Author: Helena

Flotilla: Names of victims starting to appear

One of the many inhumane aspects of Israel’s murderous raid on the aid flotilla Monday has been its tardiness in releasing the names of the killed and wounded and its holding of nearly all the kidnapped flotilla participants incommunicado in massive, specially organized temporary prisons. This has left family members of most participants in anguish, not knowing if their loved ones were among those killed and injured.
Turkey has now been able to extract from the Israelis the names of four Turkish flotilla participants who were killed Monday. They are:

    İbrahim Bilgen,
    Ali Haydar Bengi,
    Ali Ekber Yaratılmış and
    Muharrem Koçak.

RIP, friends Bilgen, Bengi, Yaratılmış, and Koçak, and my heartfelt condolences to your families.
By the way, that report in Today’s Zaman that i linked to there has a lot more information about the detained flotilla participants. Turkey has done an exemplary job of trying to protect the interests of those of its nationals who were participating in the flotilla. It would be great if all other governments, including my own, could do such a good job.
Though the Israeli authorities at first threatened to “prosecute” those flotilla participants whom it accused of having used violence against the soldiers who attacked the ships– and they were keeping all participants in detention on the pretext they needed to “screen” them regarding such charges– it now appears they have backed down completely, at least in the case of the Turkish participants.
As I wrote here yesterday, there is a powerful current in international law that holds that it is Turkey, as the nation that flagged the Mavi Marmara, that should have jurisdiction over any incidents of violence that occurred aboard the ship while it is in international waters… and of course, the assault against it by armed Israeli commandos is one such act of (great) violence that could and should be investigated and punished by Turkey.
Meanwhile, we should appeal to Israel and all other governments to get the names of those killed, injured, and detained released as soon as possible– and of course, to get all those persons immediately released from their illegal detention, as well.

