotilla at about 4 a.m. An Al Jazeera correspondent on board the Turkish ship "Mavi Marmara" said the Israeli soldiers continued shooting even though a white flag of surrender had been raised.

He said hundreds of Israeli troops attacked the ships and that the captain was among those wounded.

Indications are that most, if not all of those killed were aboard the Marmara, which carried the majority of the 700 activists who hoped to make their way toward the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu said at least 10 activists died on the Mavi Marmara. Seven marines and 20 protesters were injured, the military said.

Protest organizers said they believed up to 16 people may have been killed, including six Turks. A senior Israeli officer said most of the dead were Turks. The convoy also featured Americans, Israelis, Palestinians and many Europeans.

Israel imposed a communications blackout on those aboard the convoy and other accounts of events were not available. Consular officials were at Ashdod seeking access to detained foreigners. Veteran Pakistani TV journalist Talat Hussain, who was on one of the boats covering the event, is missing, his family said.

Ambassadors from the 27 EU countries condemned Israel's use of violence against the flotilla of ships.

"The EU condemns the use of violence that has produced a high number of victims among the members of the flotilla and demands an immediate, full and impartial inquiry into the events and the circumstances surrounding it," the ambassadors said in a statement.

Earlier, France, Germany, Ireland, Britain, Spain and Greece whose citizens were on the boats expressed shock and outrage at the raid and the civilian deaths. Greece scrapped a series of joint military exercises that were planned with Israel.

In London, more than a thousand pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated outside the Israeli Embassy in to denounce the killings.

Waving Palestinian flags and placards saying "Disarm Israel" and accusing Israel of "war crimes", the protesters had earlier marched through the capital and stopped outside the British prime minister's Downing Street residence.

The demonstrators, who were noisy but peaceful, then marched across London to gather near the Israeli Embassy which stands in a road blocked off by security gates which were guarded by hundreds of police.

[Chief Editor]

Israel vows to continue Gaza siege

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:42:42 GMT

Israeli Navy vessels

Israel vows to continue its naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, after launching a bloody attack on an international aid convoy which had aimed to break the siege.

The Israeli security cabinet said in a statement on Tuesday that it was "a clear act of self defense" for Tel Aviv to maintain the restrictions at sea, Reuters reported.

The Israeli siege of the strip also includes cutting Gaza off from the land and aerial routes which reach the coastal sliver. It took effect in mid-June 2007, reinforcing the limitations Tel Aviv had already put in place.

In a Monday attack on the Freedom Flotilla relief mission, Israeli forces killed at least 20 people.

The Israeli ministers blamed the activists for the deaths and said the assault was "the Israeli army action against the violent provocation at sea."

680 international campaigners were detained by the Israeli military. They are expected to be sent to the border with Jordan before being deported to their home countries.

HN/MMA

[Chief Editor]

Israel's Isolation Deepens
Netanyahu Decries 'Offensive of Hypocrisy'; New Strains on Trade, Cultural Ties

By CHARLES LEVINSON And JAY SOLOMON

• JUNE 3, 2010

JERUSALEM—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused his nation's critics Wednesday of an "international offensive of hypocrisy," as the growing diplomatic crisis over the raid on a flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists threatened to deepen Israel's isolation from much of the rest of the world.

Speaking as Israel said it was completing the expulsion of nearly 700 activists detained when their Gaza-bound ships were intercepted Monday in an operation that left nine dead, Mr. Netanyahu said the blockade of the Palestinian territory is necessary to prevent missile attacks against Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Terrorists affiliated with the Palestinian faction Hamas were to blame for the violence aboard the Mavi Marmara, one of the ships headed to the Gaza Strip, he said.

Early Thursday morning, hundreds of the deported aid activists arrived at Istanbul airport, greeted by throngs of supporters waving Palestinian and Turkish flags.

The international rebuke over this week's incident, from friend and foe alike, is stoking fears among officials here that increasing international moves to isolate Israel diplomatically—until recently confined to Israel's Arab enemies, a number of pariah states and the West's far-left political fringe—could gain broader traction.

