Turkish Court Indicts Senior Israeli Military Officials in Murders on Gaza Flotilla

Actual Video on board Mavi Marmara

Source Video: Cultures of Resistance.org

Article By: Col. Ann Wright

Original Source: War is a Crime

Source: Global Research

On the Second Anniversary of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Turkish Court Indicts Senior Israeli Military Officials in Murders of Nine Passengers

Two years ago I was a passenger on the first Gaza Freedom Flotilla which was sailing to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. I watched from a small boat called the Challenger 1, as a much larger boat, the Mavi Marmara, with almost 600 passengers, was brutally attacked by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) commandos. 30 minutes later, our boat was attacked.

Using snipers from helicopters Israeli commandos shot many of the passengers on the exposed top deck of the ship. Other commandos in boats fired live ammunition, as well as percussion grenades, into all levels of the ship. As commandos repelled down from helicopters and boarded the ship, they executed at point blank range 5 passengers, including a 19 year old American citizen Furkan Dogan, whose body had five bullets including one to the back of his head. 9 persons, 8 Turkish citizens and one American citizen, were murdered and 50 others were wounded. One severely wounded Turkish man later died after being in a coma for many months.

Each of the six ships in the flotilla was attacked by IDF commandos. Passengers on the ships were shot with tasers and beaten by commandos. Potentially lethal paintballs were shot into the faces of passengers narrowly missing eyes and soft parts of the skull.

IDF commandos took the computers, cameras, identification and credit cards and several hundred thousands of dollars in cash from the passengers. IDF commandos sold many of the stolen computers. Very few of the items taken by the IDF have been returned to passengers.

The Mavi Marmara was returned to Turkey with a new coat of paint to cover the blood stains of those wounded and killed. The other five ships are still held by the Israeli government in the port of Haifa.

Turkish Court Indictment of Senior Israeli Military Officials

On May 28, 2012, almost two years after the Israeli attack, a court in Istanbul, Turkey, voted unanimously to approve an indictment against Israel's former military chief Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, as well as for Eliezer Marom, Amos Yadlin, and Avishai Levi, the former heads of the Israeli Navy, Air Force Intelligence, and Military Intelligence. If convicted, each faces nine consecutive life terms in prison for "inciting to kill monstrously, and by torturing." http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/turkish-court-charges-senior-idf-officials-over-gaza-flotilla-deaths-1.432983#article_comments

The indictment also charged several unidentified soldiers who shot passengers. The charges against members of the Israeli military include commandeering vehicles, voluntary manslaughter, attempted murder, persecution and causing damage to the ship.

The indictment specifies 490 victims and complainants, among them 189 who were injured during the raid. The indictment rejected Israeli claims that Israeli commandos who boarded the Mavi Marmara acted in self-defense, saying that Israeli commandos used disproportional force by firing with heavy weapons and automatic rifles on passengers who only carried "plastic flag masts, spoons, and forks." The indictment stated that some of the victims were shot dead from close range and from the back.

2011 Gaza Flotilla and Freedom Waves

Despite the lethal Israeli attack a year earlier, in 2011, international citizen activists prepared ten ships to sail to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. The Israeli and US governments pressured the Greek government to prevent the sailing of 8 of the ships that were in Greece. Three ships from the 2011 Gaza Freedom Flotilla eventually challenged the Israeli blockade. One ship that had sailed from France in July, 2011 and two others (one from the Irish campaign and one from the Canadian/Australian campaign) that sailed from Turkey in November, 2011 were intercepted by the Israeli navy, the boats confiscated and the passengers deported from Israel.

Next Challenge to the Israeli Blockade-Gaza’s Ark

Committed to continue to bring international attention to the continuing brutal Israeli naval blockade of Gaza, international activists are working with the sailing and boating community of Gaza to prepare a ship to sail FROM Gaza carrying Gazan exports goods that will have been purchased by the international community. The boat will be called “Gaza’s Ark” and will provide job skills and employment for workers on the boat as well as a market for the beautiful crafts of Gaza. http://www.tahrir.ca/en/gazaark

About the Author: Ann Wright spent 29 years in the US Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel. She was a US diplomat for 16 years and resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war. She travelled to Gaza three times in 2009, helped organize the 2009 Gaza Freedom March and was a passenger on the 2010 and 2011 Gaza Freedom Flotillas. She was an organizer for the US Boat to Gaza, the Audacity of Hope and is an organizer for the US campaign for Gaza’s Ark.

