Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip was meant to push the area's economy "to the brink of collapse," according to a U.S. diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks on Wednesday, signaling that Israel was well aware that the policy was taking a heavy toll on the area's civilian population.
Israeli leaders have long maintained that the blockade was necessary to weaken the ruling Hamas militant group. The newly released document, published in Norway's Aftenposten newspaper, indicates that Israel hoped to accomplish that goal by targeting Gaza's 1.5 million people.
According to the March 3, 2008, cable 9Reuters dates it Nov 3, 2008) written by an American official, Israeli officials told American diplomats "on multiple occasions that they intend to keep Gaza's economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge."
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev refused to comment.
Israel imposed the blockade after Hamas militants routed forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and seized control of Gaza in June 2007. Its official policy was that it would never allow a humanitarian crisis to develop in Gaza.
The blockade failed to oust Hamas, though it brought Gaza's economy to a virtual standstill. Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost, exports have been largely halted, and for three years, Israel carefully monitored which types of consumer goods were allowed into the territory, while allowing all basic humanitarian goods in.
In fact, the cable reveals that Israeli intelligence was directly involved in micro-managing Gaza's economy, shouldering aside the banking sector, in order to have as much control as possible:
While the GOI [government of Israel] believes that maintaining the shekel as the currency of the Palestinian Territories is in Israel,s interests, it treats decisions regarding the amount of shekels in circulation in Gaza as a security matter. Requests by Palestinian banks to transfer shekels into Gaza are ultimately approved, partially approved, or denied by the National Security Council (NSC), an organ of the Israeli security establishment, not by the Bank of Israel (BOI). As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to econoffs on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge (see reftel &D8).
Of course, this is really not much of a secret. Just the sort of thing that eveyrone in the world knows, but that Israel vehement denies anyway--and everyone in the US has to deny as well, or else be branded an "enemy of Israel" if not an outright "anti-Semite".
We've been told--even by people like Kieth Olbermann, who should know better--that theWikiLeaks document dump of State Department cables contains very little serious information. But, of course, that perception is generated by the same press corps that was totally clueless about its own role in fraudulently leading our nation to war against an ideological enemy of those who attacked us on 9/11. Such a press corps has already proven itself professrionally incapable of recognizing what is significant, and what is not--much less what is simply an outright lie. To understand the value and significance of the WikiLeaks document dump, you must turn to those who have a reasonable recor of understanding US foreign policy and international relations in the first place. This is why Tuesday's program of Democracy Now! was so important. First off, Amy Goodman interviewed Investigations Executive Editor David Leigh at the Guardian, who told her that much more was to come:
DAVID LEIGH: These revelations aren't over yet. In fact, they've barely started. We at the Guardian and the other international news organizations will be making revelations, disclosures from now, day-by-day, for probably the next week or more. So, we haven't seen anything yet, really.... In the coming days, we're going to see some quite startling disclosures about Russia, the nature of the Russian state and about bribery and corruption in other countries, particularly in Central Asia. We're going to see a wrath of disclosures about pretty terrible things going on around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: What are your thoughts today? For example, we just played this clip of New York republican congress member Peter King who says WikiLeaks should be declared a foreign terrorist organization.
NOAM CHOMSKY: I think that is outlandish. We should understand--and the Pentagon Papers is another case in point--that one of the major reasons for government secrecy is to protect the government from its own population.... If you look at the papers themselves, there are things Americans should have known that others did not want them to know. And as far as I can tell, from what I've seen here, pretty much the same is true.
Goodman went on to play a clip of Hilary Clinton, trying to spin the cables to US propaganda advantage:
....Democratic candidate for the Senate from Pennsylvania (Specter's seat).
