The Israeli government has dropped a threat to issue lengthy deportation orders against journalists aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that he ordered authorities to find a formula for the reporters if they are on a flotilla that violates Israel’s entry laws.
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The Foreign Press Association, which represents hundreds of journalists working for international news organizations in Israel and the Palestinian territories, condemned the Israeli decision and urged the government to cancel the order.
“The government’s threat to punish journalists covering the Gaza flotilla sends a chilling message to the international media and raises serious questions about Israel’s commitment to freedom of the press,” the FPA said in a statement.
The association’s lawyer, Gilead Sher, sent a letter to Helman demanding that the threat be rescinded.
“The state of Israel must make a clear distinction between those who carry out an action and those who cover it (as journalists),” Sher said in his note. Israel’s local journalists association also condemned the government’s letter.
In another brilliant scoop, Max Blumenthal reveals that the anti-semitic crazed rightwing Christian Zionist Hagee and his loony minions are funding the Israel Law Center’s effort to stymy the flotilla.
Who is Shurat Hadin, and what is their agenda? According to the group’s website, Shurat Hadin is a Tel Aviv-based law center that specializes in lawsuits against “terrorists.” Its founder, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, describes herself in her bio as a “human rights activist.”
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I have discovered that a major donor to Shurat Hadin is the homophobic far-right Pastor John Hagee. In March 2010, I reported that Hagee appeared beside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a major rally in Jerusalem to denounce the two state solution and announce the financial contributions he and his supporters were making to Israeli organizations. Among the organizations Hagee said he had bankrolled was Shurat Hadin.
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As the researcher and reporter Bruce Wilson has documented, Hagee preaches that the Jewish Rothschild family controls the US economy through the Federal Reserve and conspires to attack the American middle class by devaluing the dollar. In his 2006 book Jerusalem Countdown, Hagee claimed that a lineage of “half-breed Jews,” descended from Esau and which included Adolf Hitler, have persecuted full-blooded Jews throughout history. Hagee prophesied that God intended to exterminate that “half-breed Jew” line.
It’s one thing for a foreign power to press the Greek government to delay our voyage with red tape. It is quite another thing for enemy agents to operate on Greek territory. It is high time for the international community to put their foot down and say: Enough!”
On Saturday, 25 June, the French boat, Dignity / Karama, left the port of l’ile Rousse in Corsica, France, to meet up with at least nine other vessels sailing to Gaza to challenge Israel’s illegal blockade. Israel’s best efforts to stop our boats at port, including pressure on governments, threats against insurance and communications companies, intimidation of human rights defenders, frivolous lawsuits and other underhanded tactics, have thusfar failed. The Freedom Flotilla has set sail.
The US state department is fully complicit with Israeli criminality, with similar contempt for international law and human life. Nor does it have any idea of the medical “diet” which Israel has malignantly inflicted on the people of Gaza and the state of medical emergency declared by the Gaza health ministry on the 8th June with shortages of medical supplies since January 2011 noted by the World Health Organisation this month. There seems no comprehension by the US State Department of the impact of Israel’s illegal blockade on the people of Gaza. The tawdry ‘special relationship’ is cemented in the negation of the human needs of the civilian Palestinian population which under the Hague and Geneva Conventions should be met by the belligerent occupier, Israel.
“The U.S. State Department said Friday that attempts to break the blockade are “irresponsible and provocative” and that Israel has well-established means of delivering assistance to the Palestinian residents of Gaza. It noted that the territory is run by the militant Hamas group, a U.S. designated foreign terrorist organization, and that Americans providing support to it are subject to fines and jail.
Israel’s ‘well-established means of delivering assistance’ are open to limited numbers of trucks with aid from Sunday to Thursday. Predictably, Israel ramped up deliveries yesterday (Thursday) no doubt to create a tenuous facade that 300 trucks a day are ‘normal’. Some weeks the crossings are completely closed. While Egypt opened the Rafah crossing for people several weeks ago, it closed it again after a few days. As revealed at Electronic Intifada:
There is no legal basis for Israel to intercept ships and prevent them from delivering humanitarian supplies, say experts in international law.
“Israel only has jurisdiction over its territorial waters of 12 nautical miles, and neither the waters off Gaza nor international waters are under its authority,” University of the Basque Country professor of international law Juan Soroeta told IPS.
“No UN resolution authorizes the Gaza blockade,” said Soroeta. “On the contrary, it is an illegal, unilateral measure imposed by force by Israel in the context of an equally illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.”
UN Security Council Resolution 1860, adopted on 8 January 2009, calls for “the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including of food, fuel and medical treatment.”
