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?

(The following story is reproduced from Tom Gross’s Mideast Dispatch, a wealth of information on many news stories, particularly concerning the Middle East.)

This is a rare pro-Israel speech delivered at Britain’s Cambridge University in front of 800 students, by Toronto-born 19-year-old second year law student Gabriel Latner at a debate three weeks ago.

He was speaking, along with two other speakers (one of whom was Lauren Booth), for the motion: “Israel is a rogue state” at a student debate, and abruptly changed sides, which resulted in Latner and Booth exchanging insults with one another. (Booth, who writes for British national newspapers and is often a guest on the BBC, is Tony Blair’s sister-in-law and, as reported on [Tom Gross's] email list, recently converted to Islam.)

The motion was overwhelmingly defeated. But in effect Latner won the debate for Israel – despite losing it. In the aftermath of the debate, the Palestinian, Arab, Islamic, Pakistani, Turkish and Socialist Workers student societies together sent a letter of protest to the Cambridge Union Society President. Latner was initially banned from the Cambridge Union debating society for having switched sides, but apparently the ban has now been lifted.

Text of speech delivered to the Cambridge Union by Gabriel Latner:

This is a war of ideals, and the other speakers here tonight are rightfully, idealists. I’m not. I’m a realist. I’m here to win. I have a single goal this evening – to have at least a plurality of you walk out of the “Aye” door. I face a singular challenge – most, if not all, of you have already made up your minds.

This issue is too polarizing for the vast majority of you not to already have a set opinion. I’d be willing to bet that half of you strongly support the motion, and half of you strongly oppose it. I want to win, and we’re destined for a tie. I’m tempted to do what my fellow speakers are going to do – simply rehash every bad thing the Israeli government has ever done in an attempt to satisfy those of you who agree with them. And perhaps they’ll even guilt one of you rare undecided into voting for the proposition, or more accurately, against Israel.

It would be so easy to twist the meaning and significance of international “laws” to make Israel look like a criminal state. But that’s been done to death. It would be easier still to play to your sympathy, with personalized stories of Palestinian suffering. And they can give very eloquent speeches on those issues. But the truth is that treating people badly, whether they’re your citizens or an occupied nation, does not make a state “rogue.” If it did, Canada, the US, and Australia would all be rogue states based on how they treat their indigenous populations. Britain’s treatment of the Irish would easily qualify them to wear this sobriquet. These arguments, while emotionally satisfying, lack intellectual rigor.

More importantly, I just don’t think we can win with those arguments. It won’t change the numbers. Half of you will agree with them, half of you won’t. So I’m going to try something different, something a little unorthodox. I’m going to try and convince the die-hard Zionists and Israel supporters here tonight to vote for the proposition.

By the end of my speech, I will have presented five pro-Israel arguments that show Israel is if not a “rogue state” then at least “rogue-ish.” Let me be clear. I will not be arguing that Israel is “bad.” I will not be arguing that it doesn’t deserve to exist. I won’t be arguing that it behaves worse than every other country. I will only be arguing that Israel is “rogue.”

The word “rogue” has come to have exceptionally damning connotations. But the word itself is value-neutral. The OED defines rogue as “Aberrant, anomalous; misplaced, occurring (esp. in isolation) at an unexpected place or time,” while a dictionary from a far greater institution gives this definition: “behaving in ways that are not expected or not normal, often in a destructive way.”

These definitions and others center on the idea of anomaly – the unexpected or uncommon. Using this definition, a rogue state is one that acts in an unexpected, uncommon or aberrant manner. A state that behaves exactly like Israel.

The first argument is statistical. The fact that Israel is a Jewish state alone makes it anomalous enough to be dubbed a rogue state: There are 195 countries in the world. Some are Christian, some Muslim, some are secular. Israel is the only country in the world that is Jewish. Or, to speak mathmo for a moment, the chance of any randomly chosen state being Jewish is 0.0051%. In comparison the chance of a UK lottery ticket winning at least £10 is 0.017% – more than twice as likely. Israel’s Jewishness is a statistical aberration.

