Israel Intelligence News Digest 4

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press Monday June 07, 2010 19:45 by Citizen X

IDF Admits It Doctored Flotilla Audio Clip... Israeli MP tells of her terror on aid ship... Israeli Grocer calls for same MP's death... Jewish flotilla to break Gaza siege... Rabbi Lerner's Home Attacked by Right-Wing Zionists... Uri Avnery attacked by rightist thugs... Exodus: 2010... Failure of the American Jewish Establishment... Our Enemies, the Israelis?... Defending the indefensible: a how-to guide... Beyond the Flotilla, the Crackdown Continues... Israel and the psychology of "never again"... Drowning in the Law of the Sea... Fury over raid isolates Israel

http://maxblumenthal.com/2010/06/idf-admits-it-doctored...ract/
Report: IDF Admits It Doctored Flotilla Audio Clip. Washington Post’s Kessler Must Retract
06.05.10
Max
The IDF admitted today in a press release that it doctored audio footage from its exchanges with the Gaza flotilla in order to paint the flotilla passengers as anti-Semites.
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http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=39403
Report: Israeli MP tells of her terror on aid ship
Witness: Israelis fired on Mavi Marmara few minutes before commandos went on board ship.
By Jonathan Cook - NAZARETH, Israel
Haneen Zoubi said Israeli naval vessels had surrounded the flotilla’s flagship, the Mavi Marmara, and fired on it a few minutes before commandos abseiled from a helicopter directly above them.

Terrified passengers had been forced off the deck when water was sprayed at them. She said she was not aware of any provocation or resistance by the passengers, who were all unarmed.

She added that within minutes of the raid beginning, three bodies had been brought to the main room on the upper deck in which she and most other passengers were confined. Two had gunshot wounds to the head, in what she suggested had been executions.

Two other passengers slowly bled to death in the room after Israeli soldiers ignored messages in Hebrew she had held up at the window calling for medical help to save them. She said she saw seven other passengers seriously wounded.
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http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=177648
Report: Facebook user calls for MK Zoabi's death
JPOST.COM STAFF AND REBECCA ANNA STOIL
06/06/2010
Members of the public have been responding sharply online to MK Haneen Zoabi's (Balad) participation in the Free Gaza Flotilla and recent statements in the press castigating the actions of the IDF soldiers and the government.

A small market owner from central Israel was arrested by police for inciting an assassination of Zoabi, Channel 2 reported on Sunday.

The man allegedly posted on Facebook that he would give "free groceries for life to the person who who kills MK Haneen Zoabi."
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http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3899915,00.html
Report: Jewish flotilla to break Gaza siege
German Jewish group prepares flotilla to protest Israel's blockade on Gaza. 'Activists frightened, but not by Hamas,' member of organization says
Aviel Magnezi
06.06.10
The German-Jewish organization Jewish Voice for Peace in the Middle East is preparing a Jewish flotilla to the Gaza Strip. "We intend to leave around July," a member of the organization, Kate Leitrer, said to Ynet. "We have one small craft so far, in which there will be between 12 and 16 people, mostly Jews."

Leitrer, herself Jewish, said there was great interest in joining. "Getting another boat means more expenses, and we're discussing this possibility," she said. "Because of limited space, there will be school equipment, candy, and mainly musical equipment, and there'll be musicians aboard who'll teach the children of Gaza. They need to see that Jews are not what how they are drawn in their eyes."

Leitrer also claimed that Israel acted criminally in its lethal raid on the Gaza flotilla last Monday.
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http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/vandalism
Rabbi Lerner's Home Attacked by Right-Wing Zionists
A Press Release from Tikkun Magazine on May 3, 2010
Berkeley police today confirmed that the attack on Rabbi Lerner's home late Monday May 2nd or early morning Monday May 3rd was in fact a crime and was being investigated. This followed a week in which Rabbi Lerner received several verbal death threats on the phone and lots of hate mail to him and to Tikkun...
Needless to say, this latest attack, on Lerner's home, has caused great concern to his family. It should also raise deep concerns about protecting freedom of the press (Lerner is attacked because he is the editor of Tikkun magazine). And it should provide incentive for the Jewish community to stop labeling people as anti-Semitic for the “crime” of critiquing Israeli governmental policies toward Palestinians. To take a flagrant example that may have been part of the causal chain leading to the attack on Lerner’s home, two days before that attack Lerner was attacked personally by Alan Dershowitz. In an article labeling all the rabbis who had publicly protested against Goldstone’s exclusion from his grandson’s bar mitzvah, Dershowitz, writing in the Jerusalem Post and on Huffington Post April 29, labeled the protesters “Rabbis For Hamas.” He went on to say that Lerner was the worst among them. Dershowitz is well known for defending the alleged right of Israel and the Jewish people (and Bush) to take pre-emptive action against “suspected terrorists” through “targeted assassinations.” So here Lerner is being identified as supporting terrorists, coming from an advocate for those who take violent action against those “suspects.” It isn’t hard to see how others would follow through against Lerner, and against others in the future, perhaps even with the kind of violence that now leads some right wing Jews to be violent against the Israeli army. The Dershowitz quotes are worse than you would believe: read it at cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/dershowitz/entry/it_is_goldstone_who_is

