The Unbearable Lightweightness of the BBC

Israeli Commandos descended from a piece of String onto the Turkish Charity IHH's boat the Mavi Marmara 90 miles out to sea, as attested by the GPS aboard the flotilla's boats, being transmitted live to the world, and in full view of live TV coverage shoot unarmed passengers, without provocation.

But to the spineless BBC, the exact location of the interception is unclear, but Israel had warned the boats not to enter its waters, and the Israeli soldiers are 'fighting to control passengers'. Despite updating its news story to report that Israeli TV indicates 14 Dead, it forgot to update the bit that says : 'The footage showed a number of people, apparently injured, lying on the ground. This was part of its initial report that 'unconfirmed reports that 2 people are dead have been received'.

The BBC obviously beleives that Israeli TV can be quoted as a substantial source whereas Al Jazeera, Turkish LIVE TV and Live positional updates from the Boats themselves can be ignored. So long as Israeli propaganda is reported as if it is news, and news from Arab or other non Western sources are treated as propaganda even when they are actually filming live news, then we will never be able to trust this previously world renowned broadcaster.

Fuck you BBC, you disgust me beyond any sensible words.

I hope every one else will do what the Turks are doing very forcibly - protesting vigourously to your local Israeli Embassy. Here they are: http://www.embassiesabroad.com/embassies-of/Israel

The stakes rise as FreeGaza flotilla dates get nearer

The BBC reports that Israel has arrested a man working for IHH in the West Bank, declaring the Organisation illegal, although no reason has been given for the statement.

The Prime Minister of Turkey is a founder of IHH, so this is no small matter. The reason is probably that Shin Bet, who say this:

"He was arrested on suspicion he had been working for a long time in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] for the Turkish organisation IHH, which in 2008 was declared illegal in Israel, also that in his activity he assisted other organisations in Judea and Samaria which were declared illegal," the statement said.

"He was arrested on suspicion that his activities in Judea and Samaria risked the security in the area."

The statement also said his arrest was not connected to an IHH's attempts to break the blockade of Gaza by sea, planned for later this month."

want to prime the world community that anyone who tries to break the blockade of Gaza will automatically be a banned organisation. Everyone who works with IHH can now automatically be declared to be assisting a banned organisation, so in Israeli terms, that means everyone on the boats. Mind you I find it difficult to understand how he was allowed to enroll in the Hebrew University if he was known to belong to a banned organisation, and since he was the IHH representative in the West Bank, there really is no secret about it.

This particular FreeGaza trip will be a test, not just between Turkish and Israeli muscle, and subtlety in its use, but of Obama's resolve too. He wants to be friends with Turkey, so lets hope that he does not fall prey to the usual Israeli excuse about action to relieve Gaza's population being a threat to the Peace talks.

Turkey sending ten boats to break Gaza Siege

Turkish Charity IHH is now a Joint Venture Operator with FreeGaza to send ten boats in Next Flotilla to break the siege.

The involvement of Turkish Charity IHH in becoming a joint venture partner in sending siege-breaking boats to Gaza ratchets up the pressure on Israel. Despite the bandaging of wounds following the humiliation of the Turkish Ambassador, when Turkey threatened to end diplomatic relations, Netanyahu has put his foot in it again, telling France that mediation with Syria depends on a mediator both parties can trust, such as France. This is a clear statement that Israel does not trust Turkey, since Syria plainly does. The snub is great, since Turkey were the mediators until recently, and were credited with making ground between the sides. Commentators feel that in reality Israel wants to kick Syria into the long grass, as it has done with Palestine. Prime Minister of Turkey Erdogan has, as a result, again blasted Israel, again raised Gaza as a symbol of Israeli aggression and racism.

Soon IHH will be sending Turkish boats with Turkish crews: will Turkey stand by while Israel stops and 'arrests' them, or turns them back? This is shaping up to a crucial standoff, and the stakes are very high, for if Israel loses face, Hamas will be strengthened in its belief that Israel only understands force, and never negotiates, since the UN and US and UK, come to that, have failed to negotiate any relief for Gaza as friends.

