Tom Gross, an renowned and influential journalist with years of expertise in Middle East reporting, reported on the recent UN commission that found Israel’s naval blockade to be legal, as reported in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. As he often does, Gross added some great commentary of his own to the story:

The Israeli paper Ha’aretz reports that “The final findings of the UN commission that investigated the events concerning the Turkish-led flotilla in May 2010 do not call for Israel to apologize, and conclude that the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza is legal and is in accordance with international law and a country’s right of self-defense.”

The UN committee investigating the events of last May’s Gaza flotilla is headed by the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Geoffrey Palmer, who is an expert on international maritime law.

The UN report also sharply criticized the Turkish government’s behavior in its dealings with the committee. Palmer added in the report that Israel’s independent commission led by Judge Turkel had investigated the events in a “professional, independent and unbiased” way.

By contrast, Palmer concluded that “the Turkish investigation was politically influenced and its work was not professional or independent.”

The Palmer Committee also criticizes the IHH group that organized the Gaza flotilla as well as its ties to the Turkish government, suggesting Turkey did not do enough to stop the flotilla last year. (By contrast, the Turkish authorities cooperated with Israel this year to ensure the flotilla didn’t sail from Turkey – Tom Gross.)

According to the final draft of the UN probe, Israel has not been asked to apologize to Turkey, but the report does recommend it expresses regret over the casualties.

Palmer said that although international law permits the interception of ships outside territorial waters, Israel should have taken control of the flotilla when the ships were closer to the limit of the naval blockade – 20 miles off the coast. Israel responded by saying that its interception of the flotilla further from the coast was due to military and tactical considerations, following the organizers’ refusal to stop.

***

Tom Gross adds: the above information was widely reported last week in the Israeli media, but why do all those influential international media, which criticize Israel day after day, not report properly that the UN committee has ruled Israel was right in its assertions after all?

Unlike journalists at other media, Reuters did run a piece last year, which I attach at the end of this dispatch, explaining how Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza is indeed legal under international law.

And why is the UN always spending huge amounts of money investigating supposed Israeli wrongdoings while not investigating countless wrongdoings by other governments which occur daily and most of which are barely reported by the media?

Hey Goldstone, nice of you to wake up. Now go back to sleep. Or, better yet, drop dead.

I’ve posted many posts about Richard Goldstone’s libelous and scandalous report, and now, almost two years later, that buffoon wakes up and says “maybe I was wrong”.  It’s a bit late for that, the damage has been done.

But, worse than his sitting on the truth for two years is the fact that even now, when he’s supposedly admitting his mistakes, he still can’t do so without reservation. He still has to qualify some remarks or, worse, offer some offensive “explanations” for his statements.

Melanie Phillips did a good job dissecting this new load of crap from the crapmaster in a recent Spectator article:

In an extraordinary article in the Washington Post, Richard Goldstone has now admitted that his infamous report was wrong. Having fuelled the blood libel that in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza Israel had targeted civilians and possibly had committed crimes against humanity, he now says that, as a result of the final report of the UN committee of independent experts and other evidence that has emerged since his report was published, he accepts that

civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy

and further states that

if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.

What self-serving rubbish. There was ample evidence at the time from numerous sources that Hamas was telling lies about the number of civilians who were killed by Israeli fire. There was ample evidence that Hamas was deliberately putting civilians in harm’s way. There was ample evidence that Hamas does not operate under the rule of law or uphold human rights. There was ample evidence that Israeli rules of engagement required the IDF to avoid hitting civilians wherever possible. There was ample evidence that Israel always investigates allegations of misconduct made against its soldiers and holds them to acount under the rule of law. Yet Goldstone, having accepted the poisoned chalice from the UN Human Rights Council to subject Israel to a show trial whose verdict preceded the evidence (despite his protestations that he modified this odious remit), chose to believe the propaganda put out by Hamas and its proxies among NGOs with a long track record of malevolent hostility to Israel.

Even now, in this purported mea culpa, Goldstone does not take responsibility for the Big Lie he helped perpetrate with such terrible consequences in putting rocket-fuel behind Israel’s delegitimisation as a pariah in the eyes of the world. Instead, he blames his false conclusions upon Israel’s refusal to co-operate with his inquiry.

So for the second time, he is again blaming Israel for its own victimisation – first at the hands of Hamas, and now at his own hands.

Ludicrously, he now says that his report’s

allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion.

The protestation that he had no alternative but to believe Hamas is quite astounding. Hamas is a terrorist organisation with a solid track record of lies, distortions and ‘Pallywood’-style fabrications as a strategy of aggressive warfare.  Israel, the victim of that aggression, has a solid record of telling the truth. Yet Goldstone chose to believe the Hamas version of events. Nor was this all. As he says in the Washington Post:

Some have suggested that it was absurd to expect Hamas, an organization that has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, to investigate what we said were serious war crimes. It was my hope, even if unrealistic, that Hamas would do so, especially if Israel conducted its own investigations. At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel….

