Israel has attacked Gaza Flotilla (dead and wounded)

[Ed Jewett]

The video above was taken from here:

A YOUTUBE CLIP THAT WILL NOT BE CENSORED

[which contains other embedded videos as well]

Israel is trying to make this into a popularity contest…..
3 most viewed YouTube clips in the world – posted by IDF

IDF clips of clash aboard a Gaza flotilla aid ship viewed by some 3 million people Wednesday. Al Jazeera video of same incident comes in fourth with 616,000 views.


In the online public relations arena, it appears that the Israel Defense Forces is winning the battle, at least for now. Three of the four most viewed clips on the popular video website YouTube in recent days were posted by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.


The videos were posted after a clash between Israeli navy commandos and activists aboard a boat carrying aid and heading toward blockaded Gaza resulted in 9 deaths and dozens of injuries early Monday morning.


The most watched YouTube video on Wednesday was a clip depicting Israeli navy commandos being propelled down from a helicopter onto the Turkish aid ship Mavi Marmara and subsequently being beaten by the activists on board.




This video reached an astounding 1.2 million views as of 7 p.m. Wednesday Israel time. This video was taken from an adjacent Israeli navy vessel.



Another video, this one taken from an Israeli military helicopter, also garnered close to one million views.



A third clip, which includes a soundtrack of communications between the commandos, was viewed by over 650,000 people. Overall, videos posted in recent days by the IDF have gotten some 3 million hits.



An Al Jazeera video, which shows the activists on the boat running away from IDF troops, was viewed by 616,000 people as of Wednesday evening, bringing it to fourth place. This was the first video that was posted online following the tragic event, hours before the IDF spokesperson’s Unit posted its videos.

On Tuesday, the YouTube battle between IDF and Al Jazeera was still close, but the IDF clips claimed the lead overnight Wednesday (daytime in the U.S.)
The operators of YouTube have decided to block the response option on all videos pertaining to the event. (mini censorship)

Above taken from here:


http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-de...f-1.293994

[Keith Millea]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/06/04-9

Published on Friday, June 4, 2010 by Inter Press Service If World Governments Will Not Confront Israel, What Path Should Civil Society Take?

by Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS - If, as expected, the U.N. Security Council remains politically impotent and refuses to penalise Israel for the killings of nine pro-Palestinian civilians on a ship carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, what is the next course of action?


People gather during a pro-Palestine protest in Brussels, Belgium, Friday June 4, 2010. Israeli commandos on Monday stormed six ships carrying hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists on an aid mission to the blockaded Gaza Strip, killing 9 people and wounding dozens after encountering unexpected resistance as the forces boarded the vessels. (AP Photo/Yves Logghe)

A global civil society campaign to de-legitimise Israel? Formal or informal sanctions by individual states? Worldwide arrest warrants?

All of these - and more - are in the realm of possibility, say two leading constitutional experts, Professor Richard Falk, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Michael Ratner, president of the New York- based Centre for Constitutional Rights.

The gridlock in the Security Council is likely to remind civil society forces that justice for the Palestinians will depend on bottom-up conflict resolution, and a global delegitimising campaign that worked so well in the struggle to defeat South African racism, Falk told IPS.

Asked how Israel could be punished and/or penalised for its atrocities - if action is to be taken outside the Security Council chambers - Falk said there are two sets of punitive responses outside of the U.N. system.
First, by strong diplomatic initiatives, as for instance, the deterioration of Israeli trade and security relations with Turkey, and others; and by some governments adopting informal or formal sanctions - again the South Africa analogy is relevant, he said.

Secondly, by civil society initiatives that move toward further de-legitimisation of Israel, such as a citizen tribunal on Israeli aggression on the high seas or slow genocide in Gaza; an intensifying campaign fueled by outrage, including the failure of the United Nations to uphold international law in relation to Israel, said Falk, who is also professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University.

Ratner told IPS the murdered and injured citizens from various countries can and should begin criminal prosecutions in their home countries against Israeli officials who ordered this attack in international waters.

"Worldwide arrest warrants should issue. Israeli officials should understand that they may have impunity in Israel, but that they leave Israel at their peril," he said.

