Some more footage.....
Terrorism of Israel
by halil » Wed Jun 02, 2010 5:20 pm
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has held a telephone conversation with US President Barrack Obama regarding the developments concerning the recent Israeli attack on ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has said that Ankara will not stand by and watch even a single Turkish citizen to remain in Israel or to be questioned.
Davutoglu told a press conference at the end of his contacts in Washington that none of the countries had a privilege before the international laws and that all countries, including Israel, were subject to these laws.
He reminded that the United Nations Security Council – which convened in an emergency session upon Turkey’s call - condemned the Israeli intervention in the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Separately, members of a group of civil society organizations in the TRNC and a large group of students from the Eastern Mediterranean University have held a rally to protest Israel and to commemorate the martyrs killed in the attack.
Davutoglu told a press conference at the end of his contacts in Washington that none of the countries had a privilege before the international laws and that all countries, including Israel, were subject to these laws.
He reminded that the United Nations Security Council – which convened in an emergency session upon Turkey’s call - condemned the Israeli intervention in the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Separately, members of a group of civil society organizations in the TRNC and a large group of students from the Eastern Mediterranean University have held a rally to protest Israel and to commemorate the martyrs killed in the attack.
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by CopperLine » Wed Jun 02, 2010 5:28 pm
Cap wrote:Close-Up Footage of Mavi Marmara Passengers Attacking IDF Soldiers
Make up your own minds...
Cap,
Every single piece of video footage covering the attack, with the exception of a turkish TV and an al-Jazeera excerpt, have been provided by and through the Israeli military censor. Those some Israeli IDF videos have been played over and over again on all the world's television networks. Effectively there is no other story of the attack on the flotilla except that provided by the Israeli state. (only today are some other eye-witness accounts beginning to come out). You cannot reasonably ask people to make up their minds on the basis of a monopoly.
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by Cap » Wed Jun 02, 2010 5:33 pm
CopperLine wrote:Cap wrote:Close-Up Footage of Mavi Marmara Passengers Attacking IDF Soldiers
Make up your own minds...
Cap,
Every single piece of video footage covering the attack, with the exception of a turkish TV and an al-Jazeera excerpt, have been provided by and through the Israeli military censor. Those some Israeli IDF videos have been played over and over again on all the world's television networks. Effectively there is no other story of the attack on the flotilla except that provided by the Israeli state. (only today are some other eye-witness accounts beginning to come out). You cannot reasonably ask people to make up their minds on the basis of a monopoly.
I'm not judging. This is all that was available. I'm just providing it.
I know its a sensitive issue.
Yes the Turks attacked them like demons from hell, but the question is, what provoked it? Did the IDF open fire first? Too many unanswered questions.
-
Cap - Main Contributor
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by halil » Wed Jun 02, 2010 5:38 pm
Israel is always shooting... and fast losing friends
Israel's policy of meeting force with greater force is proving ever more counter-productive. Adrian Michaels reports on the fall-out from the Gaza aid convoy deaths.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... iends.html
For Israel, a garrison state, almost every challenge is framed as a threat to its existence, just as the Battle of Britain threatened the survival of these islands. That the latest existential challenge, as Israel saw it, took the form of an aid flotilla, possibly infiltrated by extremists but seemingly packed with civilian Turks and Western intellectuals, is an indication of the growing gap in understanding between Israel and its friends.
Amos Harel, a military and defence commentator, wrote in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz yesterday: "No matter how much effort it invests, Israel will never be able to explain to the world how ... civilians were killed, without a single death on our side – and the dead are citizens of the country [Turkey] that was until recently our best friend in the region."
Gaza was the intended destination of the flotilla. Israel holds to its blockade of Gaza, a sliver of land from which it withdrew forces in 2005, because it wants to stop the flow of weapons to Hamas, an extremist Palestinian organisation that rules Gaza and is among those that really do question Israel's right to exist. Hamas is weak and corrupt, though it launches crude and terrorising rocket attacks on Israeli citizens. And Israel demonstrated clearly with its bombardment of Gaza at the end of 2008 that it can blow the militants to smithereens. None the less, Hamas is seen as a deadly threat, and the maintenance of the siege is viewed as crucial to Israel's existence.