In the end, asking Hamas to investigate may have been a mistaken enterprise. So, too, the Human Rights Council should condemn the inexcusable and cold-blooded recent slaughter of a young Israeli couple and three of their small children in their beds.

I continue to believe in the cause of establishing and applying international law to protracted and deadly conflicts….Regrettably, there has been no effort by Hamas in Gaza to investigate the allegations of its war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.

Can you believe this? He appears to have expected genocidal aggressor Hamas to behave in a civilised fashion by investigating its alleged abuses — while he chose to throw the book at its democratic victim, Israel. And now the most he will acknowledge is that expecting Hamas to do so

may have been a mistaken enterprise.

By his own admission, the man stands revealed as at best an abject idiot and at worst a moral and judicial bankrupt. His report blackened Israel’s name for defending itself against existential attack; encouraged its attackers to ratchet up their onslaught safe in the knowledge that the international community now had official confirmation that Israel was morally beyond the pale; put Israeli civilians, along with Israel’s very survival, at increased risk by helping delegitimise Israel as a global pariah; and fuelled the pressure on Israel not to defend its civilians by military means against the attacks which have relentlessly increased in audacity and scope.

Regardless of its manifest moral and intellectual inadequacies, however, his recantation carries inescapable consequences. All those who have used Goldstone’s report as a basis for their own delegitimisation of Israel now also stand revealed as having endorsed one of the worst officially sanctioned international falsehoods in history. All their attacks on Israel which relied upon Goldstone’s report are now shown to be equally baseless and discredited. Any future such attacks which use this report as an authority will be demonstrably false and malicious. The UN should now declare the Goldstone report null and void. Any less will make it knowingly and demonstrably party to a travesty of justice.

But of course, like all previous blood libels against the Jews, the poison this one has injected into the global bloodstream has no antidote. The damage is done – and no amount of self-serving recantations by Richard Goldstone will undo the terrible harm he has done.

 

With all the recent chatter about the possibility of the Palestinian Authority declaring a Palestinian state independently of any negotiations with Israel, Dan Izenberg (at times referencing Dore Gold) has written a clear, concise analysis in the Jerusalem Post outlining exactly why the PA cannot do so by current conventions.

He points out that although there is nothing “illegal” about it, most conventional countries today still follow the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, the conditions of which preclude the PA from declaring a state that would be recognizable by conventional countries.

Also, even though most countries today have a bizarre double standard in which they act as though the Palestinians do not have the same moral standards and obligations that other people must follow, Izenberg points out that even still, this is one situation in which they would think twice if only because of the precedents it would set for countries on the “other side” of their double standard, like Chechnya and Tibet.

He writes:

According to the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, which is now part of customary law and therefore binding on all countries, a state must possess a permanent population, a defined territory, a government and a capacity to enter into relationships with other states.

Furthermore, the convention states that “the political existence of the state is independent of recognition by other states.”

Thus, there is nothing in international law to prevent the Palestinian Authority from unilaterally declaring itself an independent state.

The question is whether other states will recognize it as such. In theory, states will only recognize a Palestinian state if it fulfills the criteria set down in the Montevideo Convention.

According to Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN and current head of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, states will, at least in theory, have difficulty recognizing a Palestinian state because it does not meet key criteria of the convention.

For example, the Palestinians themselves are in disagreement over what the territory of Palestine should be.

Palestinian leaders have mentioned many possibilities, including the 1947 partition plan dividing the Land of Israel into a Jewish and an Arab state, the 1949 armistice lines at the end of the War of Independence, and others.

Secondly, the PA does not effectively govern many of the Palestinian parts of the West Bank because according to the Oslo Accords, it shares many responsibilities with Israel. Furthermore, it has no control over Gaza.

Another problem is that according to the Oslo Accords, an international agreement that is still binding, the Palestinian Authority is prohibited from conducting its own foreign policy.

Be that as it may, the more than 200 sovereign states of the world will largely decide whether or not to recognize a Palestinian state on the basis of their individual national interests and ideological outlook.

Israel will not be able to do much, if anything, to prevent other states from recognizing a Palestinian state.

Gold told The Jerusalem Post that the Palestinians have another option, at least in theory. The Security Council is the UN organ that admits states to the organization. The council could pass a resolution declaring that a Palestinian state exists and that member states of the UN should recognize it on a bilateral basis.

The chances of this happening, however, are questionable, since each of the five permanent members of the Security Council, the US, Britain, France, Russia and China, have veto power over all resolutions presented to the body.

Russia and China might be concerned with the precedent the Palestinian move would have for Chechnya or Tibet.

For that reason, neither recognized Kosovo in 2008.

The resolutions of the UN General Assembly, a body that is overwhelmingly friendly to the Palestinian Authority, are nonbinding and have less impact. However, such a move might prepare the groundwork for the presentation of a similar resolution in the Security Council.

According to Gold, the biggest problem facing the PA in unilaterally declaring an independent state is the commitment it made in the 1995 Interim Agreement, Article 31, Paragraph 7, which says, “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.

