Tag: Gaza flotilla

Israeli Aggression; Circular referral


I had to post this comment from The Independent because it so encapsulates the dizzying and ridiculous nature of the explanation for Israeli aggression that I don’t possibly see how anyone can take that government seriously.

Somehow, the Chilcot Inquiry has become like Big Brother. About once a month it pops up as a small item in the news and you think: “Oh blimey, I didn’t realise that was still going on.” Before long, like Big Brother, they’ll come up with stunts to try and revive some interest. So they’ll reintroduce contestants from previous inquiries such as Martin McGuinness and Christine Keeler, or make some witnesses complete a task of finding hidden ping-pong balls in the room or they have to give evidence blindfold.

So it might seem these procedures are pointless, in which case it makes no difference that the Israelis have agreed to co-operate with a United Nations inquiry into the episode in which nine people died after the Israeli Defence Force went aboard the Mavi Marmara as it sailed towards Gaza.

But it seemed to matter to the Israelis, because until this week they insisted their own inquiry was sufficient, and that was already under way. One fact emerging from this process was that the victims, according to “Sgt S” who shot six of them, “were without a doubt terrorists”. And he produced evidence to back this up, which was: “I could see the murderous rage in their eyes”.

This matches the classic definition of a terrorist according to international law, as someone “with murderous rage in their eyes”, and shows the key witness in any terrorist trial isn’t the forensics expert or explosives analyst but an optician. If they’re trained well enough they can shine a light at the iris and tell whether you’re short-sighted, long-sighted, Hamas or Basque separatist.

But there was more. According to the Jersusalem Post the IDF told the inquiry that the group on the boat were “well-trained and likely ex-military” because “each squad of the mercenaries was equipped with a Motorola communication advice, so they could pass information to one another”. A Motorola communication advice? So these so-called peace-activists were armed with mobile phones! It’s a wonder the whole Middle East wasn’t set alight. And to think Motorola and other sinister arms dealers such as Nokia and Orange go round trading in this deadly merchandise quite openly.

If the IDF were asked to police a rock festival, at the moment when everyone used their mobiles to take a photo they’d open fire on the whole crowd. Then once 3,000 were dead, Sgt S would say: “Well done, boys, if we hadn’t been so careful that could have turned quite nasty.”

One possible difficulty in proving the optically murderous gang’s intent could be that none of them had guns. But the IDF dealt with that by saying the “mercenaries” preferred to use “bats, metal bars and knives, since opening fire would have made it blatantly clear they were terrorists and not peace activists”. So this was another cunning trick of the terrorists, to disguise the fact they were terrorists by not doing anything terrorist. My neighbour’s much the same; disguising her terrorism by being 74 and spending all day peacefully doing the garden without ever shooting anyone, the evil witch.

Even more blatantly, the inquiry was told the group did have guns on board, but “the mercenaries threw their weapons overboard after the commandos took control of the vessel”. Because that’s classic guerrilla training, to carry guns right up until the moment when the enemy arrives, and then throw them away. This is the strategy of all great military thinkers. That’s why Nelson, at the Battle of Trafalgar said: “Men, I see the French, and so let every Englishmen do his duty, and chuck all our weapons in the sea. That’ll teach the bastards.”

On and on this goes, with Prime Minister Netanyahu making it clear he agrees with it, himself calling the victims “mercenaries”. Because these mercenaries were trying to get goods such as medicine to an area that’s under a blockade, which is typical mercenary behaviour, except instead of gun-running, they were inhaler-running.

But bit by bit Israel is finding it has to answer for itself publicly, and the old excuses are not so easily accepted. From now on they’ll have to put a bit more thought into their bollocks, which has got to be for the good.

And so it is; the government whose existence depends solely on US taxpayer dollars is able to only come up with parodies to justify their murderous impulses?

The Xenophobia of the Israeli Press


Amazing!  Simple amazing what one can find on the printed pages of the Israeli press!! It espouses a racist agenda in something as far reaching and cross cultural as sports competitions, i.e. the World Cup play and who to cheer for, while still managing to maintain its victimology status, and yes it probably is satire, much like the “joke”, ‘We Con the World‘ was shameless satire

The Turks, whose Islamic fundamentalist wannabe martyrs tried to kill Israeli soldiers aboard the Mavi Marmara last Monday, did not make the tournament. The sanctimonious Swedes and Norwegians thankfully won’t be there, either.