The Israeli attack on the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid, which resulted in the killings of eight Turkish nationals, has provoked anger and protests worldwide.
According to news reports, there were more than 600 civilians from 32 countries on board the six ships which flew the flags of Turkey, Greece and Comoros.

But after a 12-hour session Monday, the Security Council issued a tame "presidential statement" condemning what has been described by critics as "high seas piracy and banditry".

The United States, which has traditionally thrown a protective arm around Israel - whether the Jewish state is right or wrong - was primarily responsible for "watering down" the statement and refusing to adopt a formal resolution against Israel.

Secure under a protective U.S. umbrella, Israel is unlikely to be singled out for condemnation or even subjected to Security Council sanctions or resolutions.

"Yes, it is likely that Israel will continue to enjoy de facto impunity as a result of Euro-American geopolitical protection," Falk told IPS.
But he predicted that European support for Israel is likely to be under strain "after such a flagrant disregard of international law and such a cruel and arbitrary use of force".

Ratner told IPS that "at some point - [and] we may be reaching that point - the anger at Israel by Muslim populations of countries like Turkey and Pakistan, and by extension their anger at the U.S., UK. and France for their continued support in the Security Council for Israeli lawlessness, may force a change."

This is not because those countries care a whit about Palestinians, he said, but because their security depends on not alienating millions in an area they deem crucial to their economic and physical security.
"So I have not given up hope for increased pressure on Israel from the Security Council," he said.

The Security Council's failure to condemn this attack is also part of its failure to act on prior occasions when Israel has violated international law, such as in Gaza, said Ratner. At a minimum, the Security Council should refer this matter to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, he added.

"The Security Council overlooking lawlessness in the past has led to more lawlessness in the future. It has given Israel impunity to carry out horrendous human rights violations," he noted.

As the Security Council, controlled on this issue by the U.S., the UK and France, protects Israel, "We are seeing the emergence of a remarkable phenomenon: militant activism by thousands from all over the world taking action that is the best hope for forcing a change that could end the blockade, end the settlements and has the potential to bring peace," he said.

Addressing parliament Wednesday, a visibly angry Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that, "Even despots, gangsters and pirates have specific sensitiveness, (and) follow some specific morals."

"But those who do not follow any morality or ethics, those who do not act with any sensitivity, to call them such names would even be a compliment to them," he said.

"This brazen, irresponsible, reckless (Israeli) government that recognises no law and tramples on any kind of humanitarian virtue, this attack by the Israeli government must by all means be punished," he added.

Referring to the Israeli version of the attack, Erdogan said the government in Tel Aviv, "has made lying its state policy and does not blush about the crime it commits".

Instead of expecting the Israelis to open an investigation, "the international community must investigate this incident in all its dimensions and must give the legal response", he added.

© 2010 IPS North America

[Peter Lemkin]

The ship Rachael Corrie is now only a short distance from Gaza, being shadowed by several Israeli Navy ships and a zodiac swiftboat with commandos aboard very close. The Israelis just [within the last 30 minutes] cut off their communications. They have announced they will attempt to get to Gaza, but if boarded will offer no resistance and all will try to get to the mid-deck, sit down and show their hands empty - palms facing the boarding pirates. I wish them luck. They have gotten far, but I fear they will shortly be boarded or worse. The Israeli Navy has the means to turn off engines or sink ships, etc. et al. It will all happen in the next hour.....stay tuned. Best of luck to all brave and decent souls on the MV Rachael Corrie!!! What a proud name to bear!!

Their website here.

[Peter Lemkin]

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined by Joe Meadors, who was on one of the other Free Gaza boats that was seized early Monday morning. For Meadors, this marks the second time he’s been aboard a ship attacked by the Israeli forces in international waters.

We’re going to go back now to 1967. Meadors was a signalman aboard the USS Liberty, a US Navy electronic-intelligence-gathering ship that was attacked by Israeli planes and torpedo boats in 1967. Thirty-four Americans were killed, more than 170 wounded, in the attack. At the time, the Liberty was cruising international waters off the Egyptian coast in the midst of what became known as the Israeli-Arab Six Day War. Joe Meadors joins us now from Texas.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Go back to 1967. Explain what happened.

