Whilst the world rushes to judgement on Israel’s interception of the Freedom Flotilla and the deaths of 9 Turkish nationals, the actual humanitarian aid languishes in Israel.
Why?
MissingPeace have just issued a report after they inspected the aid along with members of the media at the Tzifrin army base.
Their report is vital in understanding the true intentions of the Turkish organisers and also the disgusting way that the IHH hijacked the cause of the real humanitarians in the convoy.
Journalists including international news media were taken to Tzifrin on June 7th. Only the cargo of one of the ships was at the stage where it had been processed and unloaded and awaiting delivery. Other ships’ cargoes had already gone through this process and 45 trucks of aid had been loaded ready to be sent, but not delivered, of which more later.
Most of the unloading of other ships was completed.
The ship in question was the Defne Y.
So you are thinking, ‘ three ships? But there were six ‘ (Rachel Corrie arrived later). So here goes:
A breakdown of the cargo found on the ships shows that of the six ships of the flotilla only three had humanitarian aid aboard:
Gaza ship: building materials, cement, iron – The ship has not been fully unloaded.
Sofi ship: building materials, iron
Defne Y ship: clothing, humanitarian aid (roughly 40 trucks worth), and games, building materials, wheelchairs.
The “Marmara”: carried only passengers and their personal belongings. Many passengers carried large sums of money on their body. There was no Humanitarian aid on this ship.
The other two ships did not carry humanitarian aid as well.
There were 600 people on board the Mavi Marmara, mainly Turkish, but no aid. What then, was their purpose? This was the largest boat by far. Why fill it with hundreds of people and their belongings but no aid? Why was the aid, the real aid from the Free Gaza Movement, on the small ships only? No aid whatsoever on the largest, Turkish boat. It could have taken hundreds of tonnes. Nothing. Why? Because it was never an aid ship, it was a blockade-breaking ship. It was an IHH propaganda weapon. It was a political demonstration. Well that’s fine if that is your purpose.
But this ground, the intention of the ‘activists’ [read: terrorists] who had taken over the Mavi Marmara in Istanbul and the subsequent lethal confrontation, is now the subject of an enquiry and has already been covered ad nauseam.
Let’s look at the fate of the cargo.
The humanitarian aid on all the ships was not packaged and not placed on the ship in an organized way, as one would expect from an organized humanitarian aid cargo. Everything was in individual units thrown on to a pile on the ships. This was not only unsafe, but it also caused a lot of damage to the objects, since the weight crushed a lot of things and since a lot of the things were just thrown on board.
So even where there was aid, no great care was taken. No-one thought to make use of an experienced aid agency to advise on loading. Hundreds of people gave money and aid items which were carelessly loaded. Does this tell us anything about the real priority of those involved?
And now what rogue/terrorist/racist/apartheid Israel does:
To deal with the cargo on the ships, here are the stages that it must undergo by Israel:
- Israel scans all the cargo and sifts out the humanitarian aid. The aid is then placed on trucks.
- The aid goes through x-ray machines to see that everything is indeed safe.
- Since nothing was packaged and organized, Israel did this.
This entire procedure costs a lot of time and a lot of money.
They actually package it up!
When asked how many tons of aid was on all the ships, the spokesman said they don’t know yet, since the only way one can weigh something is, if it’s packaged, compressed and sealed. He showed a stack of wood boxes with labels and said that this was done by Israel …
But Hamas still try to smear Israel, accusing them of taking batteries out of the electric wheelchairs (part of their excuse, no doubt for not letting the aid through).
The spokesman said that first of all, Hamas can’t know what Israel is doing because they are not allowing the aid into the Strip. Secondly, one needs to take out the batteries from the wheel chairs because if they are stored for a long time in the heat with the batteries, the batteries get ruined. He then took the journalists to the inside storage space, which is kept cool. There all the batteries were neatly placed in boxes all lined up. He said that the minute they will get a green light from Gaza, Israel can transfer everything into the Strip. Then the batteries will be transferred together with the chairs.
The batteries for the electric wheel chairs are gel batteries. Hamas says that Israel does not allow the entry of batteries into the Gaza Strip. Asked what the problem is with batteries the spokesman said the problem is not with gel but with liquid batteries. This is because 1 liter of this battery liquid can produce 50 kilos of nitroglycerin which is an active ingredient in the manufacture of explosives, specifically dynamite.
One can’t avoid the conclusion that Hamas invented a serious need for wheelchairs specifically because they wanted the liquid batteries to make explosives and if Israel didn’t allow them in they can accuse them of callousness. But this time Hamas weren’t quite clever enough. They should have been more specific when they asked for wheelchairs.
For me the story of the wheelchairs shows exactly why there is a blockade and exactly why even items that look innocent, such as wheelchairs, have to be checked and why Israel insisted that the ships dock at Ashdod.
Some of the cargo was expired medicine and worn goods. Only 1 per cent of the goods by weight was medicine.
A Japanese reporter who visits Gaza regularly, said that what is needed in Gaza is hospital/medical equipment and medicine. He said that if the flotilla would have been really concerned about what is needed in Gaza, they would have made sure to send more medical things.
Indeed. But even these expired medicines were being stored by Israel in a cool indoor space.
