Grand theft of ancient Middle Eastern artifacts proven to involve Israel - By The Wayne Madsen Report

Grand theft of ancient Middle Eastern artifacts proven to involve Israel - By The Wayne Madsen Report
The right-wing Christian-owned store chain Hobby Lobby has settled a federal case that saw the Oklahoma City-based crafts retailer fined $3 million for illegally importing stolen artifacts from Iraq for "the Museum of the Bible" the store's owner, Steve Green, is building near the National Mall in Washington, DC. Oddly, the title of the civil asset forfeiture case, brought in the U.S. Court for the Eastern District of New York, does not mention the 600-store Hobby Lobby chain or Green as the major culprits.Had the case been criminal, as it should have been since Hobby Lobby violated a 1990 law on trafficking of Iraq, the case would have been United States of America v. Hobby Lobby, Inc.

In 2016, Hobby Lobby donated to the presidential campaigns of Donald Trump, Dr. Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina, and the Senate campaigns of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. In 2012, presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Herman Cain received Hobby Lobby campaign cash. Another major recipient has been Oklahoma Senator Jim Lankford.

Democrats in Congress suspect that the Justice Department, under pressure from Green's fellow right-wing Christian fundamentalist, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, gave Green a pass in allowing him to avoid criminal charges in return for accepting a fine and civilly forfeiting the stolen artifacts. Somehow, Green and Hobby Lobby managed to evade criminal prosecutions. The formal civil forfeiture case title is "United States of America, plaintiff, against Approximately Four Hundred Fifty (450) Ancient Cuneiform Tablets and Approximately Three Thousand (3,000) Ancient Clay Bullae." None of the Israeli or UAE agents are identified in the federal court filing. They are given the designations as “Israeli Dealer #1,” “Israeli Dealer #2,” "Israeli Dealer #3," and “UAE Dealer."


How many of the artifacts displayed in Hobby Lobby's $800 million Bible (or "Buy Bull") Museum, three blocks south of the U.S. Capitol, were stolen from Iraq in the neo-con occupation of that country? The museum is scheduled to open in November.

Green first inspected the artifacts in 2010 when he visited the United Arab Emirates. The artifacts were in the custody of two Israeli dealers who claimed they were the property of a third Israeli dealer. Another dealer from the UAE was present at Green's meeting with the Israelis. Hobby Lobby agreed to wire $1.6 million to seven bank accounts identified with five different individuals in return for the artifacts. Green used three different corporate entities to receive the shipments: Hobby Lobby, Mardel, Inc. and Crafts, Etc! One shipment of antiquities was falsely undervalued, with the invoice stating the contents were "57 'hand made [sic] miniature clay tiles (sample)' valued at $5.00 each for a total value of $285.00."

In any other similar case, Hobby Lobby would have been charged with criminal "construction of payments" to avoid detection of paying for stolen goods, that is, "money laundering." In January 2011, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized five shipments containing Green's stolen artifacts at the FedEx facility in Memphis, Tennessee. Additional shipments, via express mail from Israel and the UAE, were seized by U.S. Customs at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Some of the shipments' points of origin were falsely identified as Turkey and Israel. Justice Department investigators discovered that Green's Israeli agents used fake invoices, shipping labels, and other documentation to mask the actual origin and nature of the stolen artifacts and antiquities.

An antiquities expert hired by Hobby Lobby before the purchase of the stolen goods was arranged warned the corporation that the items they planned to purchase may have been stolen. The following statement from the expert is excerpted from the federal case filing:

"I would regard the acquisition of any artifact likely from Iraq (which could be described as Mesopotamian, Assyrian, Akkadian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Parthian, Sassanian and
possibly other historic or cultural terms) as carrying considerable risk. An estimated 200-500,000 objects have been looted from archaeological sites in Iraq since the early 1990s; particularly popular on the market and likely to have been looted are cylinder seals, cuneiform tablets . . . . Any object brought into the US and with Iraq declared as country of origin has a high chance of being detained by US Customs. If such an object has been brought into the US in the past few years and was not stopped by US Customs, then you need to examine the import documents to see if the country of origin was properly
declared; an improper declaration of country of origin can also lead to seizure and forfeiture of the object."

Disregarding the expert's warning, Hobby Lobby negotiated the final sale and shipment of the items.

 
One of the priceless cuneiform tablets [left] from Iraq discovered in Hobby Lobby's stolen cache of artifacts destined for its Bible Museum in Washington. Cuneifrom tablets like the one above were falsely identified as "ceramic tiles" from Israel or Turkey. A clay bullae, or seal, also found in Hobby Lobby's stolen cache [right].

The Green family, which prides itself on Christian evangelism and conservative values, including opposition to gay marriage and abortion, conveniently ignored the sixth of the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not steal."

This editor first reported on the surgical theft of artifacts from Iraq on April 14, 2003: "U.S. troops stood by while Iraqi mobs looted and destroyed artifacts at the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad. They also reportedly joined looters who pillaged other lucrative targets like office buildings, stores, and private homes. The Bush regime ignored calls from Koichiro Matsura, the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), who appealed to the United States to provide protection for Iraqi museums . . . One could feel the pain experienced by the museum's deputy director when she tearfully told Western journalists that 170,000 priceless artifacts dating back thousands of years to the very cradle of human civilization in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, the fabled home of the biblical Garden of Eden, were looted or destroyed. She said one tank and one or two American soldiers would have been sufficient to protect the museum from the vandals. But instead, American troops stood idly by while 7000 years of Iraqi history was cleansed. Even irreplaceable archaeological files and computer disks were destroyed. Museum employees blamed U.S. troops for the carnage."

On August 17, 2007, WMR reported: ". . . the looting of Iraqi treasures has been surgical and accomplished by outsiders who know in advance what they wish to obtain. Arab interlocutors based in Beirut, Geneva, London, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai are laundering money made from the looting of Iraqi artifacts. Much of the money is being used to fund various right-wing and neocon causes in the United States, Europe, and other regions." That report was followed a few days later, on August 21, by the following: "[Israeli] Chief Superintendent Asher Ben-Artzi, the chief of Israel's INTERPOL branch . . . is under investigation for receiving stolen 'relics.'" Our report added, "Israel has been one of the destinations for a number of stolen artifacts and relics from Iraq, especially relics that have historical significance dating from the 'Babylonian Captivity' of the Biblical-era Jewish people."

On February 27, 2015, WMR reported: "Although ISIL [Islamic State] videos show jihadists destroying an Assyrian winged lion and a relief of a face, priceless archaeological finds from the Assyrian palace of King Sennacherib are believed to have been sold to black marketers, just as other artifacts looted from museums and ruins in Egypt, Babylon, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, and Yemen have been sold to unscrupulous dealers of stolen antiquities, many of whom are based in Israel." Four years earlier, on February 14, 2011, WMR reported: "Artifacts from the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo, including those from the Umayyad, Abbasid, Tulunid, Fatimid, Ayubid, Mameluk and Ottoman eras . . . ended up in the hands of black marketers, with many ending up in private hands in Israel or among Jewish fences in Europe."

U.S. Customs managed to identify one Israeli conduit for Hobby Lobby's artifact collection at its Bible Museum in Washington. Congress should demand that all the museum's additional holdings of 40,000 be audited by independent experts because there is a distinct probability that the thieving "Christian" fundies at Hobby Lobby managed to purloin other stolen artifacts from ancient sites in carnage-ravaged Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Palestine, Libya, and Iraq with the help of their Israeli friends.

