Israel Intelligence News Digest 3

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press Saturday June 05, 2010 18:14 by Citizen X

Turkish PM May Sail to Gaza Himself... Flotilla Raid Was Not “Bungled....” Israeli Commando Who Killed Six Aid Workers to Receive Medal... When Israel Murdered 34 Americans... Ron Paul Blasts U.S. Support of Gaza Blockade... Israeli Warships Seize the ‘Rachel Corrie’... White House: Gaza Blockade Unsustainable... raid pushes unknown Knesset member into spotlight... Economist Magazine: Israel's siege mentality... victimhood, aggression and tribalism... Treat Palestinians Like Jews... Israel’s Many, Many Rights... Netanyahu was right... A Global Civil Society Campaign to Delegitimize Israel?... Aussie ex-spies comment on Israeli forged passports...

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/06/05/report-turkish-pm-ma...self/
Report: Turkish PM May Sail to Gaza Himself
Erdogan Would Bring New Flotilla, Turkish Navy With Him
Jason Ditz
June 05, 2010
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http://maxblumenthal.com/2010/06/the-flotilla-raid-was-...ance/
Report: The Flotilla Raid Was Not “Bungled.” The IDF Detailed Its Violent Strategy In Advance.
06.03.10
Max Blumenthal
...Statements by senior Israeli military commanders made in the Hebrew media days before the massacre revealed that the raid was planned over a week in advance by the Israeli military and was personally approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak. The elite Israeli commando unit known as Unit 13 was tasked with carrying out the mission and its role was known by the Israeli public well before the raid took place. Details of the plan show that the use of deadly force was authorized and calculated. The massacre of activists should not have been unexpected.
On May 28, three days before the raid, top Israeli military officials revealed details of their strategy to Maariv, Israel’s most widely circulated paper. The caption of the Maariv article reflected the military command’s plan to use force: “On the way to violence; one of the boats is on its way.”
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http://news.antiwar.com/2010/06/04/israeli-commando-con...acre/
Report: Israeli Commando Who Killed Six Aid Workers to Receive Medal
Staff Sergeant Brags of Role in Massacre
Jason Ditz
June 04, 2010
Autopsies are coming out today revealing some details about the circumstances of the Israeli attack which left at least nine aid workers dead. Doctors say that several of the victims were shot in the head and that in at least one case the gun was just inches from the aid worker’s head when fired.
But additional information is also coming in in the form of a report from an unnamed Israeli staff-sergeant, who claims proudly to have single-handedly killed at least six of the civilian aid workers.
The staff-sergeant says he has no doubt everyone on board was a “terrorist” and claimed there were secretly dozens of “hardcore mercenaries” on board.
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http://antiwar.com/radio/2010/06/04/ray-mcgovern-22/
When Israel Murdered 34 Americans - Interview: Scott Horton Interviews Ray McGovern
Scott Horton
June 04, 2010
Ray McGovern, former senior analyst at the CIA, discusses the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, LBJ’s personal intervention that stopped the Navy from responding to the Liberty distress call and the two most likely explanations for the attack: Israel’s desire to assault the Golan Heights without US foreknowledge and to cover up the execution of Egyptian prisoners of war.
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http://washingtonindependent.com/86354/paul-blasts-u-s-...ckade
Report: Paul Blasts U.S. Support of Gaza Blockade
Mike Lillis
6/4/10
Increasingly, though, a... camp is emerging — one that’s criticizing Israel for attacking a Turkish-flagged vessel in international waters (and also questioning America’s support for the Israeli blockade of Gaza). Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) was the first to step into this thorny territory, circulating a letter to President Obama Wednesday arguing that Israel’s right to self defense “does not extend to shooting innocent civilians anywhere in the world, anytime it pleases.”
And yesterday, GOP Rep. Ron Paul (Texas), a libertarian who thinks the U.S. has no business in most international affairs, also blasted Israel’s actions, telling radio host Don Imus that the blockade of Gaza is “atrocious” and America’s support of it makes us “morally responsible.”
“Preventing goods from going in, it’s actually an act of war,” Paul said.
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http://news.antiwar.com/2010/06/04/as-rachel-corrie-nea...ooms/
Report: Israeli Warships Seize the ‘Rachel Corrie’
Everyone Arrested as Irish Aid Ship Captured
Jason Ditz
June 04, 2010
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http://news.antiwar.com/2010/06/04/white-house-gaza-blo...able/
Report: White House: Gaza Blockade Unsustainable
Administration Again Gives Lip-Service to Change
by Jason Ditz, June 04, 2010
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http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0602/Ga...light
Report: Gaza flotilla raid pushes unknown Knesset member into spotlight
Christian Science Monitor
Joshua Mitnick
June 2, 2010
Ms. Zoabi was aboard the Mavi Marmara, one of six ships in the so-called Freedom Flotilla that attempted to break Israel's three-year blockade on the Gaza Strip and bring in 10,000 tons of humanitarian supplies. She was detained, along with more than 600 others, when Israeli naval forces rerouted all six ships to Ashdod port...
"Israel spoke of a provocation, but there was no provocation," she told the Knesset. "Why does the government of Israel oppose an investigation? Are you sure of the Israeli story?"
Her address to the Israeli Knesset was repeatedly interrupted by Jewish lawmakers calling her a traitor and shouting, "Go to Gaza, traitor!"
[..]
But Zoab has not tempered her rhetoric. During a press conference Tuesday, according to Ynet news, she said: "It was clear from the size of the force that boarded the ship that the purpose was not only to stop this sail, but to cause the largest possible number of fatalities in order to stop such initiatives in the future."
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http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=16274081
Comment: Israel's siege mentality
The government’s macho attitude is actually making Israel weaker
Jun 3rd 2010
For anyone who cares about Israel, this tragedy should be the starting point for deeper questions – about the blockade, about the Jewish state’s increasing loneliness and the route to peace... a policy of trying to imprison the Palestinians has left their jailer strangely besieged...
The blockade of Gaza is cruel and has failed. The Gazans have suffered sorely but have not been starved into submission. Hamas has not been throttled and overthrown, as Israeli governments (and many others) have wished. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier taken hostage, has not been freed. Weapons and missiles can still be smuggled in through tunnels from Egypt.
Just as bad, from Israel’s point of view, it helps feed antipathy towards Israel, not just in the Arab and Muslim worlds, but in Europe too. Israel once had warm relations with a ring of non-Arab countries in the vicinity, including Iran and Turkey. The deterioration of Israel’s relations with Turkey, whose citizens were among the nine dead, is depriving Israel of a rare Muslim ally and mediator. It is startling how, in its bungled effort to isolate Gaza, democratic Israel has come off worse than Hamas, which used to send suicide-bombers into restaurants.
Most telling of all are the stirrings of disquiet in America, Israel’s most steadfast ally. Americans are still vastly more sympathetic to the Israelis than to the Palestinians. But a growing number, especially Democrats, including many liberal Jews, are getting queasier about what they see as America’s too robotic support for Israel, especially when its government is as hawkish as Binyamin Netanyahu’s.
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http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/....html
Jun 3, 2010
Comment: The Israeli flotilla attack: victimhood, aggression and tribalism
Glenn Greenwald
One of the primary reasons the Turkish Government has been so angry in its denunciations of the Israeli attack on the flotilla is because many of the dead were Turkish citizens. That's what governments typically do: object vociferously when their citizens are killed by foreign nations under extremely questionable circumstances. Needless to say, that principle -- as all principles are -- will be completely discarded when it comes to the U.S. protection of Israel:

'A U.S. citizen of Turkish origin was among the nine people killed when Israeli commandos attacked a Gaza-bound aid flotilla . . . An official from the Turkish Islamic charity that spearheaded the campaign to bust the blockade on Gaza identified the U.S. citizen as 19-year-old Furkan Dogan . . . . Dogan, who held a U.S. passport, had four bullet wounds to the head and one to the chest . . . .'
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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/treat_palestinians_...0602/
Comment: Treat Palestinians Like Jews
Jun 1, 2010
Robert Scheer
...There can be no valid claims of self-defense on the part of Israeli commandos who attacked a ship of protesters in international waters, killing nine civilians and kidnapping more than 600 others—including 15 international reporters who were prevented from filing their stories by a nation that claims to be the beacon of democracy in the Mideast.
Trust me, I do not come to this viewpoint lightly. This is an issue I have written about with anguish ever since I visited Gaza and the West Bank immediately after the Six-Day War 43 years ago, and the fact that those apartheid zones still stand in oppressive isolation from the norms of human rights is a sad commentary on our profession.
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http://www.takimag.com/article/the_gaza_flotilla_and_is...ghts/
Comment: The Gaza Flotilla and Israel’s Many, Many Rights
Charles Glass
June 03, 2010
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http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/netanyahu-...93886
Comment: Netanyahu was right
All the prime minister's predictions have come true. He always said the whole world was against us - now he is right.
Gideon Levy
03.06.10
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http://original.antiwar.com/deen/2010/06/04/a-global-ci...rael/
A Global Civil Society Campaign to Delegitimize Israel?
Thalif Deen
June 05, 2010
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http://intelligencenews.wordpress.com/2010/06/05/01-478/
Analysis: Aussie ex-spies comment on Israeli forged passports affair
June 5, 2010
JOSEPH FITSANAKIS
intelNews.org