FreeGaza.org
1 June 2010

The Israeli military has been busy spinning the story of their attack on a civilian convoy trying to deliver aid to the imprisoned people of Gaza. They’ve had a head start, sending out edited videos, posting ‘supposed’ military footage of the passengers attacking them, saying that they confiscated weapons which turned out to be marbles, sling shots, kitchen knives and aluminum chairs.

But they can’t spin for much longer. Video footage from dozens of people is beginning to surface about what really happened. Al Jazeera has posted their coverage as gun shots sound in the background, speakers beg the passengers to go below and a white flag is set out for the paramilitary groups.

More will come out as passengers are released. We already know that Israel shot the captain of the Marmara and the European Campaign boat, maybe hoping that we would no longer be able to hire captains. Several activists have spoken to their Consulates and told of being kicked, beaten, dragged along the ground, tear gassed and bags thrown over their heads.

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via Live coverage: Aftermath of Israel’s flotilla raid

Article 47 legitimises naval blockades?

Brian Palmer: Is the Israeli Blockade of Gaza Against the Law? More or less.

Many consider Israel’s blockade to be on very shaky legal ground. Its status in the West Bank and Gaza is widely viewed as a belligerent occupation, despite the 2005 disengagement. Belligerent occupation is different from a true state of war and may not confer the technical right to form a blockade. Second, Sunday’s incident occurred 40 miles off the coast of Gaza, well outside the traditional blockade range. Finally, Israel has allegedly been firing on Palestinian fisherman, which is absolutely illegal.

Five acts of piracy carried out “without harm to soul to people”?

CNN:

Huwaida Arraf, one of the Free Gaza Movement organizers, told CNN Israeli troops roughed her up when they responded aggressively to her ship, a smaller one in the flotilla that was near the Turkish vessel where the casualties occurred.

“They started coming after our ship,” she told CNN, “so we took off and they charged us also. Eventually, they overtook our ship and they used concussion grenades, sound bombs and pellets.”

She said the people on her ship tried to keep them off. She said they were told the vessel was American and the people aboard were unarmed.

But, she said “they started beating people. My head was smashed against the ground and they stepped on my head. They later cuffed me and put a bag over my head. They did that to everybody.”

31 May 2010

War Resisters’ International – an international pacifist network with more than 80 affiliates in more than 40 countries – condemns the murderous Israeli attack on the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza and calls for an immediate lifting of the blockade on Gaza.

The Israeli state has been responsible for many outrages in its history, especially against the population of Gaza. To put it at its mildest, as reported last week by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, after a thousand days of the Israeli blockade, 61 per cent of the households of Gaza are “food insecure”.

The international nonviolent activists killed in the attack on the Free Gaza Flotilla did not regard their lives as more important than those of Palestinians – not more important, but nevertheless more visible. The ruthless criminality of this attack on an unarmed flotilla of nonviolent activists bearing humanitarian aid demonstrates for those who did not know before just to what extent the state of Israel regards itself as immune from international norms.

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Just as in 1976 the South African state’s attack on protestors at Soweto showed millions worldwide what the South African state really represented, so the attack on the flotilla has illuminated what the Israeli state really stands for.

By John Rees
Stop the War Coalition
01 June 2010

The murderous Israel assault on the Gaza aid flotilla has left supporters of the state of Israel in a state of political paralysis. Take Foreign Secretary William Hague: he is clearly a man with two heads.

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