Sometimes I am sickened when I'm reminded how deeply racism is embedded in a country that is supposed to be a democracy equally serving all of its residents. And that's saying something, because generally I don't care about other people at all.
This article from today's ynet reveals a clear incident of violent racism within its own culture, all the while attempting to dress it up as justified violence.
Four Border Guard officers were lightly injured Friday after being run over by a Palestinian driving a pickup truck in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi Joz. The driver was shot, and quickly died of his wounds. His body was later snatched from the hospital and he was buried at a cemetery near the Temple Mount.
There are just so many things wrong with this one little paragraph. Firstly, the officers were "lightly injured" after being "run over." Really? I feel like one or the other of those phrases might be misleading. Normally people aren't just lightly injured when they are run over. So I'm thinking that most likely they weren't run over. Probably a car passed by them rather quickly and gave them quite a fright. Secondly, the driver "was shot, and quickly died of his wounds." A little trigger-happy are we? I might give the border guards the benefit of the doubt if I didn't already know that if a Jewish citizen had committed the same crime, he would absolutely not be shot at. Lastly, his body was "snatched" in order to be buried. A little misrepresentation-happy are we? Not only are these fiendish Palestinians driving too fast, they are stealing and burying their family members in accordance with their religious beliefs. Where will it end????
Let's move on:
After the incident, the assailant attempted to escape by foot and was shot by a Border Guard force stationed in the area. He was critically wounded and died shortly afterwards. Police suspect the incident was nationalistically motivated....The company commander began chasing the assailant, who tried to flee the scene. According to the police, he was shot after failing to obey the police's call to stop.
So he was shot in the back while running away. Because the police officer probably yelled "stop" in a language he may or may not have understood. I'm not an expert but usually in situations like this, lethal force is only authorized if the suspect presents imminent danger to someone else's life. But I don't know, maybe running away, even though he had left his "weapon" (ie his car) behind, might have seemed like it presents an imminent threat. And then, "police suspect the incident was nationalistically motivated." What does that even mean? How on earth did they come to that conclusion? Absolutely no evidence whatsoever has been presented for such a claim. Whatever. It doesn't matter. The "assailant" was Palestinian and his "victims" were Israeli, so naturally it was a terror attack. Obviously.
We have DWB in the U.S.- driving while black. Here in Israel, I guess its DWA- driving while Arab.
And the end of the story reveals that
Another passenger who was in the car with him was apparently injured by stones hurled at the road earlier and was evacuated to the Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital. The police are looking into his version that the driver who run over the officers was trying to evacuate him to receive medical treatment.
So in reality, he might have just been rushing his friend to the hospital and in his haste was not driving very carefully. Maybe. But now his life has been ended, so what difference does it make.
Finally, I would like the point out that the article includes a photo of the bulldozer from the "bulldozer attack" of two years ago. As if it is related in any way.
The first intifada started when a car accident was at first thought to be an intentional act of violent racism, by the way.
Alright already. Now that the flurry (no, blizzard? Sandstorm? World-ending hurricane?) of rumors has ended I can finally report on the Flotilla Fiasco without reporting the same likely untrue information that everyone else was.
But seriously though. As soon as this thing happened, every news outlet and blog in the world was foaming at the mouth to get some information, any information about it. People were reprinting the most ridiculous things, subjects were branching off into whole other emotionally-motivated subjects. Like the whole Helen Thomas thing. Just wait 'til I get to that.
The Build-Up
So, first of all, we knew the ships were coming weeks in advance. The activists had made it clear they were coming, despite Israel's warnings. Both sides fueled the media hype by upping the ante, throughout the voyage. Israel was accused of trying to sabotage the ships (Israel is accused of trying to sabotage the ships every time an aid group sails to Gaza), and Israeli spokespeople (including Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman) went on about how the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedom and Humanitarian Relief (henceforth, IHH), who had provided much of the support for the operation, was secretly a terrorist organization and a front for Al-Qaeda. When asked for proof of this by savvy bloggers, Israel backpeddled a bit (as they will be forced to do throughout this debacle), saying that IHH supports Hamas and is "sympathetic to al-Qaeda" (source).
From the very beginning, the flotilla group made much better use of media, especially new media, tweeting and blogging and facebooking and youtubing away. Israel has attempted to match this threat in the media war by posting videos on the official IDF youtube page, but it was too little, too late. In my opinion, any formal entity, no matter how media-savvy its members are, cannot possibly match the pitch and intensity of an informal entity, whose members are not bound by any hierarchy, security concerns, or accountability. There has been in more recent days talk about an international enquiry into where the fault lies for this whole thing (the details I will get to, keep your pants on) but even if such an enquiry were to determine that Israel's use of force was justified and that the activists were at fault, who would shoulder the blame? It would be dispersed, symbolically, among everyone present. The Turkish government would have a little egg on its face (nothing compared to what Israel is currently wearing) but it would be a bit like when a mob starts a stampede on Black Friday because everyone's kid wants that toy and the store won't open its doors yet and it's 5am and everyone is tired and annoyed. Somebody started shoving first, all right, but we'll never know who it was.
So basically, before the confrontation even happened, everyone in the world knew Israel was going to end up looking bad, not least of all, Israel itself. FM Lieberman said on May 28, days before the action, that the whole thing was, "an attempt at violent propaganda against Israel."
In the Morning
On Monday, May 31, I woke to headlines about the "Flotilla Massacre." 10 people "at least" were dead, many more injured. Perusal of stories showed that Israeli "commandos" had slid down ropes from helicopters and opened fire on the unarmed activists. I simply put my head in my hands and sighed. I knew that, no matter what further information came to light on this issue, Israel had shot itself in the foot with this idiotic maneuver. In fact, it might not just have been the foot. Israel may have shot itself in the liver and will slowly and painfully bleed to death. We'll see. Threats have been made, but have proved to be most likely empty. But I have yet to get to that.
The headlines that day were mostly speculative. How many were dead? Who were they? Of what nationality? Who started the fighting? What would the international reaction be? And of course, where are all the images? In today's world, when everyone has at least a cellphone camera, and the people on the boat had already demonstrated their prowess for media technology, the curious question was why haven't we seen anything?
We found out later Israel was making serious attempts to control what information got to the press. It had cut communications on the Mavi Marmara just as Al-Jazeera correspondent Jamal Elshayyal was finishing a broadcast. He reported that two people had been killed and there were still sounds of live fire.
All cameras (or, we found out later, almost all) were confiscated from the activists as part of their intake at the Ashdod holding facility, and no media was allowed to speak to them. Prior to the Mavi Marmara's arrival, Israel had invited several journalists to observe the operation (codenamed Operation Sea Breeze) from Israeli vessels. However, these journalists were not allowed to share their observations due to a gag order.
The press was dying for information, as was I. I called my contacts, who provided me with almost no additional information. I called an activist friend of mine in Ramallah and when he picked up the phone, still sounding groggy, I said right away, "Do you know anything?" "About what?" he responded. "Are you kidding me?" "Well I just woke up. Why? Did something happen?" "Jesus look at the news." He turned on his tv and flipped through the channels. "There's nothing...nope...I don't see anything." I apprised him of the situation and he promised to get back to me if he had more information. The next day, there was a "demonstration" in Ramallah, wherein a dozen or less activists held signs like "Pirates of the Mediterranean" and spoke to reporters about freeing Gaza. The reporters were tenfold more numerous than the demonstrators, which shows how desperate the press was to get anything, anything at all, to show.
The Light Shines On
Over the next fews days, videos galore came to light, along with commentaries about their validity. There was edited video, audio, and still photographs. Journalists on various sides of the issue cricitized anyone on the other side who had obviously edited the information, claiming it was a coverup.
