Melanie Phillips and the Israeli Ambassador are not best pleased at the EDO Acquittals!

Now why did I wonder what my old friend Mel P (that was her name in the days of punk!) was writing? Maybe it’s because I could almost have written the article myself, complete with Spitting Image cartoon, because Mad Mel is nothing if not a predictable caricature of herself.

Many people, including myself, wonder how it is that Mad Mel, could make the transition from Observer journalist (deputy editor I seem to recall) to Daily Hate Mail ‘columnist’. Actually I would argue she didn’t change, she was always right-wing but managed to hide it at the liberal Observer.

One article I particularly picked up on during her spell at The Observer was written after the acquittal of the Birmingham 6 in 1991. You may recall that the then recently devised ESDA test proved conclusively that the ‘confessions’ had been concocted and forged by the Birmingham Police and pages inserted into it. Lord Chief Justice Lane, who a few years earlier had turned down the appeal of the Birmingham 6 with words that came to haunt him ‘"As has happened before in References by the Home Secretary to this court, the longer this hearing has gone on the more convinced this court has become that the verdict of the jury was correct." [incidentally the article on Lane LJ in Wikipedia is wrong on several counts – Lane did preside over their eventually successful appeal, much to his embarrassment].

But back to Mad Mel P. The idea of destroying property is alien to Mad Mel. Destroying Gazan Palestinian property is of course ok. She quotes, in the Spectator article below, which was briefly pulled from the web for possible contempt of court, Robin Shepherd who makes the original observation that ‘in bigoted Britain all you have to do these days to be acquitted of a crime is to act against Israeli interests..

Interesting I’m tempted to put it into practice. Maybe a few bricks through Ahava’s windows in London? After all they are selling stolen goods? No? Just Mad Mel’s usual hyperbole.

And Israel’s Ambassador to St. James, Ron Prossor, also weighs in. According to the Israeli daily Yediot Aharanot “Ron Prosor has harshly criticized a British judge who displayed a blatant anti-Semitic stand.” In fact one of the defendants Simon Levin was Jewish! But if you aren’t willing to support the bombing of Palestinian civilians then you are, according to this buffoon an anti-Semite! Methinks suggesting that Jews are bloodthirsty and willing to applaud the use of white phosphorous against young children is anti-Semitic, almost an Easter Blood Libel in fact.

However the article ends of an optimistic note when we are told that Prossor’s protest “will not be enough to change the grim situation of Israeli PR in the UK.” These fools imagine that the only thing they’ve got to get right is the message, that murdering thousands of civilians (over 7,000 in this decade) is something that can be washed away.

But what gets Mad Mel’s back up, so much so that she has to resort to quoting the enemy i.e. this blog, is the description or approval of the description of Gaza has ‘hell on Earth’. According to MM Gaza is one of the world’s favourite tourist destinations. Indeed so wonderful is the weather that most people choose to sleep outdoors. There again, that could be because the basic reconstruction materials for housing destroyed by Israel is not allowed in. But one wonders what MM would think of a siege of her house, where nothing that could possible be ‘dual use’ (e.g. batteries for a disabled car) can be allowed in.

Mad Mel just cannot get it out of her head that a judge, who as she admits is no bleeding liberal, has no business encouraging the jury to acquit. This will result in the ‘undermining the public's faith in the judiciary, and anarchy and a police state.’ will be round the corner. Strange that. I always thought locking up dissidents was one of the hallmarks of a police state.

So Mad Mel is forced to quote from this very left-wing blog as to the reasons why Judge George Bathurst-Norman was so favourable to the Defence (which he was, there’s no getting away from it!). So unusual is this phenomenon that Mad Mel nearly chokes on her (kosher) caviar.

And to make things worse, Mad Mel quotes this blog re Judge George Bathurst-Norman having been brought out of retirement to hear the case! Well we always try and delve behind the headlines!

Tony Greenstein

The hellish histrionics of Hove Propaganda Court

Spectator 2nd July 2010
Under the combined weight of ideology and bigotry, the rule of law itself seems to be breaking down in Britain. For the second time, a jury has acquitted people charged with criminal acts because it appears to sympathise with their cause.

In September 2008, a jury decided that it was ok to break the law and cause more than £35,000 criminal damage to a coal-fired power station because of the threat of man-made global warming.