But reports from the international humanitarian organizations working on the ground there confirm that this point is not being fulfilled.
The US State Department further rages:
Groups that seek to break Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza are taking irresponsible and provocative actions that risk the safety of their passengers. Established and efficient mechanisms exist to transfer humanitarian assistance to Gaza. For example, humanitarian assistance can be delivered at the Israeli port of Ashdod, where cargo can be offloaded, inspected, and transported to Gaza.”
On past record, there is no guarantee that aid if delivered to Ashdod will reach Gaza.
The 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid carried by the first Freedom Flotilla was confiscated by Israel along with the personal effects of the passengers and the reporters’ equipment.
None of the items were ever returned, making it “booty in the best pirate tradition,” said Spanish lawyer Enrique Santiago, who was involved in preparing the charges against Israel for the assault on the flotilla in international waters.
Oren attacked the organizers of the flotilla as “radical anti-Israel organizations…known also for anti-American activities.” He cited statements by the US State Department and UN Secretary Ban Ki-Moon criticizing or condemning their actions. Then Oren claimed that the flotilla could simply deliver its aid through a “responsible organization” like UNRWA, or bring their materials through El Arish and allow Israel to offload it. “It’s not a fight between us and the people of Gaza,” Oren claimed. “It’s between us and the group Hamas which is determined to destroy the state of Israel.” (Never mind this Israeli government document). He went on to claim that Israel’s maritime blockade was “in full accord with international law,” though he did not explain how besieging a civilian population that was not actively engaged in a full-scale war against Israel comported with the 4th Geneva Convention or the San Remo Accords.
The US boat to Gaza is carrying letters of hope and compassion for the beleaguered citizens of Gaza, who have been subjected to Israel’s horrific collective punishment, a crime against humanity, for the past 1,473 days.
Author Alice Walker who is on the US boat writes “We will be carrying letters … expressing solidarity and love”. Other vessels with the flotilla will bear humanitarian aid, including construction materials, medical supplies and educational materials.
Such are the frightening things which according to Israel’s premier hasbara source, the IDF Spokesman, threaten Israeli civilians.
and since the world Establishment, including the US government, is enabling it, it is only natural that upstanding Americans and members of other nations want to challenge it. . It should be remembered that the Civil Rights movement in the United States was mostly illegal and its activists were frequently jailed, beaten, bitten by police dogs, and sometimes shot down by law enforcement.
Early this morning, I discovered that a ‘private compliant’ had been filed against the US boat to Gaza. The compliant, it is still unclear who filed it, stated that the US boat to Gaza is not ’sea worthy’ and requires a detailed inspection.The harbor master where the boat is in port has declared that until the compliant is resolved the boat is not permitted to leave. Currently, lawyers representing the US boat are looking into the origins of the compliant and weather it was filed as a result of Israeli economic or diplomatic pressure on the Greek government. The boat is US flagged and registered in the United States.
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10 ships are expected to sail as part of the Gaza aid flotilla. Currently three ships, including the US boat, have had complaints levied against them. US boat organizers believe that Greece will attempt to delay the ships indefinitely by using a serious of bureaucratic measures such as endless safety checks and cargo inspections.
despite overall calm over the past 10 weeks, two rockets and two mortars had been fired into Israel from Gaza in the past month. Israel had conducted six incursions and one air strike, a Palestinian civilian had been killed by mortar fire while approaching the border fence at night, and two others had been injured by Israeli forces.
However, Mr. Pascoe welcomed Israel’s approval, earlier this week, of $100 million to build 1,100 housing units in Khan Younis and Rafah, as well as 18 schools of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), among other construction projects. It had brought the total value of approved United Nations reconstruction in the past 15 months to $265 million. “We continue to stress that the market in aggregate, steel bar and cement can and should be liberalized by the Israeli authorities,” he said.
He noted that on 25 May, Egypt had announced extended working hours and eased procedures at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, but the Egyptian and de facto Hamas authorities had faced difficulties in implementing the changes. Efforts to combat weapons smuggling through the tunnels continued. On illegal settlement activity, he said that, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, 1,774 units had been under construction in the West Bank during the first quarter of 2011, excluding East Jerusalem. In the past month, the Ministry of Defence had approved an additional 294 units in the settlement of Beitar Ilit, he said, adding that settlement activity also continued in East Jerusalem.