And we at Tikkun know that this dynamic of demeaning and incitement too frequently leads to violence. Please be aware that these same right-wing Zionist forces state openly that they believe Obama is trying to destroy the state of Israel and that he is an anti-Semite. So these are issues that should concern everyone in America. The attack on Lerner should be challenged now, before it becomes a new level of “acceptable” behavior in the Jewish world.

What can you do? Let people know that this kind of thing is happening in the Jewish world to people who critique Israeli policies. And demand that the Jewish organizations, newspapers and official bodies state clearly that they oppose any efforts to label as “anti-Semitic” or “self-hating Jews” those whose criticisms are focused solely on the policies of the government of the State of Israel. Help alert the general public in the US to help their Jewish neighbors by letting them know that by using the term “anti-Semitic” or “self-hating” against those whose offense has been to strongly critique Israeli policy is to risk emptying those terms of the power that they might otherwise have to deter racism against Jews.
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http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/06/06/uri-avnery-isra...-all/
Report: Uri Avnery attacked by rightist thugs
Uri Avnery: Israel; “The Government Is Drowning Us All”
...a dozen rightist thugs attacked Gush Shalom’s 86 year old Uri Avnery, when he was on his way from the rally in the company of his wife, Rachel, Adam Keller and his wife Beate Siversmidt. Avnery had just entered a taxi, when a dozen rightist thugs attacked him and tried to drag him out of the car. At the critical moment, the police arrived and made it possible for the car to leave. Gush spokesman Adam Keller said: “These cowards did not dare to attack us when we were many, but they were heroes when they caught Avnery alone.”

The incident took place when the more than 10 thousand demonstrators were dispersing, after marching through the streets of Tel Aviv in protest against the attack on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

Not only was this one of the largest peace demonstrations for a long time, but also the first time that all parts of the Israeli peace camp – from Gush Shalom and Hadash to Peace Now and Meretz – did unite for common action

The main slogan was “The Government Is Drowning All of Us” and “We must Row towards Peace!” – alluding to the attack on the flotilla. The protesters called in unison “Jews and Arabs Refuse to be Enemies!”
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http://original.antiwar.com/avnery/2010/06/06/exodus-2010/
Comment: Exodus 2010
Uri Avnery
June 07, 2010
On the high seas, outside territorial waters, the ship was stopped by the navy. The commandos stormed it. Hundreds of people on the deck resisted; the soldiers used force. Some of the passengers were killed, scores injured. The ship was brought into harbor; the passengers were taken off by force. The world saw them walking on the quay, men and women, young and old, all of them worn out, one after another, each being marched between two soldiers…

The ship was called Exodus 1947. It left France in the hope of breaking the British blockade, which was imposed to prevent ships loaded with Holocaust survivors from reaching the shores of Palestine.
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http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jun/10/fa...false
Comment: The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment
Peter Beinart
June 10, 2010