Brazil, in cooperation with the Turks, initiated a proposal that could have facilitated the nuclearization of Iran, voted with the Turks against Wednesday’s UN sanctions, and recently treated visiting Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad like a king.

Israelis won’t be cheering for North Korea, which built a Syrian nuclear facility, or Algeria, for obvious reasons. Germany remains Iran’s largest-trading partner, and a massive 20-billion-euro Swiss gas deal with Iran should prevent Israelis from backing Switzerland, which hosts the notoriously anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council.

There are many reasons not to root for England; from its attempt to prosecute opposition leader Tzipi Livni, its deputy prime minister’s support for banning weapons sales to Israel, it being the home of Israel boycotter Elvis Costello, and its recent expulsion of a Mossad official due to his alleged role in facilitating the use of British passports to kill a mega-terrorist.

Honduras has a large Palestinian population. Paraguay sheltered many Nazis, including Joseph Mengele, after the Holocaust. The Ivory Coast is 60% Muslim.

There’s more but I think you get the point; Israeli media has a bone to pick with most of the world and it’s all because the world has made Israel a victim, and the Muslims are to blame for it.

The NYT’s advocacy for imperialism


The NYT is a regular target on the pages of Miscellany101 and it is an easy one.  Its reporters lie, make articles up, for which some are punished or disciplined and others not, or tow an administration’s line, if it serves the purpose of corporate and ethnic imperialism.

Allison Weir has outed the NYT’s story on the Gaza Flotilla inquiry that will supposedly be handled by the Israeli government.  The writer of the Times’ story is both an Israeli and one with suspected ties to the murderous IDF so you can only imagine the slant of that piece.  You can read Weir’s revelations about that story here. The Times has a habit of using Israelis to write pieces on Israel and they see nothing wrong with that.  I suggest therefore that they hire a Palestinian to write articles on Gaza and the Israeli blockade of that territory, but I’m sure that will never fly.

The second article more brazen than the first is the sophomoric grandstanding of the Times about the story of Afghanistan’s supposed wealth of natural resources.  We are pretty much on record for saying that the two wars fought by America in Iraq and Afghanistan are about regime change and control of the natural resources therein, so the Times’ announcement is not earth shattering as far as we are concerned, but the timing is what we find immensely dubious as do others as well.

The way in which the story was presented — with on-the-record quotations from the Commander in Chief of CENTCOM, no less — and the weird promotion of a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense to Undersecretary of Defense suggest a broad and deliberate information operation designed to influence public opinion on the course of the war. Indeed, as every reader of Jared Diamond’s popular works of geographic determinism knows well, a country rich in mineral resources will tend toward stability over time, assuming it has a strong, central, and stable government.

Risen’s story notes that the minerals discovery comes at a propitious time. He focuses on lithium, a critical component of electronics. One official tells him that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium” — a comparison to oil. (I can see it now: “We must wean ourselves off our dependence on foreign lithium!”)

What better way to remind people about the country’s potential bright future — and by people I mean the Chinese, the Russians, the Pakistanis, and the Americans — than by publicizing or re-publicizing valid (but already public) information about the region’s potential wealth?

The Obama administration and the military know that a page-one, throat-clearing New York Times story will get instant worldwide attention. The story is accurate, but the news is not that new; let’s think a bit harder about the context.

This “news” about the riches of Afghanistan precedes another Times story which talks about the problems the Afghan mission is facing and how it might be somewhat difficult to meet the Obama administration’s deadline of withdrawal from that war ravaged country (What better way to insure circulation levels than to beat the drums for more war?) as if to prepare their readership for the bad news by re-cycling a story about the riches at the US’ disposal if we only stay the course.  Why anyone bothers to read the Times is unfathomable; my suggestion is you don’t!

First Hand Account


I’m truly amazed not everyone in the Gaza Flotilla illegally interdicted by the IDF weren’t all killed.  Perhaps they didn’t have enough ammunition for that task. The second best alternative to keeping away from an enquiring public what happened would be to take all recording devices and destroy them, advance the recordings of the IDF and begin the process of discrediting eyewitnesses to the carnage.  Look for the latter to happen at any moment; however, now there is a lot that’s being said about what took place that fateful morning and none of it paints any type of picture of our friend and stalwart ally other than of murderer.

“I saw them carrying this one IDF guy down,” he recalls. “He looked terrified, like he thought he was going to be killed. But when a big Turkish guy, who had seen seriously injured passengers who had been shot by the IDF, charged over and tried to hit the commando, the Turkish aid workers pushed him off and pinned him to the wall. They protected this Israeli soldier.”