To understand this, you just need to look at Temple Mount, the small hill in Jerusalem where two important mosques sit above the remains of the ancient Jewish temple. In Israel, perhaps as nowhere else, archaeology is a crucial part of today's politics, discourse and diplomacy. Excavations in such areas affirm for Jews their historical presence and continued right to live in the region; spades are powerful tools to deploy against increasingly shrill attempts to "delegitimise" the country.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, represents the extreme example of that delegitimising trend when he questions whether the full horrors of the Holocaust took place and undermines by assertion and implication Israel's sovereignty. But elsewhere, there is no doubt that a broad-based and widely accepted narrative that has helped to sustain Israel for decades looks in danger of running its course.
Sympathy is running out and the feeling that the Palestinians and other deserving groups were cheated in the process of establishing the Jewish state is growing. Presumably, many of the people on the aid flotilla to Gaza would not have been staunch backers of the Jewish claim to a country somewhere between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean.
No wonder Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, and many others in the country were so sensitive to the flotilla and the shifting international sands it may represent. The over-reaction by the Israel Defence Forces is far harder to justify, but it is only the latest in a long line of dreadful mis-steps by Israel's administration.
A fresh round of settlement construction in disputed East Jerusalem was announced as Joe Biden, US vice-president, was in town. Turkey's ambassador was humiliated on television in January by being summoned for an admonition and given a small, low chair from which to stare up at a hectoring Israeli minister. Israel turned down friendly overtures from Qatar, an important Arab state; it forged British and other passports while assassinating an enemy in Dubai; it took the ludicrous decision to ban Noam Chomsky, the American gadfly academic, from entering the disputed West Bank. And even as the aid flotilla approached, Israeli officials were saying it was untrue that there was a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, pointing to the lush restaurant menus that a tiny few can enjoy.
All of these events have contributed to a change in the rhetoric around Israel. Its critics decry its lack of devotion to freedom of speech and some happily dub it a "rogue" state, a sobriquet normally reserved for countries or governments that are deemed out of control. The crazy coalition that Mr Netanyahu leads is partly to blame: his government is composed of ministers spanning the religious far Right and the Labour Left, while excluding the centrist Kadima party that actually won most seats at the last election. But Mr Netanyahu has also built an inner circle made up mostly of hardliners, and they appear to be delivering bad advice. While Hamas is today celebrating a public relations triumph, Israel continues to show that it is not fighting this century's wars with this century's weapons.
Meir Javedanfar, an Israeli-based expert on Iran, says the government must stop seeing the armed forces as the first solution to everything. Israel, he thinks, is still following Sean Connery's advice as policeman Jimmy Malone in The Untouchables: "'[Al Capone] pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way.'... This is how Israel survived in a neighbourhood where it has been surrounded by powerful enemies, many of whom have been hell-bent on its destruction."
Mr Javedanfar says that philosophy worked well against Syrians, Egyptians and Jordanians, even bringing peace with Jordan and Egypt, but it is out of step today. Israel has not been, for years, the plucky little guy in the playground, and it would do better to start talking from a position of strength. He suggests that Israel could lift the Gaza blockade, explaining that it did so at the request of the moderate Palestinians who run the West Bank, demonstrating how diplomatic engagement leads to results.
In an editorial, Haaretz says of the flotilla deaths: "The violent confrontation, whether caused by poor military planning or poor execution, resulted from flawed policy, wars of prestige, and from a profound misunderstanding of the confrontation's meanings and repercussions."
Israel may now further undermine some of its most reliable alliances as a result. Egypt and Jordan are probably squirming with embarrassment. As for the US, its craven call for more investigation and understanding rather than a swift condemnation of the flotilla deaths looks almost as bad as China's refusal last week to condemn North Korea's sinking of a South Korean ship. China, incidentally, has had no such inhibitions over Israel; the foreign ministry said it was "shocked" at Israel's attack.
It is not just in the Middle East that the international consensus which has sustained Israel has been eroded. We can see the post-1945 view of the world being ripped up almost daily, from the emergence of the new powers of China and India and a perceived weakening of the US's superiority, to a moderating of Germany's ardour for the European Union and a loosening of the commitments that have helped to prevent war in Western Europe for decades.