This news item just made me laugh out loud. Literally. The Telegraph and Arutz 7 are both reporting on the hilarious story of a bunch of troublemakers who tried setting out on another flotilla to break the Gaza blockade—only to end up getting “kidnapped” by the ship’s captain who, in a dispute over money, set sail for Greece, trapping them on board before they could disembark.

To add to the hilarity, the idiots on board have reported that the captain had “gone crazy” and had left the ship, taking off on a speed boat heading for a different vessel.

(One wonders if being called “crazy” by people who are apparently crazy themselves is the psychological equivalent of a double negative?)

Anyway, it serves those rabblerousers right!

Here’s an excerpt from the Arutz 7 report:

A small group of foreign activists who had hoped to break Israel’s naval blockade on Hamas are instead heading for Greece. The activists, along with several Libyans, were trapped aboard the ship they had hoped to take to Gaza as the captain set sail for Greece instead.

The Greek captain of the Strofades IV left Libya without permission on Thursday following a lengthy dispute with the foreign Road to Hope activists over payment. Road to Hope organizers reported that the captain was planning to drop the activists off in Greece.

A separate report, from activists aboard the ship, indicated that the captain had “gone crazy” and had left the ship, taking off on a speed boat heading for a different vessel.

Three Libyans, two Irish citizens, seven British citizens and one Algerian were said to be aboard the boat against their will.

There has been a slew of disgusting, self-hating, traitorous anti-Semitic Jews in the news lately. In the last few days, I read no less than three separate stories of such vermin.

First, you have this unbelievable story of a whole shipload of such imbeciles who put together the next flotilla sailing for Gaza. Arutz Sheva reports:

A ship carrying Jewish left-wing activists from around the world set sail from Cyprus at noon Sunday, and is headed to Gaza, carrying what activists say are humanitarian supplies.

Among the passengers are Yonatan Shapiro, a former IDF helicopter pilot who co-signed a letter by IDF reservists who refused to serve in missions that targeted terrorists in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, for fear of killing civilians. Shapiro also recently vandalized the Warsaw Ghetto memorial with graffiti comparing the ghetto to Gaza.

Shapiro said that the goal of the ship is to “break the siege on Gaza” and transfer equipment and humanitarian supplies. He stressed that they would not enter a confrontation with the IDF even if the IDF stops them from reaching Gaza.

Among other activists on board are a Holocaust survivor, Julie Moskowitz, and Rami Elhanan, who lost his daughter in an Arab terror attack.

These are obviously a bunch of first-class rabble-rousers, but most incredible is the passenger whose daughter was slaughtered by Arabs in a terrorist attack. Here’s someone who should understand the need for the blockade, but he’s apparently blind to common sense.

The best response to this situation, as voiced to me by several intelligent people, was that the IDF should allow that ship in, but not allow them out. Let those foolish Jews see what their Hamas “friends” think of them. (The sad part is that even as their “friends” are stringing them up for a public lynching, those self-hating Jews would still find some way to blame it on Israel.)

Then you have another clown in today’s news: Ilan Pappe. This frothing-at-the-mouth sonderkommando actually traveled to India (a country with relatively overwhelmingly high support for Israel) with two choice companions, Arab MK Jamal Mahalka and PA official Mustafa Barghouti, to stir up a boycott of Israel and to publicly lambaste Israel in any way that he can. Arutz Sheva reports:

An Arab MK and a Jewish Israeli professor were among those in India last week for a conference that aimed to put an end to Israel-India ties. MK Jamal Zahalka (Balad), professor Ilan Pappe, and Palestinian Authority official Mustafa Barghouti traveled to New Delhi to speak in favor of boycotting Israel.

. . . MK Zahalka told Indians to stop purchasing Israeli arms because they are, he claimed, ineffective. “India should end its defense ties with Israel because it is buying equipment that failed during Israel’s aggression on Lebanon,” he said.

Ilan Pappe, known radical leftist and one of the few Israeli professors to support an academic boycott of Israel, focused on the flotilla incident, which he said “exposed Israel for who and what they are [sic].” He criticized the Arab world for “not doing anything” against Israel.

If only Israel had the death penalty for traitors.

And, yet another anti-Semitic Jewish lowlife in the news recently is none other than the American liberal funder George Soros, who was recently revealed to be behind the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel lobby, “J Street”.  Arutz Sheva reports:

[The Washington] Times’ reporter Eli Lake said that the newspaper obtained tax forms revealing that Soros and his two children gave J Street nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

Soros originally helped found J Street as an alternative lobby to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), whose pro-Israel polices angered him. He contributed heavily in an attempt to defeat President Bush when he ran for re-election in 2004, telling The New York Times that getting rid of Bush was  the “central focus of my life” and “a matter of life and death.”

Soros was a strong supporter of President Barack Obama during his presidential campaign, and the president has included J Street  officials frequently in White House consultations, trying to promote the political lobby as representing American Jews.

J Street promotes itself as a “pro-Israel and pro-peace lobby. It favors including Hamas in the “peace process. The former founder of a Hamas-linked charity recently attended a J Street event in Florida and was welcomed by applause.

All this in just a couple of days.

