As Turkey Freezes Israel Ties, Critics Decry "Whitewashed" U.N. Report on Gaza Flotilla, Blockade
http://www.democracynow.org/
Turkey has downgraded diplomatic ties with Israel and frozen military
cooperation ahead of a long-awaited United Nations report on Israel’s
deadly attack on a Gaza-bound aid ship in 2010. The report accuses
Israel of "excessive and unreasonable" force in its attack—which
killed nine people—on the Mavi Marmara ship, and says Israel should
issue a statement of regret and compensate the families of the dead as
well as wounded passengers. But it also chides passengers aboard the
Marmara and the other flotilla ships for what it calls a "reckless"
attempt to breach Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. In a major
development with broader implications, the U.N. report concludes that
the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip is legal under international
law. We speak with Norman Finkelstein, author of several books on the
Israel-Palestine conflict, including "This Time We Went Too Far":
Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion. We are also joined by
Huwaida Arraf, one of the organizers of the Free Gaza Movement. Both
Arraf and Finkelstein blast the U.N. report, calling it a "whitewash"
and "morally debased." [includes rush transcript]
JUAN GONZALEZ: Turkey has downgraded diplomatic ties with Israel and
frozen military cooperation ahead of a long-awaited United Nations
report on Israel’s deadly attack on a Gaza-bound aid ship in 2010.
According to leaked excerpts, the report accuses Israel of, quote,
"excessive and unreasonable force" in its attacks on the Mavi Marmara
which killed nine people. The report says Israel should issue a
statement of regret and compensate the families of the dead as well as
wounded passengers. But the report also criticizes passengers aboard
the Marmara and the other flotilla ships for what it calls a, quote,
"reckless" attempt to breach Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. And
in a major development with broader implications, the United Nations
report also concludes that the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip is
legal under international law.
AMY GOODMAN: The U.N. investigation was overseen by Geoffrey Palmer, a
former prime minister of New Zealand. Turkey says it will expel the
Israeli ambassador and downgrade diplomatic ties to their lowest level
until Israel drops its refusal to apologize for the raid and provides
compensation.
For more, we’re going to go to Ramallah, where we’re joined by Huwaida
Arraf, one of the organizers of the Free Gaza flotilla movement. She’s
on one of—she was on one of the six ships that were in the Gaza
flotilla when the Mavi Marmara was attacked. She’s joining us by
Democracy Now! audio stream. And here in New York, we’re joined by
Norman Finkelstein, author of a number of books on Israel-Palestine
conflict, including "This Time We Went Too Far": Truth & Consequences
of the Gaza Invasion.
In Ramallah, Huwaida Arraf, your response to the leaked report—the New
York Times posted it online—of the U.N.?
HUWAIDA ARRAF: Hi, Amy, Juan, Norman.
Sadly, it’s a completely expected whitewash of Israeli crimes. This
panel’s composition—not only its composition, but its mandate—was
problematic in so many ways. And it wasn’t designed to get at the
truth of what happened or to achieve—to get at justice for the victims
of Israel’s attack, but rather to arrive at political compromise
between Israel and Turkey. And that’s what we have. It’s an attempt to
whitewash the crimes, set them aside, and in addition, it came up with
some outrageous claims that completely contradict the findings of
numerous human rights organizations and international law authorities,
including various bodies of the U.N. itself, about the legality of the
Israeli blockade. So, very problematic.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And the report’s criticism or faulting of one
organization, in particular, a Turkish organization, that had some
members—helped organize the flotilla. Could you talk about what it
said and your response to that?
HUWAIDA ARRAF: Sure. It did say—you did quote that we were "reckless,"
but it also said that Israeli soldiers faced organized violence when
they tried to board the Mavi Marmara, which is completely untrue. We
spent a long time preparing for this flotilla. And our—everything that
we prepared, the passengers and our—the foundations of our movement
and what we do is based on nonviolent direct action resistance.