Israel's view of itself has changed hugely, too. It was a society that tended to frame itself within the context of Arab wars, a devotion to a secular, democratic society and the staunch backing of America. But Israelis have changed in composition and outlook. A huge influx of Russians after the dissolution of the Soviet Union changed the mix of the country's peoples; the controversial and rapidly expanding settlements in the disputed territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem have fractured public opinion; and the increasing influence and numbers on the religious Right have seemed to make an unwieldy political system even more unworkable.
"Israel itself does not know what it stands for," says one sympathetic observer. "There is a cacophony of voices and its enemies are using the international community and media much better."
Israeli officials can counter legitimately that their extreme sensitivity is justified. Iran's attempts to build a nuclear bomb could be explanation enough, but they can also see countries from Russia and North Korea to Brazil and Turkey probing and prodding the White House for weakness. Israel can point to occasions when diplomacy has supplanted military action as the first option. It let Hamas fire rockets on Israelis for years before losing patience and bombarding Gaza. It has pursued, fruitlessly, numerous peace talks and discussions about a Palestinian state with moderate and not-so-moderate Palestinians. It feels that having the strength to offer concessions is just taken as weakness by its enemies and not rewarded enough by its friends.
Mr Netanyahu has given the impression that doing nothing is the best strategy. He has maintained his domestic popularity, at least until recently, by allowing the vast security wall between Israelis and Palestinians to limit terrorism, and by largely facing down US demands to halt settlement construction.
But time, international opinion and Palestinian birth-rates are not on his side. Ehud Barak, the defence minister and former prime minister, sounded a clear warning in February about the lack of progress in establishing a Palestinian state: "As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel, it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."
It may seem crass to compare Israel with apartheid-era South Africa – another state viewed as rogue – but it is a measure of how far behind the discussion Israel has fallen. Something needs to change if Israel is to shore up its international allies and undermine those who would erode its right to exist.
Israel's policy of meeting force with greater force is proving ever more counter-productive. Adrian Michaels reports on the fall-out from the Gaza aid convoy deaths.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... iends.html
For Israel, a garrison state, almost every challenge is framed as a threat to its existence, just as the Battle of Britain threatened the survival of these islands. That the latest existential challenge, as Israel saw it, took the form of an aid flotilla, possibly infiltrated by extremists but seemingly packed with civilian Turks and Western intellectuals, is an indication of the growing gap in understanding between Israel and its friends.
Amos Harel, a military and defence commentator, wrote in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz yesterday: "No matter how much effort it invests, Israel will never be able to explain to the world how ... civilians were killed, without a single death on our side – and the dead are citizens of the country [Turkey] that was until recently our best friend in the region."
Gaza was the intended destination of the flotilla. Israel holds to its blockade of Gaza, a sliver of land from which it withdrew forces in 2005, because it wants to stop the flow of weapons to Hamas, an extremist Palestinian organisation that rules Gaza and is among those that really do question Israel's right to exist. Hamas is weak and corrupt, though it launches crude and terrorising rocket attacks on Israeli citizens. And Israel demonstrated clearly with its bombardment of Gaza at the end of 2008 that it can blow the militants to smithereens. None the less, Hamas is seen as a deadly threat, and the maintenance of the siege is viewed as crucial to Israel's existence.
To understand this, you just need to look at Temple Mount, the small hill in Jerusalem where two important mosques sit above the remains of the ancient Jewish temple. In Israel, perhaps as nowhere else, archaeology is a crucial part of today's politics, discourse and diplomacy. Excavations in such areas affirm for Jews their historical presence and continued right to live in the region; spades are powerful tools to deploy against increasingly shrill attempts to "delegitimise" the country.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, represents the extreme example of that delegitimising trend when he questions whether the full horrors of the Holocaust took place and undermines by assertion and implication Israel's sovereignty. But elsewhere, there is no doubt that a broad-based and widely accepted narrative that has helped to sustain Israel for decades looks in danger of running its course.