In the latest case, seven activists who caused £180,000 damage to an arms factory have been acquitted after they argued they were seeking to prevent ‘Israeli war crimes’. The Guardian reported yesterday, after the acquittals of the first five:

They believed that EDO MBM, the firm that owns the factory, was breaking export regulations by manufacturing and selling to the Israelis military equipment which would be used in the occupied territories. They wanted to slow down the manufacture of these components, and impede what they believed were war crimes being committed by Israel against the Palestinians.

... Hove crown court heard the activists had broken into the factory in the night. They had video-taped interviews beforehand outlining their intention to cause damage and, in the words of prosecutor Stephen Shay, ‘smash-up’ the factory.

As Robin Shepherd observes in horror, it seems that in bigoted Britain all you have to do these days to be acquitted of a crime is to act against Israeli interests. But what really jumps out from this story is the direction the jury received from the judge in the case:

In his summing up, Judge George Bathurst-Norman suggested to the jury that ‘you may well think that hell on earth would not be an understatement of what the Gazans suffered in that time’.

Let’s get our heads round this, folks: an English judge in an English court of law effectively directed a jury to acquit people of criminally smashing up a factory, because he chose to believe Hamas propaganda about the suffering of people in Gaza during a war about which he presumably has no knowledge whatever apart from what he has read or seen in the media – a war, moreover, launched solely to prevent Gazans from aggressively firing rockets into Israel in order to murder its civilians, during the course of which war Israel went to heroic lengths to avoid hurting Gazan civilians who were being put in harm’s way by Hamas, the true cause of Gaza's 'hell on earth'.

Quite apart from the ignorance and bigotry of Judge George Bathurst-Norman, what on earth is a judge doing imposing his political prejudices upon a jury and thus taking the side of the defendants in the case he is trying – with the result that he effectively directed the jury to acquit them of a crime?

Ironically enough, given the way he has now brought the justice system into disrepute, he declared indignantly on a previous occasion -- using his own tough record to rebut criticisms by the Home Secretary of the day of allegedly ‘soft’ sentencing by the courts:

‘The trouble is, if you go on for political reasons undermining the public's faith in the judiciary, sooner or later you are heading for anarchy and... in due course for the equivalent of a police state.’

No bleeding-heart liberal is Judge George Bathurst-Norman, it seems. Here he is jailing Paul Kelleher for three months for beheading a statue of Margaret Thatcher, saying that

although many people sympathised with him, smashing up property deserved a custodial sentence.

Really? So how come this apparent law’n’order zealot gave the people who smashed up this factory a free pass in this way? Could this – as the veteran anti-Zionist Tony Greenstein exults -- be the explanation? (Hat tip: Yisroel Medad)

Perhaps the fact that His Honour was born in the Arab town of Jaffa opposite Tel Aviv might have something to do with it!

Well, just fancy that. And here is yet another lenient sentence passed by this law’n’order judge –

Abu Bakr Siddiqui, a procurement agent for the A. Q. Khan network, receives what an individual familiar with the case describes as a “remarkably lenient” sentence for assistance he gave the network [through smuggling a shipment of special aluminium to the AQ Khan nuclear programme in Pakistan]. The judge, George Bathurst-Norman, acknowledges that the crimes Siddiqui committed (see August 29, 2001) would usually carry a “very substantial” prison term, but says that there are “exceptional circumstances,” claiming that Siddiqui had been too trusting and had been “blinded” to facts that were “absolutely staring [him] in the face.” Siddiqui gets a twelve-month suspended sentence and a fine of £6,000 (about $10,000). Authors David Armstrong and Joe Trento will comment, “In a scenario eerily reminiscent of earlier nuclear smuggling cases in the United States and Canada, Siddiqui walked out of court essentially a free man.” They will also offer an explanation for the volte-face between conviction and sentencing, pointing out that there was a key event in the interim: due to the 9/11 attacks “Pakistan was once again a vital British and American ally. And, as in the past, it became imperative that Islamabad not be embarrassed over its nuclear program for fear of losing its cooperation….”

Anyone spot a connecting thread here?

Greenstein also helpfully notes about the Hove travesty that

Judge George Bathurst-Norman was brought out of retirement to hear the case.

Really? Why? And just who decided to do that?

What in judicial hell on earth's name is going on here?

Magnificent Victory for the Decommissioners at EDO-MBM Arms Factory

Five of the Seven are Acquitted - 2 Verdicts to Come

Five of the seven accused in the EDO-MBM trial in Brighton, who were accused of criminal damage for having laid waste to EDO’s factory, have been acquitted at Hove Crown Court today. Verdicts will be announced on Friday in the case of the remaining two, including Elijah Smith and Chris Osmond.