Gaza and the threat of world war By John Pilger

Gaza and the threat of world war By John Pilger  "There is a taboo," said the visionary Edward Said, "on telling the truth about Palestine and the great destructive force behind Israel. Only when this truth is out can any of us be free."  For many people, the truth is out now. At last, they know. Those once intimidated into silence can't look away now. Staring at them from their TV, laptop, phone, is proof of the barbarism of the Israeli state and the great destructive force of its mentor and provider, the United States, the cowardice of European governments, and the collusion of others, such as Canada and Australian, in this epic crime.  The attack on Gaza was an attack on all of us. The siege of Gaza is a siege of all of us. The denial of justice to Palestinians is a symptom of much of humanity under siege and a warning that the threat of a new world war is growing by the day.  When Nelson Mandela called the struggle of Palestine "the greatest moral issue of our time", he spoke on behalf of true civilisation, not that which empires invent. In Latin America, the governments of Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia, El Salvador, Peru and Ecuador have made their stand on Gaza. Each of these countries has known its own dark silence when immunity for mass murder was sponsored by the same godfather in Washington that answered the cries of children in Gaza with more ammunition to kill them.  Unlike Netanyahu and his killers, Washington's pet fascists in Latin America didn't concern themselves with moral window dressing. They simply murdered, and left the bodies on rubbish dumps. For Zionism, the goal is the same: to dispossess and ultimately destroy an entire human society: a truth that 225 Holocaust survivors and their descendants have compared with te genesis of genocide.  Nothing has changed since the Zionists' infamous "Plan D" in 1948 that ethnically cleansed an entire people. Recently, on the website of the Times of Israel were the words: "Genocide is Permissible". A deputy speaker of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, Moshe Feiglin, demands a policy of mass expulsion into concentration camps. An MP, Ayelet Shaked, whose party is a member of the governing coalition, calls for the extermination of Palestinian mothers to prevent them giving birth to what she calls "little snakes".  For years, reporters have watched Israeli soldiers bait Palestinian children by abusing them through loud-speakers. Then they shoot them dead. For years, reporters have known about Palestinian women about to give birth and refused passage through a roadblock to a hospital; and the baby has died, and sometimes the mother.  For years, reporters have known about Palestinian doctors and ambulance crews given permission by Israeli commanders to attend the wounded or remove the dead, only to be shot through the head.  For years, reporters have known about stricken people prevented from getting life-saving treatment, or shot dead when they've tried to reach a clinic for chemotherapy treatment. One elderly lady with a walking stick was murdered in this way - a bullet in her back.  When I put the facts of this crime to Dori Gold, a senior adviser to the Israeli prime minister, he said, "Unfortunately in every kind of warfare there are cases of civilians who are accidentally killed. But the case you cite was not terrorism. Terrorism means putting the cross-hairs of the sniper's rifle on a civilian deliberately."  I replied, "That's exactly what happened."  "No," he said, "it did not happen."  Such a lie or delusion is repeated unerringly by Israel's apologists. As the former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges points out, the reporting of such an atrocity invariably ends up as "caught in the cross-fire". For as long as I have covered the Middle East, much if not most of the Western media has colluded in this way.  In one of my films, a Palestinian cameraman, Imad Ghanem, lies helpless while soldiers from the "most moral army in the world" blew both his legs off. This atrocity was given two lines on the BBC website. Thirteen journalists were killed by Israel in its latest bloodfest in Gaza. All were Palestinian. Who knows their names?  Something is different now. There is a huge revulsion across the world; and the voices of sensible liberalism are worried. Their hand wringing and specious choir of "equal blame" and "Israel's right to defend itself" will not wash any more; neither will the smear of anti-Semitism. Neither will their selective cry that "something must be done" about Islamic fanatics but nothing must be done about Zionist fanatics.  One sensible liberal voice, the novelist Ian McEwan, was being celebrated as a sage by the Guardian while the children of Gaza were blown to bits. This is the same Ian McEwan who ignored the pleading of Palestinians not to accept the Jerusalem Prize for literature. "If I only went to countries that I approve of, I probably would never get out of bed," said McEwan.  If they could speak, the dead of Gaza might say: Stay in bed, great novelist, for your very presence smoothes the bed of racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and murder - no matter the weasel words you uttered as you claimed your prize.  Understanding the sophistry and power of liberal propaganda is key to understanding why Israel's outrages endure; why the world looks on; why sanctions are never applied to Israel; and why nothing less than a total boycott of everything Israeli is now a measure of basic human decency.  The most incessant propaganda says Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel. Khaled Hroub, the Cambridge University scholar considered a world leading authority on Hamas, says this phrase is "never used or adopted by Hamas, even in its most radical statements". The oft-quoted "anti-Jewish" 1988 Charter was the work of "one individual and made public without appropriate Hamas consensus ... The author was one of the 'old guard'"; the document is regarded as an embarrassment and never cited.  Hamas has repeatedly offered a 10-year truce with Israel and has long settled for a two-state solution. When Medea Benjamin, the fearless Jewish American activist, was in Gaza, she carried a letter from Hamas leaders to President Obama that made clear the government of Gaza wanted peace with Israel. It was ignored. I personally know of many such letters carried in good faith, ignored or dismissed.  The unforgivable crime of Hamas is a distinction almost never reported: it is the only Arab government to have been freely and democratically elected by its people. Worse, it has now formed a government of unity with the Palestinian Authority. A single, resolute Palestinian voice - in the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court - is the most feared threat.  Since 2002, a pioneering media unit at Glasgow University has produced remarkable studies of reporting and propaganda in Israel/Palestine. Professor Greg Philo and his colleagues were shocked to find a public ignorance compounded by TV news reporting. The more people watched, the less they knew. Greg Philo says the problem is not "bias" as such. Reporters and producers are as moved as anyone by the suffering of Palestinians; but so imposing is the power structure of the media - as an extension of the state and its vested interests - that critical facts and historical context are routinely suppressed.  Incredibly, less than 9% of young viewers interviewed by Professor Philo's team were aware that Israel was the occupying power, and that the illegal settlers were Jewish; many believed them to be Palestinian. The term "Occupied Territories" was seldom explained. Words such as "murder", "atrocity", "cold-blooded killing" were used only to describe the deaths of Israelis.  Recently, a BBC reporter, David Loyn, was critical of another British journalist, Jon Snow of Channel 4 News. Snow was so moved by what he had seen in Gaza he went on YouTube to make a humanitarian appeal. What concerned the BBC man was that Snow had breached protocol and been emotional in his YouTube piece.  "Emotion," wrote Loyn, "is the stuff of propaganda and news is against propaganda". Did he write this with a straight face? In fact, Snow's delivery was calm. His crime was to have strayed outside the boundaries of fake impartiality. Unforgivably, he didn't censor himself.  