A video emerged of Israeli soldiers on the deck of the Mavi Marmara, with rifles in hand. It looked like the sun had just come up. This contradicted the army's earlier claim that they had not had rifles at all, but also contradicted the activits' claim that they had begun shooting from the air, which was they became violent in return. So why are these Israeli soldiers standing calmly on the ship with rifles in hand, and nobody is fighting them?
There was audio clip of an Israeli seaman requesting by radio that the Mavi Marmara reroute to Ashdod, the nearest Israeli port, instead of attempting to reach Gaza. Someone from the other side responded, "Shut up, go back to Aushwitz." But then blogger Max Blumenthal pointed out that this clip was clearly edited and in fact included a photo from another video clip where nothing of the kind was said. Both clips were published on youtube by the IDF press office. When the IDF was pressed about the discrepancy, they responded that they did in fact edit the clip, but only for clarity. They also admitted that as it was recorded from an open line, anybody, on any ship, could have said it.
Reuters even got heat for publishing edited photos taken by the activists aboard the ship. In the original photos, you can see an activist holding a knife and standing over two injured soldiers, pool of blood and everything. Reuters edited the photo so that it included only one injured soldier (the least bloody of the two), no knife, and no blood pool.
The IDF also uploaded several videos of the activists attacking the soldiers. The activists' responses were usually that they had the right to defend the ship. The issue that the raid happened in international waters also featured prominently.
The Videos
The Interviews
After people began to be released (ie deported) from the temporary holding facility in Ashdod, interviews trickled out to the rest of the world.
Here is a clip with several interviews of different passengers, but unfortunately I am unable to embed it.
There were of course a gazillion more interviews, but all the ones I'm currently finding are either with people who were on other ships (where the violence was minimal and nobody was killed) or are total nutjobs and not worth listening to.
What I Think
Basically, what I can piece together from what I've seen and read, is that the Israeli navy first attempted to board the Mavi Marmara from the sea, but was rebuked by the passengers throwing things and spraying water. The soldiers then boarded the ship from the air, sliding down ropes from helicopters. Eyewitnesses and video footage agree that the activists attacked the soldiers immediately when they reached the deck of the ship. At least three were taken inside the ship ("taken hostage" say Israel's supporters, "taken into protective custody" say the activists). The next round of soldiers who came down from the helicopters was larger and they came down shooting live ammunition.
What is amazing here is that all of the 9 people reported dead were Turkish nationals, one with dual U.S. citizenship. Let's say for fun that the soldiers were told before the operation that they were to put the hurt on the Turks aboard the ship. Even in such a case, how would they have known which people were Turkish, especially in such a melee? What seems more likely to me is that, in an effort to save themselves and their fellow soldiers, they shot at whoever was being the most violent. While its true that Israel's claims that the IHH are a secret terrorist organization lack evidence, I can think of few reasons that only Turks were killed in the raid. There were a dozen nationalities on that ship. In this interview, a witness aboard the ship said, when asked how the Israelis boarded the ship, "The main boarding of the ship was by the helicopters and by sea, but the first attempt of the helicopter attack, or descent- the Turkish Resistance, I can say, grabbed four Israeli army and took them down."
Now, as to my opinion on where the fault lies. Firstly, there was no need for Israel to board the ship in the first place. Whether or not I think the siege on Gaza is right or the flotilla is right is not the issue. If Israel wanted to divert the ship to Ashdod using peaceful means, it could have. The propellor could have been disabled and the ship towed to Ashdod, without the soldiers ever boarding the Mavi Marmara, and thus avoiding the whole disgraceful nightmare. There was some jibber-jabber from the government press office that this type of ship is too big for such a maneuver, but my government contacts (who remain anonymous for obvious reasons) tell me that is completely untrue. Furthermore, the general consensus regarding why such a poor decision was made is that military minds only know how to design military solutions- a nod to Israel's current Minister of Defense- Ehud Barak- former general and Army Chief of Staff.