Why is it that Jews always have what seems to be the most substantial fifth column of any nation, country, group, etc. ever in history???

If only this were a joke.

Hezbollah backer Samar al-Hajj has recruited a ship full of women to provoke another altercation with the IDF over the Gaza blockade, including a nun and a “heavily pregnant” mother.  One can only wonder what’s next in their arsenal?  A shipful of cute big-brown-eyed puppies? A floating hospital? A kindergarten class on a school trip?

And despite claims that they will not be traveling with so much as a kitchen knife, I would seriously wonder whether that nun aboard is even really Catholic and what she might be hiding under her habit. And, as for the pregnant mother, it’s obvious that these people have no scruples and no morality when it comes to life and their children (watch any Islamist propagandist TV show and you’ll see it clearly before long), so I wouldn’t put it past her to be on a suicide mission for herself or even her unborn child (after all, hearing how they speak of their pride in birthing and raising children for martyrdom, one can only imagine how proud she’d be of a child who was able to “achieve” such a great “accomplishment” before even being born!).

Israel has every right to blockade a territory from which terror is launched against them, and Gaza has been such a territory ever since Israel foolishly trusted the Palestinian two-faced, hypocritical, lowlife leaders and uprooted their citizens from there, leaving it Judenrein.

If other countries and activist organizations want to challenge that blockade, then they are clearly going into this with the simple and straightforward knowledge that they are challenging the security of a sovereign country, not to mention directly challenging the power and authority of an entire army, and they therefore are well aware of the consequences and consequently deserve everything that comes their way.

If these activists’ objective is really about providing “humanitarian aid” to Gazans, then there is clearly a channel for that, as described and provided by Israel, with Israel even guaranteeing the activists’ ability to monitor the distribution. The only proviso is that the “aid” must be inspected first. If, as the activists claim, the supplies are nothing but benign medical supplies and the like, then they should have no problem with that. If, on the other hand, they do have a problem with that, then we can clearly question either: (1) the activists’ true motives; or (2) the content of the “humanitarian” supplies.

As it turns out, though, based on the last flotilla, we can actually question both of the above. After all, the last flotilla clearly had motives other than benevolent humanitarian aid (in fact, the notorious Mavi Marmara didn’t even have any humanitarian supplies aboard; just terrorists armed with knives, clubs, metal rods, and apparently even firearms).

Additionally, the organizers of the last flotilla clearly were not overly concerned about the contents of the “humanitarian” supplies: amidst all the knives, clubs, rods, and other weapons, most of the actual supplies (contact lenses, medications, etc.) were found to be past their expiration dates and virtually unusable by any professional medical organization. (Not that it matters, because Hamas, the corrupt terrorist Gazan authority, ultimately confiscates everything anyway and the average Gazan doesn’t ever see any of it.)

I sincerely hope that Israel stands their ground and does not cave in to all those international talking-head ninnies sitting safely in their comfortable homes under no threat of constant attack (nay, annihilation!). Doing so would only end up setting a precedent of letting such holes make their way into their blockade under pressure and, once they do that, the whole purpose of a blockade is defeated and Israel might as well just start supplying weapons to the Palestinians themselves. (Oh, wait… don’t they already do that?!… my, what a tragic joke this whole situation has become, and all because of “international opinion”…)

As I read the familiar headline last week, “IDF Retaliation: Three Gaza Targets Bombed“, I couldn’t help but get agitated.

Why is it that the Israeli government has conclusive knowledge of  ”a terrorist tunnel leading to Israel, an arms-manufacturing lab in northern Gaza, and a terrorist headquarters in southern Gaza”, and yet does nothing about them until it wants to “retaliate” for some terrorist attack? While they’re waiting for the inevitable attack, the tunnel is an open smuggling channel, the lab is manufacturing more arms to be used against Israeli citizens, and the terrorist headquarters are continuing their terror plans.

Is it just me? Why is it that everyone reads that story (which is a recurring theme in the endless provocation-retaliation game) and never wonders about this?

The tide of public relations is slowly turning in Israel’s favor, as more and more people are learning the details of the Mavi Marmara incident, seeing the videos put out by Israel, and starting to question the Turkish government’s involvement, as well as that of the Turkish terrorist-affiliated group, IHH (İnsani Yardım Vakfı).

For starters, the United States—admittedly usually favorable to Israel (Obama notwithstanding)—seems to have a large disparity in favor of Israel between the two sides in this particular incident. Rasmussen polls show that 49% of U.S. voters believe that pro-Palestinian “activists” on the Gaza-bound aid ships raided by Israeli forces are to blame for the resulting deaths, while only 19% think that Israel is to blame. 32% are not sure.

Throughout the rest of the world, though, this seems to be trending, as well (with growing divisiveness over the incident even in Turkey, as reported in today’s Wall Street Journal). The Guardian, in a report laden with anti-Israel bias and innuendo, admits that, “the Israeli PR machine succeeded in getting the major news outlets to focus on its version of events and to use the Israeli authorities’ discourse for a crucial 48 hours.”