The second argument concerns Israel’s humanitarianism – in particular, Israel’s response to a refugee crisis. Not the Palestinian refugee crisis – for I am sure that the other speakers will cover that – but the issue of Darfurian refugees. Everyone knows that what happened, and is still happening in Darfur, is genocide, whether or not the UN and the Arab League will call it such. There has been a mass exodus from Darfur as the oppressed seek safety. They have not had much luck. Many have gone north to Egypt – where they are treated despicably. The brave make a run through the desert in a bid to make it to Israel. Not only do they face the natural threats of the Sinai, they are also used for target practice by the Egyptian soldiers patrolling the border.

Why would they take the risk? Because in Israel they are treated with compassion – they are treated as the refugees that they are – and perhaps Israel’s cultural memory of genocide is to blame. The Israeli government has even gone so far as to grant several hundred Darfurian refugees citizenship. This alone sets Israel apart from the rest of the world.

But the real point of distinction is this: The IDF sends out soldiers and medics to patrol the Egyptian border. They are sent looking for refugees attempting to cross into Israel. Not to send them back into Egypt, but to save them from dehydration, heat exhaustion, and Egyptian bullets.

Compare that to the US’s reaction to illegal immigration across their border with Mexico. The American government has arrested private individuals for giving water to border crossers who were dying of thirst – and here the Israeli government is sending out its soldiers to save illegal immigrants. To call that sort of behavior anomalous is an understatement.

My third argument is that the Israeli government engages in an activity which the rest of the world shuns – it negotiates with terrorists. Forget the late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, a man who died with blood all over his hands. They’re in the process of negotiating with terrorists as we speak. Yasser Abed Rabbo is one of the lead PLO negotiators that has been sent to the peace talks with Israel. Abed Rabbo also used to be a leader of the PFLP – an organization of “freedom fighters” that engaged in such freedom-promoting activities as killing 22 Israeli high school students. And the Israeli government is sending delegates to sit at a table with this man and talk about peace. And the world applauds.

You would never see the Spanish government in peace talks with the leaders of the ETA – the British government would never negotiate with Thomas Murphy. And if President Obama were to sit down and talk about peace with Osama Bin Laden, the world would view this as insanity. But Israel can do the exact same thing – and earn international praise in the process. That is the dictionary definition of rogue – behaving in a way that is unexpected, or not normal.

Another part of dictionary definition is behavior or activity “occurring at an unexpected place or time.” When you compare Israel to its regional neighbors, it becomes clear just how roguish Israel is.

And here is the fourth argument: Israel has a better human rights record than any of its neighbors. At no point in history has there ever been a liberal democratic state in the Middle East – except for Israel. Of all the countries in the Middle East, Israel is the only one where the LGBT community enjoys even a small measure of equality. In Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar and Syria, homosexual conduct is punishable by flogging, imprisonment, or both. But homosexuals there get off pretty lightly compared to their counterparts in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, who are put to death. Israeli homosexuals can adopt, openly serve in the army, enter civil unions and are protected by exceptionally strongly worded anti-discrimination legislation. Beats a death sentence. In fact, it beats America.

Israel’s protection of its citizens’ civil liberties has earned international recognition. Freedom House is an NGO that releases an annual report on democracy and civil liberties in each of the 195 countries in the world. It ranks each country as “free,” “partly free” or “not free.” In the Middle East, Israel is the only country that has earned designation as a “free” country. Not surprising given the level of freedom afforded to citizens in say, Lebanon – a country designated “partly free,” where there are laws against reporters criticizing not only the Lebanese government, but the Syrian regime as well.