Whether you call it the Israel Lobby or AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) or the Neocons, there's no question that as a result of Sestak's past criticisms of Israel, they are now an albatross around his neck. Check out this political ad paid for by a new (old) group of Washington pro-Israel Neocons just resurrected as the The Emergency Committee for Israel. If you ask whether Sestak is in the process of being AIPAC'ed just as Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia) was several years ago, this time with the Neocons leading the way, it turns out to be a silly question. Of course. Watch the attack video just released by this Neocon group:
In order to continue its colonization of the Palestinian territories (minus Gaza) or all of original Palestine, Israel must maintain a war footing, while casting itself as a victim of terrorism fighting for its very existence. In this deception, maintaining Hamas as its arch-enemy is an essential ingredient, perhaps its only red herring left to distract the world.
In this context, Noam Chomsky gets to the bottom of the Gaza Flotilla massacre and shows us what it was really all about.
Neoconservatism is often described as a right-wing political philosophy that emerged in the USA, and which supports using American economic and military power to bring liberalism, democracy, and human rights to other countries as necessary. Although neoconservatives claim to be liberal on economic issues, the right shift of this movement seems entirely based on its radical foreign policy. The Bush Doctrine, for example, is a often perceived as a Neoconservative project and the Iraq War an example of its implementation after 9/11.
However, according to Harvard professor Stephen Walt, the Neoconservative movement is not what it seems to be, but that it has always been an Israel-centric movement to involve the US in foreign adventures that seem advantageous to Israel, and not for the idealist purpose of spreading democracy around the world. In this regard, there is plenty of evidence that the trillion dollar Iraq war was engineered by Neocons situated in the Defense Department, that it was done for Israel's sake on falsified evidence of Saddam's WMDs and terrorist connections.
But Neocon influences did not end with Iraq, but went on to push for an attack on Iran, and then, now, Turkey, which is being singled out for its criticism of Israel based on recent events. As Walt put it, "the critic of my friend is my enemy," hence, the anti-Turkey focus of recent Neocon efforts to support Israel.
Richard Silverstein (Tikun Olam), after reviewing the geriatric makeup of the commission Israel assigned to investigate the Gaza Flotilla massacre, could only conclude that: "the fix is in." The average age of the panel is 85 years, at least some of participants being recruited from nursing homes. But that is not as damning as the well-known biases they carried through in their more lucid times.
The degree of polarization achieved within the American Jewish community by the topic of Israel was witnessed last weekend in San Francisco, when organizations of differing perspectives, peace activists from the Bay Area Women in Black and Jewish Voice for Peace, confronted members of StandWithUs/SF Voice for Israel. The peace activists were holding a silent vigil outside the main entrance to the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation while it was celebrating an annual event, "Israel in the Gardens." The StandWithUs group lined the street.
This titled text was attached to an article by Uri Avnery, founder of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom, and distributed by Tikkun via email. The article itself is available at the Gush Shalom site. This attachment was written by ML Rosenberg, a frequent Huffington Post contributor, and exposes the lies now being propagated by the Israeli government, which are being circulated in the mainstream media in the US, and possibly Europe, filling peoples' minds with utter falsehoods about the flotilla attack, Hamas, and the dire situation in Gaza. (Sorry, the previous attribution was inccrrect.)
When BP did it, it was manslaughter--"depraved indifference", as any fan of Law & Order could tell you in their sleep. But when Israel attacked the Free Gaza flotilla this week, killing nine people, it was murder one.
There are no ifs, ands or buts, save in the minds of the Israel Self-Destruction Crowd, those who would cheerfully defend Israel's use of a nuclear weapon to wipe out all of Gaza, if it came to that. "Israel can do no wrong!" may appear to be their rallying cry, but "Israel has lost all sense of right and wrong, and damn proud of it!" is their actual rallying cry. When someone lights a match anywhere in Gaza, it's a mortal threat to Israel. If someone lights a match anywhere in Europe...it's probably a mortal threat, and best not to be too careful. For it can't be stressed too much at this point that Israel doesn't give a damn what anyone in Europe thinks of them. America, either, for that matter. All they really care about is Versailles.