That was when he found the backpack which the soldier had dropped. “I figured I’d look inside and see what he was carrying,” Neish says. “And inside was this kind of flip-book. It was full of photos and names in English and Hebrew of who was on all the ships. The booklet also had a detailed diagram of the decks of the Mavi Marmara.”

Meanwhile, he says, more and more people were being carried down the stairs from the mayhem above—people who’d been shot, and people who were dying or people already dead. “I took detailed photos of the dead and wounded with my camera,” he says, adding, “There were several guys who had two neat bullet holes side by side on the side of their head–clearly they were executed.”

Neish smuggled his photos out of Israel to Turkey despite his arrest on the ship and imprisonment in Israel for several days. “I pulled out the memory card, tossed my camera and anything I had on me that had anything to do with electronics, and then kept moving the chip around so it wouldn’t be found,” he says. “The Israelis took all the cameras and computers. They were smashing some and keeping others. I put the chip in my mouth under my tongue, between my butt cheeks, in my sock, everywhere, to keep them from finding it,” he says. He finally handed it to a Turk who was leaving for a flight home on a Turkish airline. He says the card ended up in the hands of an organization called Free Gaza, and he has seen some of his pictures published, so he knows they made it out successfully.

Neish says that claims that the Israeli commandos were just armed with paint guns and 9 mm pistols are “Bullshit–at one point when I was in the stairwell, a commando opened a hatch above, stuck in a machine gun, and started firing. Bullets were bouncing all over the place. If the guy had gotten to look in and see where he was shooting, I’d have been dead, but two Turkish guys in the stairwell, who had short lengths of chain with them that they had taken from the access points to the lifeboats, stood to the side of the hatch and whipped them up at the barrell. I don’t know if they were trying to hit the commando or to use them to snatch away the gun, but the Israeli backed off, and they slammed and locked the hatch.”

“I never saw a single paint gun, or a sign of a fired paint ball!” he says.

He also didn’t see any guns in the hands of people who were on the ship. “In the whole time I was there on the ship, I never saw a single weapon in the hands of the crew or the aid workers,” he says. Indeed, Neish, who originally had been on a smaller 70-foot yacht called the Challenger II, had transferred to the Mavi Marmara after a stop in Cyprus, because his boat had been sabatoged by Israeli agents (a claim verified by the Israeli government), making it impossible to steer. “When we came aboard the big boat, I was frisked and my bag was inspected for weapons,” he says. “Being an engineer, I of course had a pocket knife, but they took that and tossed it into the ocean. Nobody was allowed to have any weapons on this voyage. They were very careful about that.”

What he did see during the IDF assault was severe bullet wounds. “In addition to several people I saw who were killed, I saw several dozen wounded people. There was one older guy who was just propped up against the wall with a huge hole in his chest. He died as I was taking his picture.”

Neish says he saw many of the 9 who were known to have been killed, and of the 40 who were wounded, and adds, “There were many more who were wounded, too, but less seriously. In the Israeli prison, I saw people with knife wounds and broken bones. Some were hiding their injuries so they wouldn’t be taken away from the others.” He also says, “Initially there were reports that 16 on the boat had been killed. The medical station said 16. There was a suspicion that some bodies may have been thrown overboard. But what people think now is that the the other seven who are missing, since we’re not hearing from families, may have been Israeli spies.”

Once the Israeli commandos had secured control of the Mavi Marmara, Neish says the ship’s passengers and crew were rounded up, with the men put in one area on deck, and the women put below in another area. The men were told to squat, and had their hands bound with plastic cuffs, which Neish says were pulled so tight that his wrists were cut and his hands swelled up and turned purple (he is still suffering nerve damage from the experience, which his doctor in Canada says he hopes will gradually repair on its own).

“They told us to be quiet,” he says. “But at one point this Turkish imam stood up and started singing a call to prayer. Everybody was dead quiet–even the Israelis. But after about ten seconds, this Israeli officer stomped over through the squatting people, pulled out his pistol and pointed at the guy’s head, yelling ‘Shut up!’ in English. The imam looked at him directly and just kept singing! I thought, Jesus Christ, he’s gonna kill him! Then I thought, well, this is what I’m here for, I guess, so I stood up. The officer wheeled around and pointed his gun at my head. The imam finished his song and sat down, and then I sat down.”