In 1937, with Adolf Hitler in power, Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times in London, wrote the following in his diary: "I spend my nights in taking out anything which will hurt [German] susceptibilities and in dropping in little things which are intended to soothe them."  On July 30, the BBC offered viewers a masterclass in the Dawson Principle. The diplomatic correspondent of the program Newsnight, Mark Urban, gave five reasons why the Middle East was in turmoil. None included the historic or contemporary role of the British government. The Cameron government's dispatch of ?8 billion worth of arms and military equipment to Israel was airbrushed. Britain's massive arms shipment to Saudi Arabia was airbrushed. Britain's role in the destruction of Libya was airbrushed. Britain's support for the tyranny in Egypt was airbrushed.  As for the British invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, they didn't happen, either.  The only expert witness on this BBC program was an academic called Toby Dodge from the London School of Economics. What viewers needed to know was that Dodge had been a special adviser to David Petraeus, the American general largely responsible for the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan. But this, too, was airbrushed.  In matters of war and peace, BBC-style illusions of impartiality and credibility do more to limit and control public discussion than tabloid distortion. As Greg Philo pointed out, Jon Snow's moving commentary on YouTube was limited to whether the Israeli assault on Gaza was proportionate or reasonable. What was missing - and is almost always missing - was the essential truth of the longest military occupation in modern times: a criminal enterprise backed by western governments from Washington to London to Canberra.  As for the myth that "vulnerable" and "isolated" Israel is surrounded by enemies, Israel is actually surrounded by strategic allies. The Palestinian Authority, bankrolled, armed and directed by the US, has long colluded with Tel Aviv. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Netanyahu are the tyrannies in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar - if the World Cup ever gets to Qatar, count on Mossad to run the security.  Resistance is humanity at its bravest and most noble. The resistance in Gaza is rightly compared with the 1943 Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto - which also dug tunnels and deployed tactics of subterfuge and surprise against an overpowering military machine. The last surviving leader of the Warsaw uprising, Marek Edelman, wrote a letter of solidarity to the Palestinian resistance, comparing it with the ZOB, his ghetto fighters. The letter began: "Commanders of the Palestine military, paramilitary and partisan operations - and to all soldiers [of Palestine]."  Dr Mads Gilbert is a Norwegian doctor renowned for his heroic work in Gaza. On August 8, Dr Gilbert returned to his hometown, Tronso in Norway which, as he pointed out, the Nazis had occupied for seven years. He said, "Imagine being back in 1945 and we in Norway did not win the liberation struggle, did not throw out the occupier. Imagine the occupier remaining in our country, taking it piece by piece, for decades upon decades, and banishing us to the leanest areas, and taking the fish in the sea and the water beneath us, then bombing our hospitals, our ambulance workers, our schools, our homes.  "Would we have given up and waved the white flag? No, we would not! And this is the situation in Gaza. This is not a battle between terrorism and democracy. Hamas is not the enemy Israel is fighting. Israel is waging a war against the Palestinian people's will to resist. It is the Palestinian people's dignity that they will not accept this.  "In 1938, the Nazis called the Jews Untermenschen - subhuman. Today, Palestinians are treated as a subhuman people who can be slaughtered without any in power reacting.  "So I have returned to Norway, a free country, and this country is free because we had a resistance movement, because occupied nations have the right to resist, even with weapons - it's stated in international law. And the Palestinian people's resistance in Gaza is admirable: a struggle for us all."  There are dangers in telling this truth, in breaching what Edward Said called "the last taboo". My documentary, Palestine Is Still the Issue, was nominated for a Bafta, a British academy award, and praised by the Independent Television Commission for its "journalistic integrity" and the "care and thoroughness with which it was researched." Yet, within minutes of the film's broadcast on Britain's ITV Network, a shock wave struck - a deluge of emails described me as a "demonic psychopath", "a purveyor of hate and evil", "an anti-Semite of the most dangerous kind". Much of this was orchestrated by Zionists in the US who could not possibly have seen the film. Death threats arrived at a rate of one a day.  Something similar happened to the Australian commentator Mike Carlton last month. In his regular column in the Sydney Morning Herald, Carlton produced a rare piece of journalism about Israel and the Palestinians; he identified the oppressors and their victims. He was careful to limit his attack to "a new and brutal Israel dominated by the hard-line, right-wing Likud party of Netanyahu". Those who had previously run the Zionist state, he implied, belonged to "a proud liberal tradition".  On cue, the deluge struck. He was called "a bag of Nazi slime, a Jew-hating racist." He was threatened repeatedly, and he emailed his attackers to "get fucked".  The Herald demanded he apologise. When he refused, he was suspended, then he resigned. According to the Herald's publisher, Sean Aylmer, the company "expects much higher standards from its columnists."  The "problem" of Carlton's acerbic, often solitary liberal voice in a country in which Rupert Murdoch controls 70% of the capital city press - Australia is the world's first murdocracy - would be solved twice over. The Australian Human Rights Commission is to investigate complaints against Carlton under the Racial Discrimination Act, which outlaws any public act or utterance that is "reasonably likely … to offend, insult, humiliate another person or a group of people" on the basic of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin.  In contrast to safe, silent Australia - where the Carltons are made extinct - real journalism is alive in Gaza. I often speak on the phone with Mohammed Omer, an extraordinary young Palestinian journalist, to whom I presented, in 2008, the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Whenever I called him during the assault on Gaza, I could hear the whine of drones, the explosion of missiles. He interrupted one call to attend to children huddled outside waiting for transport amidst the explosions. When I spoke to him on July 30, a single Israeli F-19 fighter had just slaughtered 19 children. On 20 August, he described how Israeli drones had effectively "rounded up" a village so that they could savagely gunned down.  Every day, at sunrise, Mohammed looks for families who have been bombed. He records their stories, standing in the rubble of their homes; he takes their pictures. He goes to the hospital. He goes to the morgue. He goes to the cemetery. He queues for hours for bread for his own family. And he watches the sky. He sends two, three, four dispatches a day. This is real journalism.  "They are trying to annihilate us," he told me. "But the more they bomb us, the stronger we are. They will never win."  The great crime committed in Gaza is a reminder of something wider and menacing to us all.  