Sympathy is running out and the feeling that the Palestinians and other deserving groups were cheated in the process of establishing the Jewish state is growing. Presumably, many of the people on the aid flotilla to Gaza would not have been staunch backers of the Jewish claim to a country somewhere between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean.
No wonder Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, and many others in the country were so sensitive to the flotilla and the shifting international sands it may represent. The over-reaction by the Israel Defence Forces is far harder to justify, but it is only the latest in a long line of dreadful mis-steps by Israel's administration.
A fresh round of settlement construction in disputed East Jerusalem was announced as Joe Biden, US vice-president, was in town. Turkey's ambassador was humiliated on television in January by being summoned for an admonition and given a small, low chair from which to stare up at a hectoring Israeli minister. Israel turned down friendly overtures from Qatar, an important Arab state; it forged British and other passports while assassinating an enemy in Dubai; it took the ludicrous decision to ban Noam Chomsky, the American gadfly academic, from entering the disputed West Bank. And even as the aid flotilla approached, Israeli officials were saying it was untrue that there was a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, pointing to the lush restaurant menus that a tiny few can enjoy.
All of these events have contributed to a change in the rhetoric around Israel. Its critics decry its lack of devotion to freedom of speech and some happily dub it a "rogue" state, a sobriquet normally reserved for countries or governments that are deemed out of control. The crazy coalition that Mr Netanyahu leads is partly to blame: his government is composed of ministers spanning the religious far Right and the Labour Left, while excluding the centrist Kadima party that actually won most seats at the last election. But Mr Netanyahu has also built an inner circle made up mostly of hardliners, and they appear to be delivering bad advice. While Hamas is today celebrating a public relations triumph, Israel continues to show that it is not fighting this century's wars with this century's weapons.
Meir Javedanfar, an Israeli-based expert on Iran, says the government must stop seeing the armed forces as the first solution to everything. Israel, he thinks, is still following Sean Connery's advice as policeman Jimmy Malone in The Untouchables: "'[Al Capone] pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way.'... This is how Israel survived in a neighbourhood where it has been surrounded by powerful enemies, many of whom have been hell-bent on its destruction."
Mr Javedanfar says that philosophy worked well against Syrians, Egyptians and Jordanians, even bringing peace with Jordan and Egypt, but it is out of step today. Israel has not been, for years, the plucky little guy in the playground, and it would do better to start talking from a position of strength. He suggests that Israel could lift the Gaza blockade, explaining that it did so at the request of the moderate Palestinians who run the West Bank, demonstrating how diplomatic engagement leads to results.
In an editorial, Haaretz says of the flotilla deaths: "The violent confrontation, whether caused by poor military planning or poor execution, resulted from flawed policy, wars of prestige, and from a profound misunderstanding of the confrontation's meanings and repercussions."
Israel may now further undermine some of its most reliable alliances as a result. Egypt and Jordan are probably squirming with embarrassment. As for the US, its craven call for more investigation and understanding rather than a swift condemnation of the flotilla deaths looks almost as bad as China's refusal last week to condemn North Korea's sinking of a South Korean ship. China, incidentally, has had no such inhibitions over Israel; the foreign ministry said it was "shocked" at Israel's attack.
It is not just in the Middle East that the international consensus which has sustained Israel has been eroded. We can see the post-1945 view of the world being ripped up almost daily, from the emergence of the new powers of China and India and a perceived weakening of the US's superiority, to a moderating of Germany's ardour for the European Union and a loosening of the commitments that have helped to prevent war in Western Europe for decades.
Israel's view of itself has changed hugely, too. It was a society that tended to frame itself within the context of Arab wars, a devotion to a secular, democratic society and the staunch backing of America. But Israelis have changed in composition and outlook. A huge influx of Russians after the dissolution of the Soviet Union changed the mix of the country's peoples; the controversial and rapidly expanding settlements in the disputed territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem have fractured public opinion; and the increasing influence and numbers on the religious Right have seemed to make an unwieldy political system even more unworkable.
"Israel itself does not know what it stands for," says one sympathetic observer. "There is a cacophony of voices and its enemies are using the international community and media much better."
