[HCCN] Amy Goodman, Ali Abunimah, Adam Shapiro -- Freedom Flotilla

[Judith Robbins]

"And so, what the Freedom Flotilla was, was it was a peaceful,  
unarmed people’s navy, assembled to fill the void and the vacuum  
where the Obama administration should be, where the UN Security  
Council should be, where the Arab governments should be, where the  
European Union should be." -- Ali Abunimah

[scroll down to read an update on the status of some prisoners]

Rush transcript from Amy Goodman's show June 1, 2010



AMY GOODMAN: We’ve been here in Louisiana going through southern  
Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta since last Friday, and our  
intention today was to bring you a special for the hour, but because  
of events in the Middle East, we are switching gears. And we’ll bring  
you many of the voices, we’ll introduce you to many of the people we  
met, in the coming days. Right now we turn, though, to the Middle  
East. Anjali?

ANJALI KAMAT: That’s right, Amy. We turn now to the Middle East. It  
was early Monday morning as Israeli soldiers stormed the Gaza-bound  
international aid convoy called the Freedom Flotilla in international  
waters about forty miles off the coast of Gaza. The six ships had  
nearly 700 international activists on board and 10,000 tons of  
humanitarian aid. They were aiming to break the three-year-long siege  
of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli commandos landed on the lead ship in the convoy, the Turkish  
Mavi Marmara, which had about 600 activists on board. These are  
excerpts from the raw video captured by an Al Jazeera producer on the  
ship minutes before the ship lost satellite contact with the world.  
It features two of the journalists on board.

HASSAN GHANI: This is the MV Marmara. This is Hassan Ghani reporting  
for Press TV. We have had several injuries here. One is critical. He  
has been injured in the head. We think he may die if he does not  
receive medical treatment immediately. Another person being taken  
past in front of me right now has been seriously injured. We are  
being hit by tear gas, stun grenades. We have navy ships on either  
side and helicopters overhead. We are being attacked from every  
single side. This is in international waters, not Israeli waters, not  
in the sixty-eight-mile exclusion zone. We are being attacked in  
international waters, completely illegally.
JAMAL ELSHAYYAL: To confirm and update you, the Israeli navy has now  
boarded the Mavi Marmara, where 600 civilians have been trying to  
deliver aid to Gaza. Live munition has been fired. There are reports  
that one person has been killed. Several, I have seen with my eyes,  
have been injured. We’ve seen them. Doctors trying to work to heal  
the injured. The organizers onboard the Mavi Marmara, after two  
people have been confirmed killed by the Israeli army, have now asked  
all the passengers to go inside. They’ve raised the white flag, this  
after Israeli commandos descended upon the ship in international  
water from a helicopter, as well as surrounded it by vessels from all  
sides. Tens of people, civilians, have been injured. There are still  
sounds of live fire, despite the white flag being raised. Tens of  
people have been injured, two people have been killed, onboard the  
ship which holds 600 activists, parliamentarians, women, children and  
the elderly, all of whom are civilians. Organizers have asked  
everyone to go inside, so this is where we shall head. Jamal  
Elshayyal, Al Jazeera, onboard the Mavi Marmara in the international  
waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

ANJALI KAMAT: That was the last bits of video from an Al Jazeera  
producer onboard the Mavi Marmara before losing satellite contact  
with the world early Monday morning. At least ten and as many,  
according to some reports, as nineteen civilians onboard the ship  
have been reported to have died in the attack. There has been a near- 
complete blackout of information.

Israeli troops proceeded to seize the Mavi Marmara and the five other  
ships and take them to the port of Ashdod. Hundreds of activists are  
being detained in an Israeli prison, and nearly fifty others have  
been deported. Israel has still not released the names of the dead,  
the injured, and the detained international civilians.

Three Turkish activists who were deported back to Istanbul late  
Monday night spoke to journalists. This is Mutlu Tiryaki described  
the ordeal onboard the Mavi Marmara.

MUTLU TIRYAKI: [translated] When we stepped on the board, they  
emerged from helicopters and military boats and attacked us. They  
approached our vessel with military ships after issuing a military  
warning. We told them we were unarmed. Our sole weapon was water.