Expressing concern that continued demolitions in Area C were displacing Palestinians from their communities, he said the Israel Defense Forces had destroyed 81 Palestinian structures in the West Bank, including two in East Jerusalem, displacing 260 people. In addition, Israeli settlers had attacked Palestinians and their property in the West Bank, resulting in 13 Palestinian injuries and extensive material damage
commenting two days after Israel announced it would allow the UN to bring in material for school and housing construction, said the blockade is “a deliberate policy of collective punishment which is legally indefensible and morally reprehensible.”
On Tuesday, the Israeli Government approved the delivery of $100 million in building materials for 1,200 homes and 18 schools in UN-run projects in Gaza. Yesterday Robert Serry, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, called the announcement a “significant step.”
Referring to the recent media reports of widespread health problems in Gaza, Mr. Falk said the situation of health care there is “as nothing short of catastrophic.”
“Israel has pulled out the stops in trying to get the flotilla to stop before it begins by threatening the Greek economy,“ said Ann Wright, a retired State Department official and former Army colonel who is the main organizer of the US boat to Gaza. Sitting in the lobby of the noisy Athens hotel, she added, “Greece is caught in the middle. There is tremendous public support for the flotilla, but the government is getting pounded by the Israelis.” Not naming her sources, Wright, visibly exhausted from a year of organizing for the flotilla, contended that “Israel is going to try to sink the Greek economy if they allow the flotilla to sail from Greek ports.”
In response to the growing pressure, the Greek foreign ministry released a public statement on June 22 regarding its own citizens sailing with the flotilla. According to the statement, the ministry “urges Greek citizens as well as Greek-registered vessels not to participate in the new flotilla headed for the Gaza port.”
“Everything is explained in great detail,” foreign ministry spokesman Georgy Delavekouras told me over the phone from his office in Athens, referring to the statement. However, the statement is vague and does not say whether Greece will stop Gaza-bound ships registered in other countries.
Confirming that meetings between Greece and Israel have taken place recently over “many issues, including the flotilla,” Delavekouras said the Israeli government has not applied economic pressure. When pressed on the nature of the Israeli-Greek discussions, he simply referred to the statement.
Israel is doing everything possible to avoid a repeat of last year’s flotilla debacle, when Israeli commandos stormed the largest of six boats, the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, and killed nine passengers, including one Turkish-American citizen, as they seized control of the ship.’
“Apparently, the State Department subscribes to the view that Israel’s anticipated violence against unarmed protesters is an immutable act of nature,” said Hagit Borer, a professor of Linguistics at the University of Southern California and a passenger on the U.S. boat. “This is a remarkable attitude, coming from a government that provides the Israeli government with billions of dollars in military aid…’
?’Does Israel have the right to intercept the expected flotilla?
As an occupying power in the Gaza Strip, Israel may prevent ships from reaching the Gaza shoreline. However, exercising this power imposes on Israel an obligation to allow the passage of goods and people through other means, in order to respect the rights of Gaza residents to a normal life, including the right to engage in dignified, productive work and economic, educational and cultural development. The overall closure policy, of which the maritime closure is part, is unlawful due to the restrictions it places on civilians.’
An expert legal opinion on International Maritime Law and the Gaza blockade’
‘”The legal position is plain. A vessel outwith the territorial waters (12 mile limit) of a coastal state is on the high seas under the sole jurisdiction of the flag state of the vessel. The ship has a positive right of passage on the high seas. The coastal state can regulate economic activity exploiting the resources of the seas and continental shelf up to 200 miles, the extent of the continental shelf, or the agreed boundary, but there is no indication of fishing, oil drilling or analagous economic activity in this case. The vessel is entitled to free passage.”
‘”This right of free passage is guaranteed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas, to which the United States is a full party. Any incident which takes place upon a US flagged ship on the High Seas is subject to United States legal jurisdiction. A ship is entitled to look to its flag state for protection from attack on the High Seas.”
“Israel has declared a blockade on Gaza and justified previous fatal attacks on neutral civilian vessels on the High Seas in terms of enforcing that embargo, under the legal cover given by the San Remo Manual of International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea.”
“There are however fundamental flaws in this line of argument. It falls completely on one fact alone. San Remo only applies to blockade in times of armed conflict. Israel is not currently engaged in an armed conflict, and presumably does not wish to be. San Remo does not confer any right to impose a permanent blockade outwith times of armed conflict, and in fact specifically excludes as illegal a general blockade on an entire population.”
“It should not be denied that Israel suffers from sporadic terrorist attacks emanating from Gaza.