Since 2001, the United States and its allies have been on a rampage. In Iraq, at least 700,000 men, woman and children are dead as a result. The rise of jihadists - in a country where there was none - is the result. Known as al-Qaeda and now the Islamic State, modern jihadism was invented by US and Britain, assisted by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The original aim was to use and develop an Islamic fundamentalism that had barely existed in much of the Arab world in order to undermine pan-Arab movements and secular governments. By the 1980s, this had become a weapon to destroy the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The CIA called it Operation Cyclone; and a cyclone it turned out to be, with its unleashed fury blowing back in the faces of its creators. The attacks of 9/11 and in London in July, 2005 were the result of this blowback, as were the recent, gruesome murders of the American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff. For more than a year, the Obama administration armed the killers of these two young men - then known as ISIS in Syria - in order to destroy the secular government in Damascus.  The West's principal "ally" in this imperial mayhem is the medieval state where beheadings are routinely and judicially carried out - Saudi Arabia. Whenever a member of the British Royal Family is sent to this barbaric place, you can bet your bottom petrodollar that the British government wants to sell the sheiks more fighter planes, missiles, manacles. Most of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, which bankrolls jihadists from Syria to Iraq.  Why must we live in this state of perpetual war?  The immediate answer lies in the United States, where a secret and unreported coup has taken place. A group known as the Project for a New American Century, the inspiration of Dick Cheney and others, came to power with the administration of George W Bush. Once known in Washington as the "crazies", this extreme sect believes in what the US Space Command calls "full spectrum dominance".  Under both Bush and Obama, a19th-century imperial mentality has infused all departments of state. Raw militarism is ascendant; diplomacy is redundant. Nations and governments are judged as useful or expendable: to be bribed or threatened or "sanctioned".  On July 31, the National Defense Panel in Washington published a remarkable document that called for the United States to prepare to fight six major wars simultaneously. At the top of the list were Russia and China - nuclear powers.  In one sense, a war against Russia has already begun. While the world watched horrified as Israel assaulted Gaza, similar atrocities in eastern Ukraine were barely news. At the time of writing, two Ukrainian cities of Russian-speaking people - Donetsk and Luhansk - are under siege: their people and hospitals and schools blitzed by a regime in Kiev that came to power in a putsch led by neo-Nazis backed and paid for by the United States. The coup was the climax of what the Russian political observer Sergei Glaziev describes as a 20-year "grooming of Ukrainian Nazis aimed at Russia". Actual fascism has risen again in Europe and not one European leader has spoken against it, perhaps because the rise of fascism across Europe is now a truth that dares not speak its name.  With its fascist past, and present, Ukraine is now a CIA theme park, a colony of NATO and the International Monetary Fund. The fascist coup in Kiev in February was the boast of US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland, whose "coup budget" ran to US$5 billion. But there was a setback. Moscow prevented the seizure of its legitimate Black Sea naval base in Russian-speaking Crimea. A referendum and annexation quickly followed. Represented in the West as the Kremlin's "aggression", this serves to turn truth on its head and cover Washington's goals: to drive a wedge between a "pariah" Russia and its principal trading partners in Europe and eventually to break up the Russian Federation. American missiles already surround Russia; Nato's military build-up in the former Soviet republics and eastern Europe is the biggest since the second world war.  During the cold war, this would have risked a nuclear holocaust. The risk has returned as anti-Russian misinformation reaches crescendos of hysteria in the US and Europe. A textbook case is the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner in July. Without a single piece of evidence, the US and its NATO allies and their media machines blamed ethnic Russian "separatists" in Ukraine and implied that Moscow was ultimately responsible. An editorial in The Economist accused Vladimir Putin of mass murder. The cover of Der Spiegel used faces of the victims and bold red type, "Stoppt Putin Jetzt!" (Stop Putin Now!) In the New York Times, Timothy Garton Ash substantiated his case for "Putin's deadly doctrine" with personal abuse of "a short, thickset man with a rather ratlike face".  The Guardian's role has been important. Renowned for its investigations, the newspaper has made no serious attempt to examine who shot the aeroplane down and why, even though a wealth of material from credible sources shows that Moscow was as shocked as the rest of the world, and the airliner may well have been brought down by the Ukrainian regime.  With the White House offering no verifiable evidence - even though US satellites would have observed the shooting-down - the Guardian's Moscow correspondent Shaun Walker stepped into the breach. "My audience with the Demon of Donetsk," was the front-page headline over Walker's breathless interview with one Igor Bezler. "With a walrus moustache, a fiery temper and a reputation for brutality," he wrote, "Igor Bezler is the most feared of all the rebel leaders in eastern Ukraine ... nicknamed The Demon ... If the Ukrainian security services, the SBU, are to be believed, the Demon and a group of his men were responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 … as well as allegedly bringing down MH17, the rebels have shot down 10 Ukrainian aircraft." Demon Journalism requires no further evidence.  Demon Journalism makes over a fascist-contaminated junta that seized power in Kiev as a respectable "interim government". Neo-Nazis become mere "nationalists". "News" sourced to the Kiev junta ensures the suppression of a US-run coup and the junta's systematic ethnic cleaning of the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine. That this should happen in the borderland through which the original Nazis invaded Russia, extinguishing some 22 million Russian lives, is of no interest. What matters is a Russian "invasion" of Ukraine that seems difficult to prove beyond familiar satellite images that evoke Colin Powell's fictional presentation to the United Nations "proving" that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction. "You need to know that accusations of a major Russian 'invasion' of Ukraine appear not to be supported by reliable intelligence," wrote a group of former senior US intelligence officials and analysts, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "Rather, the 'intelligence' seems to be of the same dubious, politically 'fixed' kind used 12 years ago to 'justify' the US-led attack on Iraq."  The jargon is "controlling the narrative". In his seminal Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said was more explicit: the Western media machine was now capable of penetrating deep into the consciousness of much of humanity with a "wiring" as influential as that of the imperial navies of the 19th century. Gunboat journalism, in other words. Or war by media.  Yet, a critical public intelligence and resistance to propaganda does exist; and a second superpower is emerging - the power of public opinion, fueled by the Internet and social media.  The false reality created by false news delivered by media gatekeepers may prevent some of us knowing that this new superpower is stirring in country after country: from the Americas to Europe, Asia to Africa. It is a moral insurrection, exemplified by the whistleblowers Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange. The question begs: will we break our silence while there is time?  When I was last in Gaza, driving back to the Israeli checkpoint, I caught sight of two Palestinian flags through the razor wire. Children had made flagpoles out of sticks tied together and they'd climbed on a wall and held the flag between them.  The children do this, I was told, whenever there are foreigners around, because they want to show the world they are there - alive, and brave, and undefeated.  This article is adapted from John Pilger's Edward Said Memorial Lecture, delivered in Adelaide, Australia, on September 11.  Posted with permission. www.johnpilger.com  (Copyright 2014 John Pilger)

