Bharat Rakshak

From a distance, what seems to be happening is that Israel is ratcheting up its test of what it can do in the confines of the US-Israel relationship. It is testing to see whether there exist any limits or conditionality on Israeli behavior at all. Israel believes that the Obama team is weak -- and is pushing aggressively to compel the US to tolerate anything the State of Israel does as a signal to the rest of the Middle East that is itself clamoring for any sign that the Obama administration is willing to put some muscle and substantive action behind the President's Cairo speech and other comments to the governments and people in the Arab world.

The flotilla may have been populated by peace activists who really did want to get humanitarian supplies to Gaza -- but the leadership of this flotilla was trying to expose the "false choice" contradiction that the US and other powers were making between Israel's interests and the interests of the rest of the Middle East.

This was a strategic flotilla -- designed to elicit exactly the response that Israel gave. This flotilla knew which button to push to animate Israel's military response. It is not dissimilar from what al Qaeda did by attacking New York and Washington and drawing the US military to intervene in the Middle East.

Israel, like the United States, showed itself incapable of nuance and of outmaneuvering this flotilla by resorting to means that would not have helped the activists succeed in their objectives. At the Doha Forum, I am speaking to Arabs, Jews and Christians who represent senior governmental and non-governmental organizations in their home countries -- and no one here that I have found thinks that the Israeli government responded to the flotilla sensibly -- even if one buys the argument that the blockade of Gaza is justified.

The U.S. really can't afford to make the choice of Israel over the Arab world. There will be enormous geopolitical and geoeconomic consequences if it does.

Increasingly, the balance and ambiguity that the Obama administration has been trying to maintain during what has been a mostly behind the scenes political crisis with Israel is not working. George Mitchell is not working out. The Arab states have deep structural doubts in the ability of the US to deliver on what it says it wants in the region. And Israel is compelling choices about its security and future that are actually both undermining its own security and the national interests and national security of the United States.

Israel risks losing Turkey, its "sole friend" in the Middle East, after its deadly raid on aid ships, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told U.S. President Barack Obama, his office said Wednesday.

"Israel is faced with the danger of losing its sole friend in the region and the greatest contributor so far to regional peace," the statement quoted Erdoğan as telling Obama in a one-hour telephone conversation.

"The steps that it [Israel] will undertake in the coming days will determine its position in the region," Erdoğan said.

He told Obama that Monday's operation on an international flotilla carrying supplies to the Gaza Strip, which resulted in several deaths, was "unacceptable lawlessness," the statement said.

Erdoğan stressed that Israel's blockade of Gaza, in place since 2007, should be lifted and called on Israel to release the passengers and vessels of the seized flotilla.

In an unusual step, Israel, which is facing global criticism for attacking an aid flotilla, has said violent incidents in countries like India and Pakistan in the past one month which claimed 500 lives have been "ignored" while it is being condemned for its "unmistakably defensive actions".

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman "reminded" the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that in the past month alone 500 people were killed in various incidents in Thailand, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and India, a Foreign Ministry statement said.

"While the international community remained silent and passive, and generally ignored the occurences, Israel is being condemned for unmistakably defensive actions," a Foreign Ministry statement quoted Lieberman as saying.

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But Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. Hamas is an idea, a desperate and fanatical idea that grew out of the desolation and frustration of many Palestinians. No idea has ever been defeated by force — not by siege, not by bombardment, not by being flattened with tank treads and not by marine commandos. To defeat an idea, you have to offer a better idea, a more attractive and acceptable one.
...
I do not discount the importance of force. Woe to the country that discounts the efficacy of force. Without it Israel would not be able to survive a single day. But we cannot allow ourselves to forget for even a moment that force is effective only as a preventative — to prevent the destruction and conquest of Israel, to protect our lives and freedom. Every attempt to use force not as a preventive measure, not in self-defense, but instead as a means of smashing problems and squashing ideas, will lead to more disasters, just like the one we brought on ourselves in international waters, opposite Gaza’s shores.

sunnyP wrote:It was probably a mistake to board this ship in the first place. Could the Israelis have not used to their war ships to simply stop this flotilla from getting anywhere near their coast?

