By Matthew Weaver via guardian.co.uk
Thousands of Palestinians cross border as Turkey calls for Israel to be punished for attack.
Egypt opened its border with the Gaza Strip today amid mounting criticism of Israel’s violent raid on a flotilla of aid ships attempting to break the three-year blockade of the enclave.
Thousands of Palestinians crossed the border at Rafah as Turkey called for Israel to be punished for the attack, which left at least nine people dead. Volatility in the area was further underlined by reports that five members of Islamic Jihad were killed in Gaza in two separate attacks.
The Israeli army confirmed its aircraft had shot at militants in Gaza, killing three, after they had fired rockets into southern Israel, and that two gunmen were killed after breaching Israel’s border fence.
Earlier, putting aside his hostility to Hamas, which has links to his political opponent, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, ordered that the crossing be opened until further notice. The move is being seen as a response to increasing Arab anger at what is perceived as Egyptian complicity in the blockade.
The border normally only opens once a month for a few days.
An Egyptian security source told Reuters: “Egypt opened its border with the Gaza Strip to allow humanitarian and medical aid to enter. The border will remain open for an unlimited time.”
The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon, said that if Israel had heeded calls to lift the blockade earlier, the raid on the flotilla would not have happened.
The Free Gaza Movement, one of the organisers of the aid flotilla, said more ships have been sent to Gaza. Israel has repeatedly warned that the ships will be blocked.
Turkey today revealed that four of the people killed in the attack were its nationals. Its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, described the Israeli action as a “bloody massacre” that deserved “every kind of curse”.
Speaking to the Turkish parliament he said: “This attack should definitely be punished.”
In a speech that was greeted by a standing ovation, Erdogan said: “No one should test Turkey’s patience. The foundation of peace in the Middle East is being rocked by the reckless attitude of Israel.” The flotilla was the ninth attempt by sea to breach the blockade Israel and Egypt imposed after the militant Hamas group violently seized the Gaza Strip in 2007.
“Israel in no way can legitimise this murder, it cannot wash its hands of this blood,” Erdogan said.
He added Turkey would continue to support the Palestinian people. “Turkey’s hostility is as strong as its friendship is valuable,” he said.
Turkey sent three planes to bring back some 20 Turks wounded during the raid. The nationalities of the other people killed in the attack have not yet been released . The foreign office has confirmed that a British man, named as Ahsan Shamruk, is among the injured, according to Channel 4 news.
More accounts of what happened yesterday are also emerging.
Haneen Zuabi, an Arab member of the Israeli Knesset who was on the Mavi Marmara ship, accused Israel of trying to “cause the largest number of fatalities”.
She told a press conference today: “What we saw was five bodies. There were only civilians and there were no weapons. There was a sense that I may not come out of it alive. Israel spoke of a provocation, but there was no provocation.”
Earlier the UN security council called for an impartial investigation into the raid, but it stopped short of an outright condemnation of the attack.
In a carefully worded compromise statement drafted after 10 hours of debate, the security council also called for the immediate release of hundreds of civilians held after the raid.
Palestinians, Arabs and Turkey wanted a much stronger criticism of Israel.
By Robert Booth, Kate Connolly, Tom Philips and Helena Smith, via Guardian
Activists aboard Mavi Marmara speak of shock at rapid attacks and deny assaults on Israeli commandos
Nilufer Cetin, a Turkish aid volunteer, returns home with her one-year-old son after being one of the first to be deported by Israel.
Some formed human shields, others fought back with makeshift weapons, while a few of the most vulnerable hid below deck and prayed for the violence and killing to stop.
But what united every survivor who spoke out today about yesterday’s pre-dawn assault by Israeli commandos on the pro-Palestinian aid flotilla to Gaza, was a sense of deep shock at the speed, aggression and lethal force of the Israeli response to what they reiterated was nothing more than a humanitarian aid effort.
Speaking on arrival back in Berlin, wrapped in an airline blanket from the Israeli national airline El Al, Norman Paech, a 72-year-old German pro-Palestinian activist described waking up to hear “striking explosions” as the assault began on the Mavi Marmara, the flotilla’s informal flagship.