This is a magnificent victory, all the more so because the Police deliberately engineered it so that the trial was held in sleepy Tory Hove rather than in more radical Brighton. The Police needn’t have bothered as the jury unanimously acquitted all 5.

The trial lasted 3 weeks though it was originally scheduled for twice that long. The main witness was the CEO Paul Hill, who was extensively grilled in the witness box and made a bad impression on just about everyone with his lies.

The trial has been quite amazing for the way the prosecution has been so ineffective. They first went to the Court of Appeal to overturn a decision of the judge that the defendants could use the defence of lawful necessity to justify their destruction of bomb making equipment. They lost.

And Judge George Bathurst-Norman, who has previously had a record as quite a law’n’order judge, gave a summing up so favourable that some supporters were worried that the jury might react to what they perceived as an attempt to bounce them into a not guilty verdict. We need not have worried! Perhaps the fact that His Honour was born in the Arab town of Jaffa opposite Tel Aviv might have something to do with it! Judge George Bathurst-Norman was brought out of retirement to hear the case.

It all began on January 17th 2009 the bombs as Israel’s attack on Gaza entered its third week and the total of Palestinian fatalities climbed to 1,400 or whom 400 were children, a group of Arms Factory Decommissioners arrived in Brighton intent to disrupt the supply of components to Israel, which were produced at the EDO-MBM factory in Home Farm Road, Moulsecoomb, Brighton.

At the same time, that good Christian Tony Blair went to Israel to shake hands with the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. Both hands were from eye witness accounts covered in the blood of their victims.

Just after midnight Robert Stafford age 28, Elija Smith 41, Tom Woodhead 25, Ornella Saibene 40, Bob Nicholls 53 entered EDO’s premises with the aim in Elija Smith’s words to ‘smash it up to the best of our ability’. Once inside the building they barricaded themselves in and set about their mission.

EDO’s machinery was used to make bomb release mechanisms (these carry and eject missiles from fighter planes and unmanned ‘drones’) and an assembly area for the electronic components were put out of action. EDO make a VER2 mechanism which is designed for the F16 fighter and used by the Israeli Defence Force.

The six caused £300,000 of damage. The decommissioners were peaceably arrested and charged with criminal damage and conspiracy. Elija Smith has been held on remand in Lewes Prison, Brighton since then. The others are under very strict bail conditions. It has been important to give financial and moral support to Elija. This has included many fund raising events, stalls and letter writing sessions. Their trial commenced on 7th June 2010 in Hove Crown Court.

The action of the Decommissioners is in a long line of people who have been acquitted of attacking and damaging arms production facilities from Trident Ploughshares to the Raytheon protestors in Derry last year. The defence has been that although committing an offence, they are helping to prevent a much more serious crime, in this case a war crime.

Tony Greenstein

see Guardian report

Activists Draw A Comparison Between Gaza and Warsaw

29 June 2010 19:04:55

A wonderful example of international solidarity. Activists have drawn exactly the correct lessons from the resistance of the Jewish resistance fighters [ZOB] in the Warsaw ghetto 67 years ago. Of course this was a lesson that Marek Edelman, last Commander of ZOB had learnt some time ago, much to the annoyance of the Zionist state which in a fit of pique boycotted his funeral.

Those who say that in Warsaw 400,000 Jews were deported to Treblinka and their death miss the point. Both Gaza and Warsaw are/were ghettos. It matters not that the Nazis exterminated the population whereas Israeli leaders are forced to merely deprive Gazan inhabitants of medicine, reconstruction, work and drinking water. What a defence that they aren’t actually exterminating anyone though hundreds if not thousands have died as a consequence of the siege, to say nothing of Israel’s rockets and bombs.

Tony Greenstein

Gaza Freedom Graffiti in the Warsaw Ghetto

Monday 28th 2010

Yesterday, Israeli and Polish activists met in the ruins of Warsaw’s old Jewish Ghetto.
The activists sprayed ‘Liberate All Ghettos’ in Hebrew, followed by ‘Free Gaza and Palestine’ in English on a wall of an original block in the ghetto. The block is across the street from the last fragment of the remaining perimeter wall of the Ghetto. They also hung Palestinian flags from the wall.

This was first time such an action took place in the ghetto.

Yonatan Shapira former Israeli Air Force captain and now refusnik and BDS activist said:

‘Most of my family came from Poland and many of my relatives were killed in the death camps during the Holocaust. When I walk in what was left from the Warsaw Ghetto I can’t stop thinking about the people of Gaza who are not only locked in an open air prison but are also being bombarded by fighter jets, attack helicopters and drones, flown by people whom I used to serve with before my refusal in 2003.