Turkey risks not only losing face, and looking weak if Israel is allowed to stop Turkish Merchant ships on a lawful activity, but if it intervenes, it must have a strong diplomatic hand to prevent the US and the UK from trying to get it out of the club of Israel Supporters called NATO, and marginalising it along with all the other Moslem states that have resisted Israel.

Below is an article from the Independent (UK) by Fisk, that shows how Israel is prepared to use the mass murder of 1.5 million people against Turkey, only when it suits it. Up to now it has supported Turkey's cover up of the Pogrom, because it wants the Holocaust of Jews to be unique. That way Jews are uniquely privileged to do things others are not. It is shocking how they put pressure on Armenian survivors of that Holocaust, that they will not even permit to be Israeli citizens, to speak out against Turkey.

My dream is that Turkey admits its Holocaust, its Shoah, its ethnic cleansing under Attaturk, bravely, and apologise, and compensate. Its recent re-establishment of relations with Armenia is a good first step. Let Turkey please show that it can settle the question of refugees displaced by ethnic cleansing fairly.

Then let it defend its blockade breaking boats as they strive to do the same for the people of Palestine.

Robert Fisk’s World: ❝Israel can no longer ignore the existence of the first Holocaust

Recognition of the Armenian genocide is a paramount moral and educational act

Saturday, 30 January 2010

While Israelis commemorated the second Holocaust of the 20th century this week, I was in the Gulbenkian library in Jerusalem, holding the printed and handwritten records of the victims of the century's first Holocaust. It was a strange sensation.

The Armenians were not participating in Israel's official ceremonies to remember the six million Jewish dead, murdered by the Germans between 1939 and 1945, perhaps because Israel officially refuses to acknowledge that Armenia's million and a half dead of 1915-1923 were victims of a Turkish Holocaust. Israeli-Turkish diplomatic and military relations are more important than genocide. Or were.

George Hintlian, historian and prominent member of Jerusalem's 2,000-strong Armenian community in Jerusalem, pointed out the posters a few metres from the 1,500-year old Armenian monastery. They advertised Armenia's 24 April commemorations. All but one had been defaced, torn from the ancient walls or, in at least one case, spraypainted with graffiti in Hebrew. "Maybe they don't like it that there was another genocide," George told me. "These are things we can't explain." More than 70 members of George's family were murdered in the butchery and death marches of 1915 – when German officers witnessed the system of executions, rail-car deportations to cholera camps and asphyxiation by smoke in caves – the world's first "gas" chambers. One witness, the German vice-consul in Erzurum, Max von Scheubner-Richter, ended up as one of Hitler's closest friends and advisers. It's not as if there's no connection between the first and second Holocausts.

But the times, they are a-changing. For ever since Turkey began shouting about Israel's slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza a year ago, prominent Israeli figures have suddenly rediscovered the Armenian genocide. Who are the Turks to talk about mass murder? Has anyone forgotten 1915? For George and his compatriots – there are in all 10,000 Armenians in Israel and the occupied West Bank, 4,000 of them holding Israeli passports – they had indeed been forgotten until the Gaza war. "In 1982, the Armenians were left out of a Holocaust conference in Jerusalem," he said. "For three decades, no documentary on the Armenian genocide could be shown on Israeli television because it would offend the Turks. Then suddenly last year, important Israelis demanded that a documentary be shown. Thirty Knesset members supported us. We always had Yossi Sarid of Peace Now but now we've got right-wing Israelis."

Maariv and Yediot Ahronot began to mention the Armenian genocide and George Hintlian turned up on Israeli television with Danny Ayalon – the foreign office minister who humiliated the Turkish ambassador by forcing him to sit on a sofa below him – and Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin who said that Israel should commemorate the Armenian genocide "every year". The Israeli press now calls the Armenian genocide a "Shoah" – the same word all Israelis use for the Jewish Holocaust. As George put it with withering accuracy: "We have been upgraded!!!"

This piece of brash hypocrisy has not gone unnoticed by Yossi Sarid who has described how, a few months after Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced the Gaza war, "an important Israeli personality telephoned me and said the following: 'Now you have to hit back at the Turks, to denounce them for the crimes they committed against the Armenians You, Yossi, have the right to do so...'" Sarid was appalled. "I was filled with revulsion and my soul wanted to puke," he wrote in Haaretz. "The person who telephoned me was an example of the ugly Israeli who had disgracefully been at the forefront of those who denied the Armenian Holocaust." So now "new tunes" – Sarid's phrase – are being heard in Jerusalem: "The Turks are the last ones who have the right to teach us ethics."