ANJALI KAMAT: The United Nations Security Council has condemned the  
attack and called for the immediate release of the ships and the  
civilians held by Israel and also called for an impartial  
investigation. All of the permanent member of the Security Council  
except for the United States explicitly called for Israel’s blockade  
of the Gaza Strip to be lifted.

Turkey has compared Israel’s actions to state terrorism. At the  
emergency Security Council meeting Monday, Turkish Foreign Minister  
Ahmet Davutoglu described the incident as murder and piracy.

AHMET DAVUTOGLU: This action was uncalled for. Israeli actions  
constitute a grave breach of international law. In simplest terms,  
this is tantamount to banditry and piracy. It is murder conducted by  
a state. It has no excuses, no justification whatsoever. A nation  
state that follows this path has lost its legitimacy as a respectful  
member of the international community.

AMY GOODMAN: But Israel insists that its troops had acted in self- 
defense after being attacked by those onboard. Israel’s deputy  
permanent representative to the United Nations, Daniel Carmon, said  
the civilians on the ship were not peace activists.

DANIEL CARMON: What kind of peace activists use knives, clubs, fire  
from weapons stolen from soldiers and other weapons to attack  
soldiers who boarded the ship in accordance with international law?  
What kind of humanitarian activists, some with known terrorist  
history, embrace Hamas, a terrorist organization that openly shuns a  
two-state solution and calls for Israel’s destruction, defying  
conditions set by the international community and the Quartet? The  
answer is clear: there are not peace activists.

AMY GOODMAN: Although governments across the world have strongly  
condemned Israel’s attack, the United States says it’s still  
gathering the facts and regrets the loss of life. This is the US  
deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Alejandro Wolff.

ALEJANDRO WOLFF: We are working to ascertain the facts. We expect a  
credible and transparent investigation and strongly urge the Israeli  
government to investigate the incident fully. As I stated in the  
council chamber in December 2008, when we were confronted with a  
similar situation, mechanisms exist for the transfer of humanitarian  
assistance to Gaza by member states and groups that want to do so.  
These non-provocative and non-confrontational mechanisms should be  
the ones used for the benefit of all those in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, thousands of people in cities across the  
world, from Turkey to Europe to the United States to Pakistan, have  
come out on the streets to protest the bloody attack on the  
humanitarian aid convoy.

PROTESTER: [translated] This is totally inhumane. None can defend  
this inhumane violence.
PROTESTERS: Free, free Gaza! Free, free Gaza! Stop Israeli war crimes!
PROTESTER: I’m here today because I’m an American Jew and I totally  
am opposed to what Israel is doing. Killing those people on the boat  
who were trying to bring material aid to a starving, imprisoned  
people is an insane crime, and it doesn’t represent the values of  
Jews and all people around the world.
PROTESTER: [translated] The truth is that Israel is not the only one  
responsible. All the official Arab regimes are responsible for this  
crime. Obama is responsible. The international community is  
responsible. The International Criminal Court, they became  
responsible when they remained silent about the crimes being  
committed against the people of Gaza.
PROTESTER: Continuously breaking international law, and it has never  
lived up to any United Nation resolution. And we have seen a lot of  
times that both the European Union and the United States have told  
Israel that they went too far.
PROTESTER: [translated] It depends on people. We have to force our  
governments to react. We have to force Europe to react, because this  
is a humiliation to Europe. A cocky mobster who dares to do what  
Israel has done in the Mediterranean, in international waters—what  
kind of security do we have in the Mediterranean? That’s the question  
we should ask ourselves.
PROTESTER: I know the people onboard. They are people from all walks  
of life. There are teachers. There are professors. There are  
journalists. There are politicians. There are cleaners. These are  
people like you and me who believe in taking aid to poor people. And  
these are the people that are being gunned down in cold blood by  
Israel today.

AMY GOODMAN: Voices of shock and outrage from around the world over  
the Israeli commando attack on the Gaza peace flotilla. This is  
Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. When we  
come back, we’ll be joined by a number of guests. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We’re in New Orleans, Louisiana, here to cover BP and  
the geyser that continues to gush from the bottom of the sea. But  
because of events in the Middle East, we have switched gears today to  
cover what happened, the Israeli commando attack on the Free Gaza  
Freedom Flotilla.