On the other side of the coin, let's take into account the actions of the Mavi Marmara's activists. They do not deny that they attacked the soldiers, saying it was their right to defend the ship. But what if they had just sat down? The same result would have been reached- that their ship would have been rerouted to Ashdod, their cargo unloaded for inspection, and themselves deported to their countries of origin- only nobody would have died. But maybe that wasn't preferable to them. Several media reports remarked that some of the Muslim activists were preparing for martyrdom.
One woman in this clip says, "We are now waiting for one of two good things- either to achieve martyrdom, or to reach Gaza." Another interviewee in this clip said, when asked if he had been subject to torture during his detainment, "No, unfortunately not." The one Turkish-American national who was killed kept a diary aboard the ship, the last words of which were reportedly, "Only a short time left before martydrom."
The Rachel Corrie
On Saturday, June 5, the Rachel Corrie (named after slain Gaza activist) was boarded by the Israeli navy. This time the activists did sit down, the soldiers met with the captain, and the activists agree to comply.
The passengers disembarked at Ashdod without incident.
This group was led by Mairead McGuire, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient. The Israeli coverage of this event included a full-page photo on the front page of Yediot Ahronot of an Israeli soldier offering McGuire his hand to help her disembark, which she took graciously. The caption was, "This is what a real peace activist looks like."
Fallout
In line with the amount of attention paid to the "Go back to Aushwitz" comment was a similar yet, really if you think about it, completely irrelevant incident. Helen Thomas had been a White House correspondent for Hearst news for 57 years, I do believe the longest term ever for this job. On May 27, as the flotilla was very publicly on its way to Gaza, someone asked Thomas to comment on Israel. She said, "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine." And to the question, "Where should they go?" she answered, "Go home...to Poland, Germany."
Much, unfortunately, was made of this statement. Clearly it was in bad taste, but because of the timing, it was somehow used to confirm that exhausted line of Israel's reasoning that says everyone is against them. Ten days later Thomas hastily retired.
Naturally there was also a huge media mess regarding Israel's ties with Turkey. They had, before this incident, had a very good relationship, although it had declined slightly in the last few year as PM Erdogan began re-Islamizing the state and distancing himself from Israel. Turkey recalled its ambassador to Israel after the flotilla raid and proceeded to make vague threats that it then retracted. Ergodan reportedly threatened to personally accompany a new aid flotilla that would be escorted by the Turkish Navy. Turkey's foreign minister later retracted that statement.
Iran's Ahmedinejad also threatened to send an aid convey with a military escort but denied Israel the conundrum of whether to kill him by stating he would not personally be aboard the ship. No more has been heard about this threat.
Numerous concerts have been cancelled, for example the Klaxons, Gorillaz, and the Pixies.
Finally, I leave you with this:
(For the record, I find it distasteful and unhelpful, but it provides a comment on the issue.)
Lots of interesting things are going on over here, news-wise, but your favorite snarkist is neck-deep in finals over here in the holy land and I just don't have time to report on it. But, however, even so, and although...I do find this particular Haaretz article to be important based simply on how it makes me feel inside. It is one of several articles in the Israeli press of late that has speculated on whether there will be a summer war with Lebanon and whether Israel's military is ready for such a war.
The piece says, in part:
Hezbollah tries not to carry out openly military activities in the border area, and in all of south Lebanon for that matter, but reports of heightened activities have recently spiked. A former intelligence officer told Haaretz that lately he and other Galilee farmers have seen plainclothes Hezbollah personnel traveling along the border and photographing Israeli positions.
They are sometimes accompanied by individuals who do not appear to be Lebanese, as well as interpreters, who appear to be Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers and who have by now integrated into every command level in Hezbollah.