Iran is a country given the rating of “not free,” putting it alongside China, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Myanmar. In Iran, there is a special “press court” which prosecutes journalists for such heinous offenses as criticizing the ayatollah, reporting on stories damaging the “foundations of the Islamic republic,” using “suspicious (i.e., Western) sources,” or insulting Islam. Iran is the world leader in terms of jailed journalists, with 39 reporters (that we know of) in prison as of 2009. They also kicked out almost every Western journalist during the 2009 election. I guess we can’t really expect more from a theocracy.

Which is what most countries in the Middle East are – theocracies and autocracies. But Israel is the sole, the only, the rogue, democracy. Out of all the countries in the Middle East, only in Israel do anti-government protests and reporting go unquashed and uncensored.

I have one final argument – the last nail in the opposition’s coffin – and it’s sitting right across the aisle. Mr. Ran Gidor’s presence here is all the evidence any of us should need to confidently call Israel a rogue state. For those of you who have never heard of him, Mr. Gidor is a political counselor attached to Israel’s embassy in London. He’s the guy the Israeli government sent to represent them to the UN. He knows what he’s doing. And he’s here tonight. And it’s incredible.

Consider, for a moment, what his presence here means. The Israeli government has signed off to allow one of their senior diplomatic representatives to participate in a debate on their very legitimacy. That’s remarkable. Do you think for a minute that any other country would do the same? If the Yale University Debating Society were to have a debate where the motion was “This house believes Britain is a racist, totalitarian state that has done irrevocable harm to the peoples of the world,” would Britain allow any of its officials to participate? No. Would China participate in a debate about the status of Taiwan? Never. And there is no chance in hell that an American government official would ever be permitted to argue in a debate concerning its treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. But Israel has sent Mr. Gidor to argue tonight against a 19-year-old law student who is entirely unqualified to speak on the issue at hand.

Every government in the world should be laughing at Israel right now, because it forgot rule number one. You never add credence to crackpots by engaging with them. It’s the same reason you won’t see Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins debate David Icke. But Israel is doing precisely that. Once again, behaving in a way that is unexpected, or not normal. Behaving like a rogue state.

That’s five arguments that have been directed at the supporters of Israel. But I have a minute or two left. And here’s an argument for all of you – Israel willfully and forcefully disregards international law. In 1981 Israel destroyed Osirak – Saddam Hussein’s nuclear bomb lab. Every government in the world knew that Hussein was building a bomb. And they did nothing. Except for Israel.

Yes, in doing so they broke international law and custom. But they also saved us all from a nuclear Iraq. That rogue action should earn Israel a place of respect in the eyes of all freedom-loving peoples. But it hasn’t.

But tonight, while you listen to us prattle on, I want you to remember something: While you’re here, Khomeini’s Iran is working towards the Bomb. And if you’re honest with yourself, you know that Israel is the only country that can, and will, do something about it. Israel will, out of necessity, act in a way that is the not the norm, and you’d better hope that they do it in a destructive manner. Any sane person would rather a rogue Israel than a nuclear Iran.

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.

You almost never hear of Mahmoud Abbas without hearing the adjective “moderate”, and that adjective has also been used to describe his party/organization, Fatah. These are the people with whom the world is expecting peace talks to succeed. These are the people with whom world leaders are pressuring Israel to negotiate peace. So, let’s see more about them. (Thanks to journalist Tom Gross for providing some excellent information on this.)

First, here is a lovely video provided by Palestinian Media Watch, taken at their conference in Bethlehem this month, which was attended by hundreds of Fatah officials from different Arab countries, including Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Egypt. In this video, they are applauding Khaled Abu Asba, a terrorist who took part in a terrorist attack several decades ago in which a commuter bus was hijacked and 37 civilians were killed, including 12 children. Watch as PA Prime Minister Abu Ala welcomes Abu Asba and hails him as a hero:

Also at the conference, were many leaflets passed out among its delegates, one of them headlined, “Until the Zionist Entity is Wiped Out”.

