Global Condemnation of Israeli Armed Attack on Gaza-Bound Freedom Flotilla (Amy's report today)

[EFerrari]

Global Condemnation of Israeli Armed Attack on Gaza-Bound Freedom Flotilla: At Least 10 Dead, Hundreds Remain in Detention

It was early Monday morning as Israeli soldiers stormed the Gaza-bound international aid convoy called the Freedom Flotilla in international waters about forty miles off the coast of Gaza. The six ships had nearly 700 international activists on board and 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid. They were aiming to break the three-year-long siege of the Gaza Strip. Israeli commandos landed on the lead ship in the convoy, the Turkish Mavi Marmara, which had about 600 activists on board. At least ten and as many as nineteen civilians on board the ship have been reported to have died in the attack. Israeli troops proceeded to seize the Mavi Marmara and the five other ships and take them to the port of Ashdod. Hundreds of activists are being detained in an Israeli prison, and nearly fifty others have been deported. The United Nations Security Council has condemned the attack and called for the immediate release of the ships and the civilians held by Israel and called for an impartial investigation. All the permanent members of the Security Council except for the United States explicitly called for Israel’s three-year blockade of the Gaza Strip to be lifted. Turkey has compared Israel’s actions to state terrorism. We speak to Adam Shapiro, Amira Hass, Ali Abunimah and Richard Falk.

Guests:

Adam Shapiro, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement and a board member of the Free Gaza Movement.

Ali Abunimah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

Richard Falk, United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories.

Amira Hass, columnist with Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper and the only Israeli journalist to have spent several years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/1/global_condemnation_of_israeli_armed_attack

Note: Some of this material is a recap but these people aren't going to be on the corporate media. So, I thought for their opinion, it was worth posting as an OP. ef

[EFerrari]

1. Richard Falk, UN Special Repporteur for the Palestinian Territories:

RICHARD FALK: Good morning, Amy. This was a shocking incident that involved, as your other guests have said, a complete disregard of international law, in several respects. It was an act of naked aggression. It was done on the high seas. It was done in defiance of elementary humanitarian standards. It was known that this flotilla had no weapons. It was not a security issue by the remotest stretch of the imagination. If there was a right of self-defense, it belonged to the people onboard these ships. Israel, as the aggressing state and political actor, had no claim whatsoever of self-defense. It’s an absurdity. And one can only imagine if another country that the United States didn’t like had engaged in this kind of behavior, we would have been denouncing them or, worse, using force. One can only imagine what would happen if Iran had done something of this comparably outrageous character and sought to provide some kind of legal cover for it, while silencing those that actually experienced the incident.

So I feel that we’ve almost never seen such a direct confrontation with the most elementary principles of international law. And it is a disgrace that our government has decided to stand apart from all other countries in the world, including our normal European friends, and withheld a denunciation and a call for lifting the blockade, because one needs to appreciate that underneath this criminal act, which amounts to a crime against humanity, underneath this has been the almost three years of criminal blockade of the people of Gaza. The blockade is a direct violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that prohibits collective punishment. And this is one of the first examples where a civilian population has been locked inside a zone that has been subjected to this kind of mental and physical threat to subsistence and survival.

[grassfed]

2. Mystery solved: flotilla cargo contents revealed!

flotilla cargo contents revealed

[EFerrari]

3. That teddy bear looks like WMD to me.

:(

[azurnoir]

4. that Pikachu backpack is really a flack jacket

complete with suicide bomb compartment:sarcasm: