Iranian aid ships to set sail for Gaza
Mon, 07 Jun 2010 06:20:58 GMT
Two Iranian aid ships carrying humanitarian relief and medical supplies for the people of Gaza will set sail for the coastal sliver in the upcoming days.
Iran’s Red Crescent announced Monday that the cargo will include food, medicine and appliances and it will be accompanied by a group of Iranian doctors and relief workers.
“The aid consists of food and medical supplies, which will be transported into Gaza via the Rafah border in Egypt before the week is through,” the country’s Red Crescent Director Abdolraoof Adibzadeh said.
The Rafah border crossing is the only escape route from Gaza that does not lead to Israel.
More at http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=129349§ionid=351020101
Why does the article mention Rafah? Are the ships to be used by way of Egypt?
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Report: Two Iranian ships to sail to Gaza
The Iranian Red Crescent decided to send the vessels, which will carry food, medications, and medical equipment, following a meeting with the foreign ministry.
Iranian aid ships are due to set sail to Gaza by the end of the week, according to a report in the Sunday Times.
The Iranian Red Crescent decided to send the vessels, which will carry food, medications, and medical equipment, following a meeting with the foreign ministry,
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/report-two-iranian-ships-to-sail-to-gaza-1.294657
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Perhaps Iran feels duty bound to support its growing alliance with Turkey, perhaps Iran senses Israel’s weakness, and Israel’s inability to have anything like a coherent plan. Israel is after all, only geared up for “punishhment” as policy.
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There are also reports that Lebanon is planning to send ships within a couple of weeks.
With all the atrocities committed in our name, wouldn’t it be nice to see Bush, Blair, Cheney, Wolfowitz all in the dock? And Obama and Rahm and all the cohorts causing evil killing and torture to millions?
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Strangely enough it might just start in Israel. And even stranger, if the leadership is indicted, there is no opposition to replace Bibi, Ehud Barak and Lieberman. There is just more of the same.
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Haaretz is leading with a grim-faced PM Bibi refusing calls for an international enquiry.
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And some seemingly conscientious objections by Israeli Naval officers themselves:
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Israel Navy reserves officers: Allow external Gaza flotilla probe
Officers denounce operation as ‘military and diplomatic failure’, slam government for placing blame on the activists.
“First and foremost, we protest the fact that responsibility for the tragic results was immediately thrust onto the organizers of the flotilla,” wrote the officers. “This demonstrates contempt for the responsibility that belongs principally to the hierarchy of commanders and those who approved the mission. This shows contempt for the values of professionalism, the purity of weapons and for human lives.”
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-navy-reserves-officers-allow-external-gaza-flotilla-probe-1.294536
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We are all so used to the spin and dribble, the contempt for the truth, just as we see it in our nations, so it is occurring in Israel. As above – so below. From non-existent weapons of mass destruction, to Al Qaeda cells everywhere. The Israelis are more cushioned thanks to all the money pouring in there. Making their population astoundingly right-wing. Yet it seems, crunch time has arrived.
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Breaking out of the siege
If Israel is to break out of the international siege and strategic catastrophe it now faces, it urgently needs a different policy.
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We don’t know what goes on diplomatically and quietly behind the scenes. But it seems political earthquakes vis-a-vis Israel are afoot. It is not the Israeli population that wants change. They mostly wish to continue the slaughter against the Palestinians, and anyone who dares identify with an underdog.
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Israel has no opposition and no alternative
While Zuabi was savagely attacked in the Knesset – Livni kept mum. When the blockade continued – Livni kept mum. After Israel brutally abducted the flotilla ship – Livni skipped from one television studio to another, justifying the operation with frightening alacrity.
By Gideon Levy
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If there is a revolt taking place in Zionism, in Israel or in world Jewry, it certainly is not coming from the Israeli man on the street. What a lesson to learn: Lieberman, Bibi and Ehud Barak made Israel very weak indeed. There was also historical forces at work, Israel became “an accident waiting to happen”. The truth was always an inconvenience and an enemy. Now what is to be done with millions of people bred to ride roughshod over all of humanity? They are very dangerous… Reared on persecuting hapless Palestinians, and promoted to a duplicitous business of False Flags, security and funding terror.
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On reflection, we are looking at institutionalised war crimes. But now it will not be a case of “shooting the messenger”. Turkish papers are even suggesting Israel instigated an attack on one of their naval bases:
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Suspicion growing about possible link between PKK and Israel
Amid the growing outrage over an Israeli attack on civilian ships in international waters that killed nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists and wounded dozens last week, there is deepening suspicion about the possible Israeli involvement in the killing of seven soldiers in a terrorist rocket attack on a naval base in İskenderun, in the southern province of Hatay.
Turkish intelligence organizations are looking into possible connections between the two incidents that occurred on the same day only hours apart.
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-212267-suspicion-growing-about-possible-link-between-pkk-and-israel.html
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There is more at stake than Israel or Zionism, there is world Jewry, banking and oil. For now we can all marvel at “people power”, and how the sheer indignation of people everywhere has had greater effect than any politicians or media.
A British-born al-Jazeera producer recalls his ordeal on the Gaza flotilla
By Jamal Elshayyal
Sunday, 6 June 2010
ERHAN SEVENLER / AP
A wounded activist on the Marmara after Israeli soldiers stormed the vessel
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I joined the Mavi Marmara in Istanbul on Friday 21 May as one of between 30 and 40 journalists reporting on the flotilla’s mission to Gaza. I am a journalist for al-Jazeera.