Yonatan Shapira’s testimony from the Jewish Boat to Gaza

Journal of a voyage, by Yonatan Shapira 26 September 2010 The course is 120. Another 200 miles to the port in Cyprus and the automatic pilot in the boat, which is supposed to maintain the course, refuses to work and leaves me with the unending task of maintaining the course on a turbulent sea with no sign of land from horizon to horizon. In another half hour, Itamar, my brother, who is also a “refusenik,” will relieve me at the wheel, after him Bruce and then Glyn will take their shifts. If everything goes according to plan, we will reach Famagusta at midday on Saturday, and there we will pick up the rest of the passengers, who together with us, as strange as it may seem, will try to break the blockade of Gaza. For some weeks already we have been making our way east, from the Greek island on which the yacht was bought, from north of the Peloponnese through the Corinthian Canal, the Cycladic islands. Already we have experienced just about every kind of mishap in the book: the engines overheated on us and died, the wheel suddenly became detached, the anchor got stuck, the sail tore, a storm, and more. What we have not yet experienced is the uniqueness, the wondrousness and the strong arm of the IDF – the most moral army in the world, for those who forgot. Warships have not yet intercepted us, they have not lowered commandos on us from helicopters and snipers have not yet shot at us. Those challenges are still before us and we will experience them together with the passengers, among them Holocaust survivors, a bereaved father [1] and others. The southwest wind is getting a little stronger and the compass is vacillating between 120 and 130. I glance at the GPS and see that I am veering slightly to the left. Well, if the automatic pilot were working I could simply sit, watch the waves and write undisturbed. Seven years ago on the eve of Rosh Hashana we published what the media called “the pilots’ letter.” In that declaration we announced to the whole nation (yes, we wore flight-suits and were interviewed in the press and on television) that we would refuse to take part in the crimes of the Occupation. Ten days after that, on the eve of Yom Kippur, we were invited for a talk with the Commander of the Air Force. After he outlined to me his racial theory (in the form of a scale of value of blood, from the Israelis on the top down to the Palestinians at the bottom) he informed me that I was dismissed and that I was no longer a pilot in the Israeli Air Force. Many things have happened since then. Many boats have crossed the Corinthian Canal, many demonstrations and arrests, but mainly, many children have been murdered in Gaza. I remember Arik, a close childhood friend and a combat pilot, who hesitated over whether to sign and to refuse but in the end sincerely informed me that he did not want to give up his wonderful toy, the F-16. At first he still had a little shame about the comfortable choice he had made. Secretly he supported me and admitted that he did not have courage. Seven years passed and today he is still an operational pilot in the reserves, a leader of attack formations in his combat wing and on his hands or wings is the boiling blood of tens of innocent Palestinians and Lebanese, maybe more. The traces of morality that he had are gone now and today Arik will bomb any place at any time, wherever they tell him. That is the beauty of routine. In the end everything looks normal to you: an ordinary man, kind and polite and a good father to his daughters, turns into a mass murderer. I was not a bomber pilot. I flew Blackhawks that are used mainly for rescue missions and to transport personnel. One argument we heard from those who disagreed with us, and especially people from my wing, three members of which signed the letter, was that none of us was asked personally to shoot or to bomb or to assassinate. We replied to that argument by saying that it was not necessary to commit murder in order to say that it is forbidden to commit murder, and that it is easy to say “I just held the stick while the other pilot launched the missile.” Years passed and the events of the flotilla and the murderous attack on the Mavi Marmara came and proved that the connection between my wing and the murder of civilians is in fact a lot more direct. It was the unit in which I served and the helicopters that I flew that carried out the pirate operation and lowered the commandos onto the deck. It is quite likely that the very people who flew on that night had been pupils of mine or pilots who flew with me in the past. What does a Blackhawk pilot think and feel when he is hovering over a civilian ship far from the Israel’s territorial waters? What is he thinking when he instructs the soldiers to descend in the middle of the night onto a ship that is transporting supplies of humanitarian aid, bags of cement and dozens of journalists? Mainly he is thinking about how to maintain a stable hover and not to lose visual contact with the other helicopters and the ship below him. He listens and gives orders on the helicopter’s internal communication system and maybe he also feels a little fear; after all, hovering over a vessel on the open sea, and at night, is no simple task of aviation. And maybe he thinks about a few other things. Maybe he has a certain political outlook and maybe not, but what is certain is what he is not thinking about … a pilot who is hovering over a civilian aid ship on the open sea is not thinking that somebody among the people below him is intending to shoot him or that they are in possession of firearms – otherwise he would not have approached the spot! If he is not conducting a necessary rescue operation, it is absolutely counter to army regulations; that means that they knew beyond any doubt that nobody on the Mavi Marmara was armed. He knows that they are civilians who were set on expressing protest and identification with the million and a half civilians of besieged Gaza; but he apparently does not think about the fact that when masked armed pirates pounce on you in the middle of the night it is legitimate for you to resist the hijacking (even if it is tactically and strategically pointless). To all who have doubts about the issue, I warmly recommend that you try to imagine that you are in the middle of the sea on a dark night and suddenly giant black helicopters are hovering low over you with a deafening noise and from them, like masked burglars wearing black, descend armed hoodlums, and warships are approaching you from every direction, and they are all shooting stun grenades at you and other things that you cannot identify, due to the noise and the darkness. The sun has just set on the horizon. It is 18:52 hours. I am trying to think about what will happen to us in a few more days near the coast of Gaza, within or outside the territorial waters. It apparently makes no difference when you are above the law and can shoot, hijack, rob, occupy and humiliate without anyone imposing any limits. We are in the small boat of Jews for Justice for Palestinians. We do not intend to fight the IDF, even though we have every right to do so. We chose non-violence as a tactic and as a strategy but we do not intend to give up easily until the moment they arrest and handcuff a Holocaust survivor and the bereaved father, right down to the last passenger on the boat. The colours of the sunset are getting more and more dark and deep. Gold, pink and orange with light-blue stripes between the burning clouds. Now Bruce, on the wheel, is continuing to maintain a course of 120 with the two engines along with the mainsail and the foresail which add another half-knot to the speed. Itamar is practicing his guitar and Glyn is preparing supper. It seems like the clouds of fried onion are not only filling the yacht (and making it a little hard to breathe) but the whole Mediterranean Sea. Looks like I’ll skip supper. Chief of Staff Ashkenazi told the Israeli commission of inquiry that investigated the flotilla events, that his conclusion from the events is – “more snipers” … yes – yes, that’s his conclusion from the murder on the Mavi Marmara, more snipers! My conclusion was a bit different from that of a person who in the foreseeable future will be put on trial at the international court for war crimes. My conclusion was I had to join the next boat that set out for Gaza, and what could be more fitting than a Jewish organization from Europe that is struggling for human rights and peace. I contacted the organizers and offered my services as skipper. Apparently seamanship was the most fitting of all the trades I learned in high school, and now I have the opportunity to implement what I learned, not only for pleasure but for an important and symbolic action with an organization that decided to invest a great deal of money, hours of deliberation, planning and endless preparations for one objective, to break the blockade of Gaza. Yesterday evening on the island of Kastelorizo, during last-minute preparation of the boat, we opened the foresail on a large space near the pier and wrote on it in black in Arabic and Hebrew: “Yahud min ajl al-‘adala lil-filastiniyin” – the name of the organization – Jews for Justice for Palestinians. The Arabic course I took in the summer helped me not get confused in writing the curved letters and Itamar, who stood above me and by the light by the public pier guided me up, down, left and right, so that the writing will look good and clear when we raise the sail upon our departure from Cyprus and as we approach the shores of Gaza. Another long night-watch on the wheel followed. The sea was relatively calm, but a moderate tailwind insisted on bringing the exhaust from the engines directly to the cockpit, which strengthened my determination to skip supper and to contend with the feeling of light nausea by watching the horizon, maintaining a course of 125 and mainly by singing, again and again, the songs that sound most beautiful when one is on a boat in the middle of the sea: “if the darkness has fallen and I have no star … light a rose of fire on the mast of my boat, mother …” [2] At 6:12 in the morning, as we approach Cyprus, with the first rays of light, Itamar at the wheel, Bruce and Glyn are sleeping and I am on the prow trying to breathe air clean of the smoke of the engines and trying to snooze, suddenly a medium-sized boat passes us. It passed quite close to us and looked strange. It circled us from the north and moved off to the west and looked like a small warship. Maybe we are already a little paranoid and maybe not and maybe it was just a vessel of the Turkish coast guard; in any case, we began to think and to imagine to ourselves what our encounter with the Israeli navy will be like when we approach the coast of Gaza, what each of us will do, how we will take care of the passengers and how we will react if the navy’s Dabur patrol boat (as in previous incidents) attacks us and rams our little boat. We decided to write in Hebrew and English a declaration that we will read on the radio on the nautical emergency channel when elements of the navy or the air force approach us. This is what we wrote: We are a boat of the European Jewish organization Jews for Justice for Palestinians We are on our way to Gaza We are not armed and we believe in non-violence And we are determined to proceed to the port of Gaza You are imposing an illegal blockade on occupied Gaza These are international waters and we do not recognize your authority here There are activists of all ages on this boat Among us are Holocaust survivors, bereaved parents and Israelis who refuse to reconcile themselves to the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories We are unarmed peace activists who believe in non-violence and we are determined to proceed on our way to the port of Gaza We appeal to you, officers and soldiers of the IDF, to refuse and not to obey your commanders’ illegal orders For your information, the blockade of Gaza is illegal under international law and therefore you are running the risk of being put on trial at the international court for war crimes The blockade and the occupation are inhumane and counter to universal morality and the values of Judaism Use your consciences! Do not say “I was only following orders”! Remember the painful history of our people! Refuse to enforce the blockade! Refuse the Occupation! 1. In this context, “bereaved” is understood to refer to an Israeli who has lost a loved one as a result of war or terrorism in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict – trans. 2. From the Israeli song “Zemer ahava la-yam” – “Love song for the sea.” Lyrics: Raphael Eliaz, music: Sasha Argov – trans. Translated from Hebrew by George Malent

The Flotilla Massacre: Historical Perspective, Aftermath and Implications - by Stephen Lendman

During the Mandate period and throughout its existence, Israel's history has been bloodstained, barbarous, and out-of-control - and for most of it generously funded and heavily armed with the latest weapons and technology by its Washington paymaster/partner to reign terror on the region and Palestine. Early on, Israel was a regional menace. It's now a global one, posing a grave threat to world peace and stability.

The Flotilla attack was just the latest among its thousands of other atrocities, large and small, including preemptive wars, smaller incursions, bombings, killings including targeted assassinations, torture as official policy, and numerous other crimes against humanity as advocated by early leaders like David Ben-Gurion (Israel's first prime minister) saying:

"We must expel the Arabs and take their place and if we have to use force, to guarantee our own right to settle (on their land) then we have (it) at our disposal."