I am also thinking about the delegations of young Israelis that are coming to see the history of our people but also are subjected to militaristic and nationalistic brainwashing on a daily basis. Maybe if they see what we wrote here today they will remember that oppression is oppression, occupation is occupation, and crimes against humanity are crimes against humanity, whether they have been committed here in Warsaw or in Gaza’.

Ewa Jasiewicz, activist with Kampania Palestyna and one of the co-ordinators of the Free Gaza Movement who just returned from participating in the Freedom Flotilla said:

'Yonatan could have been the pilot in the Blackhawk that dropped commandos onto the Mavi Marmara that killed nine activists from our flotilla. I could have been one of them. Poland is full of the ruins of ghettos and death camps and shrines to those who sacrificed their lives in the defence of not just their communities but in resistance to fascism.

People here need to wake up and realise that occupations and ghettos did not end with the end of the second world war. These tactics and strategies of domination and control of other people and lands are present in Palestine today and are being perpetrated by the state of Israel. We have a responsibility to free all ghettos and end all occupations’.

Poland continues to deepen its’ military and political alliance with Israel whilst ignoring its obligations under international law to stop the ghettoization of the West Bank by Israel’s apartheid wall and to ensure the protection of civilians.

Kampania Palestyna together with the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, calls for an end to Israeli impunity and degradation of human rights and international law.

Ewa Jasiewicz said,

‘Poland can no longer be a Greenzone for the normalisation of Israeli apartheid. We all have the responsibility to end the occupation and ghettoization of the Palestinian people’.

Yonatan Shapira said:

‘I was always taught growing up that the atrocities that happened to the Jewish people here happened because the world was silent. And therefore I cannot be silent. The Jewish people needed to be liberated from the ghettoes, and now Israelis need to be liberated from the crimes of their own government. Each one of us can take part in this global struggle for justice, and support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for the sake of not just the Palestinian people but for Israelis too’.

www.kampania-palestyna.pl
www.bdsmovement.net

UNISON Votes to Suspend Relations with Histadrut

UNISON’s national delegate conference, which met in the week of June 15th, passed a very strong emergency motion in the wake of Israel’s murderous attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

Conference wasn’t having any of Israel’s justifications, the pretence that its navy commandos were the subject of ‘an attempted lynching’ by the human rights and aid activists. It accused Israel of ‘brazenly lying’. You can’t get much stronger than that!

And even better Conference voted overwhelmingly to suspend relations with Histadrut , following on strong motions on Histadrut which were passed at both the Scottish and Irish TUCs as well as a motion to cut all links with Histadrut by the Universities & Colleges Union (UCU).

Histadrut once again, after its Gaza debacle, again decided to issue a statement giving full support to Israel’s massacre on the Mavi Marmara. It was a particularly disgusting statement. It purported to be ‘aware of the ongoing suffering of the inhabitants of Gaza’ whilst omitting to say it has never even lifted its little finger to relieve this suffering.

And then on cue, it gave full support to Netanyahu, Lieberman and Barak’s attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla by criticising not the murderers but the murdered:

‘The conduct of the flotilla’s organisers and their methods of action utterly contradict the cooperation and the responsibility to achieve the goal we all aspire to attain – effective humanitarian assistance for the residents of Gaza.’

The breathtaking hypocrisy of this statement – when the Histadrut has done nothing to relieve the blockade itself nor to support those in Israel who have tried to do so, and its use of an agreement with the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions last year, whereby it agreed to return a tiny fraction of monies stolen from Palestinian workers to PGFTU – sealed its fate.

Of course Unison has now gone beyond that which Palestine Solidarity Campaign and their trade union organiser, Bernard Regan approve of. Regan believes the Histadrut is a changed organisation and a genuine trade union. The fact that it evinces not a squeak of solidarity with the oppressed is neither her nor there.

Coming on top of the Boycott of Israeli ships by dockers on the West coast of American, Sweden and Norway, it demonstrates that Boycott is once again, thanks to the Israeli government, right on track again.

Tony Greenstein

2010 National Delegate Conference

Emergency Composite : AgendaID EC1 - Israel's Attack on the Flotilla

Conference condemns the attack by the Israeli army and navy on the Gaza Freedom flotilla, which was in international waters 90 miles off the coast of Gaza, in which nine people were reportedly killed. We note that these boats were carrying much-needed humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza. We repeat the demand of Conference 2009 for an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which has been in place since 2007.