“I hurried up and dressed myself and colleagues said to me ‘we’re under attack, the Israelis are here’,” he said. “The aggression came from the sky, from helicopters from which soldiers came down by ropes. We waited in the fore room and saw them carrying an Israeli soldier who looked to me like he’d had a breakdown. Then the second and third came, but after these three injured soldiers then I saw a lot – maybe 10 – passengers who were severely hurt, injured, covered in blood. They were treated in the salon next to me. One was so badly injured I am sure he must have died soon after. I didn’t even consider going upstairs as it was just too dangerous.”
One of the strongest condemnations of Israel’s actions came from the Swedish novelist Henning Mankell who had been aboard the Swedish aid ship Sofia. Mankell, the author of the Wallander series called for global sanctions against Israel to put pressure on it to lift the blockade of Gaza. “I think we should use the experience of South Africa, where we know that the sanctions had a great impact. It took time, but they had an impact,” Mankell said. He also denied there had been any weapons aboard the aid ships. “I can promise there was not a single weapon aboard the ships,” he told a reporter who was returning to Sweden with him after the writer had been deported by Israel.
Nilufer Cetin, a Turkish activist, and her baby boy hid in a bathroom below deck as stun grenades, live ammunition and teargas exploded above them. Speaking on her return to Istanbul, she described how “the ship turned into a lake of blood”.
“We stayed in our cabin and played games amid the sound of gunfire,” she said. “I protected him by staying in my cabin, then went to the bathroom. I put a gas mask and lifejacket on my son. They used smoke bombs followed by gas canisters. They started to descend on to the ship with helicopters.” She added the clashes were “extremely bad and brutal”.
Iara Lee, a Brazilian filmmaker who was also on the Mavi Marmara, claimed the Israeli troops had invaded the ship after cutting all communications and “started shooting at people”. She spoke to Brazil’s TV Globo from the prison in southern Israel where an estimated 600 foreign activists, including around 40 Britons, were being held. Israeli officials said tonight that they would all be freed immediately.
Lee said: “[The attack] was a surprise, because it happened in the middle of the night, in the darkness, in international waters, because we knew there would be a confrontation but not in international waters. Their first tactic was to cut all of our satellite communications and then they attacked. All I witnessed first hand was the shooting. They came on board and started shooting at people.”
She said the commandos then sent the women to a lower level of the ship.
“They said we were terrorists – it was absurd. They came into the part where the women were, lots and lots of them, dressed in black and with gigantic weapons as if they were in a war. They confiscated all of our telephones and all of our luggage and took everything out of the bags and put it on the floor.”
“We expected them to shoot people in the legs, to shoot in the air, just to scare people, but they were direct,” she said, in a separate interview with the Folha de São Paulo newspaper. “Some of them shot in the passengers’ heads. Many people were murdered – it was unimaginable.”
The released activists gave varying accounts of the level of resistance mounted by the passengers.
Annette Groth, a German politician, described at a press conference how she had seen Israeli soldiers outside her cabin, after they had stormed the ship.
“They were shooting without warning,” she said. “It was like war … They had guns, Taser weapons, some type of teargas and other weaponry, compared to two-and-a-half wooden sticks we had between us. To talk of self-defence is ridiculous.”
Footage of the assault shown on Turkish TV and images released by the Israeli military clearly showed some commandos being beaten with sticks by passengers.
However, Paech said he saw no arms being used by the activists. “There were only two men with short sticks but no knives, iron rods, pistols or any real weapons,” he said. “Throughout our planning of the mission we said: ‘no arms, no explosives’, we said we’d only resist politically, with normal means.”
An Arab member of the Israeli Knesset, Hanin Zoabi, who was on board the Mavi Marmara, said “not a single passenger …raised a club”.
At a press conference in Nazareth, she said: “A clear message was being sent to us, for us to know that our lives were in danger. We were not interested in a confrontation. What we saw was five bodies. There were only civilians and there were no weapons … Israel spoke of a provocation, but there was no provocation.”
According to a spokeswoman for the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), Avital Leibovich, its warships gave the activists several warnings before commandos were dropped from helicopters on to the deck of the Mavi Marmara.