How to end the siege of Gaza

I’ve been thinking through some of the challenges any Israeli government would face as it considers ending its four-year-long siege of Gaza. (And that, it is becoming increasingly clear, is what the entire world community needs to see happening.)
Think of it for a moment from the Israeli government’s viewpoint. They have been telling their own people, the world– and themselves!– for more than four years now that they need to maintain the siege “in order to ensure that Hamas and the other militant groups don’t smuggle weapons into Gaza.” One condition they’ve always insisted on, therefore, is that for the siege to be lifted, there has to be some form “credible” inspection regime at all of Gaza’s borders to ensure such smuggling doesn’t occur.
(In truth, the siege has barely prevented the smuggling-in of weapons. Gaza has hundreds of tunnels connecting it with Egypt. A much bigger role in preventing the arrival of weapons to the tunnel-heads has been played by the Egyptian security forces, acting often deep inside Sinai and not only near the country’s short border with Gaza… Under a “no-siege” regime for Gaza, Egypt could be expected to continue to play an equally strict monitoring role.)
Okay, but bear with me as I continue to think this through. In such “negotiations” as have occurred over the possibility of lifting the siege of Gaza, Israel and its U.S. lackeys have always insisted that the body that monitors the crossing-points on the Gaza side of the border not be constituted by the Hamas regime which was democratically elected– in Gaza and indeed also in the West Bank– back in 2006, and which has been ruling Gaza with some significant effectiveness in recent years, and more especially since it repulsed a U.S.-backed coup attempt in June 2007. Israel and the U.S. have always insisted that there should be a role for the (heavily U.S.-backed) Ramallah regime in controlling the Gaza side of the border. However, given Hamas’s undoubted de-facto– as well as in many eyes, de-jure– control of Gaza, shoe-horning in a role for the Ramallah PA has always necessarily involved seeking form of reconciliation or at least modus vivendi between Hamas and the Ramallah-based Fateh faction. (Or, and here is an interesting possibility, the modus vivendi could be between Hamas and the politically “independent”, though also strongly U.S.-backed Ramallah PM, Salam Fayyad.)
We should all be clear that the challenge regarding Gaza is to open its borders to the normal passage of goods and persons, and also to facilitate free passage of goods and persons between Gaza and the West Bank. It is not simply a matter of allowing/ensuring the passage of aid shipments into Gaza. It is a matter of re-opening Gaza to normal commerce with the whole of the rest of the outside world. Gazans hate the aid-dependency into which they’ve been forced. Previously, they had many factories and agro enterprises that engaged in flourishing commerce with the outside world. One of the worst aspects of the Israeli siege is that it has killed all that economic activity. Gaza needs to be open for normal commercial and human activity– not just for the trucking-in of international aid.
Anyway, for the reasons outlined earlier, for Israeli and American officials, the question of opening the Gaza borders to normal traffic of goods and persons has always been directly tied to securing a reconciliation between Hamas and Fateh on terms that they– the Israelis and Americans– approve of. But guess what. That reconciliation hasn’t happened at any point since the Fateh faction headed by Mohamed Dahlan made his (U.S.-instigated) coup attempt in Gaza in June ’07, and was repulsed. But it’s important to remember that immediately prior to that, Fateh, Hamas, and Salam Fayyad had all been participants in the National Unity Government whose terms were brokered by the Saudis in Mecca in February 2007. So reconciliation is not an impossible dream. The grassroots activists on both sides– including that very important constituency, the thousands of political prisoners from all Palestinian factions who are held in Israeli jails– are all in favor of it. And so is the Hamas leadership (though on its own terms, not those of the U.S. or Fateh.)
So what happens if this Likud-dominated Israeli government decides that it needs to, from its perspective, “back down” on the project of keeping Gaza tightly besieged. How might it do that, and wouldn’t it feel it would be somehow “letting Fateh down”?
Actually, no. Likud people have nothing of the sentimental soft spot for Fateh that so many of Israel’s Labour leaders (and even the people in Meretz) have had. And in particular, Likud does not want to have to tie itself down to negotiating the kind of firm international border in the West Bank, between Israel and the future Palestine, that the Fateh diplomats are now so firmly committed to.
There is actually a lot that Likud has in common with Hamas, as I noted in this 2008 article in Boston Review. Key among the things they have in common are that neither movement is terribly strongly committed to the two-state solution– and more importantly, neither currently wants to see a firm international boundary established in the West Bank, between Israel and “Palestine”. The two movements/parties obviously have many goals that clash against each other. But they have both shown on several occasions in the past that they’re capable of using quiet negotiations, or negotiations mediated through third parties, to reach agreements on partial (not permanent-status) issues that have proved relatively successful.
(Another thing the two of them have in common: A strong distaste for the kind of touchy-feely-huggy “getting-to-know-you” gabfests and photo ops that both Labour and Fateh have traditionally adored.)
So it could happen. Fateh might well get tossed out of the door in this. And of course, it goes without saying that the moment the government of Israel says, “Look, we’ve concluded that we need to do some kind of a quiet deal with Hamas to make this border-opening thing work,” the U.S. administration and the serried ranks of bought-and-paid-for members of the U.S. Congress will come slavering like a lap-dog right behind it and say, “Yes, yes! Of course you must!” Like what happened with the PLO back in 1993.
Well, I’m not saying this is what will happen. But I do think it’s a distinct possibility. And we do need to be able to understand just how Netanyahu and his advisers– assuming they are not all testosterone-addicted, rampant fools, as Ehud Barak appears to be– might be trying to think their way out of their current quandary…

Turkey shows the way

The Turkish government has successfully persuaded Israel to immediately release all Turkish nationals illegally captured by Israel on the high seas on Monday, and has sent civilian planes and military hospital planes to collect them. Turkey has also, obviously, insisted that Israel return the mortal remains of all Turkish citizens killed during the flotilla murders.
In addition, Turkey, which withdrew its ambassador from Israel following the murders, has now said it will restore normal ties with Israel only if Israel ends the blockade of Gaza.
Other governments of the world should reinforce this completely legitimate demand– made, as it happens, by a longtime member of NATO that is NATO’s only majority-Muslim member state.