Israel's bungled attempt to stop the aid flotilla from reaching Gaza also highlights how an increasingly forceful strategy by Palestinians and their supporters to turn to boycotts, international isolation, and relatively nonviolent protests is confronting Israel with a challenge it appears ill-prepared to counter.

Israel has faced rising international criticism since the 2006 Lebanon war, and last year's Gaza conflict fueled a new burst of condemnation. The 2009 election of Mr. Netanyahu and a less accommodative government fed doubts in the international community that Israel was committed to making compromises with the Palestinians that many outsiders thought necessary to the pursuit of peace.

Israeli officials point to a significant toughening by many allies on important Israeli strategic issues, including peace efforts with the Palestinians. The United Nations has intensified pressure for Israel to accept U.N. oversight of its nuclear program, and to agree to ban nuclear weapons from the region.

The fallout also has ricocheted beyond diplomacy, Israeli officials say. It is reflected in incidents including British grocery chains dropping products produced in Israeli settlements; Scandinavian pension funds divesting themselves from an Israeli defense company; and the spread of an annual "Israel Apartheid Week," backed by mostly left-leaning Western groups, to 50 cities world-wide.
Aftermath of the Raid

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told lawmakers in Parliament Tuesday that Israel's boarding of the Mediterranean flotilla late Sunday was an attack "on international law, the conscience of humanity and world peace."

The Swedish Football Association has appealed to UEFA, European soccer's governing body, to cancel a Friday match in Israel between the countries' under-21 squads, according to the Eurosport news channel and Swedish newspapers. The move couldn't be independently confirmed.

The Israeli foreign ministry recently issued a quiet warning to diplomats to scale back public appearances overseas, after a string of incidents in which protesters disrupted speeches by Israeli diplomats. In February, protesters in the state of Vermont interrupted a performance of the Israel Ballet.

"There is a sense, a fear here, that the more extreme anti-Israel ideologies are seeping into more accepted mainstream discourse," said a senior Israeli official responsible for tracking and combating efforts to delegitimize Israel. "It's no longer some abstract intellectual debate," he said. "It's people pushing the debate into mobilizing others into thinking this is a totemic issue of human rights and right-versus-wrong—and it's not."

A recent report by the Reut Institute, a Tel Aviv-based think tank that provides strategic-thinking support to the Israeli government, warned the deligitimization effort "has already gained strategic significance and may evolve into an existential threat." It said that Israel's freedom to act militarily against perceived threats has been limited as a result of the campaign.

The report criticized Israeli leaders for having "no coherent conceptual response" to push back against global critics. It panned an Israeli security doctrine that military might alone would ensure Israel's defense and has historically considered international opinion to be a peripheral security concern.

Relations between the U.S. and Israel showed strain following the deaths of at least nine pro-Palestinian activists in an Israeli commando raid on a ship headed to the Gaza Strip.

On Wednesday, Turkey, whose citizens accounted for all nine of those known to have been killed in the flotilla incident, said it would cancel three military and maritime-rescue exercises with Israel that were planned for this year and recalled its ambassador from Israel.

Some Western officials fear that if Israel feels isolated and cornered, it may be more likely to turn to unilateral force to confront threats from enemy states such as Iran.

Israeli critics of the handling of the flotilla operation are concerned that it has undermined the country's ability to deter its more potent foes. If Israel's most elite commando unit can't execute a relatively straightforward operation just off Israel's coast, they say, that calls into question the military's ability to pull off a far more complicated strike against Iran's nuclear facilities thousands of miles away. Israel's military has defended the flotilla operation.

Well before Monday's sea battle, Israeli officials had been blaming the Obama administration's tough line on Israel for emboldening other countries to follow suit. "It is clear that many countries feel they have more leeway, and that if America can afford to speak the way it does on Israel, then why should they stay behind," another senior Israeli foreign ministry official said in an interview before Monday's bloodshed. "America draws the line and they all align themselves on this." U.S. officials stress that all their actions are designed to strengthen Israel's national security, and that establishment of a Palestinian state is essential to that.