Of course this means they have to mount a massive Goebbels-style attack on the American people, because they very well know how vast the gap is between Versailles and America on the subject of Israel's right to kill anyone they want to. But they don't really care what we think so much as they care about intimidating us. Preventing us from thinking--that's the all-important goal here.
Here's what Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian territories, and a giant in the field of international law and human rights (bibliography here) had to say on Democracy Now! on June 1:
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Anjali Kamat. We're in New Orleans; our guests are around the world. We're going to turn right now to Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian territories.
This issue of international law, of international waters, Richard Falk, talk about your reaction to what took place. I had originally said on Sunday morning; in fact, it was 4:00 Monday morning on the waters, on the high seas, when the Israeli commandos raided the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
RICHARD FALK: Good morning, Amy. This was a shocking incident that involved, as your other guests have said, a complete disregard of international law, in several respects. It was an act of naked aggression. It was done on the high seas. It was done in defiance of elementary humanitarian standards. It was known that this flotilla had no weapons. It was not a security issue by the remotest stretch of the imagination. If there was a right of self-defense, it belonged to the people onboard these ships. Israel, as the aggressing state and political actor, had no claim whatsoever of self-defense. It's an absurdity. And one can only imagine if another country that the United States didn't like had engaged in this kind of behavior, we would have been denouncing them or, worse, using force. One can only imagine what would happen if Iran had done something of this comparably outrageous character and sought to provide some kind of legal cover for it, while silencing those that actually experienced the incident.
Lawrence of Cyberia graciously provided an obituary on the nine Turkish peace activists who died on the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. They were all Turkish citizens. In retrospect, one can only imagine how they, like others aboard the flotilla, were affected by the Gaza massacre of December 2008, when Israel killed 1,400 Palestinians, especially the more than 300 children who died. The pictures were heartbreaking.
We all saw those pictures. Yet only a few of us, like those who died on the Mavi Marmara were inspired enough to act. So these now dead activists joined an humanitarian aid convoy. They ended up dying for their principles. In the terminology of Islam, they died martyrs.
It ain't over til' it's over, and from what is being reported this morning, it ain't. The Irish ship that was to be part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, apparently, for technical reasons, never left port in the southern Mediterranean with the other ships.
But it is on its way now, and another confrontation with the Israeli Navy in international waters is likely, given the stupidity that just led to the massacre of peace activistis on the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish IHH humanitarian ship.
The ship is named after Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old human rights activist, who was killed in 2003 by an Israel Defense Forces bulldozer while attempting to block the demolition of a house in Rafah. The ship was purchased by the Free Gaza Movement.
(It's NOT a slow news day. It's not a slow history day, either. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
Some scenes on the Turkish IHH ship under attack.
New video UPDATE from CNN via Youtube.
It was report that at least 10 activists, perhaps as many as 14, were killed by Israel Navy personnel who opened fire on the Gaza aid flotilla, mainly the Turkish IHH ship, Mavi Marmari carrying over 350 Turkish peace activists, plus others including elected representatives from several other countries.
Over 60 activists were also reported wounded after six-ship convoy sailing for Gaza Strip ignored Israel's order to turn back, Turkish news reported. Confirmation is difficult to obtain at this time. The IDF confirmed that two commandos were also wounded.
Source: Haaretz via the Associated Press and Reuters
Israel Navy troops opened fire on pro-Palestinian activists aboard a six-ship aid flotilla sailing for the Gaza Strip, killing at least 10 and wounding several others after the convoy ignored orders to turn back, Turkey's NTV reported early Monday.
NTV said between 10 and 15 people were killed, with over 60 wounded.
The IDF also confirmed that two navy commandos had been wounded in fight, which apparently broke out after activists tried to sieze their weapons.