Jeffrey Goldberg, his Israeli friends, Marcy Winograd

I don’t usually spend much time reading the blog that the eager Zionist apologist– the eager Zionist!– Jeffrey Goldberg writes at The Atlantic. Today, I didn’t spend a long time there, but I did read two interesting items:
In this one, JG writes that he is currently in Israel, and–

    I happen to be around a lot of Israeli generals lately, and one I bumped into today said something very smart and self-aware: “Does everybody in the world think we’re bananas?” He did not let me respond before he said, “Wait, I know the answer: The whole world thinks we’re bananas.” I asked this general if this was a good thing or a bad thing. After all, Nixon seemed bananas and he achieved great things internationally. So did Menachem Begin. This is what the general said, however: “It’s one thing for people to think that you’re crazy, but it’s bad when they think you’re incompetent and crazy, and that’s the way we look.”
    … I’m not going to predict the political fall-out from this, because I’m not clever enough to fully grasp Israeli coalition politics. [Ah, Jeffrey, as though Israel is only country that has “politics”, eh? ~HC] But the feelings of shame and embarrassment are palpable, and someone will have to pay a price.
    About that shame and embarrassment: I just met with the son of a friend who serves in an elite Israeli army unit, one very much similiar to Flotilla 13, the Naval commando unit deployed so disastrously against the anti-Israel flotilla, and he explained the shame this way: “These soldiers are the best we have. We are Israel’s deterrent. People in the Middle East need to think we are the best, and we are the best, except that when we’re sent into situations without any intelligence, without any direction, with paintball guns instead of sufficient weapons, with no understanding of who we’re fighting. Then we’re going to have a disaster… ”

Then, from last week, he had this really interesting account of an interview he had conducted a few days earlier with Marcy Winograd, the political activist challenging arch-Zionist Rep. Jane Harman in the Democratic primary in California’s 36th congressional district (someplace in Los Angeles), to be held June 8th.
In a statement on her website today, Winograd slammed into Harman for having been so silent about Israel’s flotilla murders. It said,

    “If my opponent wanted to exercise leadership, she would demand the U.S. government condemn these murders. Her silence leaves those of us in the 36th congressional district once again to wonder whether Jane Harman truly represents all the people of this district, or just the military contractors and those who prioritize Israel, right or wrong. Her tacit approval of such violent tactics also reconfirms my assertion that Harman’s policies make us all less–rather than more–safe. ”
    Harman last week launched a media campaign attacking Winograd for her promotion of equal rights and justice for all in the middle east. Winograd states, “Millions around the world see the truth unfolding on their TV screens. My opponent can twist my calls for human rights, but the people see that there needs to be accountability for violence, and a sane policy for peace in the middle east.”

All power to Marcy Winograd in her campaign!
Highlights from Goldberg’s interview with her:

    Jeffrey Goldberg: What originally motivated you to challenge Jane Harman?
    Marcy Winograd: My original motivation had a lot to do with her covering for the Bush Administration’s crimes, covering for the invasion of Iraq and covering for the massive illegal wiretapping program. Jane Harman failed in her duty to provide oversight as the ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee. She either didn’t read or didn’t take seriously doubts raised by members of the intelligence community about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and she recklessly took us to war on the heels of that. Then I saw her on “Meet the Press” attacking The New York Times for finally releasing a story on illegal wiretaps and I thought to myself that someone has to challenge her, someone has to challenge Democratic incumbents who are complicit in the crimes of the Bush Administration. We need real representation, not someone who is in the pocket of special interests.
    JG: What special interests is she in the pocket of?
    MW: Wall Street, weapons manufacturers, Israel. Not Israel, but AIPAC, because it’s not necessarily the same.
    … JG: Talk about how you would fight terrorism.
    MW: I would work very hard for a peace agreement in the Middle East with Israel and Palestine. I think that is part of the problem, certainly not the whole problem, but it creates a great deal of tension which fuels this kind of opposition. I would, as I said, reassess whether we need all these bases, or whether we would be better off investing our resources in working with NGOs to improve local economies. I mean, in Afghanistan, forty percent of the adult population is unemployed. The biggest enemy is poverty and unemployment.
    JG: Is there anything you would do against terrorism militarily?
    MW: I would join the International Criminal Court. I believe in diplomacy and the rule of law. When people are perpetrating acts of terrorism they should be tried before the world in the world court or tried in absentia. The strongest defense is when you create coalitions of people around the world, not when you have divided the world.
    JG: Go this Henry Waxman question. Are you for a bi-national state or are you for a two-state solution?
    MW: I consider myself a realist, okay? I’m Jewish. I’ve labeled myself as a Jewish woman of conscience who is compelled to speak out because of the suffering in the world. I support peace, so whatever both sides can agree to, which would probably be an agreement on a mutual exchange of territory, I would fully support, because I want peace. However, and let me share this with you, I grew up in a strong Zionist family, I sang at my brother’s Bar Mitzvah, I sent my daughter to Jewish pre-school, I went to Israel when I was in my 20s. That’s my background, and all that being said, I know that Israel was born on land where a million Palestinians lived. For many Jews the birth of Israel is a celebration, but for the Palestinians it was the nakba, a catastrophe. There’s no safety or security in barring people from their homeland. Ultimately, Jews and Palestinians need to learn to live together, just as they lived in peace for many years.
    JG: Can you be a liberal and a Zionist at the same time?
    MW: Well, there’s a less-harmful Zionism. I don’t see Zionism as liberal. Zionism categorizes Jews as a race, which makes it easier for Jews to be targeted.
    JG: Zionism doesn’t categorize Jews as a race, it categorizes Jews as a nation.
    MW: To me, there’s no safety in creating a nation predicated on either racial or ethnic supremacy.
    JG: How did you come to this view?
    MW: I’ve been torn about this for a long time, and not really wanting to look at it, which a lot of Jews probably feel, wanting to turn away from it because it’s too painful. It’s too tied to our identity, to our neighborhoods, to our whole orientation. I My primary concern is peace. I don’t feel comfortable advocating for a country based on ethnic and racial supremacy. Personally, I’m a believer in equality, one voice, one vote, Israelis and Palestinians, one voice, one vote, that’s my personal position.
    JG: Eventual bi-nationalism.
    MW: Yes.

Ireland shows the way

The Irish Times reports that the Irish aid ship the MV Rachel Corrie is still steaming toward Gaza– and that Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) Brian Cowen has warned Israel that “If any harm comes to any of our citizens, it will have the most serious consequences.”
HT: Paul Woodward for that.
The Irish do, of course, have a long memory of having been colonized by a bullying neighbor– who was also ready on occasion to use mass starvation as a mechanism of colonial control.
The Irish Times report tells us that the Rachel Corrie has five Irish nationals and five Malaysians aboard it. It had become separated from the other boats in the flotilla due to “logistical” problem. (Or perhaps to earlier Israeli sabotage?)
Five other Irish nationals were on other boats in the flotilla– the ones Israel has attacked and impounded. Among them is the amazing Caoimhe Butterly, a dedicated International Solidarity Movement organizer whom we had the honor of meeting when we were in Damascus last November.
The ISM is now listing Caoimhe (pronounced, roughly, “Queever”) as one of three key female ISM leaders who have not been heard of since yesterday’s murder-raid, and about whom they have great concern. I’m praying for their wellbeing– and for the wellbeing of all those injured in the attack or held incommunicado since it occurred.
The Israeli government had zero authority under international law to launch its assault on the boats in international waters, and zero legitimate authority to kidnap all those riding as passengers or crew members on them. These captive should all be freed immediately. Israel should also be required to provide a full accounting of what happened to all those who were killed or injured, and to cooperate with the international enquiry that needs to be launched into this grave breach of international law.