However, once they were on the boats and subsequently attacked the soldiers had no choice but to defend themselves.

Overall, this was a PR disaster for the Israelis and they really should have known better.

The Rachel Corrie, a ship named for an American activist killed in Gaza several years ago, was planning to arrive in Gaza late Friday or early Saturday. The vessel left Ireland carrying 550 tons of cement, educational materials, toys and medical equipment -- the latest effort by peace activists to deliver supplies and break Israel's blockade of Gaza.

Edward Peck, a former U.S. ambassador to Mauritania who was a passenger on one of the ships in the flotilla, said Wednesday he hopes Israel doesn't respond to the Rachel Corrie in the same way its military did to the Miva Marmara vessel Monday. He said it won't serve Israeli or U.S. interests.

"The Israelis had said that their response is going even more proactive than before," Peck told CNN's "American Morning." "I hope they don't do it."

The Irish premier on Wednesday asked Israel to allow the cargo vessel to unload its shipment in Gaza without any hindrances. The director general of the Irish foreign ministry sent a message to the Israeli ambassador in Dublin carrying the same meaning but no response was made public.

Rachel Corrie was supposed to join the Freedom Flotilla but was delayed for a few days due to technical reasons.

Rachel Corrie is a 499 GT coaster owned and operated by the Irish arm of the Free Gaza Movement.

Bhaskar wrote:To the gurus out there.... If the Israelis do this again, there will be a possibility of another Middle East conflict... How would the Indo-Israeli relations be affected then?

Carl_T wrote:Declare Israel a terrorist state

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.co ... rist-state

ashish raval wrote:I think Iran attack by Israel is imminent. Turkey will not give bases for use. Greece will and if Turkey does anything stupid, Greece will cerainly come into picture. Which will drag NATO and what not. Israel will wipe out both Hamas and Hezbollah this time. If Iran is the game, it can fight all the 3 at the same time. Israel has simulated this situation umpteen number of times.

A_Gupta wrote:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/opinion/02oz.html

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But Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. Hamas is an idea, a desperate and fanatical idea that grew out of the desolation and frustration of many Palestinians. No idea has ever been defeated by force — not by siege, not by bombardment, not by being flattened with tank treads and not by marine commandos. To defeat an idea, you have to offer a better idea, a more attractive and acceptable one.

A_Gupta wrote:A good article:
http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article ... gaza_folly

A Brief History of the Gaza Folly

The flotilla attack is just the latest in a series of bad decisions Israel has made about Gaza over the past five years.
.....

So we move back one more link, to then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decision's to leave Gaza unilaterally, rather than as part of a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority. Sharon knew that reaching an agreement would mean yielding nearly all of the West Bank as well. He saw the Gaza withdrawal as a way to avoid making such a deal. But the unilateral pullout weakened Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas, an advocate of a negotiated peace, and legitimized Hamas and its "armed struggle."

..........

The heroic, humanistic Zionism is mostly vanished from the halls of power in Israel.

With men down and believing their lives were in danger, the Israeli commandos say they requested permission to use live fire. This was granted about 4:50 a.m., 20 minutes after the operation began. The Israelis pulled out their pistols and began to shoot.

In the ensuing melee, two activists succeeded in wresting two pistols away from the troops and shot two soldiers, according to the Israeli military and hospital officials. Israel says both activists were shot dead.

But those on the ship had no chance against armed and highly trained troops, and by 5 a.m., the ship was under the commandos' control.

Lisa wrote
No idea has ever been defeated by force — not by siege, not by bombardment, not by being flattened with tank treads and not by marine commandos. To defeat an idea, you have to offer a better idea, a more attractive and acceptable one.

Acceptable opinion?