Joe, if you could repeat what you were just saying?

Well, we’re going to try right now to go to a clip, to go to an excerpt of White House—about this attack that occurred in 1967. It’s from a documentary called Loss of Liberty.

STAN WHITE: I was coming to go back to the TRESSCOM area. I stepped out on deck. A plane came by. I looked right in the cockpit. He waved, I waved. That’s how close they were. And they knew who we were.

GEORGE GOLDEN: Of all the recon flights that they had that morning, over looking at our ship for approximately six to seven hours, they had a good idea of what they were doing. And they hit—they hit us hard and fast with everything they had.

NARRATOR: Commander William McGonagle, the ship’s captain, although he had been badly wounded, most of his bridge crew had been killed, he stayed on the bridge throughout the attack and the long night that followed. Admired and respected by his crew, he received the Congressional Medal of Honor for gallantry.

CAPT. WILLIAM McGONAGLE: When the planes struck, it was without provocation and certainly unexpected, and they seemed to descend on us from all directions at the same time. Those rockets and machine guns tore the ship. It killed men on deck. And we were defenseless.


AMY GOODMAN: That’s an excerpt of the documentary Loss of Liberty, as we turn to another excerpt.

CAPT. WILLIAM McGONAGLE: It appeared, from the ferocity of the attack, that the intent of the attackers was to sink the ship. Maybe they hoped to have no survivors, so that they would not be held accountable for the attack after it occurred.

STAN WHITE: We didn’t know who was attacking us. They didn’t know who was attacking us. I don’t know how Washington can say, "Don’t go, because they’re friends of ours." So that’s the thing that’s always bothered me right there.

DEAN RUSK: I never, myself, accepted the Israeli purported explanation. Accidents don’t occur through repeated attacks by service vessels and by aircraft. It obviously was a decision taken pretty high up on the Israeli side, because it involved combined forces. The ship was flying an American flag. Even if it had been unidentified from an Israeli point of view, it was a reckless thing for them to do. Suppose it had been a Soviet ship. That could have produced very large problems indeed.

JAMES AKINS: George Ball, the brilliant and courageous Undersecretary of State at the time of the '67 war, wrote about the attack on the Liberty subsequently. He said, "The ultimate lesson of the Liberty attack" was that it "had far more effect on policy in Israel than in America. Israel's leaders concluded that nothing they might do would offend the Americans to the point of reprisal. If America’s leaders did not have the courage to punish Israel for the blatant murder of American citizens, it seemed clear that their American friends would let them get away with almost anything."


AMY GOODMAN: That, an excerpt again of the documentary about the 1967 USS Liberty. Joe Meadors is on the line with us, a survivor of that attack by the Israeli military on the US military ship that killed thirty-four Americans.

Most Americans are not familiar, Joe, with this story. Explain where you were on the boat in 1967. Then we’ll talk about what happened this past weekend.

JOE MEADORS: I was one of the two signalmen on the ship, and as a signalman, my work station was on the very top deck. It’s virtually an open deck. But at the beginning of the attack, I was up there, and most of the time I was up—either up there or down in the pilot house, one deck below.

AMY GOODMAN: And what happened?

JOE MEADORS: Throughout the whole morning, we had been flown over about a dozen times by Israeli aircraft, who were clearly identifying us. We had overheard their pilots radioing back to their bases. Two o’clock in the afternoon, two more—two Israeli air jets blew up our starboard side. And we were in the pilot house, so we ran up to the signal bridge, anticipating just another circling of the ship. The aircraft got directly ahead of us and turned immediately left and started strafing the ship. They had rockets inside each of the four gun sheds. We had four .50-caliber machine guns. And they also put rockets directly into each of the antenna mounts.

AMY GOODMAN: Why were they attacking a US military ship?

JOE MEADORS: They claim that they were—they mistook us for a forty-year-old rusted-out Egyptian tramp steamer, the El-Kasir. I don’t think anybody believes that.

AMY GOODMAN: We were looking—just watching and listening to people like Dean Rusk, the US Secretary of State. It’s now, what, more than forty years later. What were you doing on the Gaza aid flotilla?

JOE MEADORS: I had been invited by the people at the Free Palestine Movement to visit the Gaza and see if we can try to break the blockade.