And finally a complete fiasco as to what to do with the aid because Hamas refuses to accept it. Hamas says the aid is tainted by passage through Israel even though hundreds of tonnes come through via Israel every day. The other reason is that they are waiting for Turkey to decide what to do with it.
The Japanese reporter was trying to unravel the reasons for the delay in delivering this so-called vital aid.
He spoke with the PA civil-committee about this issue. They said that it is the responsibility of UNRWA. Then he called UNRWA and he was told that they are not in contact with Israel and that it is not in their power to decide, but that it is the responsibility of UNSCO.
UNRWA also said that they received a message from Hamas telling them that they should not allow any humanitarian aid from the flotilla to enter the Gaza Strip. UNSCO also said that they are not in charge of the flotilla aid. They said that UNRWA deals with it, when confronted with the UNRWA reference to them, the man on the phone laughed and said this is not the case.
Next was COGAT, they first refused to give specific names and said “you can imagine who these international authorities are”. When pressed they said they are in touch with UNRWA, the Red Cross and “other powerful players such as the USA”, The COGAT official did not want to get more specific because he did not want to blame any particular organization until things are sorted out. The International Red Cross in Gaza told that they have their own projects and bring in their own aid.
They said they have nothing to do with the flotilla. When asked if they have met with Hamas about the flotilla, IRC said that they have had discussions with Hamas who told them not to accept any of the aid…
… [The Japanese journalist] said that if there is a real need for humanitarian aid in Gaza then everyone would work quickly to allow the entry of the aid into the Strip. Furthermore he said that if in Africa they need food, no one waits to deliver it.
Yet these very same international relief agencies are the first to accuse Israel of causing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
This is beyond belief.
Update: *See also the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs report http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques/2010/Equipment_aid_Gaza_flotilla_7-Jun-2010.htm
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To anyone that has half an unbiased brain to think and at least one unclouded eye to see, the evidence supporting Israel’s account is mounting.
Sadly, there is now a long history of Israel’s many accounts of its actions not being accepted.
The unrelenting propaganda as well as Israel’s often lamentable ability to make its case or explain its actions mean that Israel has to change. The government must find a different way to defend Israel and one that shows up its enemies to be what they are. Israel must engage with those who claim to be its friend and let them put there actions where their mouth is.
But first, even before any investigation, internal or otherwise, is cobbled together to appease world opinion, this is my version of what happened garnered from a growing body of evidence:
Whether you like it or not and whether you think it legal or not, Israel has imposed a maritime blockade on the Gaza Strip. The single most important reason for the maritime blockade is fear of arms smuggling from Iran. Israel has repeatedly said that it will not allow Iran to have a port a few tens of kilometres from Tel Aviv. This article about the Francop shows you the size and extent of such arms smuggling. This would be considered an act of war by many countries. Note that the ship was flying the Antiguan flag. This is not an isolated case. Iran supplies Hamas through Somalia and Egypt and Hizbollah, a Hamas clone, in Lebanon via Syria.
The Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish-based IHH (both ostensibly and evidentially aid organisations) organised a flotilla, loaded it with aid and set out with the expressed intention of ‘breaking the blockade’. The delivery of aid was secondary and here’s why:
There is an impression given that Gazans are starving, but they are not. The UN claims that only between one quarter and one fifth of goods previously entering before the blockade gets through Israel’s and Egypt’s border checkpoints.
It should be noted that Egypt also imposed a ‘blockade’ and has built a 30ft deep steel barrier across its border with Gaza.
Whilst there is no doubt that Gazan’s are suffering economically, it is in the interests of Israel’s enemies to use overblown and inflammatory claims. Sometimes, the truth does get out. May I refer you to this article in the Daily Telegraph: Dispatch: Just how hungry is Gaza?
“There is no starvation in Gaza,” said Khalil Hamada, a senior official at Hamas’s ministry of justice. “No-one has died of hunger.
But it is, however, true that there is hardship. This cannot and should not be denied. What is often lacking is context and moderate language. The moral issues at stake here, and your view of them, depend on your particular bias or understanding of the conflict. You may simply hate Israel and be prepared to do anything to destroy it or to blacken its name internationally. You may support Israel and be blinkered to, or underplay, Palestinian suffering.
Given the difficulties of the Gazan people, aid organisations which support Palestinians and Gazans in particular, and reject Israel’s security concerns, have sought to make political capital by attempting to run the blockade with the express intention of breaking it. At the same time they load up their ships with aid, including food and building materials. Their mission, they believe, is a moral one and they are motivated by their sense of outrage to pursue their goal.
Such activists have a right to protest. They can even try to break the blockade, but they know they will not be allowed to do so. They know, however, that this will be a propaganda victory. They know that the aid will still get through.
But their main motivation, as expressed many times in the recent Freedom Flotilla disaster is to break the blockade. One pebble cannot break a wall but eventually you will chip away enough to get through. It must also be said that these same people would never attempt to run a blockade by Iran or North Korea because they know they would be risking their lives. They know, if they are honest with themselves, that Israel may use force, but it will not be lethal. So why did it become lethal?
It is now becoming clear that at some point the flotilla was infiltrated by activists with links to terror and who had planned confrontation with Israeli forces. They brought on a board an assortment of knives, clubs and slingshots. They may have brought firearms, although there is no conclusive evidence. They were filmed by reporters on the boat chanting there intention to kill the Jews. They gave interviews stating it was Gaza or martyrdom. They did not care that they were about to risk the lives of hundreds of people including women and children (why would you bring children!)