This is not to deny that Israeli soldiers did face some attacks when
they boarded, but you can’t say that these attacks were anything more
than self-defense, because of the obnoxious way in which Israeli
soldiers—and very violent way in which they took over the ships, in
the way that was intended to cause tremendous fear and commotion. They
boarded the ships firing, even on our very small boat. The boat that I
was on was traveling right next to the Mavi Marmara, and we only had
about 17 people on that boat. They boarded, beating down people, using
tasers, firing stun grenades and paintball pellet at people’s faces.
It was completely uncalled-for violence, so that some people, a
handful out of 700 volunteers, reacted in what can be called a violent
way. It was self-defense, so it was in no way organized. And this is—
I’m saying this, being part of the central organizing committee of the
flotilla.
AMY GOODMAN: The U.N.'s report notes that, quote, "On the basis of
public statements by the flotilla organizers and their own internal
documentation, the Panel is satisfied that as much as their expressed
purpose of providing humanitarian aid, one of the primary objectives
of the flotilla organizers was to generate publicity about the
situation in Gaza by attempting to breach Israel's naval blockade. The
purposes of the flotilla were clearly expressed in a document prepared
by IHH and signed by all flotilla participants," unquote.
The report then cites the document’s statement of purpose, which
reads, quote, "Purposes of this journey are to create an awareness
amongst world public and international organizations on the inhumane
and unjust embargo on Palestine and to contribute to end this embargo
which clearly violates human rights and delivering humanitarian relief
to the Palestinians."
Norm Finkelstein, your response?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, I noticed that Juan was looking perplexed at
that statement. I have to say, last night, when I was reading the
report, I was completely dumbfounded, and I had to keep repeating—
rereading these passages over and over again. What the report stated—
and all of your listeners should hear closely, because it was so
shocking, so morally debased—the report said that we doubt, or we
question, the true motives of the organizers of the flotilla. They
said, we have evidence that their real motive was not humanitarian.
And the statement that you just quoted was the evidence that their
real motive was not humanitarian, that they had this really sinister,
nefarious motive. Their real motive was not humanitarian; the real
motive was, they said, the report said, to cast publicity on Israel’s
illegal and immoral blockade of Gaza.
Now I have to say, that is—and I’m meaning this literally—it is a new
low. I read all the Israeli reports, in particular the Turkel report,
the one put out by the former Supreme Court justice. It’s about 300
pages. They never stooped to that level. They claimed that this
handful of what they call jihadists, that they were looking for a
confrontation with Israelis or the Israeli soldiers, and they brought
on weapons for a confrontation. This report does not claim that they
were looking for a confrontation. It holds them morally culpable for
trying to cast publicity on an illegal and inhumane blockade. With the
Israelis, at least we’re in the same moral universe, and it’s a
question of fact. What was the intent of these commandos—excuse me,
what was the intent of the activists? Was it to get a confrontation,
or was it to cast humanitarian—cast light on what’s happening? But
with this report, we’ve entered a new moral universe. They are
actually saying that to cast light on an illegal and inhumane blockade
is a morally sinister act.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask, there were four members on this
committee: one from Turkey, one from Israel, then there were two
supposedly independent ones, the former prime minister of New Zealand
and Álvaro Uribe, the former president of Colombia, who himself
presided over a period of the most—the highest level of extrajudicial
killings and assassinations in his own country. It seems amazingly
strange to have someone like Álvaro Uribe on this panel as an
objective member of the committee.
AMY GOODMAN: The Colombian president.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, it was clear from the moment that Ban Ki-
moon, the alleged secretary-general of the United Nations—it was clear
from the moment he appointed Uribe on the panel that it was going to
be a farce. Beyond all the crimes for which Mr. Uribe has been accused
and also have been documented, he was also known as being very close
to Israel and advocating closer military relations with Israel. So,
from the get-go, from the moment the members were named, it was clear
which way the report was going to go.
But, you know, you always wonder, what are they going to come up with?
How could they possibly justify certain things? They said that the
blockade of Gaza—now, we have to be clear. They said the naval
blockade was legal. They separated it from the land blockade, for
technical reasons, which it’s no point in going into here. But they
said the naval blockade was legal. And the grounds they gave were
this: that Israel clearly faces security problems from Gaza, the
rocket and mortar fire. OK. And they say, to document this security
problem, since 2001, some 25 Israelis have been killed by these rocket
and mortar attacks. Fair enough. And then they say that many people
have suffered psychologically, psychological trauma from these
attacks. Fair enough.