Carl_T wrote:Declare Israel a terrorist state

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.co ... rist-state

Carl_T wrote:Declare Israel a terrorist state

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.co ... rist-state

Lisa wrote: Lets change the names

But Lashkar-e-Taiba is not just a terrorist organization. Lashkar-e-Taiba is an idea, a desperate and fanatical idea that grew out of the desolation and frustration of many Pakistanis. No idea has ever been defeated by force — not by siege, not by bombardment, not by being flattened with tank treads and not by marine commandos. To defeat an idea, you have to offer a better idea, a more attractive and acceptable one.

Acceptable opinion?

The Turkish Islamic charity behind a flotilla of aid ships that was raided by Israeli forces on its way to Gaza had ties to terrorism networks, including a 1999 Al Qaeda plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport, France's former top anti-terrorism judge said Wednesday.

The Istanbul-based Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief, known by its Turkish acronym IHH, had "clear, long-standing ties to terrorism and Jihad," former investigating judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Bruguiere, who led the French judiciary's counterterrorism unit for nearly two decades before retiring in 2007, didn't indicate whether IHH now has terror ties, but said it did when he investigated it in the late 1990s.

"They were basically helping Al Qaeda when (Usama) bin Laden started to want to target U.S. soil," he said.

Some members of an international terrorism cell known as the Fateh Kamel network then worked at the IHH, he said. Kamel, an Algerian-Canadian dual national, had ties to the nascent Al Qaeda, Bruguiere said.

Israel defied world condemnation, saying it will not lift its blockade of Gaza even as the United Nations took the first steps to investigate the killing of nine civilians on board a flotilla of protest ships.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stridently defended Israel’s forceful interception early Monday of six aid ships headed for Gaza, noting that a ship can carry tons of weapons and hundreds of rockets.

“It is our duty to scrutinize each ship that approaches Gaza,” he told a news conference in Jerusalem. “I want to clarify to the citizens of the world what would happen if we don’t do that: It would mean an Iranian port in Gaza, at a distance of only a few dozen kilometres from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.” In Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning the incident, calling for Israel to lift the blockade and agreeing to send an “independent international fact-finding mission” to investigate the raid.

The United States voted against, along with Norway and Italy, while other European Union states and Japan abstained. The U.S. called the vote a “rush to judgement.” In New York, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he needed to further discuss with UN members about ways to launch the investigation, which is also supported by the U.N. Security Council.

Many Bosnian Muslims were brought to Pakistan for being trained in the camps of the Markaz Dawa Al Irshad (MDI) as the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD), the political wing of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET,) was then known and then taken back to Bosnia. There was considerable flow of money and arms and ammunition to the Bosnian separatists. Many Pakistanis from Pakistan itself as well as from the Pakistani diaspora in the UK were trained by the JUD and taken to Bosnia for participating in the jihad against the Serbs. Some Indian-origin Muslims from Saudi Arabia were also taken to Bosnia.

All these activities for the provision of volunteers, money and arms and ammunition to the Bosnian separatists were allegedly co-ordinated by the IHH, under the cover of a humanitarian organisation, with the collaboration of the MDI. Amongst the Pakistanis who played an active role in organising assistance for the Bosnians through the IHH and the MDI were Lt Gen (retd) Hamid Gul and Lt Gen (retd) Assad Durrani, former heads of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the then Amir of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI, and Prof Hafeez Ahmed Sayeed, who was then the Amir of the MDI. Lt Gen Assad Durrani, who was posted as the Pakistani Ambassador to Germany by Mrs Benazir Bhutto, the then Pakistani Prime Minister, co-ordinated the assistance from the Ummah to the Bosnians.

All these Pakistanis frequently used to visit Bosnia. Mrs Benazir herself made a joint visit to Bosnia along with Mrs Tansu Ciller, the then Turkish Prime Minister, in February 1994. Among Pakistani volunteers from the diaspora in the UK who allegedly worked for the IHH in Bosnia was Omar Sheikh, who is now in jail in Pakistan after having been sentenced to death for his role in the kidnapping and execution of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, in Karachi in January-February,2002. He has appealed against the death sentence.