Flotilla murders: The Turkish/NATO angle

The WaPo’s Glenn Kessler reported this about Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu , who’s been in Washington today:

    With anger and sarcasm, … Davutoglu lashed out Tuesday at Israel’s attack on a Gaza aid flotilla and by extension the Obama administration’s reluctance to immediately condemn the assault that left at least nine civilians dead.
    “Psychologically, this attack is like 9/11 for Turkey,” Davutoglu told reporters over breakfast in Washington before going to the State Department to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton…
    Davutoglu displayed a map showing that the attack took place 72 nautical miles off the coast of Israel, far beyond the 12-mile sovereign border.
    … he said that in Turkey’s view, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has full authority under [last night’s UNSC presidential statement] to order an international probe. He noted that the incident took place in international waters so Israel has no right to declare it can conduct its own inquiry.
    “We will not be silent about this,” he said. “We expect the United States to show solidarity with us. . . . I am not very happy with the statements from the United States yesterday.”

More from his meeting with Clinton soon, presumably.
Turkey is of course the only majority-Muslim member of NATO, and therefore plays an important role in the counsels of the military alliance, which is currently engaged in a complicated and dangerous shooting war in Afghanistan. Israel is notably not a member of NATO.
NATO this morning held an emergency meeting at its Brussels headquarters to discuss the raid, at Turkey’s request. Afterwards, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussens said in a statement that

    he condemns the acts “which have led to this tragedy” and offered condolence to families of the victims killed in the incident.
    “I add my voice to the calls by the United Nations and the European Union for a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation into the incident,” he added.
    Rasmussen also called for “the immediate release of the detained civilians and ships held by Israel”.

In Turkey meanwhile, the excellent Turkish daily Today’s Zaman has lots of good reporting about the raid and its political fallout.
One Turkish woman who was on the Mavi Marmara, Nilüfer Çetin, was released and speedily returned to Turkey because she had a young child with her. (She’s the wife of the ship’s engineer.)
TZ reported that,

    “I was one of the first victims to be released because I had a child,” she told reporters, but “they confiscated everything, our telephones, laptops are all gone.” Her husband… is still being held by Israeli authorities.

That same article contains this:

    Greek peace activist Dimitris Gielalis, who had been with the flotilla, said: “They came up and used plastic bullets. We had beatings, we had electric shocks, any method you can think of, they used.” He said the boat’s captain was beaten for refusing to leave the wheel and had sustained non-life-threatening injuries, while a cameraman filming the raid was hit with a rifle butt in the eye.
    Mihalis Grigoropoulos told reporters at Athens International Airport that Israelis rappelled from helicopters and threw ropes from inflatable boats, climbing aboard, adding that there was teargas and live ammunition.
    “We did not resist at all; we couldn’t, even if we had wanted to. What could we have done against the commandos who climbed aboard? The only thing some people tried was to delay them from getting to the bridge, forming a human shield. They were fired upon with plastic bullets and were stunned with electric devices,” he said.

Interesting to have had Turkish and Greek activists working alongside each other on the Freedom Flotilla project, eh?
This TZ article is also really interesting. It contains a lot of excellent commentary from leading Turkish intellectuals into the political fallout the murders can be expected to have. Its headline? “Turkish Israeli-relations will never be the same.”
Among many significant quotes it contains are these:

    Soli Özel from Bilgi University says the worst-case scenario has come to pass and will lead to a revision of Turkish-Israeli relations, which were already strained by Israeli actions in Palestine over the years.
    “The power balances in the Middle East will never be the same again. Israel’s legitimacy was very weak anyway and now this legitimacy will be discussed even more. The world will react to that,” he told Today’s Zaman.