Then there’s the other side of the equation. There is not one word,
one syllable, on how many Gazans have perished as a result of Israeli
attacks. It’s not 25. It’s not 250. It’s at least at an order of
magnitude of 2,500. We’re not just talking about the 1,400
Palestinians who were killed in Operation Cast Lead. Israel always has
operations in Gaza, has very fancy names—Operation Summer Rains,
Operation Autumn Clouds, Operation Hot Winter, Operation Rainbow. All
of it vanishes from this report. The only people who have suffered
deaths in Gaza due to armed hostilities are Israelis.
Now, let’s say it’s true. Fair enough. They have a right to impose a
naval blockade to prevent weapons from going to Gaza, for security
reasons. Don’t the people of Gaza have the right to impose a military
blockade on Israel, to prevent weapons from going to Israel? You can’t
even raise that question. It’s beyond their comprehension. In fact,
the irony is, that’s the law. The law is, as Amnesty International
pointed out in its report "Fueling Conflict," under international law
and domestic American law, it’s illegal to transfer weapons to any
country or—any state or non-state party which is a consistent violator
of human rights. So, if that commission, the Palmer Commission, named
after, you know, the former New Zealand president, if they had any
integrity, they would have said, OK, Israel has the right to impose a
blockade on Gaza, and the international community" — because this is
what Amnesty said. Amnesty says the international community has an
obligation—that’s what they said—to impose an arms embargo on Israel,
as well, because it’s a consistent violator of human rights.
AMY GOODMAN: I want—I wanted to bring Huwaida Arraf back into the
discussion, who’s in Ramallah, chair of the Free Gaza Movement, was
part of the aid flotilla last year that the Mavi Marmara was a part
of. The U.N. investigation did accuse Israel of excessive and
unreasonable force. Now Turkey has announced the expulsion of the
Israeli ambassador, the suspension of military cooperation, hours
before the report was published. But also, in the last attempts of the
Gaza flotilla, just in the last months, they themselves stopped a ship
from going forward. Can you talk about all of this, Huwaida?
HUWAIDA ARRAF: Sure. Really quickly, I’d like to just touch on a
couple of important points that Norman made, the first one being about
the legality of the blockade. And Norman did say that they considered
it very separate from the rest of the closure, which has been declared
completely illegal and a violation of Israel’s obligations, so there’s
no way that this maritime blockade can be legal, no matter what way
you look at it. It’s a violation of Israel’s obligations under
international law as an occupying power.
Also, in regards to Uribe and the problems that Norman mentioned, the
other thing is that he is known to have a complete disdain for human
rights defenders. And you can look at complaints from human rights
organizations within Colombia. Also, an organization called Human
Rights First called this out, that him referring to human rights
defenders as "terrorist sympathizers" endangers human rights
defenders. So, from the start, he had a disdain for people like us who
like to call attention to and take action, nonviolent action, against
these human rights abuses.
And the last really important thing before I get to your question is
this report and the attention that it’s supposed to get, when we
already had an independent U.N. fact-finding mission that released a
report almost one year ago, comprehensive, interviewed over a hundred
victims and participants, and that was put together by scholars in
international law and known judges on international tribunals. This
should be the authority on what actually happened, not this farce of a
report.
But in terms of what you said about Turkey stopping—about being part
of stopping the last flotilla, known as Freedom Flotilla 2, which was
supposed to launch last summer, or this past summer, not exactly. It
was Israel placed a lot of pressure on a lot of countries, the
European countries, to stop their citizens from participating. Not many
—you know, some leaders of these countries made statements that the
flotilla is not helpful and that they warn their citizens not to take
part. But the country that was—that really cooperated with Israel—and
it was a shock and quite sad—was Greece. And it did—we did learn that
it came under a lot of political and economic pressure also because of
the economic situation that they’re in. But they did impose
restrictions and did not let our boats leave. So it really became
complicit in Israel’s blockade. And we are challenging that on
different levels.
