Justifying Murder on the High Seas

Once again the ugly specter of Israel's collective punishment of Palestinians in the Gaza strip has been brought to the forefront of the world's attention and, this time, it wasn't just the actions of activists (who have largely been ignored) that has drawn the laser-like focus and condemnations of nations far and wide. This time, it was the IDF's commandeering of a humanitarian aid flotilla ship in international waters - causing the deaths of 9 activists (that we know of so far) and the wounding of dozens of others - justified as "self-defence" by the Israeli government that has quite rightly been met with scorn by the UN security council (although the wording of the specific condemnation has yet to be agreed on. Typical.)

As Amnesty International noted this past January, "Israel's [Illegal] Gaza Blockade Continues to Suffocate Daily Life". There is no legal or moral justification for this blockade to continue.

Israeli government propagandists and apologists are out in full force spreading their version of the ship boarding - even going so far as to claim that the activists tried to "lynch" their soldiers. Before this display of disproportionate violence, Israeli foreign minister Lieberman made the ludicrous assertion that "there is no humanitarian crisis in Strip" and called the flotilla "an attempt at violent propaganda against Israel". Ships peacefully headed for Gaza with humanitarian aid are "violent propaganda"? Extreme Zionist hard-liners like Lieberman will stop at nothing to excuse the Israeli government's continued crimes against humanity.

The Palestinians can't count on the Canadian or US governments to do anything but support Israel's ongoing inhumanity, as they've done for decades. And while there are reports that Turkey's government has stated it will send navy ships along with the next Gaza aid convoy - a move that could potentially set off a larger conflict - the toothless UN which has issued decades of resolutions condemning Israel's actions cannot be expected to do anything but let this opportunity for real action pass once again. Collectively, and because the US has veto power on the security council, they prefer the status quo to any challenge to Israel's power-mongering.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian people continue to suffer.

Netanyahu, who cut short his visit to Canada to return to Israel to deal with what's happened, has asserted that the only path to "peace" is to 1) have the Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist and 2) agree to the demilitarization of Palestine. The second condition is unthinkable considering Israel's propensity for using military force at the slightest provocation (or what it perceives to be provocative.) As it has just shown, if it feels threatened by ships in international waters and feels justified launching a thuggish pre-emptive attack as it did this weekend, how can the Palestinian people ever feel secure living in a demilitarized zone? That would be madness.

Those aboard the ships are currently detained in Israel and have not been allowed to speak freely, giving the Israeli government ample time to try to win over public opinion. As far as I'm concerned, they've failed. They can claim alleged ties to "terrorist groups" or "Iran" or say that the activists had no right to defend themselves against IDF soldiers armed with guns (one Israeli mouthpiece actually said the soldiers were at first armed with "paint ball guns") but there's no escaping the fact that they forced themselves onto ships in international waters and there's no justification for that. None.

What, exactly, has to happen before there are actual consequences for these crimes? How many more people have to die?

Related:

Free Gaza
Robert Fisk: Western leaders are too cowardly to help save lives
UN Security Council members urge Israel to lift Gaza siege
Several Israeli Arab protesters arrested in mass rallies over Gaza flotilla deaths
US activist loses eye after being shot in face with tear gas canister
 

Quote du Jour: It's the Palestinians' Fault

Obama in Germany:

The Palestinians have to get serious about creating the security environment that is required for Israel to feel confident.

The oppressed must make the oppressors feel at ease.

Isn’t that kind of like saying if those slaves hadn’t been so uppity, things would have been a lot easier for everybody? Or if only black South Africans hadn't been so aggressive, they wouldn't have suffered so much under apartheid?

Think I'm being too tough on Obama? Check back here in a couple of years when we'll see exactly how much "progress" has been made in the so-called Middle East peace process, especially regarding the human rights violations the Palestinians will still be dealing with, and then we'll talk.

Related:

The Angry Arab - Obama Speech: Part Vapid and Part Sinister

UN hearings to be held on Gaza war crimes

Alexander Cockburn - Obama in Cairo: High Words, Low Truths

Robert Fisk - Words that could heal wounds of centuries
 

Attack in Syria: A Late October Surprise?

Lest we forget, as much as we may want to, Bush, Cheney and Gates are still busy plotting and carrying out various random attacks on sovereign countries while most of America is focused on the election and the accompanying financial crisis. I have to add though that, even if nothing else was happening, I suspect the majority of Americans wouldn't even blink at the fact that the US military has continually invaded Pakistan's territory in recent months and has now completed an air raid in Syria's boundaries. USA! USA! and all of that... The desire to win something, somewhere is overwhelming.

