Freedom Flotilla: Separating Truth from Zionist Bullshit

from : http://mantiqaltayr.wordpress.com

1. “We will not stop. We will go again. Please, donate for the next trip. We have the Rachel Corrie and another boat.We WILL go until Gaza is free.”

Quoted from the Freegaza.org twitter account. Their website is here. Donate.

2. “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.”

Hanin Zoabi, Arab member of the Israeli Knesset who was on board the Mavi Marmara.

3. Janine Zacharia, the Jerusalem Washington New York Times Post’s Wolf Blitzer analogue, just not quite as feminine looking, has begun the propaganda campaign to make sure the Israeli position on Israel’s crimes against the Freedom Flotilla is the dominant one in what’s left of the minds of the American public. Her article on the front page of JEWNYPT today is a microcosm of all that is wrong with American journalism when it comes to the Jewish state. By the way, by “Jewish State” I mean Israel, not the United States, though frankly I could not find fault with any of you if you were confused for just a second. I’ll even give Shas Party members a break on that one.

Here you have an obvious case of murder on the high seas, piracy, and just plain thuggery on the part of Israel. But the Zionist-Jew owned paper in the nation’s capital has a Jewess with years of ties to Israel presenting the Israeli side of the story. She minimizes the death toll by saying “at least 9″ people were killed, while at the same time on her very own twitter account she says the death toll could go up to 19 or 20, and presents almost everything from the Israeli perspective.

She starts right of the bat by describing Israeli’s commando raid on the Turkish ship as a “melee”. You know, a sort of Pier 6 brawl. Shas Party members, please note that the red highlights are mine.

“A nighttime Israeli naval operation to seize control of an aid flotilla headed for the Gaza Strip ended in a fatal melee on Monday as passengers battled with helicopter-borne Israeli commandos aboard a ship sailing on international waters. At least nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed.”

Israel sends in crack troops to seize an unarmed ship and the result is a “melee”. Hmmm. How about the result was Israel’s “killing at least nine passengers”? She knows how to use the passive voice.

This quote is worth looking at as well.

“Eight previous flotillas were either allowed to reach Gaza or were diverted by the Israeli navy without incident.

The above line is so misleading as to constitute an outright lie. Readers will think that boats carrying aid to Gaza either get there, or get diverted to the wonderful Jewish state, all without incident. This is pure, Grade J, kosher, stinking hot Zionist Bullshit.

Read this article: “Israeli gunboats ram boat carrying Cynthia McKinney, the people’s secretary of state.”

CNN, (Cabalah Network News), reported the same story. It sort of had to since one of its very own reporters, Karl Penhaul, was on board the ship, the DIGNITY, with Ms. McKinney. Mr. Penhaul reported that one of the Israeli boats “very severly rammed” the ship.

“When the boat later docked in the Lebanese port city of Tyre, severe damage was visible to the forward port side of the boat, and the front left window and part of the roof had collapsed. It was flying the flag of Gibraltar.”

Ms. Mckinney, in that same article, reported:

“Our boat was rammed three times, twice in the front and one on the side.”

The attack on the DIGNITY was in international waters. The ship could have been sunk, according to its captain.

“It could have ended with people drowning if they hit us more square on,” Dignity’s captain, Denis Healey, said. “It could have gone down in minutes.”

An interesting note, is Ms. McKinney’s comment on Karl Penhaul and CNN.

“Another incredibly committed journalist who was with us was CNN’s Karl Penhaul. Karl reported the truth even when his own station was repeating Israeli disinformation.“

Ever heard of the “SPIRIT OF HUMANITY”?

Here is what Paul Craig Roberts, now retired no doubt in part due to being tired of dealing with tons and tons of Zionist Bullshit, reported about that ship which also went to Gaza to deliver aid.

“On June 30 [2009], the government of Israel committed an act of piracy when the Israeli Navy in international waters illegally boarded the “Spirit of Humanity,” kidnapped its 21-person crew from 11 countries, including former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Nobel Laureate Mairead MaGuire, and confiscated the cargo of medical supplies, olive trees, reconstruction materials, and children’s toys that were on the way to the Mediterranean coast of Gaza. The “Spirit of Humanity,” along with the kidnapped 21 persons, is being towed to Israel as I write.”

[Note to Mr. Roberts: Please come out of retirement, we need you more than ever.]

The Freegaza.org folks write on May 31, 2010 concerning the “Spirit of Humanity” the following:

“Israel has yet to return the Spirit of Humanity, registered under a Greek flag.”