Turkey itself didn’t really. It did communicate to us and to our
Turkish partners that it might not be helpful at this time, but what
happened—but the Turkish organization IHH remained fully a part of the
flotilla. The Mavi Marmara was not able to go, because it was not
physically, mechanically ready to go. In fact, up until the date that
we were supposed to launch, they still had people working to meet all
of the guidelines for being certified to go into international waters
on the kind of mission that we wanted it to. So we knew—at a point, we
realized it wasn’t going to be ready, and we took that boat out of the
equation. But the Turks remained fully a part of the organizing. And
in fact, we were going to launch one boat from Turkey. One of the boats
—it was the Irish ship—was located in Turkey, but it was sabotaged by,
we believe, Israeli agents and was not able to launch. So, they didn’t
really place any barriers, certainly not like Greece did.
AMY GOODMAN: But the fact that this report did find that Israel’s use
of force was excessive and unreasonable, and the significance of
Turkey expelling the Israeli ambassador?
HUWAIDA ARRAF: Definitely. Well, it’s kind of funny that Turkey
expelled the Israeli ambassador today after the release of this
report, because the whole point of this report was to reach a
political compromise and to repair the relation between Israel and
Turkey. And we’re glad that Turkey has taken the position that it has
taken. And in fact, Turkey’s foreign minister has said that it’s time
that Israel paid a price. And it’s true, because Israel does not pay a
price for any of its human rights violations. It continues to act with
impunity. And even the fact that this report did say Israel acted
using excessive force, it doesn’t—it doesn’t go enough to—money or
paying compensation is not—is no kind of justice for the families or
for the people that—for the victims of Israel’s actions. And that’s
what we want to see. We want to see some kind of accountability. And
that’s different from the U.N. report that was issued last September
by the independent fact-finding mission, which recommended that human
rights abusers be held accountable. And that’s what we’re waiting to
see. So, this report, the Uribe-Palmer report, pays some lip service
to the victims, but its main—again, its main goal, to repair
relations, and we’re glad to see that Turkey is not falling for that.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: I’d like to say—
JUAN GONZALEZ: Norman, if we can, we just have a little bit of time.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Sure.
JUAN GONZALEZ: If you could just briefly talk about the implications
of this report coming out now and the continuing schism between Turkey
and Israel, as we head into the United Nations vote on Palestinian
statehood.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, actually, many Israelis worried that this
would be Pyrrhic victory for the Israeli government, because being so
stubborn about refusing to make an apology—there are two of
consecutive words that just don’t translate into Hebrew. The two
words, consecutive words, are "excuse me." They can’t comprehend that.
And the Israeli—many Israeli officials were saying, "Make the apology,
because we need Turkey. Turkey is our—has historically been our
strongest ally in the Muslim world. Things are now turbulent with our
other main ally in the Arab world, Egypt. Make the apology, and move
on." But there were members of the Netanyahu government—in particular,
Mr. Lieberman, the foreign minister, and his party—who refused,
because they said if they made the apology, Erdogan, the prime
minister of Turkey, would run with it and would embarrass the
Israelis, and Israelis would be humiliated. But they didn’t think it
was a wise move. And actually, I don’t think it is, either. Losing the
military relationship with Turkey, suspension of diplomatic relations,
and now you know Turkey, when the state issue—statehood issue comes up
in September, they are going to be in the forefront now, because
Erdogan has been humiliated by this report. It was a complete spit in
the face of the Turks, what this report said.
So I think, from a moral point of view, it was a disgrace. But from a
political point of view, it will probably end up helping the
Palestinians. You have to remember the whole point of the report. It
described the killing of the nine members of the—on the—passengers on
the Mavi Marmara. You know the phrase they used? It was a "major
irritant" to diplomatic relations. Killing nine people is an
"irritant." And they said, "We have to get over this irritant, so that
Israel and Turkey can restore diplomatic relations." That’s their
moral level.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there. Norman Finkelstein, we
thank you for being with us, author of, among other books, "This Time
We Went Too Far": Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion, and
Huwaida Arraf, chair of the Free Gaza Movement, co-founder of the
International Solidarity Movement, was on one of the six ships that
were in the Gaza flotilla when the Mavi Marmara was attacked. She was
joining us from Ramallah, on the West Bank.
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