Israel spent 6 hours trying to negotiate that the ships divert to Ashdod for inspection. The flotilla leaders refused. 6 hours! If they had real murderous intent they would have just sunk the ships.
Israeli commandos, include females, successfully boarded 5 of the 6 flotilla boats without encountering any resistance. There may have been some rough handling, but no-one on either side was injured. When Israel commandeered the 7th, delayed boat, the Rachel Corrie, yesterday, there was no resistance and no-one was injured.
But when the Mavi Marmara, the large lead ship, was boarded something went wrong.
Israel botched the Mavi Marmara assault. They used the wrong kind of troops and the wrong tactics. However, it is also clear, if you open your eyes even to what may be unpalatable to your viewpoint, the commandos came on board with a paintball gun and a Glock pistol. As each commando landed on the top deck wielding their paintball gun they were assaulted extremely violently with metal bars and knives. The ‘activists’ even had stun grenades, apparently.
The activists took two pistols from the Israelis and shot them. One was hit in the stomach. Another soldier was thrown over a guard rail and suffered serious head injuries. Three soldiers were taken hostage and moved below decks.
As his comrades lay on the deck injured, an Israeli Staff Sergeant dragged them to the side, stood in front of them to protect them, and took out his semi-automatic pistol. Given the Turkish autopsy evidence, 9 ‘activists’ were then shot and killed by 30 bullets suffering shots to the legs, lower body and lethal shots to the head, including the back and side of the head. Several others were injured.
Those looking for atrocity stories and who don’t understand how lethal force is applied will see this as disproportionate. Just think. You are that Israeli. You have seen your comrades beaten unconscious and shot. There is a mob advancing on you with clubs and knives and maybe guns. Your life is in danger. You try to disable your assailant by shooting him in the leg, it’s dark and you are on a heaving ship. Some leg shots may hit the lower abdomen. He keeps coming. He is about to stab you or shoot you or beat you. You are in fear of your life. You have asked for and been given permission to use your firearm. Your training tells you you have to shoot twice in the head. You keep doing this until they stop coming. You have been joined by a comrade who is doing the same thing. 9 men are dead and your assailants stop coming at you. At last there are enough of you to take charge of the boat.
They have their victory. Israel has committed another ‘atrocity’. The IHH infiltrators, with links to terrorism have won. They have provoked the tiger. Now the lies and distortions that an all too willing world wants to hear can begin.
Claims that the Israelis opened the firing from deck or even from the helicopters do not make sense. Why fire live rounds them come down a rope with a pop-gun? If the activists were unarmed surely live rounds would have cowered them? Maybe they fired stun grenades or even tear gas, who knows. We do not even know where the dead fell and whether all casualties were on deck.
The non-Turkish flotilla leaders have not acknowledged this infiltration. They either refuse to accept the evidence either because there is some form of cognitive dissonance going on, or they are deliberately ignoring it because it doesn’t play to their political preconceptions. They have already demonised Israel and nothing Israel does in national self-defence or individual self-defence will make them tell it otherwise.
Israel must recognise that it has lost the battle for world opinion long ago. A combination of its poorly thought out strategies and its opponents successful manipulation of public opinion has turned the only redoubt of democracy in the Middle East to a pariah state with a lower standing than genocidal Iran. Israel was once surrounded by neighbouring enemies who wanted to destroy it. Now most of the world is either its enemy or wants it to give in to those who would destroy it.
Israel must now stop trying to fight battles as if it were still the 1970′s. In this century of mass communication and instant sound bites, so-called human rights and NGO’s, Israel has to be more humble and a lot cleverer; it has to be less defensive diplomatically and fight back not with weapons but with diplomacy and legal instruments. It must make the same use of international courts and UN bodies as its enemies. It has to show the world more forcefully what it is up against.
What Israel must not do is lift the maritime blockade. It should get together with its ‘friends’ and the UN and ask a simple question: how do we stop Iran arming our enemy and rebuilding its capability whilst, at the same time enabling Gazans to rebuild their broken homes and lives? How will you help us? How long will Gilad Shalit rot in some hole in Gaza (if that’s where he still is?) What pressure will the UN bring on Hamas to allow the Red Cross or the Red Crescent visit him? Where are the pro-Israel NGO’s fighting to tell Israel’s story?
Israel has to agree to some form of international enquiry not because it should but because it is diplomatically the right thing to do. This should be the start of a new strategy for Israel and its fight back in the propaganda war that could destroy it. If it stops acting as the victor and starts acting a bit more like the victim the tide could turn.
Here are links to material which support the article above.
Jerusalem Post 06/06/2010 Mercenaries aboard Gaza ship
Jerusalem Post 06/06/2010 At least 5 Mavi Marmura passengers have terror links
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs 06/06/2010 Hamas refuses to allow flotilla aid into Gaza Strip
San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea, 12 June 1994
For some videos see my post http://www.raymondcook.net/blog/index.php/2010/06/03/col-kemp-israel-and-double-standards/
All news and videos about the flotilla see http://www.jta.org/bigstory
Continue reading about Flotilla: what we know and Israel’s choices
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Er.. Did I miss something with all the hoo-ha from the UN and Quartet urging Israel to open all the Gaza crossings, to ease its restrictions and allow EVERYTHING in? This will end the smuggling culture, says Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the UN. This will allow economic recovery and undercut extremism.
