The New Dark Age

27 May, 2010

The latest in today’s Yediot Aharonot with commentary:

– Except for the Naval Commandos, you should expect on the Gaza boats “Massada”, the special anti-riot unit of the Israeli Prison Authority. They were given a special permission to operate outside the borders of Israel and against people who are not (yet) prisoners.

– The Navy might start “Operation Sky Winds” already tonight, they might want to catch the different boats separately, before they all assemble.

– There will be used electronic masking devices to prevent broadcasts of the confrontation (as could be expected – I hope you have some countermeasures)

– Netanhyahu who is going off to France, Canada and the US has given authorization. He feels that he has “defeated Obama” (that is the headline in “Ma’ariv”) because he got an invitation to a meeting in the White House which would be friendlier than the one two months ago, and therefore he feels that he can do whatever he wants. 

– The anti-Turkish propaganda line is intensified. Alex Fishman, military commentator of “Yediot Aharonot” who is an unofficial spokesperson for the Israeli Army, says today that this is not really a continuation of the earlier  Gaza boats, this is a Turkish plot to open a regular shipping line to Gaza and deprive Israel and Egypt of the monopoly of controlling access to Gaza. If this flotilla is let through, Israel might as well give up the siege altogether. “This is not about 500 wheelchairs to Gaza, this is about the effective re-establishment of Turkish Imperial Power”. He says that many of the people on the boats are idealistic if misguided, and if it was only them it might have been advisable to let them through. But this is quite different, the Turkish government is involved, it is an Islamic government so this is not just a Turkish plot but an Islamic one (there is a reference to the head of the Islamic movement in Israel, Sheikh Ra’ed Salah, being present when the Turkish boats departed from Istanbul). Of course when faced with such an Islamic plot, there is choice but to use force. “Putting Gaza under siege might not be the best policy, but it is the policy which we decided upon and we cannot let the Turks change it for us” (very interesting that Fishman is writing that, as I said he is close to the supreme command of the Israeli Armed Forces and they often use him to air their views).

– The conclusion of Fishman “We have already lost the PR battle (the title of his commentary is “We have already lost”). Since the boats must be stopped anyway, the Navy should try to do is as quickly as possible, to reduce the length of the unfriendly footage. 

– There is a good interview from onboard with Dror Feiler “we don’t want a confrontation with the IDF, but we are determined to get through, and will resist passively, it will not look good for soldiers to confiscate wheelchairs” and that morale on the boats is high and people are singing. Dror is really doing good work, avoiding very radical statements (no need for them, the whole action is radical enough in itself) and conveying just the right tone. 

– The special detention center seems to be within the Post of Ashdod. The police is worried that leftists will arrive from all over the country and make trouble, it is up to us here to make their fears come true. 

– They will want to expel the international activists from the country as soon as possible, and are worried that  the activists have already made contact with Israeli lawyers and will try to hold this up through the courts. No mention here of Palestinians, which day before yesterday were mentioned as also possibly arriving in this detention center. Palestinians may stay imprisoned much longer.

These are the highlights, you get a headline on the front page and the whole of Page 2 and 3.

Bye for now, good luck

Adam

Latest from the Israeli press: http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3894766,00.html

To Gaza boats activists

I wanted to give some revelant information which appeared yesterday in Yediot Aharonot, written by Yossi Yehoshua and Ithamar Eichner, obviously derived from government sources and as far as I can see not yet circulating internationally.

1) A new detention facility was established on the coast of Ashdod, with place for hundreds of people, near the Port of Ashdod to which the Gaza boats are supposed to be towed. There was a specific mention that this facility is intended for both intenationals and Palestinians, I don’t know to what this refers. It might refer to published plans of the people in Gaza to send fishing boats to welcome the flottila and that these might also be itercepted.

2) The Israeli Navy has given the operation of stopping the Gaza boats the codename “Operation Sky Winds” (“Ruhot Shma’im”). The Navy’s Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Eliezer (Cheney) Marom, is in personal charge of this operation.

The news item mentioned that this is a “a difficult and complicated operation for the Navy, which is a relatively small force”. (The Israeli navy is always complaining of being discriminated and staved for funds, in comparison with the land and air arms, and I would not be surprised if they are using the Gaza boats in order to demand a bigger part of the Israeli defence budget…)

Essentially, a navy has two ways of stopping boats in the sea. One is to have warships point big guns and say “If you don’t stop we will shoot”. This is what they tried with the first Gaza boats. This is ineefective if the boat they try to stop deifes them and continues to move, and if the country whose navy it is has political reasons why they can’t effort to seriously hurt anybody on board (which is the case here). The other was is to send soldiers to board and take over the boats, which is what they did the last time. The Isralei Naval Commandos, who are patterend after the US Navy SEALS, are especially trained to go in small Zodiak boats and take over “enemy ships”. But there are not so many of them, nine ships might be a very heavy task for them. The Navy might borrow commandos from other parts of the Israeli armed forces.

(Here is the Wikipedia page on Admiral Marom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Marom)

3) The Netnayhu government tends to regard the whole Gaza boats intiative as being controlled by the Turkish government and treat it as part of the diplomatic tug-of-war between the two countries. The Yediot Aharonot itme was entitled “Israel extended a hand, but Turkey tuned it down”. This refered to an offered “compromise” by the Israeli side,, i.e. that the Turks would turn over all the suuplies to Israel and Israel would pass them on to Gaza “in the normal way”. The Turkish Ambassador told them that the government of Turkey is not in control of the boats. The government here does not believe it, and their conclusion is that “The Turks want to have a violent provocation in the sea”.