U.S. officials have rushed to assure Israel of continued American support amid the fallout of Monday's clash. Washington has refrained from the blunt criticism of Israel's handling of the flotilla incident that allied governments, especially European ones, have issued in recent days.
Journal Community

Israeli officials have grown particularly concerned about what they view as the European Union's increasingly aggressive stance over the Arab-Israeli conflict. These officials acknowledge that Europe has normally taken a more pro-Palestinian position than the U.S. But they say that the Obama administration's public criticism of Mr. Netanyahu's government has been seen as a green light by some European nations to press Israel further.

Some European diplomats in Jerusalem say the new tone coming from Washington has had an impact, but that shifting public opinions in their home countries are also playing a role.

In recent months, both the U.S. and the EU have formally signed onto the Palestinian Authority's timetable for the creation of an independent Palestinian state within two years.

But some European countries have also been pushing for the EU and the U.S. to join the fray more directly if the talks falter over the next two years. In particular, they've sought to lay down the terms of a peace agreement, according to an April draft of an EU statement on the Arab-Israeli conflict for submission to the U.N. Security Council, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Israel has strongly rejected such a stance.

The draft said that the Quartet of bodies engaged in pushing for Mideast peace—the U.S, the EU, Russia and the U.N.— should "propose solutions for the end game" if talks stall. Perhaps more significantly, it said the Quartet should reserve the right to unilaterally recognize the establishment of Palestinian state "on the basis of the 4 June 1967 border" if negotiations fail.

This language was eventually stripped out of the statement, according to diplomats engaged in the process. But members of Mr. Netanyahu's government were alarmed nonetheless by how far the EU draft went, according to Israeli officials. A spokeswoman for the European Commission, the EU's executive body, declined to comment on the internal deliberations.

The chill between U.S. and Israel comes amid a series of other big diplomatic setbacks in recent months. A U.N. report, the Goldstone Report, accused Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity for their conduct in the Gaza War last year. Israel has dismissed the report as unbalanced.

Both the EU and the Mideast Quartet have hardened their positions since then, explicitly recognizing East Jerusalem as the rightful capital of a future Palestinian state for the first time.

Write to Charles Levinson at charles.levinson@wsj.com and Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com

[Chief Editor]

Israel to investigate Flotilla attack

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 01:39:39 GMT

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) and IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi. (Reuters photo) A Turkish probe has named Netanyahu a suspect in the assault.

The Israeli military plans to examine what it calls the failures and lessons of its bloody assault on a Gaza-bound multinational relief mission.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced the probe on Monday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi has appointed reserve General Giora Eiland to head the board of inquiry, which will investigate the Freedom Flotilla incident.

The Israeli military attacked the Freedom Flotilla in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea early on May 31, killing nine Turkish citizens on board the M.V. Mavi Marmara and injuring about 50 other people who were part of the team on the six-ship convoy.

Israel also arrested nearly 700 activists from 42 countries on board the Freedom Flotilla, which was attempting to break the siege of Gaza in order to deliver 10,000 tons of humanitarian assistance to the long-suffering people of the territory. Later orders were issued for their deportation.

Three Freedom Flotilla activists, Aydin Atac, Celebi Bozan, and Osman Kurt, are still missing.

The board of inquiry will take into account internal Israeli navy testimonies and report the results to the General Staff by July 4.

Tel Aviv has rejected the United Nations proposal for an international probe.

Also on Monday, an Israeli government forum decided to establish an internal investigative panel, partly in coordination with the United States, Israeli media outlets reported, according to Reuters.

The Turkish Prosecutor's Office in Bakirkoy, Istanbul has already started an investigation in which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considered the main suspect and Ashkenazi and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak are also suspects.

On Monday, Barak denied that the three-year blockade of Gaza is depriving its 1.5 million residents of food, fuel, and other necessities. "There is no humanitarian crisis or hunger in Gaza," he stated.

HN/HGL