Earlier Monday, Al Jazeera reported that the Gaza aid flotilla had changed course to avoid a confrontation with Israeli warships. The Israeli naval vessels reportedly made contact earlier with the six-ship flotilla, which is carrying 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid and supplies to Gaza.
The Israeli navy was operating under the assumption that the activists manning the boats would not heed their calls to turn around, and Israeli troops were prepared to board the ships and steer them away from the Gaza shores and toward the Israeli port city of Ashdod.
UPDATE: It was report that at least 10 activists were killed as Israel Navy opens fire on Gaza aid flotilla.
Over 60 additionally were wounded after the convoy sailing for Gaza Strip ignored Israel's order to turn back, Turkish news reported. IDF confirms two commandos also wounded.
The flotilla was in international waters at the time.
UPDATE: 31st May 10 3 AM Gaza
Gaza TV News:
The Flotilla has now changed course and is sailing due west, further into International waters.
The Israeli war ships have pulled back, and are out of range at present. There is indication that the convoy will then head for Gaza in the morning.
UPDATE: Gush Shalom Coalition against the siege in Gaza
Urgent message:
A demonstration supporting the break the siege flotilla will be held tomorrow, Monday, 31.5.10 at 4:00 pm in front of the Ashdod port, Gate No. 1. We will be leaving from Levinski garden in Tel Aviv, at 3 pm. We will be using private cars, a bus will be called if necessary. Those who can bring a private car are requested to come to the pick up location to help with transportation.
The humanitarian flotilla is predicted to arrive at the Gaza shore at noon. We expect the ships to be taken over and to be towed in Ashdod port. We will be there to express our solidarity with the flotilla. And will call to break the siege and open the gates of Gaza.
UPDATE: The IHH ship Livestream is up showing passengers in life jackets after three Israeli ships confronted the flotilla 78 miles out at sea in international waters. Israel's block of electronic traffic was apparently overcome by rerouting. This is obviously an act of attempted piracy.
KEVIN OVENDEN REPORT'S LIVE FROM THE GAZA FLOTILLA!
At 22:41pm tonight, preparations aboard the Mavi Marmara are extensive. We are 90 miles away from land - 22 miles further than the Israeli decided 68 mile exclusion zone - but are being approached by an Israeli vessel.
Triage is set up and various strategies implemented to resist seizure. The Israeli media is reporting that Israel will deploy a very large naval force. Far from minimising violence, this is an illegal aggressive move which will make it more likely.
We are broadcasting live from the ship. Calm and organisation overcome the fear that Israel is trying to instill.
Viva Palestina and all aboard are prepared.
We are calling on everyone to contact various political leaders to ask them to do everything in their power to ensure the safety of these brave people, and to stand up and add their voice in support of this humanitarian flotilla.
Full details of how they can contact these political figures can be found through following this link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/...
There you will find email addresses, and template letters to use. Full instructions are provided, and we ask that you follow these and show your support for everyone involved.
This is a very serious situation, and we are calling on everyone to play their part in helping ensure their safety, and that the aid reaches Gaza without difficulty.
END
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Alice Howard
Viva Palestina UK
Tel: +447889726777
Email: alice@vivapalestina.org
Website: http://www.vivapalestina.org/ Sign up to the Viva Palestina Mailing List http://www.vivapalestina.org/a... Viva Palestina, helping to make the positive steps in breaking the siege of Gaza!
Keep posted on developments.
Original TEXT:
On Sunday, at 9AM EST (4PM Cypress), the flotilla finally left for Gaza.
Slide show from the Challenger 1 (one of the small passenger boats), Mediterranean Sea, 30th May 2010, in the morning prior to departure.
There is livestreaming from the IHH Turkish passenger ship, now en route to Gaza, as shown here:
Link to the livestream from the IHH Turkish ship may be temporarily broken. There was some earlier expressed fears that Israel may attempt to block these connections, in order to interfere with footage of events when the convoy reaches Gaza. I will replace the link if it does not revive.)
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