One side effect of all this is that the Israeli right-wing has suddenly discovered the Armenian genocide. As lomg as Turkey was a strategic ally of Israel, it was nearly impossible to mention this in Israel. The Armenian community in Israel and East Jerisalem was muzzled and forbidden to demonstrate outsode the Tirkish embassy in Tel Aviv. Now the floodgates are open and there is hardly a day without some right-wing commentator saying things like “How dare the Turks lecture us about Gaza after what they did to the Armenians and the Kurds!”. It can be funny if you have a bit cynical turn of mind (you develop it in this country, out of sheer self-preservation).

I made some comments on all this on my blog yesterday

http://adam-keller2.blogspot.com/2010/05/honor-guard.html

The best of luck

Adam Keller
Gush Shalom, Tel Aviv

PS: See this from yesterday’s Jerusalem Post

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=176491

Jerusalem Post
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Fate of Gaza flotilla remains vague
By YAAKOV KATZ AND HERB KEINON
05/26/2010 05:24

Navy prepares to block fleet of 9 ships as IDF awaits PM’s orders.

Talkbacks (7) While the navy is preparing to stop nine international aid ships that will try to reach the Gaza Strip later this week, the military is still waiting to receive a final order of what to do from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, defense officials told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

In the past, Israel has threatened, like it is now, to stop activists’ vessels from reaching the Gaza Port but then allowed them through the IDF blockade. Netanyahu has made no comment on the matter, remaining purposely vague to keep the organizers guessing as to Israel’s true intentions.

Though vague on whether the ships will be allowed to arrive, government spokesmen are unequivocal in stating that what interests the organizers are not human rights in Gaza, but rather bashing Israel.

The vessels, carrying 10,000 tons of cargo and some 550 pro-Palestinian activists, will probably reach the coastal waters of Gaza by Friday or Saturday, Dror Feiler, one of the organizers, said by satellite phone from aboard the Swedish-Greek ship Sofia.

The ships set sail from Ireland, Sweden, Turkey and Greece, Feiler said. Some are carrying television crews that plan to broadcast live any confrontation between the IDF and the activists.

“This is not going to look good on television,” said the 58-year-old Feiler, who was born in Tel Aviv and has lived in Stockholm since 1973. He served in the IDF Paratroopers Brigade and refused to serve in the territories in 1970 as one of the first “refuseniks.”

“We’re on a peaceful mission to help end the misery of the people in Gaza and it’s going to be very ugly if Israeli soldiers try to take over our ships,” he said.

In January 2004, Feiler‘s artwork “Snow White and The Madness of Truth” was vandalized by then-Israeli ambassador to Sweden Zvi Mazel. Mazel said it was anti-Semitic.

Feiler is now the chairman of the Swedish organization Jews for Israeli-Palestinian Peace and the European organization European Jews for a Just Peace.

The navy is preparing an operational plan to stop the ships.

In addition, the IDF has established a task force together with the Israel Police, the Foreign Ministry and the Prisons Service to coordinate efforts to stop the flotilla and manage the media fallout.

The ministry and Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories have in recent days launched a media campaign to stress that the supplies the ships are carrying are unnecessary and that Israel – together with various international organizations – already transfers these supplies to Gaza via land crossings.

The police and the Prisons Service will be on standby to deal with the arrest of the activists, if that becomes necessary.

One official pointed out that the flotilla, billed as an effort to bring humanitarian supplies into Gaza, comes after the Financial Times, in a story it ran on Monday, wrote that the 200 to 300 smuggling tunnels from Egypt into Gaza “have become so efficient that shops all over Gaza are bursting with goods.”

According to the FT report, “Branded products such as Coca-Cola, Nescafé, Snickers and Heinz ketchup – long absent as a result of the Israeli blockade – are both cheap and widely available. However, the tunnel operators have also flooded Gaza with Korean refrigerators, German food mixers and Chinese air conditioning units. Tunnel operators and traders alike complain of a saturated market – and falling prices.”

Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev said, “These people call themselves human rights activist, but they are the opposite. They have nothing whatsoever to say about the human rights of Israeli civilians who have been on the receiving end of Hamas rockets for years. They have nothing whatsoever to say about the human rights of Palestinians who live in Gaza under the jackboots of the Hamas regime that oppresses women, Christians, and gays – a regime that has brutally suppressed all political opposition, destroyed independent media, closed down Internet cafes, and has even made it illegal for a male hairdresser to cut the hair of a woman.”

Regev pointed out that in the past the leaders of this movement have come to Gaza and “eagerly had their photographs taken with Hamas leaders. Some human rights activists,” he said.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said that the land crossings were more than capable of meeting Gaza’s needs.

According to Palmor, 15,000 tons of supplies enter Gaza each week, including meat, poultry, fish, dairy products, fruits, vegetables, milk powder, baby food, wheat and other staples. In addition, he said, building materials are allowed in when monitored by international organizations that ensure that the materials will not be commandeered by Hamas for the fortification of bunkers.

Palmor said the organizers of the flotilla are aware that land crossings remain the most efficient way of transferring goods. But, he said, “they are less interested in bringing in aid than in promoting their radical agenda, playing into the hands of Hamas provocations. While they have wrapped themselves in a humanitarian cloak, they are engaging in political propaganda and not in pro-Palestinian aid.”

Bloomberg News contributed to this report.