Chutzpah and hasbara posted by Richard Seymour

You know how it is. For days, it's been impossible to log on to Twitter without some frantic Israeli apologists urgently messaging you to say - no, look, it's really clear, these so-called 'humanitarians' attacked Israeli soldiers who merely responded, yadda yadda yadda. They lynched those servicemen... Or, better still - peace activists don't carry weapons, they were there to get themselves killed... Rarely has such a toxic mixture of the desperate, the cowardly and the callous been compressed into 140 characters or less, and almost all of it is directly inspired by the carefully crafted tweets of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (Anyone who doubts the Israeli government's online virtuosity should check out what they can do with Flickr).

Israel, as noted before, never has any agency in any of this. Not one of Israel's apologists can contemplate for a second that the IDF, and the commando outfit Unit 13 that perpetrated the massacres, made a choice at every step leading to the murder of those aid workers - each of whom was deliberately executed with several bullets from close range. Their solidarity with the murderers is complete: "We are all Unit 13", as the Israeli protesters have reportedly taken to chanting. This is a pretty pathetic position to be in. Just as well Max Blumenthal has taken the trouble of trawling through the Israeli media's build-up to the attack, and documented that the attack was planned down to every detail, and that the use of lethal force was planned on the pretext that the flotilla's occupants were "terrorists".

Now, the 'Rachel Corrie' has also been hijacked, though as yet the Israelis haven't got round to murdering anyone on board. Predictably, it has been vilified as a jihadi vessel with links to global terrorism. The hasbara merchants have been out in force again, demanding to know why the aid workers didn't accept Israel's "offer" to dock at Ashdod port. Well, as before, it's very simple. The Israeli blockade has wilfully destroyed the Gazan economy. Destroying the power generation systems, and the sewage and other vital infrastructure that depended on it, the blockade has resulted in a process of de-development. The blockade, restricting Gaza's ships to operation within three nautical miles, has also destroyed the fishing industry. It has put almost half of agricultural land out of productive use. Mary Robinson, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, described how Gaza's "whole civilisation has been destroyed" by the blockade, though in fact Gazans are more resilient than this diagnosis would allow. But people are dying in large numbers. Poor nutrition, hardly any medicines, and lack of sewage processing means that Gazans are dying from preventable and treatable diseases. Diarrhoea alone is responsible for 12% of young deaths.

And here's the punchline. The blockade has left most Gazans wholly or partially dependent on food aid. However, the blockade has also placed a stranglehold on the amount of aid actually getting to Gaza. The amount entering Gaza in mid-2009 was 25% of that entering in 2007. This has resulted in nine out of ten residents living below the poverty line of a dollar a day. Even such aid as is devoted to Gaza can't be spent because of the blockade, according to Amnesty and the ICRC. Israel has consistently blocked food shipments, only allowing them through when it became an embarrassing political incident. It has held up medicines until they have expired. 80% of all imports to Gaza come through the tunnels. Israel has deliberately turned Gaza into a ghettoised economy, dependent on smuggling from outside fences, walls, and boundaries enforced by military violence. The tunnels, of course, are routinely attacked by aerial bombardment, on the pretext that they are being used to smuggle weapons - because Gaza, this tiny land mass with no navy or standing army, might get a few guns to defend itself the next time Israel decides to invade.

So, going through Israel is not an option. Attempting to get aid through the port at Ashdod means that little if any of the aid will reach the intended recipients. Israel has proved this time and again. The blockade is a premeditated act of savagery and sadism, and Israel does not intend to allow international aid to disrupt its calculated cruelty. Israel insists on its 'right' to hijack vessels in international waters that might actually disrupt this barbarism-by-design. Now it insists that if activists resist such hijack efforts, even with the most elementary, non-lethal weapons, as is their right, it can murder them with impunity. The Israeli state has thus proven, not only in its actions, but in the audacious, brazen propaganda campaign it has since initiated (a truly disgusting example of which), that it is not susceptible to reasoning or moral pleading. In addition to this, Israel's pied-noirs broadly approve of these colonial atrocities, differing only with the far right foreign affairs minister Avigdor Lieberman on the precise method for maintaining the stranglehold. So, relying on persuasion and heartfelt humanitarian appeals with a population that has been complicit in the colonial project from the start, and is displaying signs of rapid moral and political degeneration, is a complete waste of time. There is no alternative but to forcibly break the blockade. Israel's apologists bleat about a few knives and sticks found aboard the hijacked vessels, but if it were not tactically suicidal, it would be perfectly reasonable and appropriate for any future flotilla to proceed fully armed.

Labels: colonialism, flotilla, gaza, gaza freedom march, Israel, palestine, propaganda, war crimes, zionism

Interview with flotilla survivor posted by Richard Seymour

Kevin Ovenden explains:

"At 4.25am the attack began. The warship had neared and commandoes were lowering themselves onto the deck from helicopters. There were two motorised dinghies, carrying 14-20 commandoes, on either side of the boat.

"It was clear they were armed – it was the equivalent to an SAS raid. They were all wearing paramilitary style balaclavas.