All indications from reliable Pakistani and other sources were that the IHH’s role in Bosnia was not solely humanitarian. The humanitarian cover was allegedly used for keeping alive the Bosnian jihad and enabling it to succeed against the Serbs. The IHH allegedly played a similar role in Chechnya by helping the local Muslims in their jihad against the Soviet and then Russian troops. It then turned its attention to helping the Kashmiris by funding refugee camps for Kashmiris set up by the MDI and other Pakistani jihadi organisations in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). These refugee camps also became training centres for training Kashmiri and Pakistani jihadis for fighting against the Indian security forces.

Muslim Aid UK and Muslim Aid Pakistan also work closely with al-Khidmat Foundation which forms part of the Jamaat-i-Islami Pakistan’s social welfare wing . Al-Khidmat is also believed to have aided militancy and has helped to support the Hizbul Mujahideen , Jamaat’s armed wing. Hizbul Mujahideen is designated by the US and UK as a terrorist organisation .

In 2004 suspected Russian security agents from the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) were involved in the assassination of Zelimkhan Yanderbiyev, the former vice president of Chechnya in a car bomb attack in Doha, Qatar . They believe he was meeting with wealthy Middle Eastern figures to collect funds for Jihad in Chechnya. Yanderbiyev was a recipient of Jamaat funds to wage war on Russia .

Jamaat-i-Islami is listed by Russia’s Supreme Court as a leading financier and supporter of terrorism . After the 9/11 attacks the Federal Security Bureau (FSB), Russia’s internal intelligence agency, passed information to the US stating they believed that Jamaat would probably be involved in the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon , these assertions proved correct when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks was arrested in the home of Jamaat leaders in Pakistan .

It must be noted that other Al-Qaeda leaders such as Yasir al-Jazeeri, Ahsan Aziz, and Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi were all captured in the homes of Jamaat leaders in Pakistan . Dr Alexis Debat, a former advisor to the French Ministry of Defence and the senior terrorism consultant for ABC News, has stated that he was taken to a safe house in Peshawar, Pakistan which was used by Osama Bin Laden’s deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri which was operated by the Jamaat .

Al-Khidmat has recently helped to repatriate 2,500 Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorists that have been released as part of an amnesty by Pakistani authorities which was one of the conditions in the Waziristan Accords . There have also been reports that Taliban fighters wounded in Afghanistan are being treated at Al-Khimat’s medical centres in Pakistan .

Al-Khidmat has also recently donated huge sums to Hamas to carry on with its Jihad against Israel . Hamas leaders recently attended Jamaat’s annual grand assembly in Wapda Colony, Peshawar where they vowed to carry on their jihad against Israel . Al-Khidmat has also given money to Sheikh Faisal Malawi of the Jemaah Islamiya (Lebanon) which analysts believe is going to aid his Al-Fajr militants to help Hezbollah attack Israel in Lebanon. Malawi is the former deputy chairman of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, which is headed by Sheikh Yusef al-Qaradawi, a prominent leader in the Muslim Brotherhood .

The Daily Telegraph fails to recognize the al-Khidmat Foundation is in fact the Makhtab al-Khidmat, or the MAK, which was founded by Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden in the 1980s and was used to funnel men and material into Afghanistan. The MAK is on the U.S. Department of State Terrorist Exclusion List.

CalvinH wrote:

ashish raval wrote:I think Iran attack by Israel is imminent. Turkey will not give bases for use. Greece will and if Turkey does anything stupid, Greece will cerainly come into picture. Which will drag NATO and what not. Israel will wipe out both Hamas and Hezbollah this time. If Iran is the game, it can fight all the 3 at the same time. Israel has simulated this situation umpteen number of times.

Too far fetched. from the recent events, what made your draw these conclusions.

Seeing the video I dont see how the soldiers boarding the ship could have reacted otherwise. Boarding did went awry. I think IDF didnt anticipated such kind of voilent response from the "peace activist".