Fwiw, Ozel is one of Turkey’s most prominent Jewish intellectuals.
The piece ends with this:

    Professor İlter Turan from Bilgi University says Israel is in a panic and that this is why it has been engaging in controversial acts which are against international law. “Israel is most likely to tell the world that it was right. But, it is certain that there will be sharp international reactions directed at Israel. I think it will be hard for Israel to find support around the world,” he told Today’s Zaman.
    However, according to political scientist Doğu Ergil from Ankara University, so long as the US continues to see Israel’s acts as legitimate, Israel will continue to carry out such bloody acts. “Israel is now over in moral terms in the eyes of the people of the world. The world should oppose Israel’s inhumane acts,” he noted.
    İnal Batu, a retired ambassador, also questions the US’s stance on Israeli acts. “I wonder what kind of warnings the US delivered to Israel before this incident. Turkey should have influence on the US when it comes to this issue,” he said.

Keep watching Egypt

Egypt’s compliance with Israel in maintaining the siege of Gaza has been an essential element in the siege’s inhumane “success” until now.
But as Issandr el-Amrani blogged yesterday, Israel’s lethal raid against the Turkish-flagged siege-busting boat Mavi Marmara provoked broad, spontaneous protest demonstrations in Cairo.
Amrani:

    this is the biggest protest about Palestine since the Gaza war, in an atmosphere in which such protests have not been tolerated. We might see more in the next few days, including on Friday after prayers.

The regime led by the ageing, ailing, US-backed president Hosni Mubarak evidently decided to respond to this new pressure by opening up Egypt’s short border with Gaza a little bit. Well, that’s what the Egyptian government reportedly announced– though there are no reports yet that any people or goods have actually passed through the vast transit halls at Rafah, which are nearly always– except at Muslim-pilgrimage time– cavernously empty.
I imagine Mubarak and all the contenders to the power of his throne would like nothing better than to have the whole Gaza crisis simply disappear from the diplomatic radar screen. As I have blogged here quite frequently over the past few years, Mubarak and his country’s other powerful security bosses have worked hard to keep the lid on the Gaza issue by (1) monopolizing the mediating role in all the international/diplomatic negotiations related to Gaza, with the apparent goal of blocking any progress in them; and (2) keeping a very tight lid on any Gaza-related public activity at home in Egypt.
Might one or both those efforts now– in good part thanks to the Israeli government’s never-ending addiction to excessive violence– be headed for chaotic failure?
Keep watching. Gaza may be a “big” issue. But in world affairs, and in the maintenance of the Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East, Egypt is gigantic.

C. Murray: Raid not piracy but war

Former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray makes a strong argument here that the Israeli commandos’ assault on a Turkish-flagged civilian vessel in the high seas was an act not of piracy but of war. (HT Issandr el-Amrani.)
Murray writes:

    To attack a foreign flagged vessel in international waters is illegal. It is not piracy, as the Israeli vessels carried a military commission. It is rather an act of illegal warfare.
    Because the incident took place on the high seas does not mean however that international law is the only applicable law. The Law of the Sea is quite plain that, when an incident takes place on a ship on the high seas (outside anybody’s territorial waters) the applicable law is that of the flag state of the ship on which the incident occurred. In legal terms, the Turkish ship was Turkish territory.
    There are therefore two clear legal possibilities.
    Possibility one is that the Israeli commandos were acting on behalf of the government of Israel in killing the activists on the ships. In that case Israel is in a position of war with Turkey, and the act falls under international jurisdiction as a war crime.
    Possibility two is that, if the killings were not authorised Israeli military action, they were acts of murder under Turkish jurisdiction. If Israel does not consider itself in a position of war with Turkey, then it must hand over the commandos involved for trial in Turkey under Turkish law.
    In brief, if Israel and Turkey are not at war, then it is Turkish law which is applicable to what happened on the ship. It is for Turkey, not Israel, to carry out any inquiry or investigation into events and to initiate any prosecutions. Israel is obliged to hand over indicted personnel for prosecution.