The bright side to this anguished debate is that one of Israel's top Holocaust experts bravely insisted – to the fury of then-foreign minister (now president) Shimon Peres – that the Armenian massacres were undoubtedly a genocide. Tens of thousands of Israelis have always believed the same; several hundred are expected to turn up at the Armenian commemoration on 24 April, and most Israelis refer to the Armenian genocide as a "Shoah" rather than the tame "massacres" hitherto favoured by the political elite.

Yet the most extraordinary irony of all occurred when the Armenian and Turkish governments last year agreed to reopen diplomatic relations and consign the Armenian Holocaust to a joint academic enquiry which would decide "if" there had been a genocide. As Israeli Professor Yair Oron of the Open University of Israel said, "I am afraid that countries will now hesitate to recognise the (Armenian) genocide. They will say: 'Why should we grant recognition if the Armenians yielded?' Recognition of the Armenian genocide is a paramount moral and educational act. We in Israel are obliged to recognise it." And American-Armenian UCLA Professor Richard Hovannisian asked: "Would the Jewish people be willing to forgo the memory of the Holocaust for the sake of good relations with Germany, if Germany were to make that demand?" George Hintlian described the Armenian-Turkish agreement – which in fact may not now be ratified by either side – as "like an earthquake".

We walked together in the cold afternoon through the darkened interior of the great Armenian monastery of Jerusalem with its icons and candles. George opened a cabinet to reveal a hidden staircase up which priests would creep for a secret week when invaders passed through Jerusalem. In this dank, pious place, Ronald Henry Amhurst Storrs, governor of British Mandate Jerusalem, would often sit to ponder what he called "the glory and the misery of a people".

Miserable it has been for thousands of Armenians here. Up to 15,000 lived in Palestine until 1948, many of them survivors of the first Holocaust. But 10,000 of these Armenians shared the same fate as the Palestinian Arabs, fleeing or driven from their homes by the army of the new Israeli state. Most lost their businesses in Haifa and Jaffa, many of them seeking refuge – for the second time – in Jerusalem. A few set out for Cyprus where they were dispossessed for the third time by the 1974 Turkish invasion. As George put it bleakly, "Today, 6,000 Armenians are residents of Jerusalem and the West Bank. They cannot travel and they are counted as Armenian Palestinians. For Israeli bureaucracy, they are Palestinians."

George himself is the son of Garbis Hintlian who, as a 17-year-old, survived the death march from his home at Talas in Cappadocia. "We lost my uncle – my grandfather was axed to death in front of him." After the 1918 armistice, he worked for the British, carrying files of evidence to the initial (but quickly abandoned) Constantinople trials of Turkish war criminals. To no avail.

And glory be, if the tables haven't changed again! Turkey and Israel have made up and become good friends again. Yossi Sarid anticipated this. "Let us assume that Turkey will renew its ties with Israel. Then what? What then? Will we also renew our contribution to the denial of the Armenian Holocaust?❞

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Turkey refuses to lie down

It's great to hear that Turkey is standing up for itself in various spats with Israel, refusing to let its diplomats be humiliated in a row about how Israel is depicted in two different dramas on Turkish TV. Turkey says it is upholding its right to free speech and that what is inside its borders is none of Israel's business. Israel responds by summoning the Ambassador and belittling him publicly, and Turkey demands an unequivocal apology or it will break diplomatic relations tomorrow.

Turkey could be a major player in the liberation of Gaza. A Turkish NGO, but accompanied by many Turkish MPs, was on the Viva Palestina convoy, and it was the same Turkish NGO that procured the very expensive ferry that took the 200 vehicles to El Arish from Syria by sea after Egypt changed its mind at the last minute and sent the convoy back by this route. The Turks have a particular bee in their bonnet about Gaza, so the fact that the Government supported NGO have signed up to send two boats on the next FreeGaza voyage from Cyprus to Gaza is really exciting.