Or former IDF Chief of Staff Raphael Eitan (1978 - 1983) saying:

"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel....Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours."

Or the secret (1976 published) Koenig Report saying:

"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population."

Or Benjamin Netanyahu, as Deputy Foreign Minister, saying "Israel should have exploited the (1989 Tiananmen Square violence), when world attention focused on (China), to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories."

Little wonder why Israel's history is so bloodstained, some notable examples below:

-- on July 22, 1946, future prime minister Menachem Begin's Irgun (a notorious terror group) bombed the King David Hotel, massacring 92 Brits, Arabs and Jews, wounding 58 others, in an operation approved by David Ben-Gurion as head of the Jewish Agency at the time;

-- also under the Mandate, the terrorist Stern Gang (future prime minister Yitzhak Shamir one of its leaders) carried out numerous bombings, kidnappings, and killings, including the 1944 assassination of Lord Moyne in Cairo - Britain's highest ranking official in the region;

-- on April 9, 1948 (during Israel's "war of independence") the Irgun, Stern Gang and other Israeli terrorists slaughtered well over 120 Palestinian men, women and children in the bloody Deir Yassin village rampage; on April 14, The New York Times reported 254 killed;

-- Israel's "war of independence" (Palestine's Nakba, its "Holocaust") depopulated 531 towns and villages and 11 urban neighborhoods, committing mass slaughter, rapings, vast destruction, and countless other atrocities in displacing about 800,000 Palestinians - one of history's greatest ever crimes of war and against humanity;

-- a week after the war's mid-May 1948 end, Israeli troops massacred over 200 al-Tantura villagers, mostly unarmed young men murdered in cold blood;

-- on July 11 & 12, IDF forces slaughtered several hundred Lydda civilians, including 80 machine-gunned inside the Dahmash mosque;

-- from October 24 - 29, 1948, Israeli soldiers slaughtered 50 Hula, Lebanon villagers;

-- on October 29, 1948, they massacred around 200 al-Dawayima villagers;

-- on October 30, 20 more in Majd al-Kurum, 94 when they blew up a house, and hundreds in Sa'sa' village;

-- on October 14, 1953, Ariel Sharon's notorious Unit 101 murdered 70 Qibya, Jordan villagers;

-- on April 5, 1956, IDF shelling massacred 56 and wounded 193 in Gaza City;

-- on October 29, 1956, the IDF slaughtered about 50 Kafr Kassem village men, women and children;

-- during the 1956 Suez War, Israelis executed about 273 Egyptian soldiers and civilians in cold blood;

-- on November 12, 1956, the IDF slaughtered over 100 Rafah Refugee Camp civilians;

-- during Israel's preemptive June 1967 Six Day War, its forces massacred around 2,000 captured Egyptian soldiers, another 340 Syrian villagers in the Golan Heights, and displaced over 300,000 Palestinians who fled to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria to escape the carnage;

-- on June 8, 1967, Israeli forces preemptively attacked the USS Liberty (a clearly marked US intelligence ship), killing 34 Americans and wounding another 171 in international waters; Lyndon Johnson's defense department whitewashed it as a case of "mistaken identity," despite clear knowledge of a premeditated assault;

-- on February 21, 1973, the IDF shot down Libya Airlines Flight 114, killing 106 passengers, including one American;

-- on February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein (a member of Rabbi Meir Kahane's extremist Jewish Defense League) attacked Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs Ibrahim mosque, massacring 29 and wounding another 129;

-- during Israel's 1982 Lebanon invasion and occupation, IDF forces slaughtered about 18,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, including around 3,000 by its Phalangist allies in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps;

-- during the first (1987 - 1992) and second (2000 - 2005) Intifadas, IDF rampages slaughtered thousands of Palestinian men, women and children in cold blood;

-- in April 2002, IDF forces invaded Jenin and its refugee camp, cut them off from outside help, destroyed hundreds of buildings, buried many alive under the rubble, cut off power, water, food, and other essential supplies, refused to let in help (including medical aid), and killed or wounded at least dozens (perhaps hundreds) of Palestinian civilians; Israel removed bodies and buried them to prevent an accurate count;

-- during the July 2006 Lebanon war, the IDF caused mass destruction, killed about 1,300, wounded many more, and displaced around one million civilians (about one-fourth of the population);

-- during the June 2006 Operation Summer Rain against Gaza, Israelis killed around 240 (mostly civilians) and caused widespread destruction - including three main bridges, the Nusairat and al-Boreji refugee camps' main water pipe, and the Strip's only power plant, supplying 80% of the Territory's electricity;

-- during the same period, the IDF conducted around 50 West Bank incursions, raiding homes, razing farmland, arresting dozens, and on June 29 the entire (elected) Hamas leadership, including eight ministers, 25 PLC Change and Reform Party members, and other Hamas officials; and

-- during the 23-day December 2008 - January 2009 Operation Cast Lead, IDF forces slaughtered over 1,400, injured around 5,500 more (many seriously), and inflicted vast destruction throughout Gaza, including vital infrastructure, hospitals, schools, mosques, government buildings, factories, other businesses, farmland, private homes, and much more unrelated to military necessity in violation of international law; as a result, the Goldstone Commission concluded that:

"the Israeli military operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the (entire) population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population. The destruction of (vital infrastructure and non-military targets) was the result of a deliberate and systematic policy which has made the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population."

And now the Flotilla massacre, Israel's latest crime against humanity, enraging millions worldwide, getting Turkey and South Africa to recall their ambassadors, Nicaragua to downgrade diplomatically to a consular level, and several other countries to consider their own measures.

Qatar announced it will pay to take Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and will fund a worldwide media campaign on the incident and Gaza siege.

Arutz Sheva (Israel National News.com) reported that the Egyptian Bar Association is collecting material to file an ICJ suit, its chairman, Hamdi Alifa, saying they're being reviewed to file "giant lawsuits" against Israeli crimes, including the Flotilla attack and Gaza siege.

Haaretz reported that Swedish dock workers will blockade Israeli ships from June 15 - 24. Norway announced it cancelled a scheduled special operations seminar because its Defense Ministry objected to an Israeli officer's participation. In Bournemouth, England (with a large Jewish population and Jewish mayor), people demanded cutting city relations with Netanyahu.

The French operator Utopia said it won't screen the Israeli-made film, "Five Hours From Paris." Israel flags were publicly burned in many cities. New Delhi Muslims demanded their government sever ties with Israel. The BBC reported that 200 or more in Belfast protested the Rachel Corrie seizure, five days after the Flotilla massacre.

Ynet News.com reported that President Shimon Peres will likely cancel a scheduled Asia trip, because he's supremely unwelcome, and longtime White House correspondent Helen Thomas said Israeli Jews should return to Germany, Poland, and America, prompting B'nai B'rith's international VP Daniel Mariaschin to say:

"There should be no place for her in a news organization. Her comments go beyond commentary and land well in the camp that will stop at nothing to delegitimize Israel." B'nai B'rith has long supported the worst of Israeli crimes, denouncing anyone who dares expose them.

On June 7, Haaretz reported that a Knesset panel voted 7 - 1 to "strip Balad (Party) MK Hanin Zuabi (an Israeli citizen) of privileges over (her) Gaza flotilla participation."

In a same day op-ed piece, Haaretz's Ruth Gavison called measures to "limit dissent and protest" dangerous by "enforc(ing) the platforms of those who claim Israel is becoming a belligerent country that belittles democracy and human rights."

In fact, throughout its history, Israel has always been belligerent, and has never respected democracy, human rights, or the rule of law.