I’m going off on a tangent, here, but note that this admission by the anti-Semitic Guardian was hardly made out of admiration, but rather almost as an accusation of some large-scale underhanded conspiracy, like when they refer to all the video as “confiscated by the Israelis and subsequently edited and made available through Israeli sources”, almost as though removing several hours of inactive footage changes the clear damning evidence.

Who are you gonna believe: me or your lyin’ eyes?!

Or, like when they refer to how “the Israeli PR machine [—yes, they actually call it that] succeeded in getting the major news outlets to focus on its version of events and to use the Israeli authorities’ discourse for a crucial 48 hours. (One example of how this was being done is a leaked, sophisticated briefing paper with key talking points, compiled using official government sources and pro-government Israeli media, issued through the World Zionist Organisation on 1 June.)”

Ahhh, so this is a World Zionist conspiracy. Were the “Elders” discussing any “Protocols”, while they were at it?

But, I digress…

Even in Turkey, as I briefly mentioned, there is a growing rift over Turkey’s involvement in and reaction to the raid. The Wall Street Journal reports that:

Turkey, united in its reaction to last week’s events when Turkish citizens on a Gaza-bound ship were killed by Israeli defense forces, is dividing over the government’s handling of the affair and the role of the Islamist charity that organized the aid convoy.

Opposition politicians and some newspaper columnists have expressed concern that the government has been riding public anger at Israel’s actions. That, they say, puts at risk Turkey’s delicate balance between East and West…

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party… demanded the government release communications with Israel prior to the incident, suggesting it let the flotilla proceed despite knowing that violence was likely.

…Skepticism concerning the IHH version of events on the Mavi Marmara appears to have accelerated as a result of unexpected criticism of the IHH’s actions from influential Turkish spiritual leader Fethullah Gülen, in an interview last week with The Wall Street Journal. Analysts saw the intervention by a figure venerated by many in the government as a warning that the storm of anti-Israeli feeling risked getting out of hand.

“People will understand very soon that the IHH is harming Turkey,” wrote Cuneyt Ulsever, a columnist in the daily Hurriet, on Sunday, saying the effect of the crisis would be to persuade the West that Turkey is aligning itself with the likes of Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Two major dailies, Hurriyet and Haberturk have now published on their front pages photographs of the bloodied Israeli soldiers captured during the initial fighting.

The religious conservative daily Vakit last week published on its front page the names and photographs of eight newspaper columnists who criticized the government’s handling of the flotilla case. The headline: “Spin doctors who shoot bullets at the aid ship.” A journalist whose photograph Vakit printed in similar circumstances in 1999 was assassinated.

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that two more activist—i.e., terrorist—ships are now en route to Gaza.

Apparently, these terrorists want to capitalize on the world’s reflexive condemnation of Israel. They want to push Israel further into a no-win situation by forcing them to choose between either escalating this blockade battle under the glaring global spotlight that has now been switched on, or effectively giving the blockade up entirely and thereby reopening a channel for arms smuggling—either outcome being a tactical victory for the terrorists.

Regardless, though, of Israel’s lack of favorable options in this crisis, it needs to look out for the safety of its citizens first, and not try to salvage or regain favor in the eyes of the very few fickle, fair-weather “friends” that it has in the world if that means compromising that safety in any way. In other words, it needs to ensure at all costs that arms are kept out of Gaza, and if that means fortifying the blockade at the displeasure and condemnation of the rest of the world, then so be it. At stake, ultimately, is not just its security or its maritime sovereignty, but its very existence.

Thankfully, a top navy commander was quoted in that Jerusalem Post article (anonymously) as saying just that: “We boarded the ship and were attacked as if it was a war…. That will mean that we will have to come prepared in the future as if it was a war.” Hopefully, this tactical approach will be fully supported by Netanyahu—and expanded to every other front against Palestinian terrorists and their accomplices.

Unfortunately, there will always be critics of Israel who—even when faced with clear evidence that these savages are in no way out for “peace”—will defend those savages and continue to call them “peace activists” and will continue to condemn and lambaste Israel no matter what it does.

After all, Israel clearly and publicly offered to pass the “humanitarian supplies” directly to Gaza, as long as it was unloaded under their supervision in Ashdod. That offer was rebuffed, clearly demonstrating that this is not at all about helping the “poor” Gazans, but about provoking Israel, as well as forcing Israel to reopen a channel for smuggling arms. And did that illogical refusal by the flotilla participants (illogical in its inconsistency with their stated claims of having only humanitarian aid as an objective) awaken any of these critics to the real underlying objectives of the flotilla? Of course not; some people just love to hate, slander, and malign Israel.

In fact, if they didn’t have a convenient vehicle to express their hatred, as the blindly twisted flotilla story now provides, they would just make something up out whole cloth, like the recent Aftonbladet organ harvesting slander (the Swedish blood libel about which I previously posted). It’s that simple.

So, Israel must come to terms with that sad unfair truth, and must realize that they will never be able to “justify” their actions to people for whom “justice” is a very muddled and subjective concept.  Only once Israel realizes that, and starts worrying solely about itself, will it begin to establish a more realistic and rational foundation for dealing with the Palestinians and securing its own citizens.