The Turkish boats will not be allowed to dock in Greek Cyprus because the G Cypriots do not recognise the breakaway Turkish sponsored state of North Cyprus. The EU has been trying to broker a peace deal, prior to the Greek part becoming part of the EU, but although the Turks voted overwhelmingly for it, the Greeks voted it down. As a result, only the Greek part was admitted to the EU.

So the Turkish boats will presumably travel separately and join at sea. The Cypriots, however, a small nation without much in the way of a Navy, are getting pissed off at the way that Israel has been stopping the FreeGaza boats, which their little government has invested a lot of time into. And as it stands, there is nothing to stop the Israelis arresting the whole flotilla of an expected six boats, just as they arrested or rammed various previous boats.

A Turkish Warship might stop them!

Turkey has a legitimate interest in this area and if a warship accompanied the boats, it would only be in accord with international law and the Geneva Conventions, which make it Israel's responsibility to allow the places they occupy to have a normal life, and failing which, anyone can legally run the blockade to relieve the humanitarian problems so created.

Turkey would be protecting its own merchant shipping, and would surely score Brownie points with G Cyprus for helping their boats too. As a major power in the area, Turkey cannot be simply overridden and ignored like Cyprus or even Greece - the flag of the last boat captured. The UK and US could hardly protest, since they proclaim a wish to lift the siege, and the reaction would be very interesting, to say the least.

Am I dreaming? Maybe, military brinkmanship can never be desirable, and responsible nations do not enter into it lightly - that's why we're so angry with Blair, who did. And the ISM, the ideology behind the FreeGaza group, are a non-violent movement that would prefer to sail to Gaza with a cargo of humanity so valuable that Israel dare not stop it without raising the wroth of the world. The ISM will work with everyone, but will not put itself under obligation to anyone, party or state. I doubt that FreeGaza will 'sign-up' to Turkish protection.

On the other hand, Israel is positively reckless in its military adventures, not just in its 'own' occupied territories, but in Lebanon, which it overflies daily, and in bombing Iran and Iraq and Syria; not to mention the assassination squads of which it is so proud, and which have killed many innocent people and snatched Vanunu (the man who told us about Israeli Nuclear Weapons) back from political Asylum in the UK and imprisoned him for life. And the world has so far failed to act even when hundreds of Europeans, including MPs, get attacked or arrested by Israel or by Egypt on their behalf. The UK Government failed to respond to MPs who asked that the Government protest to Israel when a British registered FreeGaza boat was rammed in what was clearly international waters. The impunity of the Israeli Military has to end, and I dare to hope that the present row over the content of Turkish television soaps may yet provide the Causus Belli for Turkey, already seething about the lack of substance in the condemnation of Israel over Gaza. Actually, there's a lot that can be done that's less than a warship.

With the next FreeGaza fleet scheduled to sail in the spring, I hope for interesting times.

A New Year

A Happy, Productive and Successful New Year to:

This posting is about Abd Rabo Husein, of Yibna, Rafah, but before his story, can I say Congratulations to all who have travelled out to Gaza on the Viva Palestina Convoy, or with Code Pink direct to Egypt, or by themselves to El Arish. May you be successful in this new Year. All have been subject to arbitrary Egptian actions. Those on Egyptian soil have been arrested or attacked by riot police, whilst the Viva Palestina convoy has been forced to return to Syria and set off by boat for Gaza from there via El Arish in Egypt. They could have driven to Gaza from Aqaba after a short ferry crossing to Taba or Nuweiba in a few hours, but this would have meant travelling along the Israeli border on a road closed to foreigners. Why is it closed just to foreigners? Think Israeli security demands, and a supine, greedy Egyptian Government.

This ludicrous demand by the Egyptians means the boat will have to sail past Israel, and then on past Gaza to El Arish. It thrilled me to think that three boats, 200 vehicles, 500? people, would be sailing within 30 miles of Gaza Port, and a little leftwards turn would sail them directly to their destination. But the Egyptians have thought of that, and decreed that only vehicles will travel by sea. People must fly.