We note that the passengers on the boats were civilians, including a Nobel Peace Prize winner, a holocaust survivor, parliamentarians, activists, artists and other non-combatants. Israel's attack, in international waters, appears to be an act of piracy. We call for an independent international enquiry into the circumstances of this attack, and for the criminal prosecution of those committing and ordering these illegal acts.

We support the strong condemnations of Israel issued by Governments around the world, as well as those statements by trade unions, including the TUC and the ITUC.

Conference reaffirms the demands of last years conference and call for an immediate end to all UK arms sales to Israel, and for recognition of the results of the 2006 Palestine election.

We call for the immediate release of all those detained by Israel during this attack, and for the return of all their seized property.

We note that a further aid boat, the MV Rachel Corrie, which was delayed as a result of an Israeli sabotage attempt, is currently sailing to Gaza, and we support the demand of the Irish government that Israel allow it safe passage to Gaza.

In an attempt to justify this attack, Israel has been brazenly lying, attempting to define it as an attempted lynch of its troops by passengers on the boats. This is a further sign that Israel does not respond to words of condemnation; only action will have any effect.

Conference reaffirms the support of Conference 2009 for an economic cultural and sporting boycott of Israel, and call on Unison to join the scores of unions around the world who have endorsed the Palestinian United Call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. Further to that as an immediate sanction for the illegal attack on the Flotilla we call on the Government to expel the Israeli ambassador.

Conference condemns the Histadrut's statement of 31st May which supports uncritically, the Israeli Government's action against the Flotilla and agrees to suspend our relations with the Histadrut pending the outcome of our review of our relations as previously agreed by National Delegate Conference.

Carried

Brilliant Hard Talk Interview with Kenneth O'Keefe of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla

It is not often that one comes across an interview which merits the adjective 'brilliant'. However Kenneth O'Keefe's interview with the BBC, in 3 parts lives up to the billing as he lays into Israel’s bare-faced lies to justify its attack on the Mavi Marmara and the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. He points out that yes he helped disarm 2 navy commandos and separate them from their weapons, but that they were given medical treatment and not harmed, despite having killed 2 of his brothers.

O’Keefe, who has been a prominent peace activist and tore up his US passport in protest at the Iraq War, was savagely beaten up by the cowards of Israel’s so-called defence forces.

Below is an analysis of Israel’s fake vidoes and other false allegations, such as that their soldiers were shot or knifed or both. All of these allegations have now disappeared as have photos of arms shipments which dated back years.

Tony Greenstein

The Israeli Media’s Flotilla Fail

On 06.22.10, By Max

My summary of the Israeli media’s shambolic performance following the flotilla massacre was originally published here in Hebrew at Dvorit Shargal’s excellent Israeli media blog, Velvet Underground. The English version follows:

If the raid of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was a disaster for the Israel Defense Forces, its aftermath demonstrated an equally bewildering performance by the Israeli media. The IDF Spokesman’s Office churned out one misleading claim after another, each one more implausible than the next, seeking to implant in the public’s mind a version of events that bore little relation to reality. To a degree, this was to be expected; but it was startling to see how some of Israel’s most respected reporters lined up to serve as military stenographers, barely challenging the IDF’s rapidly changing versions of events. IDF claims about the flotilla passengers’ links to Al Qaida, anti-Semitic statements shouted at the Israeli Navy, and their terrorist intentions were eagerly broadcast by the Israeli media without a second thought. When independent reporters forced the IDF to retract or “clarify” all of these claims, Israeli news outlets refused to correct their errors, or covered them up without acknowledgment.

It so happened that I arrived in Israel for a research trip the day after the flotilla raid. As a result, I was able to do something which I always thought to be a very basic journalistic practice, so basic it’s supposed to be applied routinely: Asking an implicated party in a story to produce evidence for its claims. What I found bewildering is that at least judging from Israeli media reports, few, if any, mainstream reporters applied this practice, and when a visiting colleague did their job for them – nobody bothered to correct or withdraw their original report.

On June 2, the IDF disseminated a press release entitled, “Attackers of the IDF soldiers found to be Al Qaeda mercenaries.” The accusation was not accompanied by any conclusive evidence — the IDF reported that Mavi Marmara passengers were equipped with night-vision goggles (gasp!). This did not stop Yedioth’s Ron Ben-Yishai, who was embedded with the Navy commandos, from amplifying the baseless charge. Citing an “interrogation” of Marmara passengers — “lynchers,” he called them — Ben-Yishai wrote the same day, “Some among the [flotilla passengers] are believed to have ties with World Jihad groups, mainly Al Qaeda.” The article made no reference to any efforts on part of Ben Yishai to investigate this claim, nor did he seem to think to ask why the IDF was about to release dangerous operatives of Osama Bin Laden — presumably they would attack again, wouldn’t they?