AMY GOODMAN: In the case of 1967, did Israel ever claim responsibility for the attack? And what was the response of your government, of the United States?

JOE MEADORS: They claimed that they mistook us for an Egyptian tramp steamer. They claimed it was a mistake, and they apologized for the mistake. The US government accepted it. But then again, the US government has never conducted an investigation of the attack. War crimes were committed by both Israel and the United States during that attack, and we’ve been trying to get them investigated, but the US government just ignores our request.

AMY GOODMAN: Which ship were you on this time, Joe, forty years later?

JOE MEADORS: I was on the Greek passenger ship, the Svendoni.

AMY GOODMAN: And your thoughts about what happened last weekend in the early morning hours of Monday?

JOE MEADORS: I was kind of apprehensive, given the history I’ve had with the Israelis. I seem to have all the bad luck in the world when it comes to the Israelis. Their overtaking of our ship was quite simple. They just jumped onboard, a couple dozen of them, and took over the ship. They used tasers and kicked some of the people topside when they were trying to protect the captain and the pilot house. But their actions were quite swift.

AMY GOODMAN: And anything happen to you?

JOE MEADORS: No, nothing happened to me. As a matter of fact, on hindsight, they were fairly polite. It was always "please" and "thank you," but those words take on a different meaning when they’re said at the point of a gun.

AMY GOODMAN: You were not, though, on the Mavi Marmara, where the nine activists were killed.

JOE MEADORS: No, we weren’t there.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Joe Meadors, I want to thank you very much for being with us, survivor of the 1967 USS Liberty attack, where thirty-four Americans were killed, more than a hundred injured.

[Magda Hassan]

[URL="http://aliabunimah.posterous.com/proof-emerges-idf-audio-of-radio-communicatio"] June 4, 2010
9 hours ago [/URL]

Proof emerges IDF audio of radio communication with Mavi Marmara is fabricated. #flotilla


UPDATED: EARLIER VIDEO RELEASED BY ISRAEL PROVIDES FURTHER PROOF OF AUDIO FAKERY
Today, Israel released what it claimed to be the audio of a conversation between Israeli naval vessels and the Turkish-owned ship Mavi Marmara which occurred prior to the Israeli assault that killed at least 9 passengers and injured dozens more in the early hours of 31 May in international waters in the eastern Mediterranean. This audio clip, which the Israelis titled "Radio Transmission from Mavi Marmara to Israeli Navy" appears to be fabricated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxY7Q7CvQ...r_embedded



The following is a transcript of the audio:
ISRAELI SHIP "This is the Israeli Navy, you are approaching an area which is under a naval blockade"
MAN'S VOICE 1 "Shut up, go back to Auschwitz."
WOMAN'S VOICE "We have permission from the Gaza Port Authority to enter."
MAN'S VOICE 2 "We're helping Arabs go against the US, don't forget 9/11 guy"
On hearing the recording Adam Shapiro, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, identified the woman's voice as that of his wife Huwaida Arraf, chair of the Free Gaza Movement. However, Arraf was not aboard the Mavi Marmara. She was aboard one of the small passenger vessels in the six-boat flotilla, called Challenger 1. She recounted what she experienced on Russia Today, among other major media outlets (video below). It would appear that Israel has once more been caught fabricating evidence in its desperate effort to justify its violent assault on the Free Gaza Flotilla, a civilian convoy carrying humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVKeGMaKK...r_embedded


Update 1
Thanks to Marian Houk (http://twitter.com/MarianHouk ), I have learned that the Israeli army originally uploaded a video (below) in which the same naval officer in the video above has an innocuous conversation with a ship in which the only reply from the ship is "Negative, Negative, our destination is Gaza." There is no "anti-Semitism" or anything that paints the Flotilla passengers as raving bigots. The earlier video actually shows the officer moving, whereas in the previous video in which a speaker allegedly says "Go back to Auschwitz" we simply see a still picture of the same naval officer while the audio plays. This is further evidence of complete fabrication.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKOmLP4yH...r_embedded



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http://aliabunimah.posterous.com/proof-e...mmunicatio

[Magda Hassan]

[Magda Hassan]

A very interesting observation by Craig Murray. My bolding.