Murray also notes, interestingly, that the new (Conservative) British Foreign Minister, William Hague, has issued a statement on the massacre that is considerably stronger and better than anything one would ever have heard from “New” Labour.

Haaretz on Israel’s chaotic decisionmaking

Barak Ravid has an informative piece in Haaretz today, underlining the chaos in Israel’s top strategic decisionmaking circles over the flotilla raid.
It seems like the same old story– from Defense Minister Ariel Sharon dragging PM Begin into the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, through the Olmert/Peretz team’s mega-lethal clownishness in the 2006 assault against Lebanon, to the Olmert/Barak/Livni team’s still-chaotic leadership “performance” during the late-2008 assault against Gaza… through… through… and right through to today.
Ravid:

    Senior ministers have noted that … the inner cabinet did not discuss issues related to the flotilla, receive operational briefings or approve the operation. The forum of seven, which did consider and approve the plan, … held just two meetings on the flotilla, the latest on Wednesday. They approved the operation and the continuation of the Israeli policy of barring ships from docking in Gaza.
    Much of the session was devoted not to the military operation but rather to media and public relations issues surrounding the issue. “The ministers who attended the meeting didn’t get the impression from the defense establishment that a violent confrontation of this scope was likely,” one senior Jerusalem official said. “The sense during the discussion was that the navy would come and the organizers would take fright, do an about-face and flee,” he said.

No wonder PM Netanyahu had to nix his planned victory lap in the Oval Office and rush back to try to “take charge” at home.
According to Ravid,

    One of the most vocal participants in Wednesday’s session was Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser. He was against the raid and said the ships should be allowed to dock in Gaza in order to avoid a diplomatic and public relations crisis as well as the embarrassment to Israel that a violent confrontation with demonstrators on the ships could cause. After senior defense officials expressed their opposition to Hauser’s views, his position was rejected.

Maybe Hauser was the source for Ravid’s story? Anyway, it looks as though there’s some high-level butt-covering and finger-pointing going on in Israel today. Good.
By the way, the “forum of seven” includes the following: Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Intelligence and Atomic Affairs Minister Dan Meridor, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Interior Minister Eli Yishai and Minster without Portfolio Benny Begin.
“Intelligence and Atomic Affairs Minister”, huh?
This does remind me that, as we know, Israel has an extremely potent and lethal nuclear arsenal. Do we have any reason to think that it will be any more “responsible” in its stewardship of that fatal capability than it has been in its use of conventional military power?

Flotilla: U.S. supports a U.N. enquiry (oops, no?)

I just read the report of the consultations the UNSC held yesterday and in the wee hours of this morning into the flotilla massacre.
The presidential statement and most of the recorded comments from SC members noted correctly that the flotilla would never have been necessary if Israel had responded to earlier SC resolutions that called on it to ease the siege against Gaza considerably– and called on it once again, with more urgency, to do so.
I think that was excellent.
The presidential statement also committed the the UNSC to undertaking its own enquiry into what happened, noting that Israel’s confiscation of the documentary materials held by flotilla participants meant that no-one could currently be clear as to what actually occurred.
The U.S. rep there, Alejandro Wolff, went on the record expressing support for the UNSC enquiry.* That was excellent.
Of course, we should also remember the extremely hostile and ill-informed campaign the U.S. delegation mounted against the last investigatory report the UNSC produced into affairs related to Gaza: the Goldstone Report.
—
* Update Tuesday 1:45 pm:
In the UN’s record of the discussion, the rapporteur said this of Wolff statement during the UNSC session:

    He expected a credible and transparent investigation and urged the Council to conduct one fully.

However, I just looked at CNN’s video clip, available here, that includes a record of a statement Wolff made after the UNSC session. He was explicit there that he thought Israel could conduct a thorough and credible investigation on its own.