Global Outrage - Resonating and Growing

After the massacre, world protests erupted, including in many US cities - among them:

-- New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington DC in front of the White House, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Cleveland, Atlanta, Tampa, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Charlotte, Raleigh, Knoxville, Fresno, Dearborn, Denver, Sioux Falls, Fort Wayne, Fayetteville, Portland, Boise, and Seattle.

US major media reports ignored them, but aired Israeli propaganda blaming the victims, calling them terrorists, and claiming the Netanyahu government acted responsibly to prevent "pro-Palestinian radicals, jihadists" from smuggling in arms to Hamas - Palestine's legitimate government, falsely called a terrorist organization to justify premeditated murder, a suffocating siege, claiming they're for self-defense, another refuge for scoundrels caught red-handed as evidenced by the worldwide outrage.

On May 31, Al Jazeera headlined what millions around the world feel: "Global outrage over Israeli attack" - condemnation from high officials to street anger everywhere, Hamas leader Ismail Haniya proclaiming May 31 "freedom day" in calling on Palestinians throughout Gaza and the West Bank "to carry out a total strike (throughout the Territories) to show solidarity (against) Israeli crimes."

Longtime Palestinian supporter, Hugo Chavez, expressed condolences to the families and friends of the "heros who were victims of this crime," calling on "those responsible for the murders (to) be severely punished."

In a prepared statement, he condemned the "brutal massacre committed by the state of Israel against members of the Freedom Flotilla (and its) war against unarmed civilians who were trying to bring humanitarian assistance to the....people of Gaza (under) a criminal blockade imposed by the state of Israel."

"The revolutionary government of Venezuela will continue denouncing the terrorist and criminal nature of the Israeli government and reiterates....its unshakeable commitment with the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom, national sovereignty and dignity."

In early 2009, over Cast Lead atrocities, Chavez severed diplomatic ties with Israel and hasn't restored them.

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan strongly condemned Israel's attack as "despicably cowardly, brazen, reckless, and vicious - against international law, against the heart of humanity, against world peace," referring to the massacre as an "abhorrent terrorist attack" against a humanitarian mission in international waters.

He recalled his ambassador, cancelled three jointly scheduled military operations, called for an emergency Security Council meeting, asked for immediate international community action, and said "Everything has a price. And this government will have to pay (it)."

Aside from its latest appalling crime, a litany of explanatory lies, and a common street thug as prime minister, Israel and America (its paymaster/partner in all belligerent acts) have a whopping PR disaster on their hands, given world outrage resonating to top officials who must answer to their own constituencies.

Moreover, the Netanyahu government's farcical justification compounds its untenable position. Obama's indifference and Security Council obstructionism exposes his, along with outrageous congressional comments. These people can't even lie well, or perhaps as automatically count on reliable allies ahead, getting fed up with ones more an albatross.

Objectives of Both Sides

Flotilla planners' clear agenda included:

-- delivering essential to life aid to 1.5 million besieged Gazans, three years this month, but more importantly

-- symbolically breaking the siege to encourage world condemnation, highlighting an intolerable injustice, and taking another important step toward ending it.

On the pretext of blocking the entry of weapons, Israel carried out a premeditated, carefully planned and rehearsed military operation, designed to commit murder and mass casualties against unarmed civilians, even announcing it in Maariv, one of Israel's leading dailies, days in advance, the caption reading:

"On the way to violence, one of the boats is on its way," suggesting a kill-or-be-killed encounter with "terrorists."

Israel's plan had specific objectives:

-- to maintain its oppressive blockade;

-- keep 1.5 million Gazans trapped in the world's largest open-air prison;

-- cause enough harm to deter others from coming, and

-- assassinated designated activists on board.

On June 5, the UK Independent's Catrina Stewart reported an interview with Jamal Elshayyal, one of eight Al Jazeera on board reporters, seven on the Mavi Marmara, saying passengers found on Israeli commandos a list of names and photos, Alshayyal telling Stewart:

The "protesters rummaged through captured soldiers' belongings and claimed to unearth a document that they allege is a list of people Israel intended to assassinate. The booklet, written in Hebrew and in English, contained some photographs of passengers on the Marmara, including the leader of IHH, the Turkish charity that provided two of the ships, an 88-year-old priest and Ra'ad, head of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Mr. Elshayyal said."

Autopsy reports show Flotilla members were shot multiple times at close range, two or more in the head, indicating murder, not self-defense as Israel claims.

The Israeli Project produces pro-Israeli propaganda, claiming it's information is accurate, unbiased, and "not related to any government or government agency."

In its post-Flotilla attack conference call, Rep. Brad Sherman (D. CA) accused Flotilla activists of aiding Hamas in violation of US law, then called on US Attorney General Eric Holder to prosecute US participants on terrorist charges, saying:

"The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 makes it absolutely illegal for any American to give food, money, school supplies, paper clips, concrete or weapons to Hamas or any of its officials."

Sherman, a so-called "liberal" Democrat, supports the most extremist elements of Israel's government, Netanyahu and Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman among them, notorious sponsors of state-terrorism.

The entire Senate and most House members also back Israel's belligerence and broader objective to destroy PA authority to subjugate all Palestine - by ruthless attacks against civilians, considered legitimate targets to weaken their will to resist through mass slaughter, other atrocities, and numerous other abuses.

Cast Lead did it horrifically, the Flotilla slaughter just the latest example of how far Israel will go - with Washington's full support through generous funding, the latest weapons and technology, and use of its Security Council pressure and veto.

Stratfor Global Intelligence on the Flotilla Massacre

Providing information and insights to world decision-makers, Stratfor's CEO George Friedman examined the effect of Israel's attack, calling it "unprecedented in size" for an assault of this kind, citing three factors differentiating it:

-- over 600 foreign nationals were involved, including politicians and journalists, "raising the stakes for all players;"

-- the incident drew unprecedented media attention and preparation; immediately, "pre-arranged interviews with various pro-Palestinian representatives were filling regional media such as Al Jazeera" and others (but not in America where they're banned); world protests erupted, calling for accountability and sanctions against Israel; and

-- "Most importantly, a non-Arab foreign state played a role in instigating this incident. Turkey has been feeling its way forward in the region," trying to increase its political stature through "new tools of influence." Its government "did everything it could to benefit from the public relations that a successful breaching of the blockade would generate."

In addition, because of Israel's "direct action, a web of international relationships will be affected," and Turkey can leverage the incident by "providing military escorts (for) future aid flotillas that could increase in size" and further heighten tensions if Israeli recklessness continues.

Already, Middle East instability has increased, "the last thing" America needs with more than enough on its plate. In addition, Washington-Tel Aviv relations are affected, at least overtly as well as Israel's Western and regional relationships. Fumbling a "military action against a civilian convoy....is something that works directly against American policies."

Given what's happened and world outrage, "the issue has....shifted from a military question to a political one." Key ahead is how Israel, Washington and Ankara will react, besides the potential effect on other world governments, given growing demands for accountability and mass public calls for action.

Friedman discounts the idea that the commandos used "paintballs" in the attack, calling them "training rounds" not likely to be used during a mission of this sort, especially on a ship with over 600 activists. Claiming it flies in the face of up to 20 killed and many more wounded, Friedman added:

"We find this hard to believe, given Israel's extensive experience (against) hostile civilian crowds," perhaps ready to offer resistance.

Israel's Shayetet 13 force is an elite Naval Special Forces unit, specializing in sea-to-land incursions, assassinations, counterterrorism, sabotage, and other belligerent acts - not crowd control, "so a civilian opposition would not necessarily be their area of expertise," a mission Israeli police could have handled.