“We found ourselves in the middle of a lynching,” she told reporters in the Israeli port of Ashdod. About 10 activists had attacked commandos, taking their pistols, she said. “It was a massive attack. What happened was a last resort.”
The violence was not confined to the Mavi Marmara. Speaking at Athens airport, Mihalis Grigoropoulos, crew on one of the other five vessels, said the Israelis came down from helicopters and threw ropes from inflatable boats, climbing aboard using teargas and live ammunition.
“We did not resist at all, we couldn’t even if we had wanted to,” he said. “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 on with plastic bullets and stunned with electric devices.”
Greek activist Dimitris Gielalis, aboard a third vessel, the Sfendoni, gave a similar account. “Suddenly from everywhere we saw inflatables coming at us, and within seconds fully equipped commandos came up on the boat. They came up and used plastic bullets, we had beatings, we had electric shocks, any method we can think of, they used,” he said.
The tough treatment did not end after they were taken into custody in Israel, others said.
“During their interrogation, many of them were badly beaten in front of us,” said Aris Papadokostopoulos.
“There was great mistreatment after our arrest,” added Grigoropoulos.
Via Indymedia
We’re still waiting for names of the dead, but EDL and SIOE are preparing a ‘defend Israel’ demo. Time for a few people to go down and explain that they’ve been duped into defending interests that aren’t theirs, perhaps??
The islamophobic football hooligans of the English Defence League (EDL) are holding a rally tomorrow, Wednesday 2 June, from 7.00pm alongside zionists outside the Israeli Embassy to defend zionism and Israel.
The EDL have held protests with zionist Stop Islamification of Europe (SIOE) before.
People who are appalled at the EDL and timing of this rally should go to the Israeli embassy to counter-protest tomorrow evening.
People have been protesting all around the world this week after the Israeli navy opened fire with machine guns and massacred aid workers on the Freedom Flotilla who were taking medicines and food to Palestinians in Gaza. Many were killed.
The English Defence League are mostly racist football hooligans with links to right wing political groups including the BNP. They are funded by zionist millionaire Alan Lake.
“We have seen the European Union call for an inquiry. I can tell you this. Twenty of our colleagues are dead. That is a fact. At the end of the inquiry, twenty of our colleagues will still be dead. What use is your bloody inquiry? We don’t need it!
“What Israel did in boarding a foreign ship in international waters is an act of illegal war, plain and simple … In international waters, the law which applies is the law of the flag state of the ship on which the incident takes place. So those Israeli soldiers must be taken to Turkey and tried for murder in Turkey.
“And we must not forget the the cause of this incident is zionism, because under zionism, there can be no peace. There cannot be peace with a philosophy which claims a divine right to occupy somebody else’s territory and the divine justification for murder.
“Zionism is bullshit! We do not accept zionism. We do not accept Israel’s behaviour. We do not accept the continual existence of an Israeli embassy in London!”
“We as British citizens were not there this morning physically, but we were there through our taxes. Our taxes were in the bullets that were fired into our friends and our brothers and our sisters. And we are sick of it. Our taxes were there; our Balfour Declaration was there – we are sick of it!!
“Something I would like to direct to that sell-out Nick Clegg. Before he became the deputy prime minister, this man was calling for an arms embargo on Israel. Where is your arms embargo now?
“It’s simple: when they drop white phosphorous bombs on Gaza, they drop white phosphorous bombs on us. When human beings are being born with deformities in Gaza, that is our children that are being born with deformities. We must express our solidarity with those people, because they are us and we are them.
“On this subject, there is only one line of division; only one! It’s not a line of division between muslims and jews; it’s not a line of division between Arabs and jews; it is a line of division between those who stand for the equality of all and those who stand for the supremacy of some – and that government stands for the supremacy of some! No more!”
Via Counterfire
The BBC is facilitating the massive Israeli spin machine now underway to justify the latest atrocity off the coast of Gaza.
So far the BBC has not interviewed a single Palestinian spokesperson. Instead, viewers have been exposed to a succession of Israeli government apologists claiming the massacre was an act of ‘self defence’.