On June 3, Israeli journalist Lia Tarachansky of the Real News Network and I placed calls to the IDF Spokesman’s Office to demand further evidence of the Marmara’s Al Qaeda ties. We received identical responses from spokespeople from the IDF’s Israel and North America desks: “We don’t have any evidence. The press release was based on information from the National Security Council.” Hours later, the IDF retracted its claim, changing the title of its press release to, “Attackers of IDF Soldiers Found Without Identification Papers.” Despite the official retraction, Ben-Yishai’s article remains uncorrected.

On June 4, the IDF released an audio clip purporting to consist of transmissions between the Mavi Marmara and a Naval warship. “Go back to Aushwitz!” a Marmara passenger shouted, according to the IDF. YNet and Haaretz reported on and reproduced the audio clip without investigating its authenticity. Forget that the voice uttering the anti-Semitic slur sounded like a mentally disturbed teenager; had reporters performed a cursory search of the IDF Spokeman’s Office website, they would have found a longer clip released on May 31 that featured a dramatically different exchange with the Marmara with no mention of Auschwitz. Further, the voice of flotilla organizer Huwaida Arraf was featured in the “Aushwitz” clip, yet Arraf was not aboard the Marmara (she was on the Challenger One). Could the IDF have doctored audio to exploit public hysteria surrounding the issue of anti-Semitism?

On my blog, I pointed out the discrepancies in the IDF’s footage and raised the question of doctoring. The next day, the IDF conceded that it had in fact doctored the footage, releasing a “clarification” and a new clip claiming to consist of the “full” exchange between the Navy and the flotilla. Unfortunately, the authenticity of the new clip was impossible to verify.

Despite the IDF’s admission, YNet and Haaretz have not corrected their original reports, though Haaretz has at least altered its headline. Once the doctoring was exposed, the New York Times covered the episode in detail, directing international attention to the triumph of independent online reporting and the apparent failure of Israel’s parochial press corps.

On June 7, Haaretz’s Anshel Pfeffer reported on an IDF press release claiming without evidence that five flotilla passengers had links to international terror. The press release was larded with highly implausible claims, including that Ken O’Keefe, who runs an aid organization with Tony Blair’s sister-in-law, was planning to train a Hamas commando unit in the Gaza Strip. When I called the IDF Spokesman’s Office, I learned that once again, no evidence was available to support their press release. “There is very limited intelligence we can give in this specific case,” Sgt. Chen Arad told me. “Obviously I’m unable to give you more information.” Did Pfeffer demand more evidence? If he did and was answered in the same manner as I did, why did Haaretz publish an unsubstantiated spin as fact?

Joined by Haaretz military correspondents Avi Isacharoff and Amos Harel, Pfeffer became a channel for another daytime deception by the IDF. On May 31, the three reporters produced an article based exclusively on testimony from Naval commandos — the flotilla passengers’ side of the story was ignored — claiming they had faced live fire and lynching attempts from Marmara passengers. Since the story was published, the IDF has produced scant evidence to support either accusation. The article was accompanied by a suspicious photo from the IDF Spokesman’s Office depicting a bearded Muslim man brandishing a knife and surrounded by photojournalists. Daylight beamed in from a window behind the man. Haaretz’s caption, which was sourced to the IDF, asserted that the photo was taken “after” the commandos had boarded the Marmara. However, the commandos raided the ship at night, while the photo was taken during the day. Once again, the IDF’s story was fishy.

I called Sgt. Arad at the IDF Spokesman’s Office to investigate. He told me he had no evidence to support the photo’s questionable caption. Soon after our phone conversation, Haaretz quietly altered the caption, removing its claim that the photo was taken “after” the commando raid. For nearly a week, the false photo caption had remained intact. Why did Haaretz suddenly change it? The only plausible explanation is that the paper received a tip from the IDF Spokesman’s Office. If true, the tip-off suggests a scandalous level of coordination between the Israeli military and the country’s media.