Depending on who you believe, the attack on Sunday either "killed a major smuggler of foreign fighters into Iraq" according to some anonymous "US official" and/or resulted in the deaths of 8 civilians.

Killing innocent people is a nasty habit the US military has yet to shake as it continually happens in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq - to list the countries that we know of where such "mistakes" involving "collateral damage" take place. We have no idea what other covert operations around the world might be "accomplishing" in this failed war on terror.

I don't think it's a stretch to see this latest US show of militarism in Syria as perhaps a signal favouring the election of Netanyahu over Livni after she admitted this week that she had failed to form a coalition government in Israel and was forced to call an election. Netanyahu has flatly stated that he has no interest in compromising to further the Israeli/Palestinian peace process (such as it is) and if Livni manages to win, media reports characterize the situation as having now delayed that process for at least a year.

While this certainly isn't a good outcome for Bush, who had expressed that he wanted to find some finality on the I/P issue - but who, in reality, along with Condi had stalled progress repeatedly for years - aggression towards Syria could serve as a favour to McCain. We'll have to see how or if he plans to handle this news if his campaign can manage to get the focus off of Palin's wardrobe (an issue she can't seem to let go of).

As Marc J. Sirois writing in Lebanon's Daily Star explains, after analyzing the futility of attacking Iran:

Then came another kind of "surprise." The global financial crisis that broke out earlier this month did not just damage McCain's campaign by exposing his fundamental (and openly acknowledged) ignorance on economic matters ahead of an era in which such abilities are likely to be at a premium. It also forced the US government to take on trillions of dollars in new liabilities in a bid to restore confidence in the markets. Given the gargantuan deficits and debt already amassed by Bush's profligate spending on wars against Muslims, tax breaks for the rich, and subsidies for large corporations, a costly war with Iran is simply no longer a viable option.

For all of these reasons, Syria must look like a more attractive target, especially if Washington can maintain a level of hostilities that is sufficient to pique the average American's "patriotism" but not so intense that it incurs significant costs. There is no guarantee, however, that the Syrians would cooperate with such an approach, even though any form of response in kind on their part would only invite the Americans to escalate disproportionately, especially with their overwhelming advantage in air power.

The ball seems to have gotten rolling in a Syrian village near the Iraqi border shortly before dusk on Sunday. According to Damascus, US troops arrived in helicopters and assaulted a building under construction at a farmstead, killing eight civilians - half of them children.

The Bush administration's official reaction has been painfully slow in coming, but according to an Associated Press report, a US military officer has confirmed that an attack was carried out by special forces. "We are taking matters into our own hands," AP quoted the officer as saying on condition of anonymity because of what the reporter described as the "political sensitivity" - no mention of patent illegality - "of cross-border raids." Pointedly, the comments came in Washington, not from an officer on the ground in Iraq, where the US military professed to be in the dark about the attack in Syria.
[...]
So why now? The timing has got to be instilling a sense of deja vu among senior members of the Syrian regime. They recall with consternation that even after US diplomats publicly acknowledged the value of Syrian intelligence assistance in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Bush and other senior figures kept up their menacing rhetoric about Damascus. [even though they used Syria as a dumping ground for suspects they wanted tortured, like Canada's Maher Arar -catnip]

This looks to be different. Even if Damascus were still a target in Bush's so-called "war on terror," the timing is so vulnerable to accusations of an attempt to influence the election that only a dire threat could possibly justify taking the risk. Even if it turns out that what the Americans hit was indeed tied to the insurgency, therefore, hitting it now makes no sense - unless the real objective is to capture the hearts and minds of undecided voters in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

While Sirois "hope[s] that Obama wins the White House and then makes good on his promise as a conciliatory figure", Obama's fealty to AIPAC may supersede any possible progress with Syria's government on the I/P and Iraq war fronts. The Bush administration's decision to launch this latest attack has only complicated matters but hasn't that been its legacy around the world since day one?

No matter who wins the US election, the dangerously shifting sands in the Middle East will no doubt see the US government involved in extremely complex deliberations for years to come - especially once the Pentagon finally admits that military might is not the answer and that might not happen unless the US finally goes completely bankrupt. A new Great Depression might provide exactly the amount of humility needed to finally reach that point.

But who am I kidding?

Update:

Baghdad condemns 'US Syria raid'

Speaking after a Baghdad cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh also explicitly criticised the US over the unconfirmed helicopter strike.

"The Iraqi government rejects the US helicopter strike on Syrian territory, considering that Iraq's constitution does not allow its land to be a base for launching attacks on neighbouring countries," he said.