Friedman omitted what Today's Zaman reported (an English language Turkish daily) on June 7, stating:

"Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek (said) Turkish citizens who were injured or killed were subjected to serious torture, and this much is evident from traces left on their bodies as well as from bullet shots, most of which were fired at close range."

The paper's photographer, Kursat Bayhan, was on the Mavi Marmara and related his "30 hours in cell number 5202" in Beer-Sheva Prison. All their belongings were taken. They were body-searched, handcuffed, photographed, forced to sign a document saying they weren't harmed, those requesting return of their luggage and passports then beaten, how Israel treats virtually all detainees.

Fallout from the Flotilla Massacre

Joshua Landis is Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and Professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. On his June 1 web site posting, Syria Comment, he headlined, "Israel Pays High Price for Attack on Turkish Flotilla with Aid for Gaza," saying the damage is mounting:

-- Greece "decided to discontinue the joint military exercise currently under way and to postpone" the Athens visit of Israel's air force general staff head, scheduled for June 1;

-- Turkey recalled its ambassador, and its foreign minister says "relations are irreparable;"

-- Netanyahu had to cancel his important Washington visit;

-- an emergency UN Security Council session was called, no surprise afterward that Washington prevented any meaningful resolution;

-- "Obama will try to distance the US from Israel in due course. What choice does he have? Israel is increasingly a millstone around America's neck;"

-- China got Washington to agree to exempt its companies from US measures for doing business with Iran for whatever new sanctions it agreed to;

-- "Negotiations will now become harder and more costly for the US as the world largely sees (its) effort to punish Iran to be driven by Israeli concerns. Iran hardly threatens the US," Israel or any other nation.

On May 31 in Foreign Policy, Professor Stephen Walt headlined "Israel's latest brutal blunder," saying:

"What could Israel's leaders have been thinking? How could they possibly believe that a deadly assault against a humanitarian mission in international waters would play to their advantage?" Actions like this galvanize efforts to "delegitimize the country....This latest escapade is as bone-headed as the 2006 war in Lebanon" and Cast Lead. They provide "more evidence of the steady deterioration in Israel's strategic thinking that we have witnessed since 1967."

Importantly, the Flotilla attack "poses a broader threat to US national interests" because the world associates Israel's actions with Washington, given the "unbreakable bonds" between them. It's clear that "the special relationship with Israel has become a net liability." Tel Aviv portraying itself as a blameless victim is wearing thin, a shameless canard, increasingly likely ahead to fall on deaf ears.

On January 19, 2009, after Cast Lead, Walt addressed "The Myth of Israel's strategic genius," saying:

The record shows otherwise. Israel's military victories are often strategic failures, showing it's expert only at shooting itself in the foot, so far at least without consequences, but for how long.

According to noted Israeli supporter Leon Wieseltier, its settlements project was another "moral and strategic blunder of historic proportions," one, in fact, "never openly debated within the Israeli body politic," but taken behind closed doors.

For decades, Israel has stumbled from one strategic blunder to another, showing there's "no reason to think (it) possesses uniquely gifted strategists or a national security establishment that consistently makes smart and far-sighted choices."

Yet remarkably, some of its most incompetent leaders, including Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, Ariel Sharon, and Netanyahu are rewarded with new chances to repeat mistakes, perhaps because of Washington's unflagging support, but for how long, given the price America pays for damaged goods, compounding its own appalling record abroad and at home with a shelf life of definite limits and an ability to preserve it running out of cash.

Perhaps also its willingness to stick with a dubious partner, the same problem Washington faces with allies, sooner or later to get fed up and walk away, cutting their losses to advantage their own futures. The same ones Americans should consider for their own welfare, and assess how far they'll go to defend it.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Gaza Roundup 2 PIRATES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN: State-sponsored villains and emerging heroes

By now, it's widely acknowledged that state-sponsored piracy did not die when Captain Kidd was hanged (thanks, Jim, for that illuminating comment). It's alive and well, and not just off the coast of Somalia or the Straits of Malacca. The Mediterranean is a thriving hub for high-seas crime, and as in the case of merry old England, there are state-sponsored buccaneers out there plying the waters, terrorizing the ships, and sending innocent souls to Davy Jones' locker. But the pirates aren't who you think they are. They don't wear billowy shirts or big feathered hats, nor do they strut around with parrots on their shoulders. They don't have wooden legs or eyepatches. They wear modern military uniforms. And they do their vile deeds (which can well be classified as terrorism) under the flag of a nation:

According to a report in The Guardian, an Algerian activist, who gave her name as Sabrina, revealed that Israeli troops pointed their gun at a one-year-old Turkish child in front of his parents to force the captain of the Mavi Marmara to stop sailing.

Many reports have emerged from among the 124 activists who crossed over into Amman, Jordan, yesterday.

In an interview with Sky News, IT professional Hasan Nowarah, from Glasgow, described the moments as the Israeli troops descended on the ship.

"All you could see was screaming and bullets. Out of the blue as I looked around our ship, all I could see were hundreds of Zodiacs. Hundreds of Zodiacs full of soldiers, and big ships, lots of ships, and I believe as well submarines in the sea."

Kuwaiti MP Walid Al Tabtabai said the Israelis were "brutal and arrogant".

"Israelis roughed up and humiliated all of us, women, men and children," he said.

Algerian Izzeddine Zahrour said Israeli authorities "deprived us of food, water and sleep and we weren't allowed to use the toilet".

"It was an ugly kidnapping and subsequently bad treatment in Israeli jail," he said.

"They handcuffed us, pushed us around and humiliated us," Egyptian MP Hazem Farouq, who was also on the boat, said and added what he witnessed on the ship "defied his imagination".

"It was hell on the sea. I saw Israeli soldiers killing activists in cold blood and then walking on their bodies," Farouq, who was one of more than 700 activists aboard the Freedom Flotilla attacked by Israeli commandos, said on Tuesday in Cairo.

"The Israeli soldiers sprayed bullets as if they were a mafia in an American film."

But the piracy is not going unremarked. Many heroes are speaking out against it:

Monia Mazigh, wife of Canadian abduction/torture victim Maher Arar. She worked tirelessly to secure his release and get the facts out into the public eye. His eventual return was not the end of her activism, but a beginning. Now she's engaged on behalf of the Palestinians, and was out yesterday demonstrating against the siege of Gaza and the piracy of the IDF.

Robert Scheer. He calls it an act of terrorism, and demands that Palestinians be treated the same as Jews. He also notes how hard it is to get major media, and even some "progressive" media, to be honest about Israel's crimes.

Ann Wright, former US army colonel and now peace activist and human-rights advocate. She was apparently seen being led off the ship by the pirates-in-uniform. Her cellphone is on, but so far, no one's answered. What do you bet it was one of the ones confiscated by the IDF to keep the facts from leaking out until the hasbara came out and was making the rounds?

Greta Berlin, a US-based co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement. And one of the first to dispel the hasbara lies.

Swedish author/activist Henning Mankell, who singlehandedly showed just what a joke the IDF's claims of a weapons cache on board the ships really is.

Rather surprisingly, Reporters Without Borders. The org has taken some time out from its usual Venezuela-bashing, and accurately reported the Israeli military's efforts to stifle independent reporting. A brief aberration from their usual pattern, I'm sure. They will probably soon enough issue an IDF-dictated "correction" and express "regret" for the "error". (Remember, you saw it here first.)

And if you're really in the mood for a good laugh, guess what this astute netizen found! "Weapons cache" photos dating back to 2003, 2006 and who knows when else. Gosh, who knew the Mavi Marmara could travel through TIME, as well as the Mediterranean? (Note: The IDF has since "corrected" the dates on the "incriminating" photos. Too late, the truth is already out!)