In the wake of the flotilla raid, Israeli journalists had a unique opportunity to lead the global media’s investigation into the bloodbath that occurred on the deck of the Mavi Marmara. After all, no one had better access to the military or the eyewitnesses aboard the flotilla. Instead, too many among the Israeli press corps allowed themselves to be conscripted into the IDF’s hapless information war, leaving the important task of investigating the raid to independent reporters who remembered to view claims by any nation’s military with extreme skepticism.

So why do well-connected, experienced reporters follow the IDF baton so willingly, and fail to follow up when IDF claims are retracted? Is it simple bias, a desire to present their military in the best possible light, a desire so strong they abandon their duty to their readers to verify their information? Are they afraid of sanctions, of losing contacts and access to information? Do they fear personal reprisals? Their readers, and the world media that still relies on Israeli journalism as a vital source of information, need to know.

Israel’s Quisling Palestinian Authority Tries to Sabotage Resolution Condemning Israel’s Attack on the Gaza Flotilla

It is unbelievable, but unfortunately true. Electronic Intifada, the most reliable and prestigious Palestinian site, has been leaked documents that conclusively prove that Mahmoud Abbas’s quisling PA actually sought to undermine a resolution from Turkey condemning Israel’s attack on the flotilla and even left it to the US’s catspaw Ban ki-Moon , the Secretary General, to decide whether Israel’s Committee of Endorsement, as a ‘credible inquiry’.

No doubt after having criticised the lack of independence of Israel’s Committee of Endorsement, , Banki Moon will do a Gaza using suitably soothing words to cover his withdrawal as the US whips him into line.

If ever confirmation were needed that the Palestinian Authority is no different morally from the Judenrat (Jewish Councils) which collaborated with the Nazis and whose leadership was mainly composed of Zionists, then this is it.

It is ironic that in its attempt to explain away its bias, the BBC used the fact that it had interviewed Palestinians, primarily from the PA, to explain its ‘neutrality’. In reality talking to Abbas and his monkeys and co. is no different from talking to the organ grinder, though it probably makes sense to talk to the one pulling the strings.

If ever anyone had any doubt, then now it is time for us also to break relations with the Palestinian Authority. Professor Manuel Hassassian notwithstanding.

Tony Greenstein

Exclusive: Leaked documents show PA undermined Turkey's push for UN flotilla probe
Asa Winstanley, The Electronic Intifada, 22 June 2010

A document sent to Ibrahim Khraishi, Palestinian Authority representative at the UN in Geneva, proves that the PA attempted to undermine Turkey's push for a UN Human Rights Council investigation in to Israel's attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla (Patrick Bertschmann/UN Photo)

The Palestinian Authority attempted to neutralize a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution condemning Israel's deadly attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, leaked UN and Palestinian Authority documents obtained by The Electronic Intifada show. Israel's 31 May attack killed nine Turkish citizens, including a dual US-Turkish citizen, and injured dozens of others aboard the Mavi Marmara in international waters.

The Electronic Intifada (EI) today publishes one of the documents it obtained, containing proposed amendments to a draft Human Rights Council (HRC) resolution. Annotations to the resolution indicate the Palestinian Authority (PA) stood with European Union (EU) countries against Turkey's calls for robust action to hold Israel accountable.

The PA's apparent collusion to shield Israel will recall for many its efforts to undermine UN action on the Goldstone report last October.

Apparently written by a European delegate, the document's amendments would have seriously diluted Turkey's original wording. The most damaging change would have removed the call for an independent UN investigation under HRC auspices. The document was provided to EI by a source who described how it was obtained inside the UN Office at Geneva, and asked to remain anonymous.

Turkey rejected the EU-PA amendments, and the final resolution on 2 June declared that the council "Decides to dispatch an independent international fact-finding mission to investigate violations of international humanitarian and human rights law resulting from the Israeli attacks" ("The Grave Attacks by Israeli Forces against the Humanitarian Boat Convoy," United Nations Human Rights Council, Fourteenth session, A/HRC/14/L.1, Adopted on 2 June 2010).

The language in the final resolution was very similar to the January 2009 HRC resolution which led to the Goldstone report, the independent investigation that detailed war crimes committed during Israel's 2008-09 invasion of Gaza.

Yet annotations apparently made by a European diplomat on the draft resolution obtained by EI make it clear that the PA consented to removal of this wording. A PA-backed alternative paragraph instead proposed that the HRC: "Requests the UN Secretary-General to ensure a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to the [sic] international standards."

This difference is key because the Turkish wording specifically calls for an investigation under the authority of the HRC. Yet the weaker EU-PA version would have allowed the UN secretary-general to merely endorse an Israeli-led inquiry provided he considered it "credible."