 

Random News & Views Roundup

- The US house of representatives has been busy passing resolutions about other countries' behaviour this week. On Tuesday, it approved a resolution calling for Japan to apologize for its use of female sex slaves during WW2. And on Monday, it unanimously passed another resolution demanding that Canada end the seal hunt. Apparently this hectic agenda - wagging their collective fingers at other countries - is the reason Pelosi has determined that the Democrats are just too darn busy to take care of urgent American business like impeaching Gonzales, Cheney and Bush and ending the Iraq war.

- The UN security council has decided to send 26,000 African peacekeeping troops to Darfur.

The Bush administration welcomed the council's decision to adopt the resolution, but it declined to co-sponsor the resolution on the grounds that it was not tough enough, a U.S. official said. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called for an expedited transition from the African Union to the United Nations.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice phoned Ban in recent days to press him to take over the mission by October [instead of December]. Ban refused on the grounds that his military planners would not be ready.

And we all know what a fine military planner Condi is. If Bush wanted "tough", he could have addressed the crisis in Darfur years ago. All hat, no cowboy - as usual.

- Uri Avnery: A Warning to Tony Blair

As an expert on the global economy, with a worldwide perspective, Wolfensohn could also point out that the importance of the U.S. in the world economy is gradually declining, with new giants like China and India rising.

We, the Israelis, like to think that we are the center of the world. Wolfensohn, a person with a worldwide outreach, sticks a pin into this egocentric balloon. Already now, he says, only the West considers the Israeli-Palestinian issue so important. Most of the world is indifferent. "I have visited more than 140 countries: you are not such a big deal there."

Even this limited interest will also evaporate. Wolfensohn rubs salt into the wound: "A moment will come when the Israelis and the Palestinians will be compelled to understand that they are a secondary performance. … The Israelis and the Palestinians must get rid of the idea that they are a Broadway performance. They are only a play in the Village. Off-off-off-off-off Broadway." Knowing that this is the worst one can tell an Israeli, he adds: "I hope that I am not getting into trouble by saying this, but, what the hell, that's what I believe, and I am already 73 years old."

I do believe him – and I, what the hell, am already 83.

- Chris Floyd: Why the Bush Administration Buries Accounts of Extremist Recantations; Good News is No News.

Last week, the Guardian's Ian Black reported on "a remarkable recantation" by one of the founding figures of the modern jihadist movement, Sayid Imam al-Sharif. A former comrade-in-arms of Ayman al-Zawahiri -- al Qaeda's own Dick Cheney, the "deputy" who actually runs the gang -- Sharif was the mastermind behind the Islamists' first great "spectacular": the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Now Sharif, imprisoned in Egypt, is finishing a new book "that undermines the Muslim theological basis for violent jihad" and is already creating fissures throughout the Islamist movement, the Guardian reports.
[...]
The fact that some major figures in one of these factions are now renouncing the use of "killing operations" to advance their odious ideas is surely a welcome development. If it saves only one innocent life from destruction, that is cause enough for rejoicing.

Yet this process -- which began in some quarters years before 9/11, and now involves hundreds of jihadist leaders and activists -- is being ignored by the very people who, ostensibly, have the greatest reason to trumpet it. But of course, such a development is actually bad news for the fanatical militarists of the Bushist faction. They ignore, reject or twist anything that undercuts their cartoonish myth of a vast, monolithic "Islamofascism" bent on world conquest at any cost -- and capable of carrying it out, unless stopped by multitrillion-dollar American war machine ranging over every continent.

- Via Dahr Jamail's Dispatches: Ali al-Fadhily's A Little Easier to Occupy from the Air

BAGHDAD, Jul 31 (IPS) - Many Iraqis believe the dramatic escalation in U.S. military use of air power is a sign of defeat for the occupation forces on the ground.

U.S. Air Force and Navy aircraft dropped five times as many bombs in Iraq during the first six months of this year as over the first half of 2006, according to official information.

They dropped 437 bombs and missiles in Iraq in the first half of 2007, compared to 86 in the first half of 2006. This is also three times more than in the second half of 2006, according to Air Force data.

The Air Force has also been expanding its air bases in Iraq and adding entire squadrons. It is now preparing to use a new robotic fighter known as the Reaper. The Reaper is a hunter-killer drone that can be operated by remote control from thousands of miles away.

"We find it strange that the big strategists of the U.S. military have actually failed in finding solutions on the ground and are now back to air raids that kill more civilians than militants," former Iraqi army brigadier-general Ahmed Issa told IPS.

That's the same strategy they're using in Afghanistan and look how well that's turned out.