Several questions detract from the sheer unpleasantness this extract suggests: How do you know they're Hezbollah if they are in plainclothes? How do individuals appear to not be Lebanese? How do people appear to be interpreters? And finally, how do people appear to be Iranian Revolutionary Guards? If these questions could please be answered to my satisfaction, I could continue on with my goosebump fest, thankyouverymuch.
The world has known suspected for many years that Israel has nuclear weapons, but Israel's "ambiguous" policy toward announcing that fact means they will never confirm or deny this fact suspicion. But as Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Haaretz, and others are reporting today, another nail has just been hammered into ambiguity's coffin.
Writer Sasha Polakaw-Suransky broke the story wide open yesterday when he finally announced the results of his extensive research into Israel's nuclear activities. Basically what happened is he discovered documents that strongly suggest that Israel offered to sell nuclear weapons to South Africa in 1975. The problem with the airtightness of the case is that the signature of Shimon Peres, current Israeli president and former defense minister, is on a secrecy agreement with South Africa, which was signed four days after a meeting between Peres and the South African defense minister. In the minutes of the meeting, typed and preserved by South Africa, nuclear weapons exchanges were discussed. So naturally, Peres is spinning the story by saying, correctly, that his signature is not on any document suggesting Israel has nuclear weapons or plans to proliferate them.
Polakaw-Suransky says about this, "he is speaking as a politician and someone predictably weasling his way out of a situation."
Yossi Melman, Israeli journalist, jumps on board the denial train and says that if Israel does currently have nukes, it didn't obtain them until 1979 and therefore couldn't have sold them to SA in 1975 even if they wanted to. He did however confirm that Israel traded tritium to SA in exchange for uranium.
In the above interview on Al Jazeera, the interviewer says to Melman, "Israel is not really in a position to cast dispersions on other peoples' nuclear ambitions. For instance, Iran."
Melman has that look on his face your kids get when you know they're doing something they're not supposed to do and you ask them what they're doing anyway and they respond, "Nooooooothiiiiing." You can tell he's thinking goddammit I should have known he was going to say that. So he takes a few moments to stutter and responds, "Well, that's not the same case. Israel has never admitted that it has nuclear weapons. It has never threatened to use nuclear weapons."
Wait. Am I...isn't that exactly the same case? Has Iran admitted it has nuclear weapons? Did I miss that announcement?
There are two main points of newsworthiness about this story. The first is obviously the evidence pointing toward Israel having nukes. The second is Israel's clear cooperation with Apartheid-era South Africa, which is unseemly and certainly doesn't help the image of today's Israel since its critics are constantly comparing Israel's policies toward Arabs to apartheid. However, as usual, only the Israeli press included the word "apartheid" in headlines about the event. Which is typical. Jewish guilt or whatever. I don't know.
I think it's time for a recap of this whole attempted Times Square bombing thing. The quick run-down goes like this: at first, nobody knew who did it, probably an amateur they thought, since the explosive device was made of fireworks and stuff. Also, this blog called Revolution Muslim had made veiled threats against the creators of South Park for including Mohammed, dressed in a bear suit, in their last episode. And the Viacom offices are in Times Square. Then the police apparently realized it was this guy Faisal Shahzad, below:
But they didn't want to make an arrest yet so they put him under surveillance and put him on the no fly list. He ditched his surveillance and was able to board a flight to Dubai, despite the no fly list. But upon a final manifest check, the airline was like, "Mmmmm, this guy isn't supposed to be on here. Let's call whoever we're supposed to call." Video of that whole process below:
PS, my fav part of this video: It's not like you just pick up the phone and call the guest house at the terror training camp and say, "Hello, was Mr. Shahzad there recently?"
Then the police came and took Shahzad away. They had him in custody and claimed he was singing like a bird, which didn't seem too plausible to me, but later there were stories on the news about how Pakistani officials had taken his family in Pakistan into custody, and I was like, oh I see. See in Pakistan they don't have pesky human rights laws and stuff.