Now the Israelis, and there are many places on the net where you can find their quotes, are also saying the Flotilla had links to al-Qa’ida. Here’s a link to a typical Israeli hysterical claim published by one of Zacharia’s former employers, the Jerusalem Post.

So it is no surprise to find that Zacharia uses that talking point as well, but instead she uses the term “militant groups” as she markets Israel’s brand for the zombified American public.

“Because of the much larger scale of this flotilla, and because of concerns about the presence of activists with alleged links to militant groups, Israel mounted a far more aggressive military response than it had before, officials said. Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu consulted with his top security advisers and approved “Operation Sea Breeze” to try to stop the flotilla from reaching Gaza.”

The entire article is like this. Yes, she does quote some sane people who point out the illegality of what Israel is doing, but everything is framed from an Israeli perspective.

This is what you get from a Zionist owned newspaper employing a reporter as its Jerusalem Bureau Chief who has worked for five years as the Washington Bureau Chief for the Jerusalem Post (Wolf Blitzer’s former paper – he was also stationed in Washington for the Jerusalem Post), and who has worked in Israel for “The Jerusalem Report” and for Reuters. (Blitzer did something similar – working for Reuters while in Tel Aviv).

On this note, here’s a link to Alison Weir’s excellent article a while back talking about how so many “US” correspondents in Israel have what appear to be conflict of interest issues.

It’s time to hold the media’s feet to the fire. Do not let the main stream media and its zio-spondents get away with whitewashing Israel’s crimes.

4. Here’s an interesting contrast. This is a link to the Freegaza.org’s twitter account. Here’s one to Janine Zachari’s twitter account. Compare.

5. I just found out from looking at Xymphora’s site that the MV Rachel Corrie is headed toward Gaza. See here to learn the names of some of the people on board.

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author but do reflect those of this website.

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Cynthia McKinney condemns Israeli massacre of activists

from : http://www.greenpartywatch.org

Don DeBar offers this article about the Israeli Defense Force’s action against a flotilla from the Free Gaza Movement which apparently resulted in the deaths of at least ten people. McKinney, Green Party presidential nominee in 2008, was involved in two earlier attempts to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza via ship.

Cynthia McKinney Mourns the Dead of the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza:

People of the U.S. and the world must end Israeli impunity now!

I am outraged at Israel’s latest criminal act. I mourn with my fellow Free Gaza travelers, the lives that have been lost by Israel’s needless, senseless act against unarmed humanitarian activists. But I’m even more outraged that once again, Israel’s actions have been aided and abetted by a U.S. political class that has become corrupted beyond belief due to its reliance on Zionist finance and penetration by Zionist zealots for whom no U.S. weapons system is too much for the Israeli war machine, and the silence of the world’s onlookers whose hearts have grown cold with indifference.

I recently visited the offices of IHH, the Turkish humanitarian organization that sponsored one of the Freedom Flotilla boats, and that was targeted by the Israelis for its murderous rampage. Reports are still coming in as to the full extent of the senseless Israeli violence. Of course, I expect Israel’s apologists in the press and in the United States government to shift into high gear to support Israel’s lying machine. Take note of their names. The 12,000 internet squatters/written word grenade throwers, hired by the Israeli Foreign Ministry to defend Israel and attack peace activists online, are already busy spreading their orchestrated disinformation in cyberspace. Be very careful what you read and believe from special interest press and the internet. You could be reading one of Israel’s hired hacks. As a news diversion from what Israel has just done, I suspect that we can also expect to see a lot of historical footage of war’s
atrocities on television: today is Memorial Day in the United States, a day long ago set aside to remember the sacrifices of U.S. war dead.

I encouraged and supported U.S.S. Liberty veteran Joe Meadors’s participation in the Freedom Flotilla. Unfortunately, the fate of the U.S.S. Liberty innocents on the high seas, while in international waters, has now been visited upon the participants in the Freedom Flotilla, in large measure because of the Congressional- and Presidential-level cover-up of the 1967 Israeli attack on that U.S. surveillance ship. Combined with the failure of just about every other effort to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, and crimes against the peace. Belgium and Spain changed their domestic laws of universal jurisdiction after Israeli appeals to do so. The entire musical chairs gang of rotating Israeli leadership are war criminals. During my imprisonment in Israel for attempting to take crayons to the children of Gaza, I called Israel a failed state. If Israel is threatened by unarmed, humanitarian activists to the
point of massacring them, then Israel is a failed state. Israel is a failed nuclear state.