To DOWNLOAD THE VIDEO :

http://tc.indymedia.org/files/flotilla-footage/index.html

On the night of Sunday, May 30, showing a terrifying disregard for human life, Israeli naval forces surrounded and boarded ships sailing to bring humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip. On the largest ship, the Mavi Marmara, Israeli commandos opened fire on civilian passengers, killing at least 9 passengers and wounding dozens more. Others are still missing. The final death toll is yet to be determined. Cultures of Resistance director Iara Lee was aboard the besieged ship and has since returned home safely.

Despite the Israeli government's thorough efforts to confiscate all footage taken during the attack, Iara Lee was able to retain some of her recordings. Above is raw footage from the moments leading up to and during the Israeli commandos' assault on the Mavi Marmara.

Visit http://www.culturesofresistance.org/gaza-blockade to learn more.

Clinton opposes aid flotilla to Gaza

Last year's Turkish-flagged ship, MV Mavi Marmara, that Israeli forces attack

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/186036.html

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has expressed her strong opposition to the second Freedom Flotilla, claiming that it is both a 'provoking act' and 'unnecessary.'

The chief US diplomat made the remarks on Thursday as activist from more than 30 countries plan to sail aboard several ships to the Gaza Strip later this month in a bid to end the Israeli-imposed blockade on Gaza by taking humanitarian aid to the impoverished enclave, AFP reported.

"We do not believe that the flotilla is a necessary or useful effort to try to assist the people of Gaza," asserted Clinton, a staunch supporter of the Tel Aviv regime.

"And we think that it's not helpful for there to be flotillas that try to provoke actions by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israeli's have the right to defend themselves," she added.

The Israeli Navy has already declared that it will not allow the new flotilla to break the blockade on the impoverished Gaza Strip.

Earlier in the week, the Navy head Vice Admiral Eliezer Marom, called on world leaders to "impose all their authority to prevent the departure of this needless, provocative flotilla."

Last year on May 31, 2010, the Israeli military attacked the first Freedom Flotilla in international waters and murdered nine unarmed Turkish nationals aboard the Turkish-flagged MV Mavi Marmara, injuring about 50 other people that were part of the team on the six-ship convoy.

'Turkey snubs Israel outcry on flotilla'

The Mavi Marmara

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/175041.html

Turkey has rejected a request by Israel to stop a new Gaza flotilla due to take activists and humanitarian aid to the impoverished coastal sliver, saying Ankara will not interfere, a report says.

A second “peace” flotilla, comprising of more than 15 ships, is preparing to set sail in the second half of May to mark the first anniversary of the deadly Israeli attack on a similar flotilla on May 31 of last year, which killed nine activists aboard the Turkish ship, Mavi Marmara.

The move is another attempt to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza Strip, put in place since 2007 after Hamas assumed power following a democratic election in the enclave, Turkey's Today's Zaman reported on Friday.

Israel's ambassador to Turkey, Gaby Levy, asked the Turkish government this week to help stop the activists heading toward Gaza, but a Turkish foreign ministry official responded by saying that, according to his government, the flotilla plan was not Ankara's 'concern.'

In a similar move, Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu urged Europe on Monday to do all it can to prevent its nationals from taking part in the flotilla.

“This flotilla must be stopped” under any condition, Netanyahu told European ambassadors in East al-Quds (Jerusalem).

Since the attack on the Turkish vessel, Ankara has scaled back ties with Tel Aviv, demanding Israel's apology and compensations for the damages incurred in the attack, which also drew international condemnation.

Israel used 'excessive' force on Flotilla

The Mavi Marmara ship (file photo)

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/164835.html

Turkey says it has unveiled its final inquiry report on the Israeli deadly attack on a Gaza-bound aid convey last year, which proves Israel used “excessive” force and trampled international law.

The Israeli commandos attacked the Freedom Flotilla in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea on May 31, killing nine Turkish citizens on board the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, and injuring about 50 other people who were part of the team on the six-ship convoy.

The Turkish National Commission of Inquiry said in its final report to United Nations released Friday that Israel used “excessive, indiscriminate and disproportionate force” against the unarmed civilians on board the aid convoy, TurkishPress.com reported.

The report has been submitted to the Panel of Inquiry set up by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in August 2010, it said.

The case is now a litmus test for the international community “in upholding the rule of law,” it added.

It also argued that "since Israel's naval blockade on the Gaza Strip is unlawful, any act it performs as a function of this blockade is unlawful par excellence."