We’re joined by a number of guests, but we’re going to begin in New  
York with Adam Shapiro. He’s the co-founder of the International  
Solidarity Movement and a board member of the Free Gaza Movement, one  
of the groups that coordinated the Freedom Flotilla. His wife Huwaida  
Arraf, the chair of the Free Gaza Movement, was on the flotilla.

Adam, can you explain to us what you understand happened on—well, it  
was early Sunday morning in the—what happened to the flotilla?

ADAM SHAPIRO: The boats were making their way, the six ships, in  
international waters, far in international waters. They were still at  
least fifty miles offshore, and so well off the coasts of Israel and  
Gaza. And as they were making their way, Israeli warships surrounded  
the flotilla, all the ships, and the first ship to come under attack  
by helicopter, with commandos coming down from helicopter, as we’ve  
seen on the media, on the footage, was this big Turkish ship, the  
Mavi Marmara. And soldiers, as they came down, started opening fire  
immediately, as was reported by the Al Jazeera correspondence on live  
stream that we have. And the soldiers injured and eventually killed  
at least one person, before other passengers decided at that point to  
try to act in self-defense and to try to stop soldiers, more  
soldiers, from coming onto the ship.

What needs to be acknowledged here is that Israel acted violently by  
attacking our ships, to begin with. And under international law,  
under the law of the seas, our people, as the people on that ship  
coming under such an attack, an illegal attack on the high seas, do  
have a right to defend themselves. Now, we don’t necessarily  
encourage people to take up any kind of weapons against the Israelis,  
and certainly our activists train in nonviolence, but given the kind  
of scenario that was unfolding on that boat, I certainly do  
understand the desire of people to try to protect themselves and try  
to protect others who were already injured.

The other ships, including the one that my wife Huwaida was on, also  
came under attack. We don’t know, because we didn’t have satellite  
feeds on those ships, the kinds of attacks that they suffered. And we  
still don’t know, because all of the detainees are being kept from  
any kind of communication with media, with their families, even up  
until now with their lawyers and with their embassies.

ANJALI KAMAT: Adam Shapiro, do you know how many people died? And do  
you know how many people are being detained by Israel?

ADAM SHAPIRO: Until now, we still don’t know the exact number of  
dead. Israel refuses to release the names of the people that it  
killed, despite numerous requests from various embassies, some  
governments and, of course, the media. And the exact number of dead,  
the exact number of injured, and the exact number of who are in  
detention, we do not know, because, again, we are completely—this is  
becoming a major coverup by Israel to keep all information blocked,  
blanketed from getting out.

ANJALI KAMAT: Have you heard from your wife, Huwaida Arraf?

ADAM SHAPIRO: Literally just now, as I came on this program, I  
received confirmation that she has been released. She is without  
phones and without any money. They took all of her stuff from her.  
But she’s been released from prison and should be on her way to  
Jerusalem hopefully right now.

AMY GOODMAN: I’d like to go to Israel and the West Bank. I want to  
see right now if Amira Hass is on the line. She is the reporter for  
Ha’aretz.

Amira, we wanted to get the response to what has taken place in  
Israel and the Occupied Territories and what you understand, because  
this is the big issue right now, that the Israeli government has  
spoken out about what has happened, but very few people understand  
actually, outside of what the Israeli government has said, what took  
place on these ships. Certainly in the United States, the news media  
is quoting the Israeli government, the prime minister, various  
military spokespeople. But since hundreds of people have been  
detained, and we don’t know the names of the dead or the injured, we  
are not hearing any other part of the story.

AMIRA HASS: Exactly, Amy. The details cannot be told yet, because we  
don’t—other than the soldiers and the few people who returned to  
their homes, in Turkey mostly or in Greece, we don’t have details  
yet, because we depend only on the official versions of the Israel—of  
the Israeli army and the Israeli government. I’m here in Ramallah,  
and so I don’t know—I only follow on the news and what my friends  
tell me in Israel.