Obama’s most recent granting of an additional $205 million for Israeli “missile defense” is unconscionable, when in the same week, reports revealed for the first time, Israel’s offer of nuclear weapons to apartheid South Africa. Just last week, a paper bearing the signature of former Israeli Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, was released by South Africa, revealing that in 1975, Israel could offer South Africa nuclear weapons “in three sizes.” South Africa’s then-Minister of Defense, P.W. Botha, was South Africa’s signatory to the letter. This information would make the entire Obama Administration look sadly farcical as it points an accusing finger at Iran, except that U.S. obeisance to the Israeli bloodthirst is deadly serious. With deadly outcomes.

Earlier this month, Israel was granted admission to the Organization of Economic and Community Development (OECD), a direct affront to ongoing Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) efforts across the world. Once again, Israel has thumbed its nose at the global community–with bloody results–because it can.

I am proud to serve on the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Palestine. Its next sitting will be in London, where we will examine corporate complicity in Israel’s crimes against Palestine. The Tribunal will sit from November 5 – 7. Please put this on your calendar. We all must do what we can, where we are to end wars against the people at home and wars against human rights abroad.

Finally, a friend just sent a message to me saying that the Israelis had lost their minds. Sadly, based on the past, the Israelis could very well conclude that they can do anything–imprison me for trying to take love to the children of Gaza and kill humanitarian activists trying to do the same–because they know, in the end, they’ll get away with it. Instead, I would suggest that we are the ones who have lost our minds, our souls, our spirits, and our human dignity if we allow the Israelis to get away with murder–again–and we do nothing.

I am calling on the people of the United States to change course now.

On this Memorial Day 2010, I am stunned and outraged beyond belief while mourning the dead of the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza.

Tags: Cynthia McKinney, Free Gaza Movement

This entry was posted on Monday, May 31st, 2010 at 8:02 am and is filed under Social & Economic Justice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.

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Viva Palestina Convoy Arrives in Gaza

from : uruknet (irak)

July 15, 2009

The current convoy, which first tried to cross into Gaza on July 11th, faced numerous obstacles.


(PALOS HILLS, Ill.) - To chants of 'Viva! Viva! Palestina!’ more than 200 members of the Viva Palestina convoy made it into the Gaza Strip Wednesday after spending about six hours at the Rafah border processing paperwork.

American Muslim for Palestine officials listened to the celebration via the cell phone of a Viva Palestina volunteer.

Before a crowd of Gazans, convoy organizer British MP George Galloway said, "We are saying to President Obama, the world is looking. The situation in Palestine is intolerable. You have to stop this. That means you have to take action because actions speak louder than words.

"I’m really proud to say that Viva Palestine USA helped to break the siege. We will cry out against the world … We will continue to bring convoys until the siege is finally ended."

Israel’s two-year siege of the Gaza Strip has plunged the tiny area of 1.5 million people into a humanitarian crisis. And Israel’s three-week assault further devastated the area when the military bombed homes, schools, mosques, hospitals and universities. The attack killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, wounded more than 5,300 and left more than 50,000 people homeless.

From the ground a Gaza resident said this convoy as well as others like it are essential tools not only in fighting the effects of the siege but to also raise awareness around the world about the plight of the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

The Viva Palestina volunteers will go to Gaza City today, where they will spend the night. On Thursday, they will meet with victims of Israel’s January assault before heading back to Cairo, Kevin Ovenden, Viva Palestina director told an AMP official by phone.

The current convoy, which first tried to cross into Gaza on July 11, faced numerous obstacles, according Ovenden.

The convoy left Cairo early Wednesday morning to make the 10-hour trek to Rafah. The convoy is taking two ambulances and 11 truckloads of medical supplies but has left behind hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of vehicles earmarked for hospitals and nongovernmental organizations. Egyptian authorities have refused to allow the vehicles to enter Gaza through its Rafah border. Currently, the sedans and pick-up trucks are in a secure location in Alexandria, Ovenden said.

After he returns from Gaza, Ovenden said he would remain in Egypt for several days to try to get the vehicles released. Israel wants the cars and trucks to be transported to Gaza through Israel, something Viva Palestina refuses to do, Ovenden said. Viva Palestina will take into account the desires of the thousands of individuals and organizations who generously donated to the convoy, he added.

"We are missing more than one-half (of the convoy)," Galloway told the crowd about the impounded sedans and pick-up trucks. "These vehicles are desperately needed. And I’m here to tell you they will be delivered one way or another."

The American Muslims for Palestine calls on its supporters to continue to pressure the Egyptian government to release the vehicles by calling the Egyptian Ambassador to the U.S., Sameh Shoukry, at 202.895.5400. Ask for the vehicles to be released and to be exported to Gaza through the Rafah border.