While the commandeered vessels were sailed to the Israeli port of Ashdot, the captives were left without food or water. “All we were given were some chocolate bars that the Israelis pilfered from the ship’s stores,” says Neish. “You had to grovel to get to go to the bathroom, and many people had to just go in their pants.”

Things didn’t get much better once the passengers were transferred to an Israeli prison. He and the other prisoners with him, who hadn’t eaten for more than half a day, were tossed a frozen block of bread and some cucumbers.

On the second day, someone from the Canadian embassy came around, calling out his name. “It turned out he’d been going to every cell looking for me,” says Neish. “My daughter had been frantically telling the Canadian government I was in the flotilla. Even though the Israelis had my name and knew where I was, they weren’t telling the Canadian embassy people. In fact the Canadians–and my daughter–thought I was dead, because people had said I’d been near the initial assault. The good thing is that as they went around calling out for me, they discovered two Arab-born Canadians that they hadn’t known were there.”

“Eventually they got to my cell and I answered them. The embassy official said, ‘You’re Kevin? You’re supposed to be dead.’”

After being held for a few days, there was a rush to move everyone to the Ben Gurion airport for a flight to Turkey. “It turned out that Israeli lawyers had brought our case to the Supreme Court, challenging the legality of our capture on international waters. There was a chance that the court would order the IDF to put us back on our ships and let us go, so the government wanted to get us out of Israel and moot the case. But two guys were hauled off, probably by Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency). So we all said, ‘No. We don’t go unless you bring them back.’”

The two men were returned and were allowed to leave with the rest of the group.

“I honestly never thought the Israelis would board the ship,” says Neish. “I thought we’d get into Gaza. I mean, I went as part of the Free Gaza Movement, and they had made prior attempts, with some getting in, and some getting boarded or rammed, but this time it was a big flotilla. I figured we’d be stopped, and maybe searched. My boat, the Challenger II, only had dignitaries on board including three German MPs, and then Lt. Col. Ann Wright and myself.

At one point in the Israeli prison, all the violence finally got to this man who had witnessed more death and mayhem than many active duty US troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. “I broke down and started crying,” he admits. “This big Turkish guy came over and asked me, ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘Sixteen people died.’”

“He said to me, ‘No, they died for a wonderful cause. They’re happy. You just go out and tell your story.’”

Look for the Israeli investigation to completely whitewash all that has been spoken by those who were there and discredit them as well.

This is how it’s done


The western world, particularly America, keeps getting upstaged by these developing countries that are showing the international community how to behave on a global level.  First there was the murder of a Palestinian activist in Dubai, and the UAE’s meticulous handling of that murder investigation which was so spot on it penetrated the invicibility of the lawless and dreaded Mossad, led to the arrest of one person in Poland, the expulsion by Ireland of an Israeli diplomat, the unraveling of the purse strings behind Mossad operations, which sadly America has declined to follow up on and earned Dubai/UAE the respect of the international community.

Brazil and Turkey both brokered a deal with Iran, a deal the US was in favor of until the Israeli interests in the US government decided to go on with their stated program of regime change for Iran and implemented sanctions at the UN level.  What’s significant about the deal is it’s what America said would be necessary to avoid sanctions, but no one stepped up to the plate to forge it until Turkey and Brazil did which brought down upon them the wrath and scorn of the western world and Israel.

That leads us to the latest diplomatic coup and that is Turkey’s announcement they are freezing ties with Israel unless Israel agrees to an international investigation into the murder of at least 9 people aboard a Turkish ship, many of the victims Turkish nationals.  Turkish outrage was evident from the very beginning, yet the country carried itself with diplomatic aplomb; insisting the Israelis immediately release the hostages of the flotilla Israel had seized, providing transportation for those released and returning them first to Turkey and then to their country of origin; all of this under the watchful gaze and inaction of a seething West paralyzed by its fear of even the most  minimal response to an international atrocity.   The suspension of ties, if it’s carried out by Turkey, is complete from military to intelligence gathering and sharing to diplomatic.  The situation demands no less than that from any and all countries, yet because of a wholly unhealthy relationship between Israel and some of her allies, that country is literally able to get away with murder.  Turkey, and Dubai moderate countries and allies of America are once again giving a civics lesson in how to be good neighbors and friends to the rest of the world and it’s high time the world pay attention instead of dismissing them.  By demanding Israel follow the rule of law and have transparent investigations into their behavior with meaningful consequences for Israeli illegal activity, these countries are contributing to the health and stability of peace and international relations.  Unfortunately, there are far too many who believe dissent is the illegal activity and are not able to see where inaction against Israeli terrorism is doing more to aggravate tensions and instability than meaningful, constructive calls for action.  Turkey 2, Israel 0.