On the one hand, there have been quite a few demonstrations, as I  
understand, against the attack and against the decision to stop the  
flotilla. There is a strike in Palestinian communities in Israel  
proper. There is a strike in Gaza, I think. But also in the West  
Bank, the police cleared a strike and three days of mourning. In the  
West Bank, I’ve seen that the Palestinian police is trying very hard  
to prevent people from clashing with the Israeli army, feeling more— 
feeling deterioration. So what I’ve noticed is there is—there are  
many, many security vehicles of the Palestinian Authority near  
junctions, near areas where the Israeli army is located. They opened,  
as I read—I haven’t seen it—they opened wake houses in several  
municipalities all over the West Bank. But people—there were a few  
demonstrations yesterday in the West Bank, demanding actually the  
Palestinian Authority to stop all negotiations with Israel and to  
stop the military coordination with Israel, which is a very—it’s a  
sore wound in Palestinian life, this military security coordination.  
So far, as I understand, the PA of course has condemned, but has not— 
is not reacting to this demand, to the public demand. We don’t know  
what will happen next.

But I think that beyond those details, what’s becoming clearer and  
clearer—and I think that’s also to many Israelis—is that who is  
really under blockade is not Gaza and not the Palestinians, but  
Israel, under a self-imposed blockade, because they think they could  
continue to violate our—not only international law or concepts, but  
also common sense. It’s all reacting against the common sense of  
every normal person in this world, you know, like if you think about  
Noam Chomsky not allowed to enter the country. So this is the main  
thing we can see. From the very beginning, the decision to not allow  
this ship from entering Gaza, from reaching Gaza, then this attack on  
civilian ships and then expecting the people will accept this attack,  
as Adam said, in international water. So it’s a complete act of  
piracy. And then these soldiers expect to be received as if they  
were, I don’t know, guests. So this shows about a certain—and  
unfortunately, the Israeli society is behind the government in that  
sense, still behind the government. So it is under blockade. The  
Israeli society is under self-imposed siege.

ANJALI KAMAT: Amira Hass, you were supposed to be on one of the boats  
in the flotilla?

AMIRA HASS: Yes, I registered, as I—as you know, we are not—Israeli  
journalists are not allowed to enter Gaza through Erez, and I did  
enter—over the past year and a half, I did enter three times, so- 
called illegally. And the first time was with a boat. And I  
registered to enter, and I was supposed to be on the boat with Dror  
Feiler, the Israeli Swedish activist and musician. But unfortunately,  
because they kept postponing the date, I had something I could not  
cancel in Jerusalem at the end of last week, so, unfortunately, I did  
not join it. Or fortunately.

AMY GOODMAN: Amira Hass, you talked about the protests in the  
Palestinian territories. What about in the Israeli Jewish community?  
What has been the response? And what are you seeing on Israeli  
television? What kind of video? What is the story, the narrative,  
you’re getting?

AMIRA HASS: There were. Israeli activists has been—has had several  
demonstrations since yesterday, as I could tell by emails and by what  
friends told me, and Palestinians in Israel, as well, of course.  
There are all sorts of condemnations by Israeli organizations and  
organizations for human rights organizations. So there is an  
activity, as an—adding to the quite rejectivity of Israeli Jews  
against the occupation, which we see permanently. But it’s an  
activity of a minority. There are, of course, publicists and some  
public personalities who are alarmed by Israeli blindness, I think,  
as I can tell by the reports.

Now, the Israeli version, as is seen and is almost the only version  
that is shown to the Israeli public, is that once they went down the  
ropes, the soldiers, they were immediately attacked by some people,  
who had with them knives and sticks or whatever, and were beating  
them. The official—the video, the photos. And you can hear also on  
the voice—you can hear that the soldiers are surprised or shocked.  
And so are their officers, their commanders, which watch everything  
through the—whatever equipment they have. I tend to believe that they  
were indeed surprised. They did not expect resistance. They did not  
expect to be challenged. I cannot tell if it was after—by what we are  
shown, if it was after some shots were—that they shot and killed some  
people, or was it simultaneously when they slid down from the  
helicopters. But this is what is seen on the Israeli—on Israeli TV.  
And this is also what—I read some testimonies of soldiers, and this  
is also what soldiers tell, told from a military correspondent of  
ours who of course got the permission to speak to them. We don’t get  
any detailed account of anyone of those who were on the ship.

ANJALI KAMAT: I want to bring Ali Abuninah, the co-founder of the  
Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End  
the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse, into the discussion. He’s joining us  
from Chicago.

Ali, can you talk about the reaction from the United States from the  
Obama administration and also at the Security Council?