One of the document's annotations explains that "TK [Turkey] has checked with their capital and they are still under high-level instruction to insist on language as originally proposed." The note adds that "PA and PAK [Pakistan] can agree to both proposals" -- i.e to replace the independent HRC investigation with one merely approved by either the UN Security Council or the secretary-general.

Similarly, while Turkey had -- according to the annotations -- insisted that the resolution specifically condemn the Israeli attack, the "PA and PAK is [sic] OK with the EU proposal" to replace reference to "the outrageous attack by the Israeli forces against the humanitarian flotilla" with the more ambiguous "use of violence during the Israeli military operation." The EU alternative could be interpreted as including condemnation of "violence" by passengers attempting to defend themselves with water hoses or sticks against the unprovoked Israeli military attack in international waters.

Public statements by both French and UK diplomats support EI's interpretation of the document. After Turkey succeeded in getting its wording into the 2 June resolution, the UK and France abstained, and the Netherlands, Italy and the US voted against.

Explaining his country's abstention, French representative Jean-Baptiste Mattei expressed a wish for a "unanimous stand" and said his government "regret that proposals for amendments to the text made by the EU" were not accepted. Peter Gooderham for the United Kingdom concurred with this wish "to reach consensus" and even mentioned he was "grateful for the efforts of the co-sponsors in this regard" ("UN Human Rights Council, Archived Video", Fourteenth session, 2 June 2010).

The Palestinian Authority was one of the resolution's co-sponsors.

Imad Zuhairi, the Deputy Permanent Observer of the PA to the UN in Geneva, said in a phone interview that the position of his delegation was that "no matter if it's Geneva, the Human Rights Council, or the Security Council, there should be a transparent and international independent investigation committee in accordance with international standards."

Zuhairi claimed his delegation had been "not against or with" the EU effort to scupper the HRC investigation. He criticized the Security Council resolution wording as "ambiguous" and said the PA would "reject by all means any internal investigation" by Israel. He added: "what we care for is our [Palestinian] people in the occupied Gaza Strip."

When questioned specifically on the comment in the document that the PA can "agree" to removal of the HRC investigation, Zuhairi said the comment was inaccurate, and said that whoever had written it was mistaken.

However, the annotations in the draft HRC resolution leaked to EI are corroborated by a second leaked document which reveals an earlier attempt to dilute the HRC resolution, but this time directly by the PA itself.

The second document, and the email to which it was attached, were leaked by a source unconnected to the first document. EI was given access to the second document on condition it not be published.

The second document is in the widely-used Microsoft Word format and the "Track Changes" feature has been used, so the exact changes made to it are unambiguous. An examination of the Word document's metadata reveals that it was initially created by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs ("Disisleri Bakanligi") before the PA added its changes.

The email to which it was attached was written by Feda Abdelhady Nasser, a diplomat at the PA's UN mission in New York, and sent to Dr. Ibrahim Khraishi, the PA representative at the UN in Geneva where the HRC is based. It is copied to Riyad Mansour, the head of the PA mission at the UN in New York.

Abdelhady Nasser explains that the attached document contains the PA mission in New York's edits to the draft resolution being proposed for adoption by the HRC.

The document itself proves that the PA representatives replaced the proposed Turkish wording in which the HRC "Decides to dispatch an independent international fact finding mission ..." with much vaguer and more indirect language that: "Calls upon the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in cooperation with the Secretary-General, to dispatch a fact finding mission ..."

This language would have removed the entire issue from the auspices of the HRC. Taken together, the evidence indicates that the PA was directly involved in trying to dilute and undermine Turkey's robust position and to protect Israel from accountability.

Recent reports suggest that the "investigation conforming to international standards" approved by the Security Council and the US administration will be conducted by Israel itself, observed by Northern Ireland politician David Trimble who recently co-founded an organization called Friends of Israel, and Canadian Brigadier-General Ken Watkin.

A separate investigation by the HRC, as stipulated in the 2 June resolution that passed with 32 votes in favor (three against, nine abstentions) would represent a challenge to the authority of the Israeli investigation. If the Goldstone report is a precedent, an HRC investigation is far more likely to be critical of Israeli actions.

In October 2009, the Goldstone report was finally adopted by the HRC. Despite the PA initially withdrawing support for the South African jurist's investigation into Israel's 2008-09 onslaught against the Gaza Strip, Mahmoud Abbas, who extended his expired term as PA president under contested "emergency laws," was forced into a humiliating U-turn after an outpouring of disgust and protest from Palestinians around the world.