In a significant departure from most of her colleagues, Sen. Dianne Feinstein called Tuesday for an "impartial inquiry" into the Israeli commando raid on a humanitarian flotilla carrying aid to the Gaza Strip that left nine activists dead, including one American.
A long-brewing feud between tea party factions over Tuesday's Nevada Republican primary election has boiled over into bitter e-mail exchanges in which activists are lambasting one another as "turncoats" and "representative of a liberal mentality."
Surprisingly strong public support for punishing copyright freeloaders has emerged in a new poll. It suggests that activists have a job on their hands persuading the public that infringers are the Robin Hoods of the village - they might even be the village idiots.…
Turkey is demanding an international inquiry into Israel's fatal raid of a convoy carrying aid to Palestinians in Gaza last week, Israel's U.S. Ambassador is promising that his country will never apologize "for measures that were necessarily taken to defend the lives of our soldiers, and Senator Chuck Schumer is calling on the State Department to determine if the Turkish group bankrolling the flotilla has ties to Al Qaeda. And to top it off, the Pixies canceled their Wednesday concert in Tel Aviv to protest Israel's handling of the convoy.
(AP Photo/IHH)
Kim Deal could not be reached for comment, but Schumer has cited reports that the organization, Insani Yardim Vakfi, has "long-standing ties" to terror groups. Some say the group was connected to the 1999 "millennium plot" to bomb the Los Angeles airport. No military supplies were found aboard the ships. Yesterday activists on board the ships released a few photos to AP which the group insists shows activists "tending" to the injured soldiers. An Israel government spokesperson said the series of images "shows that our boarding party in fact did face deadly violence from the hardcore Islamist activists on the boat from the fundamentalist IHH movement."
A reader writes:
They were already tested. Noam Shalit, Gilad Shalit's father, made the following offer to the flotilla organizers last week: if you will take a package to my son, I will lobby the government and try and convince them to let you through to Gaza. His request was rejected.
Another writes:
Beinart insists that anti-blockade activists should demand the release of Shalit, a uniformed soldier captured on the battlefield. For what it's worth, I am against the blockade and in favor of Hamas releasing Shalit, but I am also in favor of Israel releasing the thousands (I've heard the number 11,000) of Palestinians who are rotting in Israeli prisons without trials.
By the way, everyone knows Corporal Shalit's name - how many of us can name a single Palestinian being held by Israel? Beinart? Anyone?
Israeli forces on Saturday boarded the Rachel Corrie after it ignored orders not to head for Gaza, but there was no repetition of the bloody violence that erupted when commandos stormed an aid boat earlier in the week.
While Israel hailed the peaceful end to the operation which the military said was carried out without any injuries on either side, the pro-Palestinian organisers lashed out at the Jewish state, accusing it of "hijacking" the ship.
The Israeli military said its forces had boarded the vessel "with the full compliance" of the crew and passengers in a peaceful operation in which there was no use of violence by either side.
"Our forces boarded the boat and took control without meeting any resistance from the crew or the passengers. Everything took place without violence," a spokeswoman told AFP, adding that the ship and the 15 people on board, most of them Irish or Malaysian activists, was en route to the southern port of Ashdod.
But the takeover prompted a furious response from the Dublin-based Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which accusing Israel of "hijacking" the Rachel Corrie and abducting its passengers.
"For the second time in less then a week, Israeli forces stormed and hijacked an unarmed aid ship, kidnapping its passengers and forcing the ship toward Ashdod port," it said, also noting that those on board were believed to be unharmed.
But army spokeswoman Avital Leibovitz insisted the operation passed off peacefully.
"They didn't storm the ship -- they boarded it with the agreement" of the people on board, she told an AFP reporter in Ashdod.
She said the Rachel Corrie had been commandeered in international waters some 21 nautical miles northwest of Ashdod after the vessel refused to respond to four requests to change course.
The operation began shortly after dawn on Saturday when activists on board the vessel spoke by phone with the Gaza-based welcoming committee and said they had been surrounded by Israeli naval boats.
Shortly afterwards, all communications with the ship were cut, Amjad al-Shawa told AFP in Gaza City.
The Irish government, which earlier this week had urged Israel to show restraint and allow the ship to reach Gaza, was kept informed of developments as the situation unfolded, a spokesman for the foreign ministry told AFP in Dublin.
The boat was carrying around 1,000 tonnes of aid and supplies, half of which was reportedly cement -- a substance which Israel does not allow into Gaza, claiming it could be used for building fortifications.
Israel has repeatedly argued that there is "no humanitarian crisis" in the Gaza Strip and that such supplies are not needed -- a charge roundly refuted by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
"The idea that there isn't a humanitarian crisis in Gaza is absurd," spokesman Chris Gunness told an AFP reporter in Ashdod, pointing out that in the past year alone, poverty among Gaza's population of 1.5 million had tripled.
"The number of people who cannot afford to feed themselves or their families has gone from 100,000 to 300,000 in the last year alone," he said, noting that 80 percent of the population was dependent on foreign aid.
The incident comes at a sensitive time for Israel, which is contending with the diplomatic fallout of an earlier raid on a flotilla of Gaza-bound aid boats, which left nine people dead, most of them Turks.
Despite an international outcry over the deadly commando operation, Israel vowed to block all attempts to reach Gaza by sea in defiance of the tight blockade it has imposed on the impoverished territory since 2006.
Israel had warned it would stop the Rachel Corrie -- a 1,200-tonne cargo ship named after a US activist killed in 2003 as she tried to prevent an Israeli bulldozer from razing a Palestinian home.
