De onvermijdelijke door het westen gesteunde politieke zelfmoord van het zionistisch regime. Het probleem nu voor de Westerse autoriteiten is nu dat ze voor de belangen van de vermoorde westerlingen moeten opkomen. En zich dus tegen het belang van de Joden in Israel en de Joodse lobby in het Westen moet keren.
10 Reported Killed as Israel Raids Boats Headed to Gaza
A pro-Palestinian activist was evacuated to a hospital in the northern city of Haifa on Monday.
By ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: May 31, 2010
JERUSALEM — The Israeli Navy attacked a flotilla carrying thousands of tons of supplies for Gaza on Monday morning, killing at least 10 people, according to the Israeli military and activists traveling with the flotilla. The Israeli Defense Forces said naval personnel boarding the six ships in the flotilla met with “live fire and light weaponry including knives and clubs.”
“As a result of this life-threatening and violent activity, naval forces employed riot dispersal means, including live fire,” the I.D.F. said in a statement.
“That is a lie,” said Greta Berlin, a leader of the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement, speaking by telephone from Cyprus. She said it was inconceivable that the passengers on board would have been “waiting up to fire on the Israeli military, with all its might.”
“We never thought there would be any violence,” she said.
The warships first intercepted the convoy of cargo and passenger boats shortly before midnight on Sunday, surprising the boats in international waters, according to activists on one vessel. Israel had vowed not to let the flotilla reach the shores of Gaza, where the Islamic militant group Hamas holds sway.
Named the Freedom Flotilla, and led by the Free Gaza Movement and a Turkish organization, Insani Yardim Vakfi, the convoy was the most ambitious attempt yet to break Israel’s three-year blockade of Gaza. About 600 passengers were said to be aboard the vessels, including the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Mairead Corrigan-Maguire of Northern Ireland, and a Holocaust survivor, Hedy Epstein, 85.
“They attacked us this morning in international waters,” said Ms. Berlin. “According to the coordinates, we were 70 miles off the Israeli coast.”
The clash occurred as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to meet President Obama in Washington on Tuesday for talks on the Middle East peace process. Some media reports from Jerusalem said that Mr. Netanyahu might delay his visit.
Within hours, diplomatic repercussions began to spread from the Mediterranean to Europe where Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs, called for a full inquiry into the incident and the immediate lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
Channel 10, a private television station in Israel, quoted the Israeli trade minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, as saying between 14 and 16 people had been killed. He said on Israeli Army Radio that commandos boarded the ships by sliding down on ropes from a hovering helicopter and were then struck by passengers with “batons and tools.”
“The moment someone tries to snatch your weapon, to steal your weapons, that’s where you begin to lose control,” Mr. Ben-Eliezer said, quoted by Reuters.
Jamal El Shayyal, a reporter from the television broadcaster Al Jazeera, was on board the Mavi Marmara, the largest of the six ships, during the attack. He said in a video report that dozens of civilians had been injured in the fighting.
The I.D.F. said late Monday morning that the ships from the convoy would be taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod, north of Gaza, where “naval forces will perform security checks in order to identify the people on board the ships and their equipment.”
On Sunday, three Israeli Navy missile boats had left the Haifa naval base in northern Israel a few minutes after 9 p.m. local time, planning to intercept the flotilla. After asking the captains of the boats to identify themselves, the navy told them they were approaching a blockaded area and asked them either to proceed to Ashdod or return to their countries of origin.
The activists responded that they would continue toward their destination, Gaza.
Speaking by satellite phone from the Challenger 1 boat, which has foreign legislators and other high-profile figures on board, a Free Gaza Movement leader, Huwaida Arraf, said: “We communicated to them clearly that we are unarmed civilians. We asked them not to use violence.”
Earlier Sunday, Ms. Arraf said the boats would keep trying to move forward “until they either disable our boats or jump on board.”
Turkey strongly condemned the Israeli military for the assault.
“Regardless of any reasoning, such actions against civilians engaged in only peaceful activities are unacceptable,” said a statement on the Foreign Ministry’s Web site on Monday. “Israel will be required to face the consequences of this act that involves violation of the international law.”
“Israel launched this operation in international waters and to a ship flagged white, which is unacceptable under any clause of the international law,” the head of the Turkish Grand National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Commission, Murat Mercan, said on the Turkish station NTV.
“We are going to see in the following days whether Israel has done it as a display of decisiveness or to commit political suicide.”
Turkish television stations showed angry protesters confronting police officers outside the Israeli consulate in Istanbul on Monday morning. Crowds also gathered outside the Ankara residence of Gabi Levi, the Israeli ambassador, who was summoned to the Foreign Ministry.
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