Targetting the Victims


In a bid to reverse the reality that at least nine people were killed, murdered, by Israel in the commission of a crime, supporters of the Israeli government are now trying to turn the tables on the victims of that crime and enforce  legal ramifications against them for standing up to Israeli illegal activity.

A half-dozen elected Democrats called on the State Department to ban every flotilla participant from entering the United States.Well, only some of them called for everyone to be denied visas. Most of them just called for an “investigation” into the terrible terror ties of the activists aboard the flotilla, sponsored by a Turkish NGO called IHH that is not on any American watch list.

The organizers of this way of thought have successfully made people who were trying to provide the most basic of necessities to a people who have been marginalized and at the doors of abject poverty while under a military imprisonment into terrorists  who should be banned from entering the US.  It may very well be that none of the non-citizens of America would ever want to come to the US, but banning them from entry no doubt puts them on no fly lists that could disrupt their travel to other countries and cause them unknown inconvenience and trouble. This is in reality the goal of political zionism much like the blockade of Gaza is the goal to Palestinians, creating instability and chaos to the order of individuals, communities and societies and thereby instilling hopelessness.  It helps that the targeted are demonized and despised by everyone else too, while leaving the message that opposition to political zionism is fruitless and counterproductive.

What is disappointing is that US elected officials have gone on the bandwagon when even the most cursory attention to this issue of the Gaza blockade by even the most junior member of their staff would demonstrate  to them how the blockade itself is illegal, the cost of the blockade to the Palestinians living in Gaza is astronomically high, some of the effects being chronic mental health issues, infant mortality, a lack of proper education, high unemployment, the complete breakdown of municipal services, etc. and that aid organizers are merely trying to provide subsistence levels to a population under armed guard.  Yet, the prisoners of the prison called Gaza are the perpetrators of this misery and criminal activity, not its victims and those who are trying to come to their aid should be banned or suffer the ignominy of travel restrictions. Such is the false reality of political zionism.

This is courage


Blooded and beaten perhaps, but unbowed nor unapologetic Ken O’Keefe describes in his own words what took place and quite naturally it completely different than what the Israeli government said. My brief observations about O’Keefe’s revelations are these; he is an American patriot who embodies the spirit upon which this country was built, that of critical but principled dissent; respect for the Constitution and a courage to stand up for his convictions.  Unfortunately, the America of today finds such people a threat and will do everything to discredit them or worse.  O’Keefe also brings with him love for the dispossessed or in what might be called in today’s parlance, the underdog. I’m sure there are a lot of O’Keefe’s in the movement to bring much needed relief to the people of Gaza because they are surely needed.  I’m sure too, they realize the sacrifices they are making dealing with the wounded animal called the State of Israel which might include their deaths, but sacrifice was once a part of the fabric of America where going along to get along was not the way of doing business.  To all the O’Keefes of this movement, I salute you one and all.

I remember being asked during the TJP Human Shield Action to Iraq if I was a pacifist, I responded with a quote from Gandhi by saying I am not a passive anything. To the contrary I believe in action, and I also believe in self-defence, 100%, without reservation. I would be incapable of standing by while a tyrant murders my family, and the attack on the Mavi Marmara was like an attack on my Palestinian family. I am proud to have stood shoulder to shoulder with those who refused to let a rogue Israeli military exert their will without a fight. And yes, we fought.When I was asked, in the event of an Israeli attack on the Mavi Mamara, would I use the camera, or would I defend the ship? I enthusiastically committed to defence of the ship. Although I am also a huge supporter of non-violence, in fact I believe non-violence must always be the first option. Nonetheless I joined the defence of the Mavi Mamara understanding that violence could be used against us and that we may very well be compelled to use violence in self-defence.

I said this straight to Israeli agents, probably of Mossad or Shin Bet, and I say it again now, on the morning of the attack I was directly involved in the disarming of two Israeli Commandos. This was a forcible, non-negotiable, separation of weapons from commandos who had already murdered two brothers that I had seen that day. One brother with a bullet entering dead center in his forehead, in what appeared to be an execution. I knew the commandos were murdering when I removed a 9mm pistol from one of them. I had that gun in my hands and as an ex-US Marine with training in the use of guns it was completely within my power to use that gun on the commando who may have been the murderer of one of my brothers. But that is not what I, nor any other defender of the ship did. I took that weapon away, removed the bullets, proper lead bullets, separated them from the weapon and hid the gun. I did this in the hopes that we would repel the attack and submit this weapon as evidence in a criminal trial against Israeli authorities for mass murder.