ALI ABUNIMAH: Yes. Good morning.

Among the more than 700 people on the ship from about thirty-two  
countries are thirteen United States citizens, including a former  
ambassador, Ed Peck, who has been released and is reported to be on  
his way back to the United States. But as in the previous Israeli  
acts of piracy and war against ships heading to Gaza—you remember  
when Cynthia McKinney was kidnapped and jailed in Israel for trying  
to reach Gaza—once again, the United States government is saying and  
doing nothing publicly that suggests any great concern for its  
citizens who have been kidnapped by Israel.

And the statements from the Obama administration, particularly that  
by the US representative at the United Nations, Alejandro Wolff, were  
really quite shocking and astonishing. You played a clip during the  
news, where he suggests really that the flotilla were themselves to  
blame, talking about using non-confrontational and non-provocational  
methods rather than going by ship—in other words, suggesting—agreeing  
with the outrageous Israeli claims that trying to reach Gaza with  
humanitarian aid is somehow a provocation or a confrontation. And  
Ambassador Wolff also reaffirmed Israel’s so-called right to self- 
defense in this context, which suggests that the United States,  
unless it makes clear otherwise, believes that attacking a civilian  
ship on the high seas and massacring an unknown number of its  
passengers is somehow self-defense.

I think we also have to keep our eye on the context here, Anjali.  
Just a week or so ago, the United States Congress voted by 410-to-four 
—I’ll repeat that, 410-to-four—to a request from the Obama  
administration for additional military aid, another $205 million.  
This was clearly a political move by the Obama administration to fund  
the rather useless Iron Dome rocket defense as a way to appease  
Israel politically. But the message Israel got from this, as it has  
gotten from US and international complicity and complacency, the  
failure to hold Israel accountable for the war crimes documented in  
the Goldstone report; the failure to hold Israel accountable for the  
act of international terrorism and murder in a hotel room in Dubai;  
the failure to hold Israel accountable for four years of murderous  
siege on Gaza that has killed, by itself, 400 Palestinians for lack  
of access to medical aid and other needed supplies. The failure to  
hold Israel accountable in all these ways has sent Israel the  
message: do what you like, get away with whatever you want to, until  
people hold Israel accountable.

And so, what the Freedom Flotilla was, was it was a peaceful, unarmed  
people’s navy, assembled to fill the void and the vacuum where the  
Obama administration should be, where the UN Security Council should  
be, where the Arab governments should be, where the European Union  
should be. And it is a shocking outrage and a crime that will live in  
infamy, along with the bombing of the King David Hotel, along with  
the attack on the USS Liberty, along with so many other appalling  
crimes, that international humanitarian workers bringing aid were  
attacked on the high seas.

I spoke to you a few months ago when I was in Cairo with the Gaza  
Freedom March. By now, people have tried to reach Gaza to break the  
siege by land. They have tried by sea. And they have lost their  
lives. They have given their lives in the cause of breaking this  
siege on Gaza. And we have to ask, we have to ask, for what crime are  
1.5 million people in Gaza being held prisoner? There is a museum in  
Berlin, which I visited as a schoolboy, to those who were killed  
trying to cross, those who were machine-gunned trying to cross over  
the Berlin Wall. Well, an unknown number of people, because Israel  
won’t tell us, were machine-gunned for trying to break this blockade.  
When will there be accountability? And when will the Obama  
administration stop this outrageous complicity, this enabling, this  
acting as an accomplice with these crimes against people in Palestine  
and now against Americans, Turks, Greeks, Jordanians, Palestinians,  
Lebanese, Swedes, French people, German people, members of  
Parliament, doctors, retired people, trying to bring medicine to  
people in Gaza? That our government has not stood up and condemned  
this in the clearest possible terms is a sign that something is sick  
in the United States’ system when it comes to speaking about and  
dealing with Israel. There is a sickness that has to be addressed.

AMY GOODMAN: Ali Abunimah is speaking to us from Chicago. He’s the  
founder of the Electronic Intifada. Adam Shapiro in the studio with— 
in New York at Democracy Now!. Amira Hass is with us from Ramallah in  
the West Bank. When we come back from break, we’re going to Richard  
Falk, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian  
territories, to talk about international law.

