Reuters report.
Iran's Red Crescent Society has cancelled a plan to send a shipload of aid to
the Gaza Strip, saying it was denied access to pass through the Suez Canal, a
claim rejected by an Egyptian official.
A ship had been due to set off from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas over the
last few days as part of Iran's support to efforts to break Israel's blockade
of the strip.
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BBC report.
Turkey has barred an Israeli military flight from Turkish airspace, in apparent
retaliation for Israel's raid on an aid convoy bound for Gaza.
Turkey's prime minister confirmed that a "ban" had been implemented following
the 31 May raid, in which nine Turkish citizens on the flotilla were killed.
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Craig Murray writes.
There is a peculiar symmetry about the Bloody Sunday inquiry into the killing
by soldiers of unarmed demonstrators concluding just as the Israeli inquiry
into the shooting of unarmed peace activists is set up. But there is another
fascinating common factor - David Trimble.
[...]
It is therefore no surprise at all that it was that indefatigable - and
extremely well remunerated - Friend of Israel, Tony Blair, who gave Netanyahu
Trimble's name as a safe pair of hands for the cover-up.
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David Samel comments on Mondoweiss. See also this.
While the Times article offers a plethora of valuable information, its unbiased
reporter, Isabel Kershner, fails to mention the best part. One of the
international observers is none other than Lord David Trimble -- who won the
Nobel Peace Prize bringing peace to Northern Ireland.
Some may fear that a Northern Irish peacemaker like Lord Trimble, despite his
impeccable integrity, is too unfamiliar with the Middle East to bring any
expertise to his observer position. Not so!
Just last month, Trimble and a group of his international colleagues launched
the "Friends of Israel Initiative," self-described as a new project in defense
of Israel's right to exist. Trimble and his fellow sponsors, including former
US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, an icon of rationality in the field of
international relations, acted out of outrage and concern about the
"unprecedented delegitimation campaign against Israel, driven by the enemies of
the Jewish state and perversely assumed by numerous international authorities."
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Ilan Pappé in the Independent.
The forced peace is not negotiable as far as the Israeli political elite is
concerned, and it offers the Palestinians a limited control and sovereignty in
the Gaza Strip and in parts of the West Bank. The Palestinians are asked to
give up their struggle for self-determination and liberation in return for the
establishment of three small Bantustans under tight Israeli control and supervision.
[...]
The international response is based on the assumption that more forthcoming
Palestinian concessions and a continued dialogue with the Israeli political
elite will produce a new reality on the ground. The official discourse in the
West is that a very reasonable and attainable solution is just around the
corner if all sides would make one final effort: the two-state solution.
Nothing is further from the truth than this optimistic scenario. The only
version of this solution that is acceptable to Israel is the one that both the
tamed Palestine Authority in Ramallah and the more assertive Hamas in Gaza
could never ever accept. It is an offer to imprison the Palestinians in
stateless enclaves in return for ending their struggle.
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Jonathan Cook writes:
If the confrontation with the activists on the flotilla has proved to Israelis
that the unarmed passengers were really terrorists, the world's refusal to stay
quiet has confirmed what Israelis already knew: that, deep down, non-Jews are
all really anti-Semites.
Meanwhile, the lesson the rest of us need to draw from the deadly commando raid
is that the world can no longer afford to indulge these delusions.
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Independent report.
Mr Elshayyal, a reporter for the Arab channel al-Jazeera, was standing to one
side of the ship and had a view of the front and back of the vessel when the
fighting started. By his account, soldiers fired down on the protesters from
the helicopters before an Israeli soldier had even set foot on the ship. A man
next to him was shot through the top of his head, dying instantly.
"What I saw were shots being fired from the helicopter above and moments later
from below -- from the ships," Mr Elshayyal said. "As far as I am concerned,
it's a lie to say they only started shooting on deck."
At least two other eyewitnesses saw soldiers firing from above the ships before
they landed on the Marmara's deck. It is possible that this is what prompted
the fierce resistance to the soldiers when they dropped down. Several
passengers recount how organisers urged their peers to stop hitting the
soldiers, aware of how it would harm their claim to be peaceful protesters.
