Remembering the dead and the Rachel Corrie’s mission

by Paul Woodward on June 4, 2010   War In Context

Humanitarian aid workers, a firefighter, a politician, a taekwondo champion, a photojournalist, a student who hoped to become a doctor — nine Turkish men, mostly fathers who leave behind children and wives.

Even while their deaths are at the center of an international crisis that is rocking the state of Israel, these individual lives lost have scarcely gained attention — firstly because the Israeli government resisted revealing any information about who died and in what circumstances, and then, while maintaining a stranglehold on the facts, Israel’s propaganda machine has worked furiously to portray the victims as villains.

The world has largely viewed Israel’s efforts to conceal its brutality with a mixture of skepticism, contempt and outrage. Yet in one regard the hasbara has worked: it has effectively sold the idea that the organizers and participants in the Freedom Flotilla were intent on picking a fight. This was an act of provocation and where opinions differ is on whether the provocation was justified or not.

As MJ Rosenberg wrote:

The first thing you need to know about the Gaza flotilla disaster is that the intention of the activists on board the ships was to break the Israeli blockade. Delivering the embargoed goods was incidental.

In other words, the activists were like the civil rights demonstrators who sat down at segregated lunch counters throughout the South and refused to leave until they were served. Their goal was not really to get breakfast. It was to end segregation.

Yes and no.

The Freedom Flotilla is part of a movement that aims to end the siege of Gaza, but delivering humanitarian aid is not incidental.

Israeli occupation use of banned weapons during war on Gaza confirmed

Palestinian Info Center 3/19/2010

GAZA, (PIC)– Dr. Basim Na’im, the Palestinian health minister, said that analysis of samples taken from the bodies of war victims as well as samples of soil from Gaza confirmed the use by the Israeli occupation of internationally banned weapons and called onto medical delegations who visit the Gaza Strip to expose this fact and not yield to Zionist pressures.

He made these remarks during a press conference organized by the PA health ministry on Thursday in Gaza to exhibit the findings of the analysis conducted on biological samples taken from war victims in the Gaza Strip after last years Israeli onslaught.

“We suspected the enemy was using banned weapons in its wars against the Palestinian civilians, especially that for years specialized doctors were noticing new phenomena amongst the wounded that they did not see before and that although wounded Palestinians were accorded the proper medical treatment stabilizing their condition for the first few hours, their health condition was rapidly deteriorating leading to death without obvious reasons,” Naim said.

In this regard Na’im accused the international community of remaining passive although the Israeli occupation army was caught in action using prohibited weapons against the civilians in Gaza killing children, women, and elderly people among other civilians.

He said that the analysis concluded that the weapons used contained more than 30 toxic elements such as cobalt, cadmium and molybdenum.