Also, among its resolutions, the Fatah assembly approved a political platform emphasizing the Palestinians’ right “to resist occupation in all forms including armed struggle”, i.e., suicide bombings. A report by Reuters added that President Abbas personally insisted on this.

Another resolution explicitly said Fatah would oppose recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

Yet another resolution adopted was one in which the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of a Palestinian state is non-negotiable and that no Palestinian leader is permitted cross that line. Tom Gross elaborates:

The conference also adopted a position paper which states that the Palestinian national enterprise will not reach fruition until all of Jerusalem, including the outlying villages, comes under Palestinian sovereignty.

“Fatah will continue to sacrifice victims until Jerusalem will be in Palestinian hands, clean of [Jews],” the paper states.

The paper does not make a distinction between the eastern and western halves of Israel’s capital, nor does it distinguish between the territories within the Israeli side of the Green Line and the areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.

PULLQUOTE:

“It has been said that we are negotiating for peace, but our goal has never been peace. Peace is a means; the goal is Palestine.”

The conference also endorsed the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades as Fatah’s official armed wing, contrary to their repeated promises under various agreements that the Fatah leadership has signed with Israel and the U.S. to dismantle the group. In an interview, Kifah Radaydeh, an Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades activist, said the PA would resume violence against Israel when Fatah is “capable,” and “according to what seems right… It has been said that we are negotiating for peace, but our goal has never been peace. Peace is a means; the goal is Palestine.”

Tom Gross writes:

Among the dozens of deadly terror attacks carried out in recent years by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Israeli civilians, including many children, are:

The Yeshivat Beit Yisrael massacre (which killed 10 Israelis), the King George Street bombing in Jerusalem, the Jerusalem supermarket bombing in Kiryat Yovel, the Allenby Street coffee shop bombing in Tel Aviv (see my Wall Street Journal article for more on this), the Ben Yehuda Market bombing in Jerusalem, the Petah Tikva shopping mall massacre, the French Hill Junction massacre, the Tel Aviv central bus station massacre (in which several African and Filipino migrants were among the 23 killed), the Kfar Sava train station bombing, the Mike’s Place suicide bombing in Tel Aviv (carried out jointly with British terrorists of Pakistani origin), the Rehavia Jerusalem bus massacre, the Liberty Bell Garden bombing, the Ashdod Port massacre, the Tel Aviv sea promenade bombing, the Beersheba Central Bus Station bombing, the Kdumim bombing, the Tel Aviv Old Central Bus Station bombing, the Eilat bakery bombing, and last year’s Dimona suicide bombing.

Are Fatah really “moderates” as many international news organizations and U.S. State Department officials claim?

Then, there is all the corruption in Fatah. Fatah, having learned well from Yasser Arafat, the Two-Faced (both of them hideous) Crook, is rife with corruption. Tom Gross writes:

The second day of the Fatah conference was marked by a stormy debate on the financial status of the organization. Delegates said they were alarmed to find that there were no financial reports prepared by party leaders. Fatah Chairman Mahmoud Abbas had to leave meetings he was holding on the sidelines of the main assembly to quell quarrels between the delegates and the party’s central committee.

Some members accuse Abbas of protecting members of the central committee who have been accused of corruption, fraud and mismanagement. The Palestinians have received more foreign aid per capita than any other people in the world. Billions of dollars of European and American taxpayers’ money have been siphoned off to Swiss banks by Fatah leaders over the years.

Even Nabil Amr, the Palestinian ambassador to Egypt, had this to say last month: “Fatah is full of thieves, spies and corrupt people, enough to destroy any country.”

And, finally, there are the accusations and conspiracy theories which fly right and left among them, all the way up to the highest levels of the Fatah leadership. Tom Gross tells of one such wild account:

Fatah’s veteran General Secretary, Farouk Qaddoumi, has accused PA President Mahmoud Abbas and former PA security chief Mohammed Dahlan of being accomplices in the “assassination” of Yasser Arafat.