The two sides involved in Monday's deadly operation gave conflicting versions of what happened, with Israel saying its commandos only opened fire after they were attacked with clubs, knives, guns and other weapons.
Bulent Yildirim, head of the Turkish Islamic charity IHH, said activists used iron bars in self-defence after commandos fired indiscriminately when they stormed the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara.
Turkish prosecutors have launched an investigation into top Israeli leaders over the raid, Turkish press reports said on Saturday.
And UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said Israel could face prosecution over the deadly raid and that she was following requests for a referral to the International Criminal Court.
Update (12:55 am EST): About an hour ago, the Jerusalem Post reported that the Rachel Corrie had been boarded by Israeli authorities. The Post now reports that the ship has been “intercepted”: Navy ships have intercepted the boat Rachel Corrie approximately 55 kilometers from the Gaza Strip, and are calling on it to divert to Ashdod, activists [...]
AFP - Israel may have lost the initial PR battle over its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship, but it is fighting back with a barrage of video clips in a bid to prove activists initiated the violence.
So says the Guardian: Israel was tonight under pressure to allow an independent inquiry into its assault on the Gaza aid flotilla after autopsy results on the bodies of those killed, obtained by the Guardian, revealed they were peppered with 9mm bullets, many fired at close range. Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot [...]
“Israel does not need enemies: it has itself. Or more precisely: it has its government” writes The New Republic’s Leon Wieseltier in a bitingly titled column, Operation Make the World Hate Us: The assault on the ‘Mavi Marmara’ was wrong, and a gift to Israel’s enemies. It’s not just an Israeli government initiative. Operation Make The [...]
We don’t post a lot of politics here on Neatorama, so pardon me for this post about the new and controversial Arizona law that forced local police to check whether a person is an illegal immigrant (presumably from Mexico).
Critics contend that the law will lead to racial profiling. Even Mexican President Felipe Calderón has blasted the law as violating basic human rights.
Whether you agree with the law or not, here’s the point of this post: it turns out that despite its bluster, Mexico actually has very similar laws on its book against the country’s own Honduran illegal immigrants!
Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said the law "violates inalienable human rights" and Democrats in Congress applauded Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s criticisms of the law in a speech he gave on Capitol Hill last week.
Yet Mexico’s Arizona-style law requires local police to check IDs. And Mexican police freely engage in racial profiling and routinely harass Central American migrants, say immigration activists. [...]
"There (in the United States), they’ll deport you," Hector Vázquez, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, said as he rested in a makeshift camp with other migrants under a highway bridge in Tultitlán. "In Mexico they’ll probably let you go, but they’ll beat you up and steal everything you’ve got first."
Chris Hawley of USA Today has the full story: Link (Photo: Sergio Solache/USA Today)
Beinart presses anti-blockade activists to demand the release of Gilad Shalit, the young Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas since 2006:
Were activists in Ireland and Malaysia and Turkey to take up Shalit’s cause, it would embarrass Hamas to no end. Hamas would likely reply that it cannot release Shalit unless Israel releases the Palestinians prisoners it holds, and perhaps Israel should release some of them. But the activists could answer that there is no justification for deliberately harming the innocent. That, after all, is what they say about Israel’s blockade. If you are for ending the collective punishment of Gaza (which is not the same as trying to prevent Hamas from acquiring weapons) regardless of whether Shalit is released, as I am, you should also be for releasing Shalit, regardless of whether the blockade ends or Palestinian prisoners are freed.
On 1 July, New Jersey is slated to become the 14th state in America to legalise medical marijuana, after five years of lobbying by pro-pot activists. But unlike in more liberal states such as California, New Jersey is enacting the toughest pro-pot law ever.
Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) is facing a bruising battle this election year, and probably needs all the help he can get. According to Maplight.org, the Senate Majority Leader has received $179,640 in pro-Israel campaign contributions.
Following the lead of the Obama administration, and nearly all elected US politicians on both sides of the aisle, Reid is firmly defending Israel's interception of a "freedom flotilla" headed for Gaza, which resulted in the death of at least nine activists, including a US citizen, based on the grounds that the country has a right to defend itself.
Despite widespread condemnation from the world, and even from elements of the US media, few Democrats are willing to go against Israel, more for the sake of donations from AIPAC than votes, as many liberal Jewish Americans side with the activists.
"Israel is one of our strongest and most important allies, and the United States stands firmly with Israel at this critical time," Reid's statement says.
The Senate Majority Leader notes, "I deeply regret the loss of life in the flotilla incident, including the death of an American citizen."
Reports claim that Furkan Dogan was shot at close range, with four bullets in his head and one in his chest.
Reid then states that Israel acted to stop shipment of "weapons," but nothing was found on the boat except for a few slingshots and knives that the IDF highlighted in a series of videos on YouTube. Without a word about the controversial Israel blockade of Gaza, Reid also mentions fears of "terrorists," and then essentially blames activists for what happened for failing to accede to Israel's instructions while they were in international waters.
Israel has an obligation to protect its citizens and therefore has a clear right under international law to prevent weapons from getting in the hands of terrorists determined to target them. Israel indicated it was willing to put in place a process to ensure that legitimate humanitarian relief reached Gaza. Unfortunately this offer was rejected.
"Israel has pledged to carry out a transparent and thorough investigation of this incident, and I look forward to its findings," Reid's statement concludes, without mentioning that Israel has rejected any international probes undertaken by independent bodies.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