I also helped to physically separate one commando from his assault rifle, which another brother apparently threw into the sea. I and hundreds of others know the truth that makes a mockery of the brave and moral Israeli military. We had in our full possession, three completely disarmed and helpless commandos. These boys were at our mercy, they were out of reach of their fellow murderers, inside the ship and surrounded by 100 or more men. I looked into the eyes of all three of these boys and I can tell you they had the fear of God in them. They looked at us as if we were them, and I have no doubt they did not believe there was any way they would survive that day. They looked like frightened children in the face of an abusive father.

But they did not face an enemy as ruthless as they. Instead the woman provided basic first aid, and ultimately they were released, battered and bruised for sure, but alive. Able to live another day. Able to feel the sun over head and the embrace of loved ones. Unlike those they murdered. Despite mourning the loss of our brothers, feeling rage towards these boys, we let them go. The Israeli prostitutes of propaganda can spew all of their disgusting bile all they wish, the commandos are the murders, we are the defenders, and yet we fought. We fought not just for our lives, not just for our cargo, not just for the people of Palestine, we fought in the name of justice and humanity. We were right to do so, in every way.

While in Israeli custody I, along with everyone else was subjected to endless abuse and flagrant acts of disrespect. Women and elderly were physically and mentally assaulted. Access to food and water and toilets was denied. Dogs were used against us, we ourselves were treated like dogs. We were exposed to direct sun in stress positions while hand cuffed to the point of losing circulation of blood in our hands. We were lied to incessantly, in fact I am awed at the routineness and comfort in their ability to lie, it is remarkable really. We were abused in just about every way imaginable and I myself was beaten and choked to the point of blacking out… and I was beaten again while in my cell.In all this what I saw more than anything else were cowards… and yet I also see my brothers. Because no matter how vile and wrong the Israeli agents and government are, they are still my brothers and sisters and for now I only have pity for them. Because they are relinquishing the most precious thing a human being has, their humanity.

In conclusion; I would like to challenge every endorser of Gandhi, every person who thinks they understand him, who acknowledges him as one of the great souls of our time (which is just about every western leader), I challenge you in the form of a question. Please explain how we, the defenders of the Mavi Marmara, are not the modern example of Gandhi’s essence? But first read the words of Gandhi himself.

“I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence…. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour.” – Gandhi

And lastly I have one more challenge. I challenge any critic of merit, publicly, to debate me on a large stage over our actions that day. I would especially love to debate with any Israeli leader who accuses us of wrongdoing, it would be my tremendous pleasure to face off with you. All I saw in Israel was cowards with guns, so I am ripe to see you in a new context. I want to debate with you on the largest stage possible. Take that as an open challenge and let us see just how brave Israeli leaders are.

Israeli atrocities continue…..


The Israeli government has decided for itself the role of international pariah and no one has the intestinal fortitude to tell them that except lowly internet bloggers like Miscellany101 and others who have seen enough of the atrocities this country has inflicted on everyone it feels victimized by.   Having bought off American and European politicians and quieted an obsequious press, Israel once again gets away with murder in the deaths of the passengers of the Gaza flotilla.  In a night raid against unarmed civilians, a particularly Israel like tactic, the IDF boarded one of the ships of the flotilla that was in international waters and began shooting all those who didn’t quickly comply with their demands, leaving in their wake anywhere from 10 to 20 dead.

Of course, the Israeli government will claim they were acting in self defense and the apologists will echo that claim; governments will not issue any voices of protest or reprimand, nor make any demands on the Israelis for transparent investigations and over time, people will forget this latest act of murder like all the rest before it.  The conscientious citizen ought to know, however, that the Israelis for the moment are the merchants of death and destruction and that this rogue and lawless state has nothing to offer the international community until they are brought in line with law and order, something the Israelis are not the least bit interested in at this time.  The self-proclaimed super power is instead a super coward in the face of the petulant, lawless state, which sees no limits for its own behavior while super critical of the behavior of its opponents.  Indeed America has relegated itself to being a client state of Israel, the dog wagged by its own tail.