Apart from the naivety of this belief, why didn’t he go to Cairo and ask them to open up the Rafah crossing? Israel has no control of that crossing. Why does the Quartet not ask Cairo to ease restrictions? If you remember, Egypt is actually building a metal barrier across the entire border with Gaza. No-one is condemning this. No-one mentions it.
Just thought I’d mention that.
Continue reading about Gaza, the blockade and Egypt. Did I miss something?
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During and after Operation Cast Lead the Israel Defence Force (IDF) was vilified for ‘war crimes’ and the notorious Goldstone Report which concluded that Israel had a deliberate policy to kill civilians and destroy property has become a major vehicle for attacks on Israel.
Israel always maintained that in war mistakes are made but it was never its policy to target civilians. The IDF has conducted and continues to conduct its own investigations and has rebutted many of the specific accusations in the report.
As is the nature of attacks on Israel, the mud always sticks and anything ranging from truth to downright lies will pass as truth as long as it carries a negative image of the State of Israel with which its enemies can beat it.
Now there is an ironic echo of how Israel characterised its campaign in December 2008 to January 2009 and how NATO is conducting its ‘surge’, Operation Moshtarak, against the Taliban. There is an uncanny similarity in the language and also the situations that NATO has confronted.
Let’s draw one important distinction between Cast Lead and Moshtarak; Gaza is a heavily populated, built-up, narrow strip of land which is very difficult terrain in which to carry out a military campaign; Helmand is open country with relatively sparsely populated villages and towns.
Both Israel and NATO have stated that they have no argument with civilians. Israel went to extraordinary lengths to warn civilians of impending strikes by leafleting, mobile phone calls and even dropping special munitions on houses which sounded as if they were explosive devices but were only designed to warn those inside to get out.
NATO are fighting an extremist Islamist group who have repeatedly targeted NATO forces with IED’s; Hamas was rocketing Israeli civilians for several years sending over thousands of rockets into southern Israel.
No NATO country is directly threatened by the Taliban; Israel is not only directly threatened but Hamas have stated in their own charter that their goal is to destroy Israel and kill Jews.
Yet look at the different way the world’s press and especially the UN responds and reacts to operation Moshtarak:
the BBC reports :
Taliban militants are increasingly using civilians as “human shields” as they battle against a joint Afghan-Nato offensive, an Afghan general has said.
Gen Mohiudin Ghori said his soldiers had seen Taliban fighters placing women and children on the roofs of buildings and firing from behind them….
It is difficult for the Afghan army and Nato to storm Taliban-held areas because to do so may inflict heavy civilian casualties and there are still a lot of civilians in Marjah.
“Whenever they launch an attack, the Taliban take refuge in civilians’ homes.
Now isn’t that exactly what the IDF claimed Hamas were doing in Gaza and Goldstone found no evidence of this, or more specifically Fact-finding mission member Colonel Travers could find no evidence?
And then this in the same report:
US Marines fighting to take the Taliban haven of Marjah have had to call in air support as they come under heavy fire.
They have faced sustained machine-gun fire from fighters hiding in bunkers and in buildings including homes and mosques.
Now hang on, this is what the Israelis said Hamas were doing but not only did Hamas deny it but Goldstone again found little evidence and our friend Travers could find no evidence of mosques being used despite Israeli videos which conclusively proved the opposite and also an important independent witness Col. Tim Collins.
And then there was the incident where NATO said twelve civilians had been killed by a missile that had malfunctioned only later to correct this by saying that the intended target was hit but thy didn’t realise civilians were in the building.
Gen Carter confirmed on Tuesday a missile that struck a house outside Marjah on Sunday killing 12 people, including six children, had hit its intended target.
Gen Carter said the rocket had not malfunctioned and the US system responsible for firing it was back in use. Officials say three Taliban, as well as civilians, were in the house but the Nato soldiers did not know the civilians were there.
Initial Nato reports said the missile had landed about 300m (984ft) off its intended target. Gen Carter blamed these “conflicting” reports on “the fog of war”.
Now I urge you to cast your mind back to Operation Cast Lead where Israel was saying very similar things and the result was a UNHRC investigation, war crimes accusations and a threat that figures in the IDF and government would become international criminals – indeed some have already decided this is the case.
So where are the calls from the UNHCR now? How soon will Judge Goldstone regather is little band of men and women and go straight to the Taliban and ask then if they committed any war crimes (answer will be ‘No’) and give evidence of the many crimes of NATO. Will he then come up with a 500 page report recommending senior NATO commanders and politicians in NATO countries be taken to The Hague on charges of war crimes? Will Brown and Miliband, Obama and Clinton, Sarkozy and the rest be hauled before a tribunal? Will the US, UK and other NATO countries become international pariahs? And look at the difference: they were fighting far from home an enemy they claim is a threat to their national security. Did any UN body ever dispute this? Israel was fighting an enemy on its doorstep that was killing its civilians and targeting them on a daily basis for years and years before it took any action.
