Rachel Corrie, too...

Israel's Attack on us All

How many civilians were killed in Israel’s dawn attack on the Gaza-bound flotilla of aid? We still don’t know. How many wounded? Your guess is as good as mine. Were the aid activists armed with guns? Yes, says Israel. Were they in cahoots with al-Qaeda and Hamas? Certainly, says Israel. Did the soldiers act reasonably? Of course, they faced a lynch, says Israel.

If we needed any evidence of the degree to which Western TV journalists are simply stenographers to power, the BBC, CNN and others are amply proving it. Mark Regev, Israel’s propagandist-in-chief, has the airwaves largely to himself.

The passengers on the ships, meanwhile, have been kidnapped by Israel and are unable to provide an alternative version of events. We can guess they will remain in enforced silence until Israel is sure it has set the news agenda.

Hamas, and no less, Iran and Hezbollah, learned early on that Israel's own embargo against Hamas-ruled Gaza was the most sophisticated and powerful weapon they could have deployed against the Jewish state.

Here in Israel, we have still yet to learn the lesson: We are no longer defending Israel. We are now defending the siege. The siege itself is becoming Israel's Vietnam.

As I write at 5pm on Monday, May 31, all day has passed since the early morning reports of the Israeli commando attack on the unarmed ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, and there has been no response from President Obama except to say that he needed to learn “all the facts about this morning’s tragic events” and that Israeli prime minister Netanyahu had canceled his plans to meet with him at the White House. Thus has Obama made America complicit once again in Israel’s barbaric war crimes. Just as the US Congress voted to deep-six Judge Goldstone’s report on Israel’s war crimes committed in Israel’s January 2009 invasion of Gaza, Obama has deep-sixed Israel’s latest act of barbarism by pretending that he doesn’t know what has happened.

No one in the world will believe that Israel attacked ships in international waters carrying Israeli citizens, a Nobel Laureate, elected politicians, and noted humanitarians bringing medicines and building materials to Palestinians in Gaza, who have been living in the rubble of their homes without repairs or medicines since January 2009, without first clearing the crime with its American protector. Without America’s protection, Israel, a totally artificial state, could not exist. No one in the world will believe that America’s spy apparatus did not detect the movement of the Israeli attack force toward the aid ships in international waters in an act of piracy, killing 20, wounding 50, and kidnapping the rest. Obama’s pretense at ignorance confirms his complicity.

"It was hell on the sea. I saw Israeli soldiers killing activists in cold blood and then walking on their bodies," Farouq, who was one of more than 700 activists aboard the Freedom Flotilla attacked by Israeli commandos, said on Tuesday in Cairo.

"The Israeli soldiers sprayed bullets as if they were a mafia in an American film."

Farouq and his colleague Mohammad Al Beltagui were detained along with many activists, who survived the widely condemned Israeli attack. They were released late on Monday after direct intervention by the Egyptian Foreign Ministry.

At approximately 10:50 PM eastern time, Israeli warships captured the MV Rachel Corrie, an Irish aid ship bound for the Gaza Strip. Israeli troops are said to have boarded the vessel and arrested everyone on board, which included a high ranking former UN official, Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday, and a Nobel laureate. No violence or injuries were reported so far.

The Israeli military insists that, far from the straightforward massacre of civilians that it appears to be, they are the victims of a massive conspiracy to frame them, and that 50 “well trained” Turks with communication devices, who they said were likely ex-military, were on board shooting and throwing grenades at them. The fact that no grenades or guns or communication devices or, indeed, “terrorists” were found on board is being claimed as another coverup, that after the massacre the “terrorists” somehow had the presence of mind to throw all the evidence overboard. Exactly how they all disappeared themselves in unclear, but not a single captive was charged with any crime.