Luntz’s task was to figure out what had gone wrong. When he probed the students’ views of Israel, he hit up against some firm beliefs. First, “they reserve the right to question the Israeli position.” These young Jews, Luntz explained, “resist anything they see as ‘group think.’” They want an “open and frank” discussion of Israel and its flaws. Second, “young Jews desperately want peace.” When Luntz showed them a series of ads, one of the most popular was entitled “Proof that Israel Wants Peace,” and listed offers by various Israeli governments to withdraw from conquered land. Third, “some empathize with the plight of the Palestinians.” When Luntz displayed ads depicting Palestinians as violent and hateful, several focus group participants criticized them as stereotypical and unfair, citing their own Muslim friends...
Hebrew University Professor Ze’ev Sternhell is an expert on fascism and a winner of the prestigious Israel Prize. Commenting on Lieberman and the leaders of Shas in a recent Op-Ed in Haaretz, he wrote, “The last time politicians holding views similar to theirs were in power in post–World War II Western Europe was in Franco’s Spain.” With their blessing, “a crude and multifaceted campaign is being waged against the foundations of the democratic and liberal order.” Sternhell should know. In September 2008, he was injured when a settler set off a pipe bomb at his house...
But there is a different Zionist calling, which has never been more desperately relevant. It has its roots in Israel’s Independence Proclamation, which promised that the Jewish state “will be based on the precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew prophets,” and in the December 1948 letter from Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and others to The New York Times, protesting right-wing Zionist leader Menachem Begin’s visit to the United States after his party’s militias massacred Arab civilians in the village of Deir Yassin. It is a call to recognize that in a world in which Jewish fortunes have radically changed, the best way to memorialize the history of Jewish suffering is through the ethical use of Jewish power.
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http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/06/06/our-enemi...elis/
Comment: Our Enemies, the Israelis
When will we wake up to the threat?
Justin Raimondo
June 07, 2010
The lawlessness and brutality that we saw in the attack on the flotilla is inherent in the nature of Zionism, which, after all, came to birth at a time when the world was rife with nationalism of the most virulent sort. Liberal friends of Israel look on in horror as the Jewish state evolves into a combination of South Africa under apartheid and the new North Korea. Yet ideology has its own inexorable logic: it’s hardly an anomaly that the early followers of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the leading figure in what is today the ruling party in Israel, were attracted to and full of praise for the “blood and iron” doctrine of Mussolini – and the feeling was mutual. Not for nothing did Il Duce allow Jabotinsky’s “revisionist” faction to set up a training camp in Italy for its naval fighters in the Irgun, the forerunner of today’s IDF.
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http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/06/02/defendin...guide
Comment: Defending the indefensible: a how-to guide
Stephen M. Walt
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
To help students prepare for future acts of diplomatic casuistry, and to raise public consciousness about these tactics, I offer as a public service this handy 21-step guide: "How to Defend the Indefensible and Get Away With It." The connection to recent events is obvious, but such practices are commonplace in many countries and widely practiced by non-state actors as well.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-brant-rosen/beyond-....html
Comment: Beyond the Flotilla, the Crackdown Continues
Rabbi Brant Rosen
June 2, 2010
As I read the myriad of reactions to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla tragedy last Sunday, I'm struck by one recurring theme: the sense of astonishment that these activists responded to the Israeli Navy with violence.

In other words, they didn't act according to the script. They didn't behave like proper practitioners of civil disobedience. The implication: if they had responded like the non-violent activists they were purported to be, this whole tragedy could well have been avoided.

There's only problem with this calculus: non-violent Palestinian protests have actually been ongoing throughout the Occupied Territories for years - and the Israeli military has been responding to them with much the same kind of brutality that was used against the passengers of the Mavi Marmara.
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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/06/05/never_agai....html
Saturday, Jun 5, 2010
Comment: Israel and the psychology of "never again"
The wounds of its people's tragic history have trapped Israel in a cycle of violence
Sandy Tolan
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http://original.antiwar.com/peter-casey/2010/06/06/isra...bate/
Comment: Drowning in the Law of the Sea
Israel’s attack on the Free Gaza flotilla
Peter Casey
June 07, 2010
In its many trials in the court of public opinion, Israel and its supporters have become adept at polishing turds. The process begins with asking and answering the question, “Did the law allow us to do this?” If the answer is “yes,” as it always will be, its critics are terrified of leaving that claim un-rebutted. And so, like moths to a flame, they respond. Once they do, the defenders of Israel’s actions are on safe ground. They don’t need to prove ironclad, irrefutable legal justification. All they need to do is persuade the target audiences that the law, the facts, or both are so complicated that anyone, especially in the heat of battle, could have made a mistake.

So it is the case with the Jewish state’s interdiction of the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara and its five companion ships, en route to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, who by all credible accounts have been held captive for several years in a virtual – and not so virtual – open cesspool, in near-starvation subsistence, dependent upon their captors for survival. As ridiculous as it may sound to ordinary people, Israel argues that it was entirely within its rights under international law for its warships in the dead of night to surround unarmed civilian vessels laden with crayons and medicine, 80 nautical miles out at sea, disrupt their communications, send ninja-like armed commandos sliding down ropes from helicopters to the decks, kill at least nine passengers, kidnap the rest back to Israel, deny them access to lawyers, and then “deport” them, but not before confiscating anything they may have used – cameras, cell phones, laptops, etc. – to record the attack.

While this sounds absurd, there is an even greater absurdity. The legal argument in support of Israel’s brutality is not obviously wrong.
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http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/eric_margo....html
Report: Fury over raid isolates Israel
Relations between Jewish state and longtime ally Turkey may never recover after foolish flotilla attack
Monday, June 7, 2010
By ERIC MARGOLIS, QMI Agency
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