In response, Fatah condemned Qaddoumi as “deranged” and “hysterical” and vowed to expel him from the organization. Qaddoumi is not attending the conference and has not been nominated for a place on the Central Committee or the Fatah Revolutionary Council.

The committee said that Qaddoumi was a man suffering from a “sick mind” and was renowned for his “fabrications” and “hallucinations.”

Qaddoumi, who is refusing to attend the Fatah conference, made his remarks at a news conference in the Jordanian capital of Amman shortly before the Fatah conference began. He said Abbas had worked in collusion with U.S. intelligence to assassinate Arafat.

Lashing out at Abbas, Qaddoumi accused him of stealing some of Arafat’s titles and of establishing an autocratic regime in the Palestinian territories.

“The man (Abbas) has fallen in love with titles used by President Arafat,” Qaddoumi said. “First he asked to be named overall commander of the Palestinian revolution and then the exiled president of Palestine.”

So, there you have it: just a small taste of the lunatics with whom Israel is supposed to make peace. And then people wonder why this peace is supposedly so elusive! Can you only imagine what kind of a country “Palestine” would be if it actually came into existence? Can you just imagine what the leadership would be like? Their policies? It’s not hard to imagine what a cesspool of hatred, infighting, terrorism, and corruption such a country would be.

Similar to what I’ve been saying all, while democratic revolution is a noble initiative and a cause worth fighting for, we should not to too excited just yet about what’s going on in Iran until we know what they plan to do with that democracy, and if their intention really is a true democracy to begin with or just something different than what they have now.

Case in point: the Palestinians. Everyone jumped the gun in lauding their new democracy, their “free” elections, etc., only to watch as they swept Hamas, one of the most notorious terrorist organizations in the world, into power. And, interestingly enough, they’re still in power because they found that having terms and periodic new elections are just not convenient for them.

So, here we are, cheering on the Iranian revolution. Are we going to make the same mistake? Don’t get me wrong; I do support this revolution and I do hope for the best, but I’m just saying that we shouldn’t be overly optimistic until we know what they plan to set up in place of the mullocracy that they are trying to sweep out.

Distinguished and accomplished journalist, Tom Gross, debunks a very popular misconception regarding Mousavi on his web site. What he writes is:

MOUSAVI IS NEITHER A LIBERAL NOR AN OPPONENT OF THE ISLAMIST STATE.

The “opposition” candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi is one of the fathers of Iran’s nuclear program, and was prime minister during the Iran-Iraq war, directing his army to send waves of teenage suicide bombers against Iraqi forces. (He is incidentally a cousin of Ayatollah Khamenei.) He is almost as much a hardliner of the regime as the “victor” President Ahmadinejad is. That is why he was one of just four candidates (out of over 4000 people who applied) allowed by the regime to stand in this stage-managed presidential election.

All four regime-approved candidates have long been involved in the regime’s reign of terror. For example, Mousavi was responsible for ordering the execution of 30,000 Iraqi prisoners.

THE TRUE IRANIAN OPPOSITION IS STILL BEING IGNORED

The BBC and others continue to ignore real opposition to the dictatorship, supported by many of the demonstrators, such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a political umbrella coalition of five Iranian opposition political organizations, including secular democrats, led by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi from exile in Paris. Several times last week, the Supreme Leader acknowledged this in his public statements. But the Western media has hardly mentioned the NCRI, even though in Paris on Saturday, tens of thousands of its supporters staged the largest ever demonstration by Iranians outside Iran.

As usual, the BBC, the world’s largest news broadcaster, gets so much of its Middle East reporting wrong. This is not a battle between a hard-line reactionary Ahmadinejad and a “moderate reformist” Mousavi. It is a battle between rival factions of a ruthless and dangerous regime.

So, again, just how much will change as a result of this bloody revolution is yet to be determined, but don’t be surprised if most of the changes are internal sociotheological changes that have little to do with their foreign policy, especially regarding nukes and regarding Israel.