So Shahzad apparently admitted he was part of the Pakistani Taliban and it was under their guidance that he planted the bomb. Which failed, I don't know if I mentioned that. Yeah, the bomb just didn't go off. It failed.
Anyway, meanwhile, the head of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, created a youtube channel seemingly for the sole purpose of uploading two youtube videos praising Shahzad's attempt and promising further attacks on U.S. soil. Oh, and he also wanted to mention that he's not dead, as was previously thought.
That video is here. For some reason I'm not able to embed it, but here's a screenshot:
It's really worth watching. Seriously, it's like a trailer for an action film. Drama! Action! Suspense! Subtitles!
All this happened a week ago and then yesterday, I guess after they followed up on the leads Shahzad and his family gave them, the U.S. government announced it was sure the Pakistani Taliban was responsible for the failed Times Square bombing attempt.
Unmanned drones just went to town in Waziristan. Which is here, on Pakistan's Northern border with Afghanistan.
And by "went to town" I mean they shot two missiles and killed ten people. There was also a similar unmanned drone attack in the same region earlier in the week, according to the above article, but I could find no specific information about that. I don't know yet who was killed in this drone attack and how involved they were in the Times Square thing, but rest assured I will lean on my sources until I get that information. Who are my sources, you ask? I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.
So let's review: in the span of a week's time, U.S. officials evacuated Times Square, neutralized a bomb, tracked down the bomber, arrested him, had his family ten thousand miles away arrested, convinced him to tell all, followed up on that, and then bombed the people who helped him make and plant the bomb.
Situation handled.
Doesn't this whole thing read like an action movie treatment?
So apparently the ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokul volcano will reach Israel by tonight.
How is "Eyjafjallajokul" even a word? You could put together any sequence of 15 letters and it would be equally as recognizable and easy to read (and by that I mean not at all) as "Eyjafjallajokul." Like, why not Ashjayecloudyajouyomommafnson?
Hanyway, my point is that things are windy and dusty over here and I don't like it one bit.
Remember back when everyone was mad at Netanyahu? That was because just as Joe Biden was in Israel trying to get peace talks started, Israel announced it was going to build a whole bunch of new settlement housing in East Jerusalem, in a neighborhood called Ramat Shlomo.
As part of the newest round of proximity talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Israel annouced yesterday that it would not build the approved Ramat Shlomo neighborhood for at least two years. There, are you happy now?
Israel had pledged not to build in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood of East Jerusalem for two years and that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed that he would work against incitement of any sort.
Just two days after resuming peace talks with Israel, the Palestinian Authority has reported to the United States what it termed the first violation of negotiation terms, a senior Palestinian official said Monday.
Yasser Abed Rabbo said the construction of 14 housing units for Jewish settlers in an East Jerusalem neighbourhood, as reported by the Israeli Peace Now pressure group, violated the terms of new talks.
About the first round of talks, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said:
Erekat said that during their meeting, Abbas gave Mitchell a letter outlining the Palestinian Authority's position on proximity talks and the issues it wants to discuss. Abbas would head the Palestinian negotiating team himself, Erekat said, adding that the Palestinians view the talks as aimed at "The end of the occupation and creation of a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel along the 1967 borders."
And Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak echoed his sentiments at a separate event:
"Without an agreement, we will be subject to international isolation, and we will suffer a fate similar to that of Belfast or Bosnia, or a gradual transition from a paradigm of two states for two peoples to one of one state for two peoples, and some people will try to label us as similar to South Africa. That's why we must act," Barak said. If both sides are willing to make brave decisions, he said, "it will be possible to get to direct negotiations and a breakthrough toward an agreement."
So it looks like Barak is super duper ready to make a two-state solution with the Palestinians, but clearly the rest of the government is not on board. Ah, well, no matter. I'm sure Netanyahu and Lieberman and all those guys will enjoy being a Jewish minority in, oh, 20 years.