For all the talk of these supposed “peace” activists that are trying to break the Gaza blockade, the video footage released today shows that the label “terrorist” is much more appropriate for these bloodthirsty savages.

Here they are attacking Israeli soldiers before they even touch down on the ship, mobbing them with knives, metal poles, rods, firebombs, etc.

I’d call these “people” animals, but that would be doing a disservice to animals.

Following the two videos of these monsters is a video of those same Gaza flotilla participants taken earlier by a Palestinian reporter, showing them chanting an Islamic battle cry invoking the killing of Jews.

Text from the third Youtube video:

The name Khaibar mentioned in battle cry was the last Jewish village defeated by Muhammad’s army in 628. The battle marked the end of Jewish presence in Arabia. There are Muslims who see that as a precursor for future wars against Jews. At gatherings and rallies of extremists, this chant is often heard as a threat to Jews to expect to be defeated and killed again by Muslims.

Herbert I. London wrote a great post for the HudsonNY blog, entitled “Egyptian Chutzpah“, in which he discusses Egypt’s new “apartheid wall” initiative. Of course, they wouldn’t call it an “apartheid wall”—that distinction apparently only applies when it’s done by Israel. Nevertheless, it’s the exact same thing (a wall) for the exact same reason (to keep the Palestinians out—terrorists, in the case of Israel; all Palestinians, in the case of Egypt).

It’s a great read—too good to excerpt. Here it is in its entirety:

How do you spell chutzpah in Arabic? The Egyptian government has railed against Israel for erecting a security fence in the West Bank for years, protesting, its construction in the United Nations and every other international body, and usually employing the phrase “apartheid wall.”

But now, mirabile dictu, Egypt is building a wall of its own along the border of the Gaza Strip — and, as one might guess, will not entertain any criticism of this project.

The Israeli barrier was built to prevent suicide bombing and other terrorist activities against Israelis; by contrast, the Egyptian fence is designed to stop Palestinians living in Gaza from entering Egypt.

One might well ask why President Hosni Mubarak would want to keep his Arab brothers locked inside the poverty-stricken area of Gaza, among the most congested places on the globe.

He contends, with some legitimacy, that Hamas’s presence in Gaza could be a destabilizing factor in Egypt if the border were porous. Yet Hamas poses a threat to Israel even more formidable than its threat to Egypt. The stated Hamas goal is “Liberate Palestine,” not “Occupy Egypt.” Moreover, if Hamas were an existential threat to Egypt’s national security, why has Mubarak been negotiating with Hamas leaders for years, and why has he been at the center of talks over reconciliation with Fatah?

In fact, by keeping the border crossing into Egypt closed, Mubarak is sending the Palestinians to Israel for help. In the Byzantine world of Middle East politics Arab leaders want the Gaza Strip to remain exclusively an Israeli problem.

The irony, of course, is that the millions of dollars required to build the new fence could have been employed to build hospitals, schools and housing. Palestinians crossing the border generally do so in search of employment or to be reunited with families residing in Egypt. At the moment even medical and humanitarian aid cannot get through the Rafah border crossing and human rights activists are invariably stopped at the border as well.

Recognizing the potential embarrassment of this security fence, Egyptian leaders denied its existence, until photographs made such denials laughable. The Egyptian fence is actually a ten kilometer underground metal barrier that will cost approximately $500 million. Whether it turns out to be a real barrier remains to be seen. Palestinians involved in the smuggling of contraband material are extremely adept at bypassing barriers. If anything, the Egyptian wall will probably escalate tensions in Gaza: it is the cap on a boiling pot of soup.

Palestinians in this tiny strip of land suffer from Hamas terrorism, lack of jobs, lack of basic facilities, congestion, and a host of corrupt and misguided leaders. Nonetheless, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas has defended Egypt’s right to build a separation wall. Irony of ironies: this is the same Abbas who condemned Israel’s “Apartheid Wall” and urged the international community to tear it down.

In the Middle East, lies are verbal instruments to manipulate opinion.

And as this event on the Gaza border suggests, this time oppression is not a matter of Israelis against Palestinians, but Arabs against Palestinians.

The next time an Arab ambassador rises at the United Nations to criticize Israel, he should be reminded of the manifold ways Arabs contain, constrain and exploit fellow Arabs. If the term “apartheid” is used as a condemnation of Israel, it should be hurled back at Egyptians who sanctimoniously – and hypocritically — engage in the very actions they once condemned.

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that Hamas is planning to line their Gazan border with humans, effectively creating a human civilian shield behind which they can continue to launch their missiles and under which they can dig smuggling tunnels into Israel.

Of course, you won’t find this in any UN report…

The army learned recently of the plan, initiated by Hamas Housing Minister Yousef al-Mansi, under which thousands of Palestinians who are waiting for their homes that were damaged during Operation Cast Lead to be repaired will be housed in temporary structures and caravans along the border with Israel.