Now I know what you are thinking: in Gaza hundreds of civilians were killed; what about white phosphorus, white flags etc. Now just compare the terrains in Gaza and Afghanistan as I have already pointed out.
Israel has admitted mistakes; it may be that its interpretation of international law in respect of some of its actions differs from others; it may be that some of its soldiers acted disgracefully writing graffiti and trashing property. They should be disciplined. Are these war crimes? If so NATO is certainly guilty. And what about the Iraqi who was beaten up by British soldiers and died of his injuries? Is that not a war crime? Where is the UN on that? Where is the UN on Abu Ghraib? Where is the UN on Guantanamo Bay? Will the UN regard the Taliban as a legitimate military in the same way Goldstone and the UN regard Hamas?
What’s the difference?
I’ll tell you in case you didn’t already guess: Israel. Always Israel. They are not considered to be capable of regulating or examining their own conduct like the US or the UK or any European country or any great power such as China or Russia. Where are the resolutions on Chechnya? South Ossetia? Where Tibet?
The UN acts like a bully; pushing around small countries, especially Israel is fine but the big boys are exempt.
The UN is no longer fit for purpose because it is run supposedly along democratic lines but is numerically dominated by countries which are not. This same bunch of tyrants and dictators have a natural antipathy to Israel, not least that most of them are Muslim states. This means that whenever Israel tries to defend itself it will always be vilified and demonized. America can kill hundreds of thousands of Muslims. Sunnis can kill tens of thousands of Shia and vice versa. They can attack the others’ holy shrines and you just hear the odd ‘tut tut’. All Hamas have to do is show a dead baby and the entire world is calling for Israel’s destruction.
Isn’t that called anti-Semitism? Used to be. Doesn’t get Israel off the hook for real crimes or human rights violations but if there is never any differentiation or fairness with regard Israel’s actions then any genuine criticism which every country should be subject to, will be dismissed as vilification. If genuine criminals like Mugabe or Bashir are not pursued with the same vigour as legitimate Israeli politicians, if George W Bush and Tony Blair aren’t guilty but Tzipi Livni is then where is the justice? Think extraordinary rendition. Think torture. So why is Israel always the bogeyman?
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has recently released information which casts serious doubt on the bona fides of one of the members of the Fact Finding Mission led by Judge Goldstone and which led to the production of the Report which accused Israel of directly targeting civilians and deliberately destroying civil infrastructures contrary to the rules of war.
The member in question is Colonel (ret.) Desmond Travers. As the JCPA tells us:
Travers joined the Irish Defense Forces in 1961 and retired after forty years. As the only former officer who belonged to Justice Richard Goldstone’s team, he was the senior figure responsible for the military analysis that provided the basis for condemning Israel for war crimes.
The JCPA report slams Travers’s methodology and accuses him of bias.
During the Mission’s collection of testimonies from Palestinian psychologists in the Gaza Strip, Travers asked them straight out to explain how Israeli soldiers could kill Palestinian children in front of their parents. In an interview with Middle East Monitor, on February 2, 2010, he asserted that in the past Israeli soldiers had “taken out and deliberately shot” Irish peacekeeping forces in Southern Lebanon. Both of these statements by Travers are completely false. It should be stressed that one of the most vicious and unsubstantiated conclusions in the Goldstone Report is the suggestion that Israel deliberately killed Palestinian civilians.
This is rather like the ‘when did you start beating your wife’ question which bases the question on an assumption that assumes the guilt of the defendant.
When he was asked about Hamas intimidation that affected the Mission’s inquiries, he replied that that there was “none whatsoever.” Yet the Goldstone Report itself noted in Paragraph 440 that those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of Palestinian armed groups because of a “fear of reprisals.” He rejects the notion that Hamas shielded its forces in the civilian population and does not accept the idea that Israel faced asymmetric warfare.
Only a craven idiot could come to the conclusion there was no Hamas intimidation or that civilians were not used as human shields or that the warfare was not asymmetric. A craven idiot or someone so biased that his place in the mission not acceptable.
The report continues:
Travers comes up with a story that the IDF had unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s) that could obtain a “thermal signature” on a Gaza house and detect that there were large numbers of people inside. Incredibly, he then suggests that with this information that certain houses were “packed with people,” the Israeli military would then deliberately order a missile strike on these populated homes. The primary technical problem with his theory is that Israel does not have UAV’s that can see though houses and pick up a thermal signature. More importantly, Israel used UAV’s to monitor that Palestinian civilians left houses that had received multiple warnings, precisely because Israel sought to minimize civilian casualties, a fact that Travers could not fathom, because of his own clear biases.
The case against Travers appears to be growing. The entire JCPA report is well worth a read. It highlights inaccuracies in data and lack of professional conduct.
The clincher :
In an interview with Harpers, published on October 29, 2009, Travers makes a sweeping generalization: “We found no evidence that mosques were used to store munitions.” He then dismissed those who suggested that was the case by saying: “Those charges reflect Western perceptions in some quarters that Islam is a violent religion.” How many mosques did Travers investigate? He admits that the Mission only checked two mosques.