However this does not come close to reaching the bar of armed conflict that would trigger the right to impose a limited naval blockade in terms of San Remo. To make a comparison, in the 1970’s and 1980’s the United Kingdom suffered continued terrorist attack from the Irish Republican Army, with much more murderous impact causing many more deaths than anything Israel has suffered in recent years from Gaza. However nobody would seek to argue that the UK would have had the right to mount a general naval blockade of the Republic of Ireland in the 1970’s and 1980’s, even though the Republic was undoubtedly the base for much IRA supply and operations. Justifications of Israeli naval action against neutral civilian ships by San Remo is based on special pleading and an impossibly strained definition of the term “armed conflict”.’
In a deliberate bid to co-mingle sex, violence, and nationalism — do these people plan to imitate the SS, or does it just happen? — Birthright’s planners self-consciously try to bind Jewish youth to Israeli youth in the most visceral way possible.
With acknowledgement to Professor Ran Greenstein from Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg ….
Naomi Chazan may wish for self-determination for both “peoples”, yet equal rights under the law – individual human rights – precede any presumed collective rights. This is the contradiction which to their discredit, liberal zionists cannot resolve. Yet typically, racism is full of contradictory anomalies. Is it reasonable to oppose equal rights for all as a basic principle of democracy?
There is no customary law which defines a collective “right to exist”. If Israel cannot institute equal rights for all its citizens and cease from being a racist state which entitles some people above others on the artificial basis of ethno-religious identity, it guarantees its own disintegration – such tyrannies of privilege inevitably collapse under the weight of the contradictions required to sustain them.
The two state solution which Chazan proffers is reminiscent of the ‘separate but equal’ propaganda pushed by white South African apartheidists when they attempted to justify their horrific bantustans.
The liberation movement at which liberal zionism baulks and casts as a chimera, BDS, is ethical, legitimised by its grounding in human rights as the unified grassroots call for global solidarity of people of conscience from oppressed Palestinians themselves. BDS addresses the apartheid perpetrated by Israel against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, the hideous Occupation, the lack of recognition of Palestinians’ right of return and the lack of equal rights for all in Israel. All these aims are supported solidly by international humanitarian law.
Like the apartheid South African state, Israel cannot halt the inevitable – boycotts, divestments and sanctions are an unstoppable non-violent means to ease the transformation of this belligerent oppressor and its supporters, be they rightwing or cognitively dissonant ‘liberal’ zionists.
Chazan’s efforts to undermine BDS need to be seen in context. At the end of the day, Chazan will go home to Israel where she is a privileged Jewish citizen with all her rights intact. She is part of and an enabler of the establishment that denies Palestinians their basic rights and freedoms, and as such, she is not in a position to be dictating to the Palestinians their methods of struggle or acting as gatekeeper for the international solidarity movements, preaching to them what is allowed and what is not in standing with the Palestinians. As in every human struggle for freedom, justice and equality, that right is the prerogative of those who live behind the walls, hindered by checkpoints and held captive to siege and military oppression.
In his message of support for the new “Freedom for Palestine” single by OneWorld, Archbishop Desmond Tutu recognises the power of music and art against Israeli apartheid and colonialism in the same way that they were central to the struggle against apartheid oppression in South Africa.
“True peace comes only with justice.”
The Freedom Flotilla 2, with 12+ boats carrying humanitarian aid and 1000+ peace activists, is sailing to Gaza in late June. Alice Walker, who’s sailing with us, calls this the Freedom Ride of our generation. We want to help open this Palestinian port and end the illegal Israeli blockade, which has caused so much suffering. Meanwhile, the global BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) movement is calling on Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Laurie Anderson and Kiri Te Kanawa to cancel their 2011 Israel concerts and get on the boat!
Palestine / Israel Links
Let them eat cheese! Rechavia Berman examines Israeli neoliberalist exploitation, settler pogroms, sex in politics and the superiority of zionist dairy cows amongst other things in his Weekly Holyland overview.
Disgusting zionist entity plans to demolish 87 Palestinian homes in Occupied East Jerusalem as part of a tourist trap ‘National’ Archaeology park.
Fascist Israeli Occupation Forces cowards throw sound bombs and tear gas at non-violent protestors at the weekly demo at Nabi Saleh. Check out the BDS Banner!
Palestine / Israel Links
Israel’s Jewish Exodus – ‘What do you do with a society where everyone must support injustice or be themselves condemned as traitors or criminals?’ Imagine if it was your child. ‘”Father please help me! Don’t let them take me away,” screamed 12-year-old Ahmed Siyam as approximately fifty heavily armed Israeli soldiers and police dragged the handcuffed and blindfolded boy away’.
?’The facts are that we are dealing with some very brutal people; people indoctrinated over a long period of time. And a military that obviously is insensitive to the sufferings of other people. ‘