The IDF believes that Mansi plans to set up the temporary villages to serve as obstacles in the event that Israel sends ground forces into Gaza. The border villages will also likely serve as cover for tunnels that Hamas will dig under the security fence and into Israel to carry out attacks.

“This is part of Hamas’s overall strategy to use built-up areas to hide in and to launch attacks,” a senior defense official said. “This basically means that Hamas will want to use the people it places there as human shields against Israel.”

Tom Gross gives us a great photo journal reminder of the forcible evacuation of Jews from Gaza and the disgusting animalistic self-destructivist riots that the Palestinians engaged in during and after the evacuation.

He also provides some links on that page to other related photo journals, one of which is a must-see for everyone who has any doubts as to the utter lack of morals and ethics of the Palestinians: a look at the sickening “education” that Palestinians give to their young children, essentially tantamount to mass societal child abuse.

Tom Gross brings us this great example of CNN’s anti-Israel bias and their complete and utter antipathy towards Israel’s state of living under constant terror and attack from Hamas:

Below is a transcript of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s interview on CNN yesterday, in which he is repeatedly asked by Wolf Blitzer about Israeli “war crimes”.

(To remind readers, since CNN doesn’t, Netanyahu wasn’t even in government at the time of the Gaza offensive earlier this year, and he opposed the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza precisely because he foresaw the kind of attacks on Israel that then followed from Gaza.)

Netanyahu was being interviewed on the occasion of his meeting in New York with President Barack Obama and Palestinian leader Mohammed Abbas, who wasn’t, incidentally, asked about war crimes.

BLITZER: You know this United Nations commission, which just came back with a scathing report suggesting that Israel, your military, committed war crimes or something close to that, crimes against humanity, perhaps, even, during the fighting in Gaza. And I know you strongly disagree, but I want you to react to that United Nations report.

NETANYAHU: Now you’re being a diplomat. I strongly disagree? I think this is preposterous. It’s absurd. Israel was rocketed, pummeled for eight years by thousands of rockets that came from Gaza. We vacated all of Gaza, hoping that this thing would stop, and they fired not one rocket, but thousands of rockets, after we left Gaza.

So, what’s a country to do? I mean, what would you do if thousands of rockets fell on – Where are you talking from, Wolf, Washington, right? – Washington, D.C., or any part of the United States? You know what the United States would do.

BLITZER: The argument, though, Mr. Prime Minister, in this U.N. report is that you overreacted, and, in the process, you killed a lot of civilians.

NETANYAHU: We overreacted, did we? Well, let me tell you, after a million or so of our people were under rocket fire, progressively larger and larger circles of rockets falling on our cities, we did what every reasonable country would do. We tried to get at the rocketeers, those terrorists firing those missiles and rockets who placed themselves, embedded themselves in homes and schools and mosques, and you name it.

And we tried to target these people. We even sent them SMS text messages, telling the Palestinian civilians, please get out of harm’s way, cellular phones, you name it. So, we did everything possible to minimize the loss of innocent civilian lives.

And yet the Hamas actually was committing a double war crime, firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians. That’s a double war crime. They’re the ones who sort of get a free bill out of this biased U.N. report, and Israel, that is defending itself, is accused.

BLITZER: All right.

NETANYAHU: So, the terrorists are exonerated. The victims are accused. That’s an upside-down world. And I think this does grievous harm to the battle against terrorism, because the terrorists are basically being told, you get a free ride. All you have to do is fire at a democracy from built-up areas, from residential quarters, and you will get a clean bill of health. And I think it does a great disservice to peace, too, because we’re asked to take risks for peace. The international community says, if you take risks for peace, we will support your right of self- defense. And yet we did just that. We vacated Gaza in the hopes that this would advance peace. And when we’re rocketed with thousands of rockets and missiles from the places we vacated, people say Israel is the war criminal.

BLITZER: All right.

NETANYAHU: Come on. I mean, this is absurd.

BLITZER: If there is a trial at the International Court and the accusation is that Israel committed war crimes, or crimes against humanity in Gaza, will you cooperate with that?

NETANYAHU: Well, the question is, will any serious country cooperate with it?

I took note of the fact that the leading democracies that were in this U.N. commission, they opposed this. They were against this mandate, because it looked like a kangaroo court in the first place, where Israel was basically hanged, drawn, and quartered morally and given an unfair trial to boot right at the start of these proceedings.

I think this is wrong. But understand this. It’s not only we who will be damaged. It’s you, too. I mean, American pilots, NATO pilots, let alone Russia and other countries that are fighting terrorists, are going to be put on the dock, too, because it’s said that you cannot fight terrorists.

It means that all the terrorists have to do is put themselves in a residential quarter, and they receive immunity. And that’s not something that any country fighting terrorism can accept. And I don’t think you can accept it either.

The United Nations’ anti-Israel, biased Goldstone Report is still generating press.

In the latest news, the Washington Post is reporting that the United States has rejected a UN proposal to compel Israel and Hamas to conduct internal investigations in response to their travesty of a report, under threat of facing possible prosecution in an international court.