Of course, Israel produced photographic proof that large amounts of weapons were stored in mosques, like the Zaytun Mosque. In a subsequent interview, Travers rejected the Israeli proof: “I do not believe the photographs.” He described the photographs as “spurious.” Travers appears to be bothered by proof that contradicts the conclusions he reaches on the basis of a very limited investigation. In early 2010, Colonel Tim Collins, a British veteran of the Iraq War, visited Gaza for BBC Newsnight (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/ 8470100 .stm, 20 January 2010) and inspected the ruins of a mosque that Israel had destroyed because it had been a weapons depot. He found that there was evidence of secondary explosions cause by explosives stored in the mosque cellar. Travers clearly did not make the effort that Collins made.
And now the punchline:
Travers most recent interview also had a disturbing additional element. When addressing the role of British officers in defending Israel’s claims, Travers suddenly adds: “Britain’s foreign policy interests in the Middle East seem to be influenced strongly by Jewish lobbyists.
So the UN chose someone who believes the Jewish lobby conspiracy theory and that a cabal of Jews is directing UK foreign policy in the same way that Channel 4 came to a similar conclusion with no evidence whatsoever.
The UN Human Rights Commission chose their four mission members very well because the UNHRC is front-loaded with countries that seek to demonise and delegitimise Israel and then to cover their tracks by choosing ostensibly impeccable mission members to do a hatchet job on Israel. When the names were first put forward Israel could see that the mission would be biased and its conclusions were foregone. But now the document is out there to add to the litany of lies, half-truths, prejudice and propaganda that passes for justified criticism of Israel.
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The irredeemably flawed Goldstone Report, which was produced at the behest of UN Human Rights Council, came to the conclusion that both Israel and Hamas probably committed war crimes during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip between December 2008 and January 2009.
Both Israel and Hamas were charged with responding to the allegations in the report and conducting their own investigations into it to be presented to the UN Security Council.
The very idea of asking an organisation such has Hamas (which not only brutally represses its own people and murders its political opponents, but is also intent on the genocide of the Jewish people and the destruction of Israel as is written into its own charter and its many public broadcasts), to present a response to the UN is as mind-boggling as it would be for the UN to ask the Taliban to present a report on its actions in Afghanistan.
Whereas Hamas boasts of its war crimes and comes up with a ludicrous response to the UN, Israel, at least, has spent thousands of hours, conducted hundreds of interviews, brought dozens of indictments against its own soldiers and is still in the process of producing a 1000 page response to the Goldstone report.
This is what Hamas has to say, as reported by Ha’aretz, and so condemns itself from its own mouth:
The Hamas report will be submitted to the UN later this week, said the official, Mohammed al-Ghoul. Its argument is that rockets fired from Gaza were meant to hit military targets, but because they are unguided, they hit civilians by mistake. (My emphasis)
Anyone with even a minimal smattering of law and logic can see not only the contradictions in this last statement but must also see that this lie is so patent and so crass that were Mr al-Ghoul (and what an appropriate name that is!) a wooden puppet his nose would stretch from Gaza City to al Quds!
IT IS A WAR CRIME TO FIRE MUNITIONS WHICH CANNOT BE GUIDED TOWARDS AREAS OF POPULATION. PERIOD.
And if they are unguided, how can they possibly be meant to hit military targets!? This is the organisation and these are the people who are being legitimised by the UN just by treating them on an equal footing with a member of the UN. This is moral equivalence of the most pernicious and degrading kind. But Ban says, according to the Jerusalem Post,
he was uncertain whether Israel or the Palestinians had met UN demands to undertake “credible” investigations into allegations that they deliberately targeted civilians during last year’s Gaza offensive….
He said he hoped the assembly’s resolution will, in fact, result in probes “that are independent, credible and in conformity with international standards.”
But, he added that “no determination can be made on the implementation of the resolution by the parties concerned.
Eh? He may be uncertain about Israel but he must surely be god-damned bloody positive that Hamas targeted civilians because, apart from the overwhelming evidence AND their ongoing operations (e.g. barrel bombs along Israel’s coastline this week), THEY ADMITTED IT AND BOAST ABOUT IT. What the hell does he mean ‘he’s uncertain’? He’ll be wanting an investigation into Copernican heliocentricity soon.
The Ha’aretz article quotes al Ghoul as saying:
Palestinian armed groups have repeatedly confirmed that they abide by international humanitarian law, through broadcasting in different media that they intended to hit military targets and to avoid targeting civilians,” the Hamas report stated, citing casualties from “incorrect (or imprecise) fire.
What planet, indeed, what specie are these people from? The only media broadcasts I know about are vicious, Jew-hating, genocidal, blood-libelling filth.
This is what Israel has done according to the Jerusalem Post:
Israel released a 46-page paper last Friday documenting the steps it had taken to investigate IDF actions during Operation Cast Lead, stressing that its military judicial system was independent and came under civilian review, and dismissing four of the 36 allegations of war crimes found in the Goldstone Report.
The document also revealed that disciplinary action had been taken against two top officers – a brigadier-general and a colonel – for permitting artillery fire near a UN compound in a neighborhood in Gaza City…
The IDF, meanwhile, is continuing preparation of an in-depth, point-by-point rebuttal of the Goldstone report, which is expected to number over 1,000 pages and be ready within a number of weeks.
A subtly different response to Hamas.