The BBC has also failed to use any of the alternative footage shot on the ships by Al Jazeera and Press TV journalists, among others, although this is in widespread circulation. It has, on the other hand, made very wide use of video footage released by the Israeli army, which Israel CLAIMS shows soldiers being attacked with iron bars etc.
This footage is totally unverified. More to the point, it doesn’t change anything. The BBC has failed to point out that if armed pirates hijack a ship in international waters, those on board have the absolute right to defend themselves by any means. The aid volunteers could have had AK47s and it would not have justified Israel’s behaviour!
In fact, of course, the volunteers were unarmed, as Israel knew. They knew that because Turkey checked the passengers and all the cargo before the ship set sail.
One commenter on Counterfire has noted that “Then there’s the way issues and discussions are framed. For example, BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight interviewed Andy McNab – ex-SAS, writer – about how the IDF could have carried out a better operation on Monday morning. That’s hardly the point is it? I couldn’t care less about the nuances of IDF tactics – they shouldn’t have been there in the first place!
“There’s also the under-reporting of demonstrations, the lack of space for people from the anti-war and pro-Palestine movements, and the absence of any real attempt to provide historical or political context.”
For a prime example of shifting the goalposts and taking up the issues as Israel is instructing us to view them, see this article, entitled ‘What went wrong?‘ It’s conclusion seems to be that Israel should have sent MORE troops, and used more tear gas and stun guns before the commandos came on board the ship, implicitly accepting Israel’s version that the troops a. had a right to be there, b. went in softly, and c. met with strong and unexpected resistance.
The whole article rests on the credibility of one soldier and one (embedded, Israeli) reporter. Meanwhile, all the alternative footage and every eye-witness account from the people who’ve been released, tells a completely different story.
Complain to the BBC about this biased media coverage. Remind them that propaganda that supports illegal wars and occupations IS ITSELF a war crime!
Phone: 03700 100 222
Email your complaint: https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/
Via Counterfire
“If the international community lets Israel get away with this war crime, it is saying that Israel can commit genocide against the Palestinians. Israel is putting two fingers up at humanitarian law, international law, and it is saying to Europe, America, the rest of the world, ‘We believe we can do what we like.’”
“There should be immediate cutting off of all aid, all money, all relations, so that … apartheid Israel finally gets the message that what it’s doing is unacceptable.”
“We are completely outraged … it’s a terrible thing that they have done … We know that the Israelis behave illegally; we know they behave immorally; we know that they cause massacres … We want to make it clear that Israel does not speak for jewish people; it speaks for itself. They’re zionists and they’re murderers.”
“It was humanitarian aid and it shows quite clearly that the Israelis want to starve the people of Gaza to death. It is their final solution for the ‘Arab problem’ … There should be absolute boycott on all Israeli goods. They [the government] should break diplomatic relations …”
Letter to the Evening Standard from an aid worker: “Israel insists on creating hostility”
By Kieran Turner
Give 1.5 million people a cargo of fish, and tomorrow they’ll be hungry again. Help those people break through an illegal siege, and tomorrow they’ll be able to fish for themselves. This is the reality for Gaza, and is one part of why the volunteer humanitarians on board the Freedom Flotilla are not interested in depositing their cargo in an Israeli port.
Another part of their reasoning is that Israel’s offer to pass the aid through land routes “in line with regulations” subtly refers to regulations that would see the bulk of the aid dumped. Israel allows a very specific, varying selection of goods into Gaza so it can claim to be helping. Including “sticks for brooms” and “cleaning products for tiles” – but not dental amalgam for fillings.
In fact, roughly enough dental amalgam manages to find its way into the country. But again, that’s a short-term solution. What Gazan dentists desperately want is young recruits to be able to study at universities. There are currently no anaesthetists in the strip. But the blockade prevents them travelling too.
In ten years as an aid worker, I’ve never been faced with such a one-sided problem. In Kosova, for example, we helped isolated communities of both Albanians and Serbs. One reason aid workers are so often accused of bias in Palestine is simply that precious few Israelis need our help!
Yet Israel insists on creating hostility where none need exist. The people who wielded sticks against soldiers two nights ago had no hostile intent. They were being attacked by armour-clad men leaping from helicopter gunships in the night.
