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Israel up to their shenanigans again (pg. 26)
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| EddieZilker |
| You're an idiot, washley. |
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| zoogla |
| quote: | New aid ship heads to Gaza, Israel vows to stop it
By MENELAOS HADJICOSTIS and DAVID RISING
Associated Press Writers
June 4, 2010
ISTANBUL (AP) -- An aid ship trying to break the blockade of Gaza could reach Israel's 20-mile (32-kilometer) exclusion zone late Friday, an activist said, but Israel's prime minister has vowed the ship will not reach land.
The dueling comments suggest a potential new clash over Israel's three-year-old blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip - and come only four days after an Israeli commando raid on a larger aid flotilla left nine activists dead.
Greta Berlin, a spokesman for the Free Gaza group, said in Nicosia the 1,200-ton Rachel Corrie is heading directly to Gaza and will not stop in any port on the way. It is trying to deliver hundreds of tons of aid, including wheelchairs, medical supplies and concrete.
By Friday afternoon, the ship was 150 miles (240 kilometers) from the coast of Gaza in international waters, the group said on its website. Irish Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead McGuire and the former head of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, Denis Halliday, were among the 11 passengers on board.
The Irish vessel is named after an American college student crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer while protesting house demolitions in Gaza.
Israel will not allow the aid ship to reach Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told senior Cabinet ministers late Thursday. According to a participant in the meeting, he said Israel made several offers to direct the ship to an Israeli port, where the aid supplies would be unloaded, inspected and transferred to Gaza by land, but the offers were rejected.
Netanyahu has hotly rejected calls to lift the blockade on Gaza, insisting that it prevents missile attacks on Israel. The Rachel Corrie's cargo of concrete is also a problem, because Israel considers that to have military uses.
Netanyahu has instructed the military to act with sensitivity in preventing the Rachel Corrie from landing and avoid harming those on board, the participant said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed.
Israel has rejected demands for an international panel to probe Monday's deadly commando raid on the aid ships, saying it can conduct a professional, impartial investigation on its own.
Activists say Israel sabotaged the previous aid flotilla, and Israeli defense officials said Friday only that unspecified "actions" were taken when the boats were still far from Gaza that delayed the flotilla. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was classified.
The Turkish activists' deaths on the aid ship increased tensions in the Mideast, especially with Turkey, an important ally of Israel. On Thursday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Israel's actions "a historic mistake."
His deputy on Friday announced that Turkey was reducing its economic and defense cooperation with Israel. Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said all deals with Israel are being evaluated.
"We are serious on this issue. New cooperation will not start and relations with Israel will be reduced," he said.
Israel says its commandos opened fire Monday as a last resort after they were attacked, and released a video showing soldiers in riot gear descending from a helicopter into a crowd of men with clubs. Three or four activists overpowered each soldier as he landed.
Returning activists admitted fighting with the Israeli commandos but insisted their actions were in self defense because the ships were being boarded in international waters by a military force.
In Istanbul on Friday, 20,000 people waved Turkish, Palestinian and Hezbollah flags in a memorial service outside the Beyazit mosque for a member of the IHH charity group who the activists say was killed while taking pictures of the Israeli commando raid.
The youngest of the nine activists killed, 19-year-old Furkan Dogan, was being buried Friday in his family's hometown in Kayseri in central Turkey. Another 10,000 people attended the funeral service for Dogan ahead of his burial, chanting "down with Israel," but Dogan's father, Ahmet Dogan, was stoic.
"Neither I nor his mother or brother have any grief," he told the AP as he arranged flowers on his son's coffin before prayers started. "We believe he became a martyr and God accepts martyrs to paradise."
Dogan, who was born in Troy, New York, moved to Turkey when he was two. The other eight slain activists were all Turkish nationals.
In Istanbul, three members of an anti-Zionist Jewish sect called a news conference to blast Israel's actions.
"We are totally opposed and condemn this atrocity that has been perpetrated against Turkey, against the ships of the human rights activists," Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a leader of the radical Neturei Karta, told reporters.
"We all pray for the speedy and peaceful total dismantlement of the state of Israel and for a free Gaza ... so we can live together - Jews, Muslims and Christians."
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Hadjicostis reported from Nicosia. Associated Press writers Mark Lavie and Matti Friedman in Jerusalem, Selcan Hacaoglu in Istanbul and Burhan Ozbilici in Kayseri also contributed to this report. |
www.ap.org
One of the activists killed was an American citizen. I didn't even know about the American that was killed when standing in front of a tank to stop the Israeli army from bulldozing homes in Gaza. So, they bulldoze homes and then don't allow construction materials in for fear of terrorist use. okay.
Nice to see that there are Jewish sects that are against the atrocities. |
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| hardcore trancer |
| quote: |
Israeli commando who shot six passengers in aid convoy in line for medal
Six of the nine passengers killed in an Israeli raid on an aid convoy bound for Gaza were shot by a single Israeli commando, who is being considered for a medal of valour for saving his injured comrades as passengers attacked them with clubs, knives and even guns they had taken from downed Navy Seals.
Fresh details of the controversial raid, which has led to accusations of “piracy” and “state terrorism” being levelled against Israel, and which wrecked its strategic partnership with Turkey, emerged yesterday. There were reports that passengers who attacked the Israeli boarding party had been dragging three captured commandos into the hold of the ship when the shooting broke out.
And a British passenger who witnessed the deadly pre-dawn encounter in international waters said that some of the more peaceful activists on board had tried to protect captured Israeli soldiers being set upon by a hardcore of passengers, most of them believed to be Turks linked to an Islamic charity accused by Israel of having links to extremists.