Israeli officials can counter legitimately that their extreme sensitivity is justified. Iran's attempts to build a nuclear bomb could be explanation enough, but they can also see countries from Russia and North Korea to Brazil and Turkey probing and prodding the White House for weakness. Israel can point to occasions when diplomacy has supplanted military action as the first option. It let Hamas fire rockets on Israelis for years before losing patience and bombarding Gaza. It has pursued, fruitlessly, numerous peace talks and discussions about a Palestinian state with moderate and not-so-moderate Palestinians. It feels that having the strength to offer concessions is just taken as weakness by its enemies and not rewarded enough by its friends.
Mr Netanyahu has given the impression that doing nothing is the best strategy. He has maintained his domestic popularity, at least until recently, by allowing the vast security wall between Israelis and Palestinians to limit terrorism, and by largely facing down US demands to halt settlement construction.
But time, international opinion and Palestinian birth-rates are not on his side. Ehud Barak, the defence minister and former prime minister, sounded a clear warning in February about the lack of progress in establishing a Palestinian state: "As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel, it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."
It may seem crass to compare Israel with apartheid-era South Africa – another state viewed as rogue – but it is a measure of how far behind the discussion Israel has fallen. Something needs to change if Israel is to shore up its international allies and undermine those who would erode its right to exist.
- halil
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by CopperLine » Wed Jun 02, 2010 5:40 pm
Cap wrote:CopperLine wrote:Cap wrote:Close-Up Footage of Mavi Marmara Passengers Attacking IDF Soldiers
Make up your own minds...
Cap,
Every single piece of video footage covering the attack, with the exception of a turkish TV and an al-Jazeera excerpt, have been provided by and through the Israeli military censor. Those some Israeli IDF videos have been played over and over again on all the world's television networks. Effectively there is no other story of the attack on the flotilla except that provided by the Israeli state. (only today are some other eye-witness accounts beginning to come out). You cannot reasonably ask people to make up their minds on the basis of a monopoly.
I'm not judging. This is all that was available. I'm just providing it.
I know its a sensitive issue.
Yes the Turks attacked them like demons from hell, but the question is, what provoked it? Did the IDF open fire first? Too many unanswered questions.
Cap,
Do you think that the videos issued by the IDF for the wwwebbers to freely disseminate have been edited at all ? Do you think that the IDF would release footage of the commandos opening fire from the helicopters before they landed on deck ? Of course not. They are releasing videos which author just one story, their story. And they know - because they are past masters in the art of propaganda - that the world is full of webbies like you and me who re-distribute their story (for free) whilst we insist that we're just "providing it", just "making it available" for people to make up their minds.
(And the IDF think to themselves : "Job's a good un. Job done.")
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CopperLine - Regular Contributor
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- Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2007 9:04 pm
by Cap » Wed Jun 02, 2010 5:44 pm
CopperLine wrote:Cap wrote:CopperLine wrote:Cap wrote:Close-Up Footage of Mavi Marmara Passengers Attacking IDF Soldiers
Make up your own minds...
Cap,
Every single piece of video footage covering the attack, with the exception of a turkish TV and an al-Jazeera excerpt, have been provided by and through the Israeli military censor. Those some Israeli IDF videos have been played over and over again on all the world's television networks. Effectively there is no other story of the attack on the flotilla except that provided by the Israeli state. (only today are some other eye-witness accounts beginning to come out). You cannot reasonably ask people to make up their minds on the basis of a monopoly.
I'm not judging. This is all that was available. I'm just providing it.
I know its a sensitive issue.
Yes the Turks attacked them like demons from hell, but the question is, what provoked it? Did the IDF open fire first? Too many unanswered questions.
Cap,
Do you think that the videos issued by the IDF for the wwwebbers to freely disseminate have been edited at all ? Do you think that the IDF would release footage of the commandos opening fire from the helicopters before they landed on deck ? Of course not. They are releasing videos which author just one story, their story. And they know - because they are past masters in the art of propaganda - that the world is full of webbies like you and me who re-distribute their story (for free) whilst we insist that we're just "providing it", just "making it available" for people to make up their minds.
(And the IDF think to themselves : "Job's a good un. Job done.")
I know the Israeli's are masters of deception, I just wanna know the OTHER side of the story. Any links?
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