Why Was the Mavi Marmara Reflagged Just Before Sailing?

Contrary to virtually all media reports to date, it appears the Mavi Marmara was reflagged from Turkey to the Comoros Islands around 20 May, shortly before heading the peace flotilla.
This is very important. While the Israeli attack remains illegal, it means that the injured party - and the party with legal jurisdiction over the event - is the incapable Comoros Islands rather than the highly capable Turkey. It also greatly reduces the NATO angle, unless other attacked ships were flying the Turkish flag.
But the question must be why on earth was the flag changed just before sailing, and who instigated it?
Flags of convenience are normally adopted for purely commercial reasons to escape regulations of s "serious" flag state like the UK or US, in particular on issues like rates of pay, union recognition, working conditions and hours etc. The Turkish owned merchant fleet uses flags of convenience much less than other advance nations - possibly from national pride, possibly because Turkish regulations are not too onerous anyway.
But it would seem remarkable if the owners of the ship decided for commercial reasons to switch flags just before sailing in the "Peace flotilla". It is on the face of it a remarkably foolish decision. Did the Turkish governrnent influence it to lessen the political responsibility of Turkey in any incident? Did Israel manage to influence the owners in any way? Is the vessel leased? Who are the owners, and just why did they do this?
None of this masks the illegality of Israel attacking a ship under any foregin flag in international waters. But bluntly, it was a stupid decision in practice by the protestors to set sail in a Comoros flagged ship.
Fortunately the MV Rachel Corrie is Irish registered, and the flag state (Ireland) has already shown it takes its duty seriously by telling the Israeli government it expects the Rachel Corrie to pass unhindered.

[Austin Kelley]

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11319.shtml

You will have no protection

Alice Walker, The Electronic Intifada, 4 June 2010




You will have no protection

-- Medgar Evers to Civil Rights Activists in Mississippi, shortly before he was assassinated, 12 June, 1963




My heart is breaking; but I do not mind.

For one thing, as soon as I wrote those words I was able to weep. Which I had not been able to do since learning of the attack by armed Israeli commandos on defenseless peace activists carrying aid to Gaza who tried to fend them off using chairs and sticks. I am thankful to know what it means to be good; I know that the people of the Freedom Flotilla are/were in some cases, some of the best people on earth. They have not stood silently by and watched the destruction of others, brutally, sustained, without offering themselves, weaponless except for their bodies, to the situation. I am thankful to have a long history of knowing people like this from my earliest years, beginning in my student days of marches and demonstrations: for peace, for non-separation among peoples, for justice for Women, for People of Color, for Cubans, for Animals, for Indians, and for Her, the planet.

I am weeping for the truth of Medgar's statement; so brave and so true. I weep for him gunned down in his carport, not far from where I would eventually live in Mississippi, with a box of t-shirts in his arms that said: "Jim Crow Must Go." Though trained in the United States Military under racist treatment one cringes to imagine, he remained a peaceful soldier in the army of liberation to the end. I weep and will always weep, even through the widest smiles, for the beautiful young wife, Myrlie Evers, he left behind, herself still strong and focused on the truth of struggle; and for their children, who lost their father to a fate they could not possibly, at the time, understand. I don't think any of us could imagine during that particular phase of the struggle for justice, that we risked losing not just our lives, which we were prepared to give, but also our children, who we were not.

Nothing protected Medgar, nor will anything protect any of us; nothing but our love for ourselves and for others whom we recognize unfailingly as also ourselves. Nothing can protect us but our lives. How we have lived them; what battles, with love and compassion our only shield, we have engaged. And yet, the moment of realizing we are truly alone, that in the ultimate crisis of our existence our government is not there for us, is one of shock. Especially if we have had the illusion of a system behind us to which we truly belong. Thankfully I have never had opportunity to have this illusion. And so, every peaceful witnessing, every non-violent confrontation has been a pure offering. I do not regret this at all.