Susan E. Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations said that the U.S. has long had “very serious concerns” about the mandate that the United Nations Human Rights Council gave to Goldstone, calling it “unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a television interview also came out swinging, saying that “this report is tendentious and biased, that its end result was determined before it started.  This is a kangaroo court that decided to convict Israel in any case.”

He also made the following insightful comments:

First of all, this is a prize for terrorism and encourages terrorism.  There is something much deeper here.  See what happened with the disengagement.  They told us that if we left, some said there would be peace.  Some said that if there wasn’t peace, at least we will have international legitimacy that if they fire one missile, we would be able to strike at them with full force.  They fired one missile, two missiles, three missiles, 1,000 missiles, 2,000 missiles and in the end, the State of Israel, when it could take no more, acted and it acted in the most measured way we knew.  We could be compared to other countries that acted when it was attacked by many missiles.  The second thing is that they certainly need to understand that there is a threat to democracy here.  If the terrorists, these war criminals, both fire at civilians and hide behind civilians, this is a double war crime.  If they receive a prize and the attacked becomes the aggressor, then it will also happen to you.  NATO is fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq and Russia is also fighting in various places.  The countries that are fighting terrorism must understand that this report hurts not only us but them as well.  It hurts peace.  It hurts security.  Therefore, this report is harmful and biased and we reject it outright.  There must be a very strong response by the responsible countries in the world.

Dan Kosky also writes a great piece in the Guardian pointing out the glaring bias with the report. Here is the bulk of his piece (since virtually all of it is great reading) :

Richard Goldstone’s long-awaited report has confirmed suspicions that his investigation is guided by an agenda to isolate Israel. The farcical investigative process has produced a report which vilifies Israel but helps little in better understanding the Gaza conflict.

Much was rightly made of the investigation’s one-sided mandate, which erased Hamas’s culpability. Panel member Christine Chinkin, branded Israel’s Gaza operation a “war crime” before the inquiry had even begun. As a result, the Israeli government rightly recognised the warning signs and stayed away from the Goldstone process.

Equally worrying for the sceptics was the lack of transparency throughout the inquiry. Hand-picked “witnesses” were invited without explanation to testify before the mission. A hearing in Geneva, billed ostensibly as an opportunity to hear Israeli voices, became a cover for representatives of radical NGOs to spout propaganda with little direct significance to the conflict in Gaza.

Most notable was the appearance via video of Shawan Jabarin, director general of al-Haq, a Ramallah-based NGO which spearheads lawsuits against Israeli officials in courts across the world. Jabarin’s contribution over events in Gaza is overshadowed by evidence that he is “among the senior activists of the Popular Front terrorist organisation”. Al-Haq’s allegations are cited at least 30 times in the report, but the critical context of his background is hidden.

Grave doubts over the investigative process have been realised by the mission’s conclusions. These strengthen the game plan designed to condemn Israel. The report is replete with dubious statistics and sources. Casualty figures are quoted from the Gaza based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), a politically motivated organisation, which consistently refers to terrorism as “resistance”. PCHR’s faulty statistics include senior Hamas military figures such as Nizar Rayan and Said Siam, as civilians.

Yet it is perhaps what is missing which is most telling. Reading the report, one would be unaware of Hamas’s human-shield strategy, a significant contributory factor to the civilian deaths in Gaza. Goldstone prefers to ignore the obvious. Although he states: “Palestinian armed groups were present in urban areas during the military operations and launched rockets from urban areas”, he avoids the logical conclusion of the massive use of human shields. Of course, admitting that Hamas endangered Gazan citizens would provide an alternative to Israeli guilt. Yet, rather than state the inconvenient truth, the report reinforces preconceived Israeli culpability.

Goldstone is similarly evasive over the unreliability of key “eyewitnesses”. Like the flood of NGO publications in the immediate aftermath of the conflict (particularly those by Human Rights Watch, of which Goldstone was a board member) Goldstone’s so-called investigation is largely reliant upon “eyewitness” Gaza testimony. The report applies entirely illogical reasoning, failing to elaborate on “a certain reluctance by the persons … interviewed in Gaza to discuss the activities of armed groups”. This observation provides a glimpse of the dangers faced by those speaking out against the regime in Gaza, yet Goldstone omits to mention how Hamas intimidation undermines witnesses and with it the very foundation for his conclusions.

The last paragraph wonderfully highlights the double-standard to which Israel is held:

Of course, these are the same battle dilemmas facing UK and US armies in foreign fields. Until the issues are seriously addressed or, alternatively, forces in Afghanistan and Iraq are subjected to similar scrutiny, Goldstone and the NGOs and UN frameworks which threw their weight behind his mission will justifiably be viewed with suspicion.

This double-standard spotlight is similar to a piece by Alan Dershowitz that I mentioned in my previous post on the subject, which included:

If the methodology and conclusions of this infamous report were ever applied generally to democracies seeking to combat terrorists who hid behind civilians—as in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq—it would constitute a great victory for terrorism and a defeat for democracy. But not to worry. The report is not intended to establish general principles of international law, applicable to all nations. It is directed at one nation and one nation only: the Jew among nations—Israel.