Government responses must focus on this underlying cause: Israel’s inability to see that it is fomenting most of the trouble it tells us it is trying to suppress. William Hague has said directly the flotilla and its welcome “underlines the need to lift the restrictions on access to Gaza”. The UN and EU have said much the same. Why is the world paralysed until the US joins in? And if Obama does dare, will we see the next flotilla escorted through the Israeli pirates by Nato ships?
By Dorian Jones in Istanbul and Helena Smith, via guardian.co.uk
First eyewitness accounts of raid contradict version put out by Israeli officials.
At least 10,000 Turks protested against Israel's attack on the flotilla on Monday in Istanbul.
Survivors of the Israeli assault on a flotilla carrying relief supplies to Gaza returned to Greece and Turkey today, giving the first eyewitness accounts of the raid in which at least 10 people died.
Arriving at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport with her one-year-old baby, Turkish activist Nilufer Cetin said Israeli troops opened fire before boarding the Turkish-flagged ferry Mavi Marmara, which was the scene of the worst clashes and all the fatalities. Israeli officials have said that the use of armed force began when its boarding party was attacked.
“It was extremely bad and very tough clashes took place. The Mavi Marmara is filled with blood,” said Cetin, whose husband is the Mavi Marmara’s chief engineer.
She told reporters that she and her child hid in the bathroom of their cabin during the confrontation. “The operation started immediately with firing. First it was warning shots, but when the Mavi Marmara wouldn’t stop these warnings turned into an attack,” she said.
“There were sound and smoke bombs and later they used gas bombs. Following the bombings they started to come on board from helicopters.”
Cetin is among a handful of Turkish activists to be released; more than 300 remain in Israeli custody. She said she agreed to extradition from Israel after she was warned that conditions in jail would be too harsh for her child.
“I am one of the first passengers to be sent home, just because I have baby. When we arrived at the Israeli port of Ashdod we were met by the Israeli interior and foreign ministry officials and police; there were no soldiers. They asked me only a few questions. But they took everything – cameras, laptops, cellphones, personal belongings including our clothes,” she said.
Kutlu Tiryaki was a captain of another vessel in the flotilla. “We continuously told them we did not have weapons, we came here to bring humanitarian help and not to fight,” he said.
“The attack on the Mavi Marmara came in an instant: they attacked it with 12 or 13 attack boats and also with commandos from helicopters. We heard the gunshots over our portable radio handsets, which we used to communicate with the Mavi Marmara, because our ship communication system was disrupted. There were three or four helicopters also used in the attack. We were told by Mavi Marmara their crew and civilians were being shot at and windows and doors were being broken by Israelis.”
Six Greek activists who returned to Athens accused Israeli commandos of using electric shocks during the raid.
Dimitris Gielalis, who had been aboard the Sfendoni, told reporters: “Suddenly from everywhere we saw inflatables coming at us, and within seconds fully equipped commandos came up on the boat. They came up and used plastic bullets, we had beatings, we had electric shocks, any method we can think of, they used.”
Michalis Grigoropoulos, who was at the wheel of the Free Mediterranean, said: “We were in international waters. The Israelis acted like pirates, completely out of the normal way that they conduct nautical exercises, and seized our ship. They took us hostage, pointing guns at our heads; they descended from helicopters and fired tear gas and bullets. There was absolutely nothing we could do … Those who tried to resist forming a human ring on the bridge were given electric shocks.”
Grigoropoulos, who insisted the ship was full of humanitarian aid bound for Gaza “and nothing more”, said that, once detained, the human rights activists were not allowed to contact a lawyer or the Greek embassy in Tel Aviv. “They didn’t let us go to the toilet, eat or drink water and throughout they videoed us. They confiscated everything, mobile phones, laptops, cameras and personal effects. They only allowed us to keep our papers.”
Turkey said it was sending three ambulance planes to Israel to pick up 20 more Turkish activists injured in the operation.
Three Turkish Airlines planes were on standby, waiting to fly back other activists, the prime minister’s office said.
Sometimes, you just need to DO something!
Joti's journey to Gaza 