© AP Photo/Dita AlangkaraA Muslim student holds up a poster during a rally against Israel's deadly commando raid on ships taking humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip, in Jakarta, Indonesia, Tuesday, June 1, 2010.
Monday's assault of the Israel Defense Forces on the flotilla of humanitarian aid which was heading to the besieged Gaza Strip from Turkey left at least 16 dead and many others wounded. Never mind that Israel's criminal action violated the 4th Geneva 1949 Convention. Just imagine for a single moment that Iran had carried out the carnage instead of Israel. Simply replace the two names and then read the news as reported by CNN: "The Free Gaza Movement, one of the organizers of the aid, said that Iranian commandos dropped from a helicopter onto the deck of one of the ships early Monday and immediately opened fire on unarmed civilians."
Since September 2000, Israel has killed more than 6,300 Palestinians, most of whom were children and defenseless civilians. Israel has also demolished more than 25,000 Palestinian homes since 1967. It possesses at least 200 nuclear warheads in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 487. Interestingly, it receives around $7 million of military aid from the U.S. per day. 7,383 Palestinians are political prisoners in Israel. The racist regime of Israel has built 223 settlements on Palestinians' confiscated lands. Over the six-year period between September 2000 and February 2006, 36,589 Palestinians were injured by the Israeli forces, of whom 3,530 Palestinians were permanently disabled or maimed. Shockingly, this six-year period was witness to the confiscation of 249,680 km2 of Palestinian land. Israeli forces even uprooted Palestinian trees - 1,187,762 from 2000 to 2006. This shows the nature of the brutal regime of Israel which is at odds with nature herself, let alone human beings.
Although it's practically unthinkable, try to replace Iran and Israel, imagining for a single moment that Iran is the occupying state that kills at least two foreign civilians a day, beleaguers some 1.5 million people who don't have any access to the barest rudiments of their daily life and live under continuous threat of military assault and are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Would the so-called international community tolerate it? Would a simple "expression of concern" from the UN Secretary General suffice with regards to such incessant viciousness, if it had been anyone other than Israel?
Let's be honest with ourselves. Israel is enjoying unconditional immunity from all international rules, laws and regulations and acts like an autonomous state with no respect for its obligations and responsibilities. After the dissolution of South Africa's apartheid regime, which was recently revealed to have had a nuclear deal with Tel Aviv in 1975, Israel is the only apartheid entity on the planet. Despite this fact, Israel's increasingly tenuous existence is repeatedly propped up through the largely unwavering support of the world's superpowers.
The United States and its European allies have shown unquestioning support for Israel throughout its 62 year existence. In the face of some of the most egregious crimes committed by the Middle Eastern statelet, such as Operation Cast Lead in the Winter of 2008 - 2009 (which led to the termination of Israel's diplomatic relations with four countries; Venezuela, Bolivia, Qatar and Mauritania), the Western 'super-powers' stood firm in their support of Israeli bloodletting.
The international reactions to the latest round of Israeli brutality in a pre-dawn attack on sleeping civilians on a humanitarian aid flotilla, which included 700 peace activists from different nations, while unpardonably deplorable, is hardly surprising.
The Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper who has several times attacked Iran over its nuclear program has simply expressed his regret over the deaths and injuries which "occurred", shrugging off the responsibility of the atrocious perpetrator and the architect of the massacre. "Canada deeply regrets the loss of life and the injuries suffered. We are currently looking for more information in order to shed light on what exactly happened," Harper's ridiculous and pusillanimous statement reads. Canada is still looking for information about what has happened!? Maybe the Israel Defense Forces can provide the answers! Maybe the IDF can tell Harper: "The peace activists had not coordinated with us as to the shipping of humanitarian aid into Gaza, so we murdered them."
The reaction of the other countries was equally spineless. Some of them summoned the Israeli ambassadors for "clarifications", some of them regretted the death of civilians and sympathized with the families of the dead, some of them expressed their "serious concern" over the attack and the rest remained indifferent as the Israeli officials gave their strong backing to the massacre, leaving thousands of unanswered questions and much ambiguity about the modality of international relations which make a fabricated state such as Israel so impervious to international law that nobody can stop it.
The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) 2010 review conference, in which 189 countries unanimously called on Israel to put its nuclear activities and facilities under the IAEA's comprehensive safeguards, was similarly arrogantly rejected by Tel Aviv. To paraphrase the Israeli response: "We are not an NPT signatory and therefore we don't need its supervision; we want to possess our nuclear weapons to use them whenever we deem necessary!"
The 'international community', (a euphemistic term to describe the United States and its European friends), that gave birth to this enfant terrible will now have to tolerate the consequences of the great mistake they made 60 years ago. From the very beginning, it was clear that the establishment of the Israeli regime would give rise to widespread insecurity, anxiety and disorder in the Middle East. Now that Israel is beginning to expand the frontiers of its aggressiveness in an open and flagrant way, it is not hard to foresee the days when European and American civilians are massacred by Zionist foot-soldiers in the name of defending Israel's right to exist as an apartheid state. Indeed, it seems that the world has witnessed the first instance of this in yesterday's attack on the Freedom Flotilla.
But I come back to my main question; what would happen if Iran, my country, had carried out such a vicious and unprovoked act? Iran has not attacked or occupied another country for over 100 years; has never killed any foreign civilian under fallacious pretexts; would Iran have been treated the same way as Israel? If not, why not?
...with love from Israel.
I don't know about this attack on these ships. Something is afoot here we aren't in on, like for example, the sponsors of this organization are Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, the couple that kicked off the Weathermen Underground (operatives only) in Chicago back in the sixties who bombed and killed people in the United States.
The Weather Underground was/is a terrorist organization. If there is a 'war on terror' seems to me Israel had every right to bring force down on these ships.
Here is what is being referred to:
[Link]
Do we ever have the homework to do.