Others on the ship claim they raised a white flag, but say that it was
ignored. They also used a loudspeaker to reiterate their message of surrender
and requested that the injured be taken off the ship to get medical
assistance. Again, they were ignored.
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Craig Murray writes.
The Rachel Corrie has now been illegally boarded by the Israeli military in
international waters.
As usual the BBC's immediate reaction is simply to retail Israeli
propaganda. The Rachel Corrie has been boarded "with the full compliance of the
crew", BBC News tells us. That is almost certainly not true, unless you count
without violent resistance as "full compliance".
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Guardian report.
Israel was tonight under pressure to allow an independent inquiry into its
assault on the Gaza aid flotilla after autopsy results on the bodies of those
killed, obtained by the Guardian, revealed they were peppered with 9mm bullets,
many fired at close range.
Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and
five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman
of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, which carried out the autopsies
for the Turkish ministry of justice today.
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IMEMC report.
The Rachel Corrie is 150 miles away from Gaza in international waters and on
her way. They will arrive on Saturday morning. The 1200 ton cargo ship is the
last ship from the Freedom Flotilla and is loaded with construction materials,
20 tons of paper and many other supplies that Israel refuses to allow into the
imprisoned people of Gaza.
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Guardian report.
An Algerian activist, who giving only a first name of Sabrina, accused Israeli
commandos of taking a one-year-old child hostage.
"They point a gun to his head in front of his Turkish parents to force the
captain of our ship to stop sailing," she said.
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Telegraph report.
"They were kicking my legs to make me fall and mocking me in Hebrew," she
said. "They were trying to take trophy pictures with me and they liked laughing
in my face.
"They also searched me but I won't go into that. They took pleasure in
humiliating us."
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Paul Woodward on Mondoweiss.
This is a major development. The Irish-flagged MV Rachel Corrie cargo ship,
whose passage to join the Freedom Flotilla may have been delayed because of
sabotage by Israelis, is now heading for Gaza -- and it has the full support of
the Irish government. This is no longer just a question of how easily Israel
can trample on the rights of a humanitarian organization.
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Andrew Sullivan in the Atlantic.
It's only when you glimpse into this mindset that you realize how deeply
paranoid and disturbed it is. When trained commandos open fire on activists, it
is because those commandos are allegedly in danger! When a tiny strip of dense
urban development is strafed with missiles infinitely more powerful than
anything Hamas can lob, it is apparently out of self-defense. When casualties
are always lop-sided to an almost absurd degree - in Gaza and on the Mavi
Marmara - Israel is always the victim, and the blood is always on the hands of
the victims, even when some of those victims are children buried in
rubble. When a ship in international waters, carrying the flag of a NATO
member, is attacked, the real victims are the attackers, who faced a "lynch
mob", according to Noah Pollak.
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Robert Fisk in the Independent.
Where were our politicians yesterday? Well, we had the ridiculous Ban Ki-moon,
the White House's pathetic statement, and dear Mr Blair's expression of "deep
regret and shock at the tragic loss of life". Where was Mr Cameron? Where was
Mr Clegg?
[...]
How did we get to this point? Maybe because we all grew used to seeing the
Israelis kill Arabs, maybe the Israelis grew used to killing Arabs. Now they
kill Turks. Or Europeans. Something has changed in the Middle East these past
24 hours -- and the Israelis (given their extraordinarily stupid political
response to the slaughter) don't seem to have grasped what has happened. The
world is tired of these outrages. Only the politicians are silent.
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Financial Times editorial.
With Monday's brazen act of piracy, Israel dealt a blow to the legitimacy of
its own struggle. The killing of activists aboard the captured ships sent
Israel's way of defending its security, which it was already imperative to
return within the bounds of international law, hurtling into lawlessness.
Israel claims the activists had links with extremist groups and that some
attacked Israeli soldiers with knives and sticks (and in some accounts the odd
light firearm). Even if true, this would not justify the illegal capture of
civilian ships carrying humanitarian aid in international waters, let alone the
use of deadly force.
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