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Source: American Muslims for Palestine is a national grassroots organization whose mission is to educate the American public about the issues pertaining to Palestine and its rich cultural heritage.

To learn more about the Gaza convoy, visit: vivapalestina.org



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Letter from an Israeli Jail, by Cynthia McKinney E-mail Print PDF News

from : freegaza.org ( Int. )

To support Free Gaza, please buy this gorgeous poster, 17" x 24", $20 + postage, for info contact Susan Harman

News

Saturday, 04 July 2009 13:47 Last Updated on Sunday, 05 July 2009 15:30 Written by Free Gaza Team

Original audio message available here:

http://freegaza.org/it/home/56-news/984-a-message-from-cynthia-from-a-cell-block-in-israel

This is Cynthia McKinney and I'm speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies - and even crayons for children, I had a suitcase full of crayons for children. While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis high-jacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people of the world to see how we have been treated just because we wanted to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.

At the outbreak of Israel's Operation ‘Cast Lead' [in December 2008], I boarded a Free Gaza boat with one day's notice and tried, as the US representative in a multi-national delegation, to deliver 3 tons of medical supplies to an already besieged and ravaged Gaza.

During Operation Cast Lead, U.S.-supplied F-16's rained hellfire on a trapped people. Ethnic cleansing became full scale outright genocide. U.S.-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology, DIME weapons, and cluster bombs - new weapons creating injuries never treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel's onslaught that Gaza had become Israel's veritable weapons testing laboratory, people used to test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.

The world saw Israel's despicable violence thanks to al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international water ... It's a miracle that I'm even here to write about my second encounter with the Israeli military, again a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.

The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime ... I am now known as Israeli prisoner number 88794. How can I be in prison for collecting crayons to kids?

Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else's children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza's children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.

I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at gunpoint after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against my will. I am being held in this prison because I had a dream that Gaza's children could color & paint, that Gaza's wounded could be healed, and that Gaza's bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.

But I've learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison. First of all, it's incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who also had a dream ... like my cellmates, one who is pregnant. They are all are in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land. They had a dream that their lives would be better ... The once proud, never colonized Ethiopia [has been thrown into] the back pocket of the United States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and occupation. Ethiopians must free their country because superpower politics [have] become more important than human rights and self-determination.

My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was arduous. I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it wasn't cheap. Many of them represent their family's best collective efforts for self-fulfilment. They made their way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel only after they arrived Israel told them "there is no UN in Israel."

The police here have license to pick them up & suck them into the black hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful, industrious and proud women represent the hopes of entire families. The idea of Israel tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely propagandized slick marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a place of refuge and safety for the world's first Jews and Christian. I too believed that marketing and failed to look deeper.

The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who are now trapped in Ramle's detention facility. And what are we to do? One of my cellmates cried today. She has been here for 6 months. As an American, crying with them is not enough. The policy of the United States must be better, and while we watch President Obama give 12.8 trillion dollars to the financial elite of the United States it ought now be clear that hope, change, and ‘yes we can' were powerfully presented images of dignity and self-fulfilment, individually and nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.

It was a slick marketing campaign as slickly put to the world and to the voters of America as was Israel's marketing to the world. It tricked all of us but, more tragically, these young women.

We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to represent us. I have read and re-read Dr. Martin Luther King Junior's letter from a Birmingham jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that I too would one day have to do so. It is clear that taxpayers in Europe and the U.S. have a lot to atone for, for what they've done to others around the world.

What an irony! My son begins his law school program without me because I am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for other people's children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I'm experiencing the harsh reality which is why people need dreams. [But] I'm lucky. I will leave this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?

Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men whom I see being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock. [Ask yourself:] what are you willing to do?

Let's change the world together & reclaim what we all need as human beings: Dignity. I appeal to the United Nations to get these women of Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in Israel as the guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes. I appeal to the United State's Department of State to include the plight of detained UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel country report in its annual human rights report. I appeal once again to President Obama to go to Gaza: send your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to engage Hamas as the elected choice of the Palestinian people.

I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free Palestine, and to the women I've met at Ramle. This is Cynthia McKinney, July 2nd 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794.

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Cynthia McKinney is a former U.S. Congresswoman, Green Party presidential candidate, and an outspoken advocate for human rights and social justice. The first African-American woman to represent the state of Georgia, McKinney served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, from 1993-2003, and from 2005-2007. She was arrested and forcibly abducted to Israel while attempting to take humanitarian and reconstruction supplies to Gaza on June 30th. For more information, please see http://www.FreeGaza.org

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.

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