It is true that Israel neither co-operated with the Fact Finding Mission led by Goldstone nor does it appear to be intending to have an independent judicial enquiry. Ban appears to be saying that such an enquiry may not be necessary because he has not dismissed the Israeli army enquiry as being an inadequate response; all he says is that response is incomplete, which is self-evident since they have not yet delivered the 1000 page document. Hamas’s report is incomplete because it is a risible heap of bovine excrement and the Palestinian Authority which decided it should have a report to (it can’t let its rival Hamas have all the glory) only began at the end of January!
It’s not the credibility of Israel that’s is being highlighted here but the credibility of the UN itself and its ridiculous playing out of the farce of a ‘credible’ report from Hamas and giving them the respectability of playing out that farce as if they were a responsible national entity and not a bunch of murderous genocides intent on spreading their obnoxious, pathological hatred of Jews.
Ban ki-moon? Ban ki-rupt more likely.
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Now that the United Nations Human Rights Council has voted to send the Goldstone report to the UN General Assembly, the head of the fact-finding team that produced the report, Richard Goldstone, is back-pedalling.
Goldstone has been exposed in all his naivety. Just like a ghetto Jew policeman, collaborating with his people’s murderers, Goldstone accepted the role of heading the fact-finding mission. And no sooner than the report is presented to the UNHRC, the resolution recommending it to the UN General Asembly becomes doctored to exclude any mention of Hamas and to include extraneous materials attacking Israel which were not part of the original brief.
And Goldstone, like a naive Jew collaborator never saw it coming. The revered jurist, the impartial investigator who produced a report so one-sided as to be obscene. Now he is widely reported as being “saddened” by the resolution as jta.org reports, Goldstone went on to say “”There is not a single phrase condemning Hamas as we have done in the report”
Well that’s naive and disingenuous, isn’t it? Even in the report the condemnation of Hamas was a mere after-thought thrown in, probably at Goldstone’s embarrassed insistence, as a fig-leaf to cover a deeply nasty biased and dangerous report.
So Goldstone finds himself surprised at being the patsy of the anti-Israel league.
You see the resolution of the UNHRC does not mention Hamas AT ALL! Surprise, surprise. The murdering, lying terrorist abomination that calls itself Hamas and who committed every war crime and broke every rule of war, the Geneva convention, customary law and human decency get off scot free whilst Israel is now called a war criminal and its pariah status no doubt enhanced. Meanwhile other countries for whom no investigation and no resolution will ever see the light of day (Russia in Chechnya and South Ossetia, China in Tibet, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and probably Pakistan) laugh on the sidelines or actively participate in condemning Israel.
This moral inversion, this moral blindness towards Israel and Israel alone is the real crime.
And the UNHRC resolution did not stop at the Goldstone Report. Here’s the extraneous stuff
Reaffirming the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and the inadmissibility of the acquisition of land by the use of force, as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations
So what’s that got to do with the Gaza conflict?
Affirming the applicability of international human rights law and the international humanitarian law, namely the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,
That’s OK until ‘to the Occupied Palestinian Territory..’ bit. This has nothing to do with Gaza but a lot to do with final status negotiations. Clearly those sponsoring the resolution have already decided that East Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian Territory even though there is and never has been a Palestinian state. Indeed, the resolution’s title is:
HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATION IN PALESTINE AND OTHER OCCUPIED ARAB TERRITORIES.
Do they mean Iraq? Probably the Golan Heights and Gaza which the UN is determined to call ‘occupied’ even though Israel abandoned it and withdrew all its troops several years ago. It was that very withdrawal which led to Gaza being taken over by Hamas and other terrorist groups who used the Gaza Strip to launch thousands of rockets against Israeli towns and cities and whose actions precipitated the conflict.
Only the naive and the blind could say that the text of the resolution includes Hamas by implication.
Goldstone, meanwhile has defended his Report in the Jerusalem Post and this defence is analysed brilliantly by Alan Baker here.
So like the ghetto policeman, Goldstone, a man of impeccable credentials, has sold his soul. But not because of self-serving, but because he has failed to spot the trap. He has failed to see how many lies and distortions Israel’s enemies are prepared to use against it. He has failed to expose the lies of Hamas, the lies of the Palestinian Authority and the moral inversion of the bleeding-heart human rights lobby for whom the narrative is simple: Israel is the aggressor and Palestinians the victim. End of.
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On Tuesday the Israel Defense Force (IDF) released a video in black and white, using night vision and taken by an unmanned drone.
The video followed a series of explosions in a residential area near Tyre in Southern Lebanon.
The video clearly shows rockets being transferred by truck from the site of the explosion to another location.
UN Security Council Resolution 1701 forbids arms to be brought into Southern Lebanon following the war between Israel and Hizbullah in 2006.
Today the Jerusalem Post has a story about Hizbullah’s release of a video taken on the ground and showing a similar exercise to that witnessed by the Israeli drone but claiming that the objects being moved were metal posts.
Just as the Palestinians have a wonderful film industry which fabricates evidence against Israel on a regular basis, Hizbullah now appear to be bidding for their place at the Cannes Film Festival.
Why would anyone take a video of metal posts and doors (so they also claim) being moved?
Why is the film taken in the daytime when the drone video was at night?
Why are there UNIFIL soldiers in the Hizbullah video and not not the IDF video?