My heart goes out to all those people who have given up a large slice of their time to try and break the siege of Gaza, and they deserve respect and support. Many participants will be constrained by time, and will soon have to return for work or study, but signs that people are hardening their positions comes from hearing of those now in their 5th or 6th day of hunger strike in Cairo.

A key moment in breaking British resolve to stop unlimited immigration by Jews into Palestine after World War II came with the arrival of the ship Exodus, which was turned back from Haifa, and which Zionist Terrorists threatened to blow up with all its passengers if it wasn't allowed to land. The UK Government gave in to this threat by terrorists, and effectively, by giving in, gave Palestine into the Zionist control. This episode has been an important learning experience for Palestinian armed groups too.

Let us not threaten to blow up the boat, but must it travel without passengers at all? And must it go to El Arish instead of directly to Gaza? And must the British Government continue to be completely spineless where Palestine is concerned? The Old Man, below, is a timely reminder of British impact in Palestine:

His name is Abd Rabo Hussein and he was born and lived in Yibna, in what is now Israel. He worked for the British military at Lod airport - what is now known as Ben Gurion Airport. When the Exodus Immigrants, and all of the other immigrants decided at the point of a gun that Palestine would become Israel and that Israel had no room for Yibna which would be cleansed of Palestinians and annihilated, he was turned from a British Asset into a stateless refugee. His work for the British Military, which, as in modern Day Iraq, would have made him a target for Jewish Terrorists, cut no ice with the UK Government, who refused to help him in any way. He fled to Gaza where he was settled in a tent in Rafah Refugee Camp (Yibna Section). When the partition of Palestine, and subsequent land grab by Israel, did not produce the expected return of refugees, and when the UK Government, despite UN resolutions, did nothing to facilitate return, these tents became permanent houses, no bigger than the tent plot provided by the UN:

This is still the case today, and this is one such house, the house of a young family who we see in their kitchen with their only form of heating and cooking.

After the dust from the wars following partition cleared, Mr Hussein found himself in Egypt. He hadn't moved, of course, but Gaza became an Egyptian province. At that time, before the Suez nationalisation, there were British Military bases in Egypt, and Mr Hussein thought that would be a good place to work. The British thought so too, and he was employed for several years in the plating shop and as an electrician on a RAF base near the Suez canal.

Once again the British were not interested in his welfare, simply his work output, and once again they abandoned him to his hovel in Gaza. Once back in Gaza he set up a small workshop, since he was a skilled fitter, and found a small prosperity. But then, after the 1967 'Six Day War', he found himself back in Israel once more, again without moving.

Israeli occupation brought mixed fortunes to the inhabitants of Gaza. It humiliated them, made trade and commerce subject to extreme difficulty, often costing ten times more in bribes to Israeli authorities to move stuff out of or into Gaza via the Israeli port of Ashkelon, than the shipping costs from Ashkelon to, say, China. But unskilled labourers could find work on Israeli settlements at poverty wages compared to Israel, but above average compared to Gaza. But that would not help a skilled fitter like Mr Hussein, so he continued to work in his shop:

He continues to work there today, doing the same work as when the Israelis were there, after they left, and now that he finds himself under siege. He makes the little cookers that the young family have in the picture above, although he can only do this if you can give him the metal from scrap or somewhere, since the import of all metal is prohibited. Living close to the tunnels, as he does, is no help if you don't have the money to buy the goods that come that way.

All his life he has been a hard worker, a skilled fitter, a loyal servant of the British Crown, a deeply law-abiding citizen, a refugee in a place that has been three different countries, none of which is his home, because his home has been stolen, like his country, and eradicated, at least physically. Now he is subject to three governments (Hamas, Fatah/Israel, the UN) at the same time! He is nearly 90 years old. He has no pension, no country takes responsibility for him, and he must work until he dies, although because he lives in a UN refugee camp, he will at least get basic rations and some healthcare.

Whilst rich Israelis sue Germans and others in International courts for property that their families often sold to Nazis (but, as they say, under duress) some of those Israelis live on Land and in Houses they stole from this man and his compatriots, without shame, without guilt, without any empathy. Having a relative who was in a concentration camp or who fled from the Nazis has become a badge that descendants think entitles them to steal what they like. But mostly, they are the descendants, why do they think their Father's suffering should entitle them to privilege, when they give such little care to those whom they continue to kill themselves in the Ghetto of Gaza?