"The first soldiers landed on the roof of the ship, people responded instinctively with their bare hands and things you would find on a ship – pieces of wood and piping and so on. No sharp objects were used.

Two soldiers were overpowered and pushed below deck. They were disarmed to prevent further injury or death.

"The attack opened with percussion grenades.

"These don’t just make a noise but send shockwaves of heavy vibration. They were trying to create terror and panic.

"They also used rubber coated bullets in the earlier stage. But very quickly they turned to live rounds and we were taking heavy casualties.

"Niki Enchmarch was on the top deck standing next to a Turkish man who was holding a camera. An Israeli soldier shot him in the middle of the forehead. It blew off the back of his skull and he died.

"I was on the second deck. A man standing a metre in front of me was shot in the leg, the man to the right of me in the abdomen. There was pandemonium and terror.

"The youngest person on the ship was not yet a year old, the eldest 88. The crew included German and Egyptian parliamentarians, NGO workers and representatives from various charities. This is who Israel was targeting.

"While they opened fire we struggled in our defence and to limit the massacre.

"They attacked with lethal force to terrorise the movement for the end of the siege of Gaza and the wider movement of solidarity with Palestine. They used violence to instill terror for political ends. This is the definition of terrorism."

Labels: blockade, flotilla, free gaza, gaza, gaza freedom march, Israel, palestine, zionism

Israel: marionette or schlemiel posted by Richard Seymour

Don't get me wrong. I think the attack on the Gaza Freedom flotilla was an insane adventurist provocation that may turn out very badly for Israel. But there are two narratives developing in the media, and among the commentariat, in which Israel is either a bungling, Frank Spencer-style dolt, well-meaning but overly eager, or a sort of mannequin with no animus of its own, pushed into action exclusively by external forces. The former narrative is most popular. Note the ubiquity of the phrase "botched raid" in the reporting. As if Netanyahu's cabinet didn't send the notoriously violent Masada unit (whose crimes against humanity usually take place in the locus of one of Israel's political jails, or in the vicinity of a peaceful Palestinian protest) to storm the Mavi Marmara on purpose. As if the whole thing wasn't planned for weeks in advance, in detail, from inception to denouement. As if the probability of murders wasn't accounted for.

The second narrative, the marionette tale, is more specialised fare, and it is perhaps telling that two of Israel's liberal "critics" should purvey it in different versions. Example one: Turkish Islamists used humanitarians as bait to "lure Israel into a trap, precisely because it knew how Israel would react, knew how Israel is destined and compelled, like a puppet on a string, to react the way it did." Example two: Israel had "no choice" but to murder the aid workers because they had "issued threat after threat against the IDF in the days building up to this morning's clash" and on the day used "iron bars and other weapons to assault the troops and giving the IDF carte blanche to respond with force against them". The aid workers compelled Israeli troops to kill them, gave them no options. Their every action was pre-determined from start to finish, and even if the results are regrettable, and even if Israel initiated the aggression and pulled the trigger, it bears no responsibility.

It has a venerable history, this idea. Golda Meir expressed it most pithily when she said that she would never forgive the Arabs for making Israel kill their children. In whatever variant it takes, it is surely revealing that the best defence (or least worst criticism) of Israel that such people can muster is that Israel is not a responsible agent.

Labels: flotilla, free gaza, gaza freedom march, Israel, massacre, palestine, zionism

Israelis celebrate state terrorism posted by Richard Seymour

Looks like a sizeable contingent of jubilant Israelis turned up outside the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv to party down after Israel's assault on the aid flotilla:



How sad for them that they didn't have the opportunity to watch the assault from afar, perched on deckchairs, binoculars in hand, as some of their compatriots did during Cast Lead.

Labels: flotilla, gaza, gaza freedom march, Israel, palestine, zionism

Saddam's WMD found aboard Gaza Freedom flotilla posted by Richard Seymour

Or not:



This is either: awesomely, epically, tragicomically pathetic; or, it is a huge middle digit proudly erected and waved before the entire world.

Labels: flotilla, gaza, gaza freedom march, idf, Israel, propaganda, zionism

Gaza Freedom Protest pictures posted by Richard Seymour

Some pictures from today's protest, which - given that people only have this morning to organise over it - was extraordinarily large, and raucous. There weren't very many coppers about, which is probably more due to its being a bank holiday than to the ConDem government's concern for civil liberties. I have to apologise for having failed to get a picture of the only Liberal Democrat I saw at the protest, that being Craig Murray. But he did deliver an incredible speech, second only to Lowkey in the reception he received from the crowd.

Labels: blockade, flotilla, gaza, gaza freedom march, Israel, palestine, viva palestina, zionism

Footage of IDF siege posted by Richard Seymour

This Al Jazeera footage of the IDF's seige includes English-language commentary, confirming that the ship didn't even enter Israel's exclusion zone, that it was in international water, and that the IDF deliberately targeted civilians:



This report from the Sydney Morning Herald confirms that the ship was in international water when Israel intercepted.

Labels: flotilla, gaza, gaza freedom march, idf, Israel, palestine, viva palestina, zionism