The Israeli commando who killed six of the passengers of Mavi Marmara, the Turkish ferry owned by the IHH charity, said that he had been the last of 15 soldiers to rappel down the rope from an overhead helicopter on to the decks of the ship, which he described as “a battlefield”.
Identified for security reasons only as Staff Sergeant S, he said that contrary to initial Israeli Army reports, the shooting had started within minutes as he and his comrades were set upon by a “mob of mercenaries”.
As he landed on the ship’s top deck, he said he saw three of his superior officers who had landed ahead of him lying wounded, one with a bullet wound to the stomach, another shot in the knee and the third beaten unconscious.
Taking charge, he formed his men in a perimeter around the wounded, pulled his 9mm Glock pistol and opened fire on passengers he accused of shooting at the boarding party with guns taken off the first soldiers, who had been overwhelmed as they landed one by one.
“When I hit the deck, I was immediately attacked by people with bats, metal pipes and axes,” the sergeant recalled. “These were without a doubt terrorists. I could see the murderous rage in their eyes and that they were coming to kill us.”
He said he saw one of the passengers holding a seized pistol to another Israeli commando’s head.
His accusation that his assailants were mercenaries was based on the large amounts of cash found on a number of the detained and killed passengers, although other officials have suggested the money was destined to be given to Hamas in Gaza if the convoy succeeded in breaking the Israeli naval blockade.
New footage released by Israel, and apparently filmed by activists before the boarding had started before dawn on Monday, showed an Israeli assault craft full of helmeted commandos pull alongside the Mavi Marmara, where men waving metal pipes and a chain leant overboard to ward them off.
Others were emptying fire hoses at the Israeli boat below, while a stun grenade was dropped into the vessel, exploding among the soldiers.
Some Israeli officials have accused the Turks who attacked them of links to terrorist groups, although it was unclear why, in that case, the soldiers of Flotilla 13, the elite Navy Seals unit involved in the operation, were briefed only to expect peaceful resistance.
The question also remained as to why the passengers, if they were indeed terrorists, did not use deadlier weapons against the approaching naval launches and helicopters hovering overhead.
Alexandra Lort-Phillips, 37, an activist from Hackney, was on the Mavi Marmara when it was stormed and described seeing an Israeli soldier taken down into the stairwell below the deck where the soldiers landed.
“I went down the stairwell and there was a massive crowd of people and lots of shouting,” she said, after being deported to Istanbul.
“They had got a soldier who had boarded the ship from the roof. There was a sense of ‘My god, we’ve got an Israeli soldier’. I don’t think we really knew what we were going to do.”
“I saw a gun being taken. His gunbelt was removed and someone, I don’t know who, ran past me with the weapon and disappeared. They could have shot him but didn’t.” She said around 25 people were gathered around the soldier, who was held by his legs and stripped to his underwear as he was restrained.
“The women who were there were shouting ‘Don’t hurt him’.” Ms Lort-Phillips denied he was beaten, but said: “There were obviously some guys there who were extremely agitated by the situation. It is like you’d expect when there’s a fight between men.” As Israel desperately tried to limit the damage caused by the bloodbath on the high seas, the organisers of the aid flotilla said another boat was due to challenge the blockade and make for Gaza at the weekend.
The Rachel Corrie, an Irish-flagged ship, is named after a young American peace activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003 while trying to prevent the army from demolishing a Palestinian home in Gaza. Organisers said it was steaming straight for Gaza with Mairead Maguire, winner of an Irish Nobel Peace Prize, on board.
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On in Israel you get a in medal for killing people.:rolleyes: |
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| jester |
| quote: | Originally posted by hardcore trancer
On in Israel you get a in medal for killing people.:rolleyes: |
Hahaha thats hilarious. I just do not know why the IDF would release such info though :crazy:
If I was them, I would of never said something like that. |
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| Joss Weatherby |
| Israel hates the PNW. The ship sailing there now is named after a girl from Washington who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to prevent the IDF from demolishing Palestinian houses. |
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| Nrg2Nfinit |
| quote: | Originally posted by jester
Hahaha thats hilarious. I just do not know why the IDF would release such info though :crazy:
If I was them, I would of never said something like that. |
there are so many things wrong with this statement i don't know where to begin, i'll refrain because i don't want to make any antisemetic comments.
Where is Ben when you need him? |
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| The17sss |
| quote: | Originally posted by fayraree
One of the activists killed was an American citizen. |
An American citizen by accident... he was born to Turkish parents in the U.S. and left when he was 2 years old, never returning. He is technically a citizen but has no memory of being here, or any sort of cultural ties to America. This is another instance of media grasping at straws for something to spin. "Israel killed an American citizen! They don't even care about their own allies, the bloodthirsty animals!" :rolleyes: |
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| Moongoose |
| Yes completely grasping at straws...how much do you want to bet that if the situation ws reversed and those were turkish commandos staging an armed assault on an isreeli flotilla in international waters and that same "american citizen by accident" was killed...US and Turkey would be on a brink of war or at least a major international incident right about now. |
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| w_ashley |
| As opposed to the Americans who get shipped out of the country because even though they've lived in the US all their life they wern't born in the US. |
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| The17sss |
| quote: | Originally posted by Moongoose
Yes completely grasping at straws...how much do you want to bet that if the situation ws reversed and those were turkish commandos staging an armed assault on an isreeli flotilla in international waters and that same "american citizen by accident" was killed...US and Turkey would be on a brink of war or at least a major international incident right about now. |
But... the situation isn't reversed so all you can do is speculate on that. The media could have disclosed the rest of the story about his background, but conveniently didn't. Why is that? |
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