When I was in Cairo last December to support CODEPINK's efforts to carry aid into Gaza I was unfortunately ill with the flu and could not offer very much. I lay in bed in the hotel room and listened to other activists report on what was happening around the city as Egypt refused entry to Gaza to the 1,400 people who had come for the accompanying Freedom march. I heard many distressing things, but only one made me feel, not exactly envy, but something close; it was that the French activists had shown up, en masse, in front of their embassy and that their ambassador had come out to talk to them and to try to make them comfortable as they set up camp outside the building. This small gesture of compassion for his country's activists in a strange land touched me profoundly, as I was touched decades ago when someone in John Kennedy's White House (maybe the cook) sent out cups of hot coffee to our line of freezing student and teacher demonstrators as we tried, with our signs and slogans and songs, to protect a vulnerable neighbor, Cuba.

Where have the Israelis put our friends? I thought about this all night. Those whom they assassinated on the ship and those they injured? Is "my" government capable of insisting on respect for their dead bodies? Can it demand that those who are injured but alive be treated with care? Not only with care, but the tenderness and honor they deserve? If it cannot do this, such a simple, decent thing, of what use is it to the protection and healing of the planet? I heard a spokesman for the United States opine at the United Nations (not an exact quote) that the Freedom Flotilla activists should have gone through other, more proper, channels, not been confrontational with their attempt to bring aid to the distressed. This is almost exactly what college administrators advised half a century ago when students were trying to bring down apartheid in the South and getting bullets, nooses, bombings and burnings for our efforts. I felt embarrassed (to the degree one can permit embarrassment by another) to be even vaguely represented by this man: a useless voice from the far past. One had hoped.

The Israeli spin on the massacre: that the commandos were under attack by the peace activists and that the whole thing was like "a lynching" of the armed attackers, reminds me of a Redd Foxx joke. I loved Redd Foxx, for all his vulgarity. A wife caught her husband in bed with another woman, flagrant, in the act, skin to skin. The husband said, probably through pants of aroused sexual exertion: All right, go ahead and believe your lying eyes! It would be fun, were it not tragic, to compare the various ways the Israeli government and our media will attempt to blame the victims of this unconscionable attack for their own imprisonment, wounds and deaths.

So what to do? Rosa Parks sat down in the front of the bus. Martin Luther King followed her act of courage with many of his own, and using his ringing, compassionate voice he aroused the people of Montgomery, Alabama to commit to a sustained boycott of the bus company; a company that refused to allow people of color to sit in the front of the bus, even if it was empty. It is time for us, en masse, to show up in front of our conscience, and sit down in the front of the only bus we have: our very lives.

What would that look like, be like, today, in this situation between Palestine and Israel? This "impasse" that has dragged on for decades. This "conflict" that would have ended in a week if humanity as a whole had acted in defense of justice everywhere on the globe. Which maybe we are learning! It would look like the granddaughter of Rosa Parks, the grandson of Martin Luther King. It would look like spending our money only where we can spend our lives in peace and happiness; freely sharing whatever we have with our friends.

It would be to support boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel to End the Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and by this effort begin to soothe the pain and attend the sorrows of a people wrongly treated for generations. This action would also remind Israel that we have seen it lose its way and have called to it, often with love, and we have not been heard. In fact, we have reached out to it only to encounter slander, insult and, too frequently, bodily harm.

Disengage, avoid, and withhold support from whatever abuses, degrades and humiliates humanity.

This we can do. We the people; who ultimately hold all the power. We the people, who must never forget to believe we can win.

We the people.

It has always been about us; as we watch governments come and go. It always will be.



Alice Walker is a poet, novelist, feminist and activist whose award-winning works have sold over ten million copies.

Image: Israeli soldiers stand guard as the Israeli navy raids one of the ships in the Freedom Flotilla. (Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

[Jan Klimkowski]

The autopsies reveal numerous close range head shots.

The slaughter of the lambs.

Gaza flotilla activists were shot in head at close range

Exclusive: Nine Turkish men on board Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times, autopsy results reveal

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 a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, which carried out the autopsies for the Turkish ministry of justice today.

The results revealed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back. A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back, said Yalcin Buyuk, vice-chairman of the council of forensic medicine.

The findings emerged as more survivors gave their accounts of the raids. Ismail Patel, the chairman of Leicester-based pro-Palestinian group Friends of al-Aqsa, who returned to Britain today, told how he witnessed some of the fatal shootings and claimed that Israel had operated a "shoot to kill policy".