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It was at 11pm local time on the evening of the 30th, as we were headed for Gaza, that we first spotted the Israeli military from afar. I asked the organisers what they expected to happen. They told me they had decided to move as far away from the military zone as possible, and as far away from the Israeli army and as deep into international waters, because they wanted to avoid a confrontation.
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At 2.30am I sent an email to my news desk to say we shouldn’t expect anything to happen during the coming hours, and I went to bed. At roughly 4am, a huge bang on the window woke me up. I could see swarms of people in small speedboats belonging to the Israeli army close to our boat. The sound was of water grenades and tear gas canisters landing on board. I quickly put on my life jacket, grabbed my satellite phone and ran upstairs. Most of the others chose to stay down.
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Because many of the crew were at that time at morning prayers, there had been a quick approach from all sides, just before they had finished praying.
When I got to the top deck I could see there were more than 15 speedboats around us, which had on average about 20 soldiers each. About 12ft above me, maybe 15ft at most, I saw the bottom of a helicopter; the sound was immense.
I pulled out my phone to call the desk. But none of the phones were working. None of the satellite phones were working; they were jammed by the Israelis. They had been working two hours before. I can list you more than 10 journalists whose satellite phones weren’t working.
There was a second helicopter hovering over the ship, trying to lower Israeli soldiers down on a rope. On either side there was tear gas being thrown in from the boats, canisters which they were firing from a sort of gun. One man was shot in the top of the head from the helicopter. He collapsed on the ground. I snatched a microphone from one of the Turkish reporters to say one man had been killed. As I did that another man was shot. Those people died instantly.
Until that point I had not yet seen an Israeli soldier on deck. As far as I am concerned, it’s a lie to say they only started shooting on deck. Only then did I see an Israeli soldier on deck.
Read the rest here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/kidnapped-by-israel-and-abandoned-by-britain-1992518.html
There is a small section of people who have served Israel, and then turned their back on it, no doubt through revieving some injustice. The authour of this piece was once an Israeli paratrooper. And although he and people like him are blacklisted and do not get much mention – even in the “Alternative press”, they seem to have some license to “say it like it is”.
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The Jews of Israel and many of their brethren elsewhere had come to an entirely wrong conclusion that they are above the law, a breed apart. …
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Their luck lasted for fifty years and caused a rupture between Israelis and reality; the Jews of Israel do believe now that they can do whatever they wish for they are real human beings, and the rest are not. …
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Our friend Jeff Blankfort proposed the diagnosis and the treatment: “Israel is a nation controlled by the criminally insane and supported by and large by a criminally insane public that has total contempt for the rest of humanity and for those Jews who do not support their racist enterprise. With its nuclear weapons, it is Israel that is holding the rest of the world hostage. The goal must be to find a way to disarm and dismantle it.”
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Lifting of Gaza blockade is the first goal, while the second is introduction of democracy and equality in the whole of the land between the Sea and the River. It’s time for the Jews of Israel to come to terms with reality: Jews are ordinary human beings, not some supermen or space travellers or angels; they have to observe the customary law of nations. They can’t go around killing people in neutral waters; they can’t lock up a million of Gazans just because they are not Jews.
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The dastardly attack on the Freedom Flotilla provides an opportunity: not only should the pirates be placed in the dock, but their supporters overseas as well, for aiding and abetting. The anti-terrorist laws promulgated by many nations allow for a legal framework to do it. Israel is a terrorist state, thus its supporters and lobbyists are supporters of terror network. They should be arrested immediately and their assets seized.
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While this will bring freedom to people of Gaza, it will incidentally solve the financial and economic crisis as well, because the terrorist supporters head such criminal structures as Goldman-Sachs and Pentagon. They occupy not only Nablus, but the Capitol Hill and Wall Street as well. Their removal will save millions. The Greek debts and American mortgages will be evaporated; Afghanistan and Iraq will find peace. Even democracy will become real, instead of demo version.
Read the rest at: http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Yardarm.htm
What happens when Israel panics?
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Israel is now at total loggerheads with the worlds nations and people. She became accustomed to “ruling the roost” with her secret benefactors, who shared, “so many secrets”, legally defined as “classified”.
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Turkey says Israel’s PM Bibi is a prime suspect, in ordering the murders of the Humanitarian aid workers. If so, was he the first PM to do so, or is it a long tradition? Ariel Sharon was Bib’s political mentor. For the Turkish prosecutor to say this, he must have either been informed through a “leak” or by judging Bibi’s behaviour. He could not have just “imagined” it.
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Turkish prosecutors go after Israeli politicians
Israel’s prime minister, defense minister and chief of General Staff are among the prime suspects in an investigation initiated by the İstanbul Bakırköy Prosecutor’s Office into Monday’s military operation against a Gaza-bound civilian aid flotilla that left nine peace activists, all of whom were Turkish citizens, dead. …
To demonstrate that Israel’s intervention was illegal, the prosecutors will emphasize that the ships were in international waters, that the people aboard had waved a white flag of surrender, that the ships were carrying humanitarian aid, that the passengers did not threaten Israel and that no permission for intervention was given by the ships’ captains or countries under whose flags they were sailing. Concrete evidence, such as firing at the victims at close range, and the testimonies of victims will also be included as evidence.
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-212202-turkish-prosecutors-go-after-israeli-politicians.html
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Then again Israel has an official policy of “targeted” killings, there has been much controversy within Israel that even these killings are beyond what the law allows. It has been widely reported that the “Rachel Corrie” was mechanically sabotaged by the Israelis, and it was carrying VIPs. We can assume they were to be spared the hostile treatment that the rest of the Flotilla received.
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And Israel is pushing the US to up the ante on North Korea. This is Israel’s only modus operandis, when there is trouble, sow conflict.
Read the rest of this entry »