Abd Rabo Hussein is still alive, and he wants to go home. He still remembers his English friend Sgt Cowell, from the plating shop, and would like to contact him.

Hedy Epstein, victim of the Holocaust, is also alive, and her memories of the Holocaust have persuaded her to be on Hunger Strike in Cairo in support of Mr Abd and all the other refugees and besieged Palestinians. Special regard must be directed at those whose suffering leads them not to demand this and that from innocent third parties, but to empathy with those now in a similar position.

I wish them both well, and a happy, productive and above all successful new year, and I hope that Mr Hussein can join Ms Epstein in having grim memories, but that are only memories, of events that have finally ended.

Etiquette at the Rafah Border

It looks like Viva Palestina has become a travel agency for adventurers who want to say that they have been to Gaza! It seems that they were let in without most of their aid (again). When will their leadership start doing something that helps Palestinians rather than helping the Israeli/Egyptian Axis to defuse the Anger in the West. People think the Convoy helps to break the siege, but, it is just collaborating with it!!

If you go to the West Bank, the 'rule' is not to take advantage of the invitation usually extended by the Israelis to foreigners to go to the front of the queue at checkpoints (AKA behaving like an Israeli), and to stay in line and wait with the Palestinians. It's called Solidarity, whereas queue jumping is called Arrogance.
What should the procedure be at the entry to Gaza? Make up your own mind: here's an extract from a posting by the FaceBook Group International Campaign to open the Rafah Border, who are camped at Rafah sometimes on hunger strike, trying to force open the gates:

" Elated at news of the arrival of the Viva Palestina convoy, many of these (Palestinian) families, exhausted and in debt, came today to try their luck at Rafah, hoping that the Egyptian police would be more lenient and that they might be able to get some help from members of the convoy.


But that was, unfortunately, not the case: for these families the day turned into a nightmare. They had arrived early in order not to miss the convoy, so they waited all day in the scorching sun. The first members of the convoy began to arrive around 2 pm in buses under heavy security.


Then the horror began: at this very moment, the Egyptian riot police set upon the Palestinian families them and began forcibly evacuating them. People were shouting, screaming, weeping—and the cops kept on beating them savagely.


We tried to slip into Rafah Gate in the midst of the confusion. We even succeeded, but were then dragged back out.


The scene we were witnessing was once again so shocking that Iman, furious, was shouting insults at Mubarak and his minions.


Laila got into one of the buses and called for the help of the members of the convoy, but they replied that there was nothing they could do. “We want to get into Gaza and we don’t want any trouble.”


A man in the bus called out, “I’m a Palestinian.” And one Palestinian woman, stuck in Egypt for many days couldn’t help saying to him, “Oh, fine, you’re a Palestinian from America and I’m a Palestinian from Gaza. You can get in and I am not even allowed to return to my home in Gaza.” By then the Egyptian police had arrived and they pulled Leila and this woman out of the bus.


No contact between Palestinians and foreigners. That has been the order of the day every day since we pitched our tents here at Rafah.



We can understand the attitude of the members of this impressive convoy, with its buses, refrigerator trucks and vans. It has been so difficult for them to get this far with half of their humanitarian aid(the other half was confiscated in Alexandria) that it was hard for them to jeopardize delivery of the remaining supplies by attempting to help the people they were watching being beaten up before their very eyes. They would have been heavily penalized—they would have been refused entry into Gaza.



How can one comprehend Egyptian policy? How can one understand these Egyptian policemen who viciously beat the Palestinians and treat them like sub-humans, like enemies? Why prevent the Palestinians from returning to their own homes? Who gives the orders? Why not tell them what procedures they need to follow? And, by the way, is there one? We have asked these questions countless times, and each time we got a different answer. "

After a Slow Start, The Pictures That I brought Back From Gaza Finally Become an Exhibition

It is such a relief to have finally got something organised - and pretty damn good it is too. Thanks to Sally for some artistic input so we have an aesthetically appealing show, and thanks to Dr Joseph O'Neill for arranging some places for the Exhibition to be seen. More on this soon, but what do you think?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=575N0JRzaIs