The report said that the Israeli raid was a "full-fledged and well-planned attack" on the international aid flotilla.

"Israel must acknowledge its responsibility and accordingly convey a public apology to the Republic of Turkey and provide compensation for all the damage and losses resulting from its unlawful attack," according to the report.

"The attack took place 72 nautical miles from the nearest coast, and 64 nautical miles from the zone declared unlawfully, as will be seen, blockaded by Israel. As a result of the attack, eight Turkish citizens and one US citizen of Turkish descent were killed. Over 70 passengers from a host of nationalities were wounded. One of these remains in a coma to this day," the finding revealed.

"The case is a critical litmus test for the international community in upholding the rule of law ... Impunity must give way to accountability," the report said.

The Turkish report challenged an Israeli inquiry that cleared its military and government of any wrongdoing. The Israeli finding sparked Turkish protests.

Ankara said it was “appalled and dismayed” at the Israeli panel's findings, which had called both the assault and Tel Aviv's siege of the Gaza Strip 'legal.'

Much of the international community is united in expressing outrage over the incident and a United Nations inquiry found -- by complete contrast -- that the forces had shown “an unacceptable level of brutality.”

Israel has so far rejected to either apologize for the incident or pay any compensation -- two measures it has been obliged by Turkey to take to make amends.

Turkey to cut 'all ties' with Israel

Source: PressTV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=130863§ionid=351020204


After an Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound flotilla that left nine Turkish citizens dead, Ankara has introduced a roadmap to "completely" cut its ties with Israel.

After Israel failed to apologize or pay compensations for the killing of the Turkish citizens in its attack on the Mavi Marmara on May 31, Turkish Defense Industry Implementation Committee (SSIK) reviewed the country's military agreements and joint projects with Israel on Thursday.

The SSIK held a meeting chaired by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday and decided to shelve 16 military agreements with Israel, including a $757 million plane and tank modernization project and a missile project worth over $1.5 billion.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul had earlier announced that a roadmap was to be prepared on the issue of sanctions against Israel.

"The roadmap details a process through which Turkey will completely cut its ties with Israel" in several stages, Turkey's Today's Zaman reported on Thursday.

According to the roadmap, the first step would be that Turkey's ambassador to Tel Aviv, who had been previously recalled, will not be sent back unless Israel sends a member to a UN investigatory commission that aims to look into the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

Furthermore, the roadmap requires all military training and cooperation with Israel to be halted and states that an internal Israeli inquiry into the attack will in no way be recognized by Turkey.

Ankara announced, however, that joint projects between Turkish and Israeli private sectors are excluded from the plan that will put an end to all Turkey's ties with Israel.

Neo-cons lead charge against Turkey

Israel's raid on the Turkish Mavi Marmara ship may have caused an outcry in many countries, but among American neo-conservatives it is Turkey that has come under attack [GALLO/GETTY]

By: Jim Lobe

Source: Al Jazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/06/20106168451670414.html

As the right-wing leadership of the organised US Jewish community defends Israel against international condemnation for its deadly seizure of a flotilla bearing humanitarian supplies for Gaza, a familiar clutch of neo-conservative hawks is going on the offensive against what they see as the flotilla's chief defender, Turkey.

Outraged by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's repeated denunciations of the May 31 Israeli raid, as well as his co-sponsorship with Brazil of an agreement with Iran designed to promote renewed negotiations with the West on Tehran's nuclear programme, some neo-conservatives are even demanding that the US try to expel Ankara from NATO as one among several suggested actions aimed at punishing Erdogan's AKP (Justice and Development Party) government.

"Turkey, as a member of NATO, is privy to intelligence information having to do with terrorism and with Iran," noted the latest report by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a hard-line neo-conservative group that promotes US-Israeli military ties and has historically cultivated close ties to Turkey's military, as well.

"If Turkey finds its best friends to be Iran, Hamas, Syria and Brazil (look for Venezuela in the future) the security of that information (and Western technology in weapons in Turkey's arsenal) is suspect. The United States should seriously consider suspending military cooperation with Turkey as a prelude to removing it from the organisation," suggested the group.

Its board of advisers includes many prominent champions of the 2003 Iraq invasion, including former Defence Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director James Woolsey, and former UN ambassador John Bolton.

'Ingrained hostility'

Neo-conservative publications, notably The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard and the National Review, have also been firing away at the AKP government since the raid.

