UN Report: At least six of the Mavi Marmara killings "summary executions".
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rights, freedoms and repression |
news report 
Thursday September 23, 2010 18:08
by TD - Free Palestine Campaign
"Clear evidence" of wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment and wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health – all crimes under the Geneva Convention (Guardian)
Yesterday, the UN Human Rights Council issued, a 56 page damning indictment of Israeli actions on the night of May 31st last when the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was attacked in international waters resulting in the murders of 9 humanitarian activists and serious injuries to many of the other participants. The report recommends the prosecution of the Israelis concerned but led by the US and the Quisling Palestinian Authority, no doubt, the "international community" will be strenuously resisting this.? For as Arun Gupta brilliantly and witheringly puts it in his Indypendent article; The Victim that is Israel http://www.indypendent.org/2010/06/23/the-victim/
Image by Emily Henochowicz who lost her left eye after being shot in the face with an Israeli tear gas canister at the Qalandia Checkpoint near Ramallah
Excerpts
• On the basis of the forensic and firearm evidence, at least six of the killings can be characterised as extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions (page 39/section 172).
• Live ammunition was used from the helicopter onto the top deck prior to the descent of the soldiers ... The Mission has found no evidence to suggest that any of the passengers used firearms or that any firearms were taken on board the ship (page 27).
• According to forensic analysis, tattooing around the wound in his face (Furkan Dogan) indicates that the shot was delivered at point blank range.Furthermore, the trajectory of the wound, from bottom to top, together with a vital abrasion to the left shoulder that could be consistent with the bullet exit point, is compatible with the shot being received while he was lying on the ground on his back (page 30).
• One passenger, a Greek national, was severely beaten for refusing to provide his fingerprints to the Israeli authorities. The passenger was dragged along the ground for some distance and then surrounded by a large group of Israeli officials who proceeded to beat him severely, including the deliberate fracture of his leg. His cries for help were ignored, and one witness noted uniformed officials, both male and female, laughing at him. The passenger’s broken leg was not treated until after he had left Israel (page 43/section 190).
• Forensic evidence shows that he (İbrahim Bilgen) was shot in the side of the head with a soft baton round at such close proximity and that an entire bean bag and its wadding penetrated the skull and lodged in the brain. He had a further bruise on the right flank consistent with another beanbag wound. The wounds are consistent with the deceased initially being shot from soldiers on board the helicopter above and receiving a further wound to the head while lying on the ground, already wounded (page 30).
Comments (6 of 6)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6Press Release: IPSC says Irish Government must act on findings of UN HRC Report into Israel's Flotilla attack
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/97725
IPSC Briefing Document: The findings of the UN Human Rights Council Inquiry into Israel’s Flotilla attack: An illegal blockade, an illegal attack, unlawful executions and use of “extreme” and “unnecessary” violence against passengers: Irish Government must take meaningful action to end Israeli impunity
http://www.indymedia.ie/attachments/sep2010/1._ipsc_bri...t.pdf
The UNHRC Report is essential, powerful, riveting reading that angers me beyond words, but, thankfully, not beyond activism. It eviscerates all the lies, obfuscation, hasbara and black propaganda oozed by Israel and its fellow travellers in the western media, most egregiously by the unspeakable Jane Corbin in the BBC's Panorama "Investigation": Death in the Med.
For more on the brilliant, Jewish American art student, Emily Henochowicz who lost her eye protesting in Palestine against the Mavi Marmara massacre, see her Democracy Now interview?
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More of her art can be seen on her blog http://thirstypixels.blogspot.com/
Emily has spirit and chutzpah?
Curiously, from normally progressive websites such as Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, Counterpunch, ZNet and the Palestine Chronicle there is a dearth of coverage - Democracy Now gives it fleeting mention - on the UN HRC Report.
Chris McGreal in the Guardian does a copy and paste job of claim and counter claim with no attempt at analysis or telling comment: A United Nations panel of human rights experts has accused Israel of war crimes through willful killing, unnecessary brutality and torture in its "clearly unlawful" assault on a ship attempting to break the blockade of Gaza in May in which nine Turkish activists died. McGreal "balances" this with: Israel swiftly dismissed the accusations as "politicised and extremist" ... Last month, Israel's military commander, Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, defended his forces' use of live ammunition during the assault on the ship, saying that commandos had not expected to meet such violence from the activists and were forced to defend themselves when they came under attack.
Jesus wept!
The Israeli "liberal" newspaper is reporting that Israeli PM, Netanyahu, is of the view that the United Nations report on the Gaza flotilla raid is "biased and distorted" and the group responsible is "obsessed with targeting Israel." ... "The entire world saw videos of soldiers coming onto the deck of the Marmara ship into a pre-planned, violent ambush of terror-supporters who tried to kill with clubs and knives," Further, the Israeli Foreign Ministry opined that the Human Rights Council had a "biased, politicized and extremist approach". Barak Ravid finishes his report with a flourish: The Human Rights Council, based in Geneva, was re-established in 2006 by then UN Security General, Kofi Annan, following accusations that its predecessor, the UN Commission on Human Rights,openly and systematically discriminated against Israel. But the new body has also passed several resolutions condemning Israel over the past few years, especially for its actions in the Palestinian territories, and is often of accused of unfair bias against Israel.
Now that it's clear the UN HRC is obsessively targetting and systematically discriminating against Israel, it's to be expected that, shortly, Obama will be commanding cypher-man, Ban Ki-moon, to "re-establish" that body further to Israel's taste and desire.?
They are reporting a 33ft catamaran with Jews, including a holocaust survivor, on board fron britain, Israel and the US, on its way to Gaza to demonstrate that not all Jews support the boneheads in Likud.Left Cyprus today.
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