The very fact of this blatant fabrication is an indicator of guilt.
Now the Lebanese want to report the IDF to the UN for breaching 1701! If Israel witnesses explosions of munitions in an area which is supposed to be free of munitions it has a right to investigate. And what does it find? Hizbullah are stashing rockets which can reach many parts of Israel.
And what does the UN do? Nothing. What does the pathetic Lebanese government do? Nothing. No international outrage. Nothing. Well no change there then. Just continue pillorying Israel for defending itself.
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A new website has been created which systematically dismantles the findings of the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead.
The report accused Israel of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity in its offensive against Hamas in Gaza in December 2008-January 2009.
Hamas got off lightly.
Now the Israeli Defense Force and individual officers and members of the government of the day may be accused of war crimes and subject to arrest and trial in the International Court of Justice if the UN finds cause to recommend further action.
This new website – www.goldstonereport.org is an intelligent and well-argued and meticulously documented analysis which exposes the lies, bias and bankrupt forensics of the report.
I urge you to read it.
Continue reading about The Goldstone Report – an important resource
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Libya, that bastion of democracy and human rights has forced the UN Security council to meet ahead of schedule to discuss the Goldstone report on alleged war crimes in Gaza by Israel and Hamas in Operation Cast Lead.
Presumably it’s Israeli war crimes Libya has in mind, not Hamas’s war crimes.
This is just as extraordinary as the original Palestinian Authority’s request to the UN Human Rights Council to delay the debate.
Now Libya and other Arab states say that October 14th is the day when the debate must take place. They can’t wait to accuse Hamas of its egregious human rights violations, can they.
Now the PA has made a U-turn and supports Libya’s request.
Of course Libya can force this issue as a member of the UN Human Rights Council.
A natural choice as a defender and investigator of Human Rights, of course. It’s rather like having Hannibal Lecter running a vegetarian restaurant.
For example, one of the most important of all human rights is the ability of a nation to choose its leaders and remove that leadership in regular elections.
Libyans have no human right to replace Colonel Gadaffi. No political parties are allowed in Libya.
For a full explanation of Libya’s right to serve on the UNHRC you might do well to visit the US Department of States’s website here.
You will see a litany of abuses including arbitrary arrest, detention without trial, torture, trumped up charges.
Look at this – remember?:
Trial Procedures
The law provides for the presumption of innocence, informing defendants of the charges against them, and the right to legal counsel. In practice defendants often were not informed of the charges against them and usually had little contact, if any, with their lawyers. Defense lawyers automatically were appointed, even if the defendant declined representation.
On two occasions, in 2004 and 2006, a court sentenced to death six foreign health workers accused of deliberately infecting 426 children with HIV‑tainted blood in 1999. The sentences reportedly were based on confessions that the accused made under torture. International observers reported serious concerns about the lack of investigation into allegations of torture and delays in bringing the case to a conclusion. In 2005 the Supreme Court accepted the appeal of the medics and ordered a retrial by the criminal court, which began in May 2006 and concluded with a second guilty verdict in December 2006.
During the second criminal trial, authorities denied the defendants and their lawyers the right to call witnesses or present evidence while giving wide latitude to the prosecution. Defendants and their lawyers had limited access to government‑held evidence. Following the December 2006 guilty verdict, the medics again appealed to the Supreme Court, which held its first hearing on the defendants’ appeal on June 20. On July 11, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s conviction and reinstated several lesser charges to the indictment, including alcohol consumption and currency violations. On July 17, the Higher Judicial Council intervened and commuted the death penalty to life imprisonment after the victims’ families expressed satisfaction with a compensation arrangement, which included a payment of one million dollars for each infected child, substantial foreign investments in the local health infrastructure, and European promises to provide medical care abroad for some affected children.
On July 24, the government allowed the medics to depart to serve their remaining prison terms in Bulgaria, where authorities pardoned the six medics upon arrival. (my emphasis)
The Libyans thus managed to kidnap innocent people and hold them to ransom and extort millions from European governments before releasing their hostages. If this had not been state kidnapping but some terrorist group in Iraq the hostages would not have been bartered.
Libya. The same country that greeted Lockerbie bomber and mass-murderer, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, with celebration and triumph on his release from a Scottish prison.
A fundamental human right is freedom of religion, is it not? Surely the UNHCR could not allow its council to have a member where a government proudly professes its anti-Semitism. Wrong. Gadaffi has just done just that. On March 27th 2007 Gadaffi said “”Jews will go extinct because everyone hates them.”
For Libya to be so exercised about the Goldstone report is rank hypocrisy of the most cynical kind. A country, run by a lunatic, who condones and supported terrorism across the world, a dictatorship, has the chutzpah to want to bring Israel to justice.
But that’s the problem with the UNHRC and the UN, They are seriously compromised by an obsessive, biased and politically motivated animus against Israel whilst the true criminal regimes in the world merit scant and mealy-mouthed condemnation. How does Libya stand on Sudan or Zimbabwe? Sri Lanka anyone? Russia and Georgia – where’s that investigation? China and Tibet? Where are the Goldstone reports on these countries?
Why should any country or any individual pay any attention to anything spewed out of the hate-filled mouths of just about every UN body. Judge Goldstone as next Secretary General? It’s a distinct possibility.
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