He calculated that during the bloodiest part of the assault, Israeli commandos shot one person every minute. One man was fatally shot in the back of the head just two feet in front him and another was shot once between the eyes. He added that as well as the fatally wounded, 48 others were suffering from gunshot wounds and six activists remained missing, suggesting the death toll may increase.

The new information about the manner and intensity of the killings undermines Israel's insistence that its soldiers opened fire only in self defence and in response to attacks by the activists.

"Given the very disturbing evidence which contradicts the line from the Israeli media and suggests that Israelis have been very selective in the way they have addressed this, there is now an overwhelming need for an international inquiry," said Andrew Slaughter MP, a member of the all party group on Britain and Palestine.

Israel said tonight the number of bullets found in the bodies did not alter the fact that the soldiers were acting in self defence. "The only situation when a soldier shot was when it was a clearly a life-threatening situation," said a spokesman for the Israeli embassy in London. "Pulling the trigger quickly can result in a few bullets being in the same body, but does not change the fact they were in a life-threatening situation."

Protesters from across the country will tomorrow march from Downing Street to the Israeli embassy to call for Israel to be held to account for its actions.

Earlier this week, William Hague, the foreign secretary, said the government would call for an inquiry under international auspices if Israel refuses to establish an independent inquiry, including an international presence.

The autopsy results were released as the last of the Turkish victims was buried.

Dr Haluk Ince, the chairman of the council of forensic medicine in Istanbul, said that in only one case was there a single bullet wound, to the forehead from a distant shot, while every other victim suffered multiple wounds. "All [the bullets] were intact. This is important in a forensic context. When a bullet strikes another place it comes into the body deformed. If it directly comes into the body, the bullet is all intact."

He added that all but one of the bullets retrieved from the bodies came from 9mm rounds. Of the other round, he said: "It was the first time we have seen this kind of material used in firearms. It was just a container including many types of pellets usually used in shotguns. It penetrated the head region in the temple and we found it intact in the brain."

An unnamed Israeli commando, who purportedly led the raid on the Mavi Marmara, today told Israeli news website Ynet News that he shot at a protester who approached him with a knife. "I was in front of a number of people with knives and clubs," he said. "I cocked my weapon when I saw that one was coming towards me with a knife drawn and I fired once. Then another 20 people came at me from all directions and threw me down to the deck below …

"We knew they were peace activists. Though they wanted to break the Gaza blockade, we thought we'd encounter passive resistance, perhaps verbal resistance – we didn't expect this. Everyone wanted to kill us. We encountered terrorists who wanted to kill us and we did everything we could to prevent unnecessary injury."

Tonight the Rachel Corrie, an Irish vessel crewed by supporters of the Free Gaza movement, remained on course for Gaza. Yossi Gal, director general at the Israeli foreign ministry, said Israel had "no desire for a confrontation" but asked for the ship to dock at Ashdod, not Gaza.

"If the ship decides to sail the port of Ashdod, then we will ensure its safe arrival and will not board it," he said

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun...sy-results

[Peter Lemkin]

Robert Fisk: The truth behind the Israeli propaganda
June 5, 2010

ROBERT FISK/THE INDEPENDENT—I have, of course, been outraged at armed men boarding ships in international waters, killing passengers on board who attempt to resist and then forcing their ship to the hijackers’ home port. I am, of course, talking about the Somali pirates who are preying on Western ships in the Indian Ocean. How dare those terrorists dare to touch our unarmed vessels on the high seas? And how right we are to have our warships there to prevent such terrorist acts.

But whoops! At least the Israelis have not demanded ransom. They just want to get journalists to win the propaganda war for them. Scarcely had the week begun when Israel’s warrior “commandos” stormed a Turkish boat bringing aid to Gaza and shot nine of the passengers dead. Yet by week’s end, the protesters had become “armed peace activists”, vicious anti-Semites “professing pacifism, seething with hate, pounding away at another human being with a metal pole”. I liked the last bit. The fact that the person being beaten was apparently shooting another human being with a rifle didn’t quite get into this weird version of reality.