I’m Amy Goodman with Anjali Kamat, and we’re broadcasting from New  
Orleans, from New Orleans, Louisiana, where the BP oil catastrophe  
continues to unfold. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and  
Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman with Anjali Kamat. We’re in New  
Orleans; our guests are around the world. We’re going to turn right  
now to Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in  
the Palestinian territories.

This issue of international law, of international waters, Richard  
Falk, talk about your reaction to what took place. I had originally  
said on Sunday morning; in fact, it was 4:00 Monday morning on the  
waters, on the high seas, when the Israeli commandos raided the Gaza  
Freedom Flotilla.



RICHARD FALK: Good morning, Amy. This was a shocking incident that  
involved, as your other guests have said, a complete disregard of  
international law, in several respects. It was an act of naked  
aggression. It was done on the high seas. It was done in defiance of  
elementary humanitarian standards. It was known that this flotilla  
had no weapons. It was not a security issue by the remotest stretch  
of the imagination. If there was a right of self-defense, it belonged  
to the people onboard these ships. Israel, as the aggressing state  
and political actor, had no claim whatsoever of self-defense. It’s an  
absurdity. And one can only imagine if another country that the  
United States didn’t like had engaged in this kind of behavior, we  
would have been denouncing them or, worse, using force. One can only  
imagine what would happen if Iran had done something of this  
comparably outrageous character and sought to provide some kind of  
legal cover for it, while silencing those that actually experienced  
the incident.

So I feel that we’ve almost never seen such a direct confrontation  
with the most elementary principles of international law. And it is a  
disgrace that our government has decided to stand apart from all  
other countries in the world, including our normal European friends,  
and withheld a denunciation and a call for lifting the blockade,  
because one needs to appreciate that underneath this criminal act,  
which amounts to a crime against humanity, underneath this has been  
the almost three years of criminal blockade of the people of Gaza.  
The blockade is a direct violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva  
Convention that prohibits collective punishment. And this is one of  
the first examples where a civilian population has been locked inside  
a zone that has been subjected to this kind of mental and physical  
threat to subsistence and survival.



ANJALI KAMAT: Richard Falk, given the international of outcry over  
this incident, do you think there will be enough pressure to  
implement the recommendations of the Goldstone report to finally lift  
the siege on Gaza?



RICHARD FALK: It is hard to tell at this point. What is clear is that  
the United States continues in its role as the protector of Israeli  
impunity in circumstances that are so extreme that it will build  
additional anti-US attitudes throughout the world, not only in the  
Islamic world. And it is probably a matter that will be determined in  
large part by how sustained the civil society reaction to these  
events are. I’ve said for some time that the best hope for the  
Palestinians is not at a governmental level or through reliance on  
the United Nations, but rather through the boycott, divestment and  
sanctions campaign, which has increasingly come to resemble the anti- 
apartheid campaign that was so successful in delegitimizing the  
racist regime in South Africa. I think this legitimacy war is being  
waged now as the primary arena of struggle. And it has shown the  
immoral failure of established governments to do what should have  
been done years ago and insisted that this blockade be lifted and  
used nonviolent coercion by way of sanctions in the event that Israel  
continued to refuse to end the blockade. It is a crime that has no  
borders at this point. And it’s only the peoples of the world,  
really, that represent the conscience of humanity in a circumstance  
of this kind.



AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur for  
human rights in the Palestinian territories and the Occupied  
Territories. The countries that have called in the Israeli ambassador  
for an explanation are Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Cyprus, Denmark,  
Egypt, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Jordan, New Zealand, among  
others.

Ali Abunimah, can you talk about the videotape? And again, we have to  
stress, in the brief coverage that we see in US media right now,  
because we do not even know the names of the dead or the injured, not  
to mention hundreds of people who are now in jail in Israel, we’re  
only getting one side here. But the videotape that the Israeli  
government is showing of what happened on the lead ship, on the  
Turkish ship, Ali?



ALI ABUNIMAH: Yes. I mean, what we have to do is put all this in the  
context of Israel’s propaganda strategy. What they’ve done is imposed  
a total news block-out—blackout. Hundreds of people are detained.  
They’ve had no access to lawyers, certainly no access to media. It  
was reported there was one Al Jazeera cameraman, of the six Al  
Jazeera staff who were kidnapped with the ships, who was released.  
And what he said is that all the passengers were allowed to leave the  
ships only with their passports, with no other personal belongings.  
He was personally attacked by Israeli soldiers while he was filming,  
and his camera smashed. In any case, no journalists were allowed to  
leave the ships with any film or any recordings whatsoever. We don’t  
know the names of the dead. The families of all those passengers are  
anxiously awaiting news of their loved ones. Why is this? So that the  
Israeli narrative can get a long head start. This is all about the  
Israeli propaganda strategy to give the Israeli propagandists, like  
Mark Regev, a free run. They’ve had more than twenty-four hours. And,  
Amy, it’s working in the mainstream media, because they’re only  
reporting, you know, the atrocious reporting on National Public Radio  
and on the BBC, which is taking mostly the Israeli version.

Even the videos the Israelis received, what they do confirm to us is  
that Israel attacked a civilian ship with attack helicopters,  
speedboats and commandos. Now, they show people fending off the  
soldiers. I mean, in this country, in the United States, people  
lionize the passengers on Flight 93 who tried to fight off the  
hijackers to no avail. So there was a natural reaction there. What we  
don’t know is when that happened. The Al Jazeera footage, which came  
out before the feed was cut by Israel, showed people—or there was  
evidence of people being shot at and killed as soon as the Israelis  
attacked. Hanin Zoabi, the member of Parliament in the Knesset, the  
Palestinian who was released and gave a press conference today,  
talked about the sudden attack with sound bombs, tear gas,  
explosions. The same—the Al Jazeera journalist who was released said  
the same thing. Because the Israelis are obscuring or removing the  
time stamps from the videos they are releasing, we have no idea when  
those videos were taken, and they’re showing very short clips. But  
what is not in doubt and what nobody disputes, not even the Israelis,  
is that an Israeli military force carried out an unprovoked attack on  
the high seas against a civilian vessel, and people have been killed,  
people who were on a humanitarian mission. And there is no  
justification for that.



AMY GOODMAN: Adam Shapiro, we want to bring you in before the end.



ADAM SHAPIRO: Yes.



AMY GOODMAN: Adam, we want to bring you in before the end, because in  
addition to what happened on the high seas, you have the West Bank  
attack on a young Cooper Union art student, a student in New York who  
was in the West Bank. Can you explain who she is and what happened?

ADAM SHAPIRO: As you said, Emily [Henochowicz] is a twenty-one-year- 
old Cooper Union art student who was there in the West Bank joining  
the International Solidarity Movement as an activist protesting  
what’s going on in the West bank. I mean, obviously, Gaza is very  
bad, but there continues to be land confiscation, home demolitions,  
the building of the wall in the West Bank. Emily was attending a  
protest at Qalandia checkpoint, demonstrating against what happened  
to our flotilla. The Israelis opened a barrage of tear-gas canisters,  
fired at very close range, at her specifically. Eyewitness accounts  
talk about two tear-gas canisters being shot right at her feet and  
then a third being shot at her head, hitting her in the left eye, I  
believe. And we have received word from the doctors that she has lost  
her left eye.

This is yet another attack on an unarmed international civilian  
coming to join the Palestinians in protest, coming to stand up for  
human rights. There is a war. There is a war now. Israel has launched  
this war. It launched it earlier with attacks on Rachel Corrie, on  
Tom Hurndall and other internationals, but this is now an open war  
Israel has launched on foreigners. There is no citizen. There should  
be travel warnings issued now to all foreigners trying to enter  
Israel or the Occupied Territories. You are targeted by Israel.



AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you all for being with us. I want  
to thank Adam Shapiro in New York; also Amira Hass of Ha’aretz,  
speaking to us from Ramallah; Ali Abunimah in Chicago; Richard Falk,  
speaking to us, UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories.  
Two more boats are headed to Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid.  
Mairead Maguire is on one of them, among many. She is the Nobel Peace  
Prize winner.

===============================================

update on the prisoners from Aljazeera today:

Israel has started releasing some of the 700 activists it captured  
after it troops stormed a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid  
to Palestinians in Gaza.

Turkey has sent three planes, including two military ambulance  
aircraft, to bring its nationals home.

Six Greek passengers returned to Athens after being expelled from  
Israel, and a former US ambassador who was also on the ship was on a  
flight home.

Here are excerpts of what some of the freed passengers had to say:

Issam Zaatar, Al Jazeera cameraman

I was filming, and then he [an Israeli solider] ran after me with a  
stun gun.

He could not catch me. One of his colleagues hit my hand from behind  
with a stun gun. My camera fell down. He ran to crush the camera with  
his feet.

I told him, don't break my camera. If you want the tapes, I will give  
them to you. I told him these are media equipment. They had no limits.

They used rubber bullets. They used tear gas bombs. It was an  
unbelievable scene.

Haneen Zubi, Palestinian member of the Knesset
We were expecting the Israeli army to stop us, to prevent us from  
entering but surely we didn't expect such a war against us.

It was 14 ships which approached us, nearly at 4.30 in the morning.  
Fourteen ships that I could count and one helicopter. Maybe more than  
10 soldiers, I couldn't say exactly [how many] were getting out of  
the helicopter.

On the second floor of the ship there were just passengers who are  
journalists, a nurse and organisers of the flotilla who didn't have  
anything in their hands.

After 20 minutes, maybe 15 minutes, there were three dead bodies.

It ended at six, when a voice from the microphone said the ship was  
controlled by the Israelis, 'please enter the rooms'.

Norman Paech, former member of the German parliament
This was not an act of self-defence [by the Israeli army], but rather  
it was completely disproportionate - although we were counting on our  
ship being blocked and maybe checked.

This was a very serious offence, this was a war crime.

I personally saw two and a half wooden sticks which were used [by  
activists].

We had not prepared in any way to fight. We didn't even consider it.

No violence, no resistance - because we knew very well that we would  
have absolutely no chance against soldiers like this.

Mihalis Grigoropoulos, Greece
I was steering the ship, we saw them [Israeli soldiers] capture  
another ship in front of us, which was the Turkish passenger vessel  
with more than 500 people on board and heard shots fired.

We did not resist at all, we couldn't even if we had wanted to. What  
could we have done against the commandos who climbed aboard?

The only thing some people tried was to delay them from getting to  
the bridge, forming a human shield. They were fired upon with plastic  
bullets and were stunned with electric devices.

There was great mistreatment after our arrest. We were essentially  
hostages, like animals on the ground.

They wouldn't let us use the bathroom, wouldn't give us food or water  
and they took video of us despite international conventions banning  
this.

Nilufer Cetin, Turkey
We stayed in our cabin and played games amid the sound of gunfire.

My son has been nervous since yesterday afternoon ... I did not need  
to protect my son.

They knew there was a baby on board. I put a gas mask and life jacket  
on my son.

We did not experience any other problems on board, only a water  
shortage.

We took walks on the deck, played games with my son. The curtains  
were drawn, so I did not see the raid as it was happening. I only  
heard the voices.

There are lightly and heavily wounded people.

There are thousands, millions of babies in Gaza. My son and I wanted  
to play with those babies. We planned to deliver them aid. We wanted  
to say: 'Look, it's a safe place, I came here with my baby-son.'

I saw my husband from a distance, he looked okay. The ship personnel  
was not wounded, because they [the soldiers] needed them to take the  
ship to port.

I will go again if another ship goes.

Cetin returned to Istanbul airport with her one-year-old son.

Youssef Benderbal, France
The instructions were clear. Do not provoke, remain calm and go to  
meet them [the commandos] saying 'we are pacifists and not terrorists'.

Masked commandos took possession of the ship. They were aiming for  
the captain's cabin.

Benderbal was not on board Mavi Marmara, the lead ship of the  
flotilla, but on one of the other five ships. He gave this account to  
Europe 1 radio after arriving at a Paris airport.

Dimitris Gielalis, Greece
Suddenly from everywhere we saw inflatables coming at us, and within  
seconds fully equipped commandos came up on the boat.

They came up and used plastic bullets, we had beatings, we had  
electric shocks, any method we can think of, they used.

Gielalis was on board the ship Sfendoni.

Mutlu Tiryaki, Turkey
When we went up to the deck, they emerged from helicopters and  
military boats and attacked us.

They approached our vessel with military ships after issuing a  
warning. We told them we were unarmed. Our sole weapon was water.





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