"Turkey now represents a major element in the global panorama of radical Islam," declared the Standard's Stephen Schwartz, while Daniel Pipes, the controversial director of the Likudist Middle East Forum (MEF), echoed JINSA's call for ousting Ankara from NATO and urged Washington to provide direct support for Turkey's opposition parties in an article published by the National Review Online.

The Journal has been running editorials and op-eds attacking Turkey on virtually a daily basis since the raid, accusing its government, among other things, of having "an ingrained hostility toward the Jewish state, remarkable sympathies for nearby radical regimes, and an attitude toward extremist groups like the IHH (the Islamist group that sponsored the flotilla's flagship, the Mavi Marmara) that borders on complicity".

On Monday, it ran an op-ed by long-time hawk Victor Davis Hanson that labelled the IHH "a terrorist organisation with ties to al-Qaeda", while an earlier op-ed, by Robert Pollock, its editorial features editor, called Erdogan and his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, "demagogues appealing to the worst elements in their own country and the broader Middle East".

Meanwhile, in an op-ed published by The Forward, a Jewish weekly, Michael Rubin, a Perle protégé at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), accused Turkey of having "become a conduit for the smuggling of weapons to Israel's enemies", notably Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Backtracking

The onslaught is ironic both because of the neo-conservatives' long cultivation of Turkey and their avowed support for promoting democratic governance - of which they have singled out Turkey for special praise - in the Muslim world.

Neo-conservatives were among the most important promoters of the military alliance between Israel and Turkey that began to take shape in the late 1980s and was consolidated by the mid-1990s.

In fact, Perle and another of his protégés, former undersecretary of defence for policy, Douglas Feith, worked as paid lobbyists for Turkey during that period, in major part to persuade the powerful "Israel Lobby" to promote Ankara's interests on Capitol Hill.

In 1996, the two men participated in a task force chaired by Perle that proposed to incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that he work with Turkey and Jordan to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power as part of an alliance designed to transform the strategic balance in the Middle East permanently in favour of Israel.

But the Turkey promoted by Perle and his fellow neo-cons in the 1980s and 1990s was one that was dominated by a secular business and political elite carefully monitored by an all-powerful military institution that mounted three coup d'etats between 1960 and 1980 and intervened a fourth time in 1997 to oust an Islamist-led government.

Disappointment

Despite its close links to both the US and Israel, however, the Turkish military badly disappointed the neo-cons in the run-up to Washington's invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Instead of insisting that the civilian government at the time grant US requests to use Turkish territory as a major launching pad into northern Iraq, the armed forces decided to defer to overwhelming parliamentary and public opposition to the invasion.

"I think for whatever reason they did not play the strong leadership role on that issue that we would have expected," complained then deputy secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz, a long-time Perle friend and colleague who, despite his lavish praise of Turkey as a model Muslim democracy, headed repeated efforts by the George W. Bush administration to persuade Turkey's national security council - where the military's voice was dominant - to effectively overrule its parliament.

Erdogan, who became prime minister just a week before the invasion and whose political and economic reforms have been widely praised in the West, at first sought good relations with Israel. As late as 2007, he arranged for Shimon Peres to become the first Israeli president to address the Turkish parliament.

By then, however, many neo-cons had become concerned about Erdogan's efforts to weaken the military's power, his warm reception of a top Hamas leader in 2005, criticism of Israel's military campaign against Hezbollah in 2006, and rapprochement with Syria.

When the military not so subtly threatened to intervene against Erdogan and the AKP in 2007, some neo-cons, notably Perle, suggested that the US should not try to discourage it. Others, including The Standard's Schwartz and Pipes, encouraged it as the lesser of two evils, even as The Journal defended the AKP as "more democratic than the secularists".

Since Erdogan's furious denunciation of Israel, and Peres personally, at the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) after Israel's Cast Lead operation in Gaza in January 2009, however, neo-cons of virtually all stripes - including those, like The Journal's editorial writers, who have praised the AKP as a democratising force - have turned against Ankara. And the flotilla incident, combined with Erdogan's perceived defence of Iran's nuclear programme, has raised their animus to new heights.

"A combination of Islamist rule, resentment at exclusion from Europe, and a neo-Ottomanist ideology that envisions Turkey as a great power in the Middle East have made Turkey a state that is often plainly hostile not only to Israel but to American aims and interests," wrote Eliot Cohen, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, in a Journal op-ed on Monday.

Click here to read Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign policy.
http://www.lobelog.com/