Turkish family protests that their sons wanted to be martyrs – something which most Turkish family members might say if their relatives had been shot by the Israelis – had been transformed into confirmation that they had been jihadis. “On that aid ship,” a Sri Lankan texted me this week, “I had my niece, nephew and his wife on board. Unfortunately Ahmed (20-year-old nephew) got shot in the leg and now treated (sic) under military custody. I will keep you posted.” He did indeed. Within hours, the press was at his family’s home in Australia, demanding to know if Ahmed was a jihadi – or even a potential suicide bomber. Propaganda works, you see. We haven’t seen a frame of film from the protesters because the Israelis have stolen the lot. No one has told us – if the Turkish ship was carrying such ruthless men – how their terrible plots to help the “terrorists” of Gaza were not uncovered in the long voyage from Turkey, even when it called at other ports. But Professor Gil Troy of McGill University in Montreal – in the rabid Canadian National Post, of course – was able to spout all that gunk about “armed peace activists” on Thursday.

I wasn’t personally at all surprised at the killings on the Turkish ship. In Lebanon, I’ve seen this indisciplined rabble of an army – as “elite” as the average rabble of Arab armies – shooting at civilians. I saw them watching the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinians on the morning of 18 September (the last day of the slaughter) by their vicious Lebanese militia allies. I was present at the Qana massacre by Israeli gunners in 1996 – “Arabushim” (the equivalent of the abusive term “Ayrab” in English), one of the gunners called the 106 dead civilians, more than half of them children, in the Israeli press. Then the Israeli government of Nobel laureate Shimon Peres said there were terrorists among the dead civilians – totally untrue, but who cares? – and then came the second Qana massacre in 2006 and then the 2008-09 Gaza slaughter of 1,300 Palestinians, most of them children, and then…

Well, then came the Goldstone report, which found that Israeli troops (as well as Hamas) committed war crimes in Gaza, but this was condemned as anti-Semitic – poor old honourable Goldstone, himself a prominent Jewish jurist from South Africa, slandered as “an evil man” by the raving Al Dershowitz of Harvard – and was called “controversial” by the brave Obama administration. “Controversial”, by the way, basically means “fuck you”.

There’s doubts about it, you see. It’s dodgy stuff.

But back to our chronology. Then we had the Mossad murder of a Hamas official in Dubai with the Israelis using at least 19 forged passports from Britain and other countries. And the pathetic response of our then foreign secretary, David Miliband? He called it “an incident” – not the murder of the guy in Dubai, mind you, just the forgery of UK passports, a highly “controversial” matter – and then… Well, now we’ve had the shooting down of nine passengers at sea by more Israeli heroes.

The amazing thing in all this is that so many Western journalists – and I’m including the BBC’s pusillanimous coverage of the Gaza aid ships – are writing like Israeli journalists, while many Israeli journalists are writing about the killings with the courage that Western journalists should demonstrate. And about the Israeli army itself. Take Amos Harel’s devastating report in Haaretz which analyses the make-up of the Israeli army’s officer corps. In the past, many of them came from the leftist kibbutzim tradition, from greater Tel Aviv or from the coastal plain of Sharon. In 1990, only 2 per cent of army cadets were religious Orthodox Jews. Today the figure is 30 per cent. Six of the seven lieutenant-colonels in the Golani Brigade are religious. More than 50 per cent of local commanders are “national” religious in some infantry brigades.

There’s nothing wrong with being religious. But – although Harel does not make this point quite so strongly – many of the Orthodox are supporters of the colonisation of the West Bank and thus oppose a Palestinian state.

And the Orthodox colonists are the Israelis who most hate the Palestinians, who want to erase the chances of a Palestinian state as surely as some Hamas officials would like to erase Israel. Ironically, it was senior officers of the “old” Israeli army who first encouraged the “terrorist” Hamas to build mosques in Gaza – as a counterbalance to the “terrorist” Yasser Arafat up in Beirut – and I was a witness to one of their meetings. But it will stay the same old story before the world wakes up. “I have never known an army as democratic as Israel’s,” the hapless French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy said a few hours before the slaughter.

Yes, the Israeli army is second to none, elite, humanitarian, heroic. Just don’t tell the Somali pirates. :hmmmm2: