Israel Hijacks Aid cargo, executes hostages - Pak journo, Talat Hussain taken hostage

[gambit]

Does this mean that Israel will draw back its expansion if Palestinians lay down arms and settle for a piece agreement? Will the Israelis allow Palestinians to occupy and claim as their own the land they have occupied now? Clearly not. Hence this is no "appropriate context" and in no way "territories taken as securities in an ongoing war against the Arab states".

Not? Then you need to explain why did Israel withdrew from Gaza back in '05 and the peace treaty with Egypt which Egypt honored despite the murder of the Egyptian leader who dared to make such an agreement. For the former, there was virtually no guarantees of border security.

This has absolutely no importance whatsoever to Israel's colonial occupations.

Of course it does. It goes to the crux of the issue, which is WHO is the competent guarantor of sovereignty and control over a territory that borders a country, any country. In the case of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, we have two competent guarantor/administrators of an agreement. For the Gaza withdrawal, we have only one. Guess which situation never improved.

I have never, ever met a humanist or a peace activist who does not term this as colonial barbarism. It is plane and simple.

Does not matter what they called the Jews and Israel. What matter is the reason why, which is the question: WHO is the competent guarantor of sovereignty and control over a territory that borders a country, any country? Peace does not have to be accompanied by friendship, although that is the more desirable state between two or more parties. Else you can call your neighbors all sort of names but as long as both of you are reasonably assured that neither will do harm to each other, you will co-exists in peace.

 

[GUNNER]

ANKARA, June 29, 2010 (AFP) - All but two of the nine Turks killed in an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship were shot more than once, and five died from bullet wounds to the head, according to forensic reports.

The reports were made available to AFP Tuesday by lawyers for the victims' families, who have petitioned Turkish prosecutors to investigate the May 31 bloodshed on the Turkish Mavi Marmara ferry.

The forensic examinations were carried out in Turkey by the government-run Forensic Institute.

"The findings make it clear the Israeli forces shot to kill the activists and not to overpower them," one of the lawyers, Yasin Divrak, told AFP.

The nine volunteers were shot a total of 31 times, according to the documents.

The youngest victim, 19-year-old Furkan Dogan, a dual Turkish-US national, was shot five times, including twice in the head, his autopsy report said.

A bullet that pierced his face was fired from close range, it said, adding he was hit also in the back of the head.

The forensic experts failed to detect other point-blank shots on the remaining victims.

All nine bodies had been washed before being brought to Turkey and their clothes were either blood-soaked or otherwise unfit for analysis, making it impossible to reach a conclusion on the ranges of most shots, according to the documents.

Another victim, Ali Heyder Bengi, 39, was shot six times, including once in the abdomen, while Fahri Yildiz, 43, was hit by five bullets, among them a fatal one in the chest, according to the documents.

Journalist Cevdet Kiliclar, 38, the web editor of the Islamist charity IHH that led the ill-fated campaign, was killed by a single bullet that hit him between the eyebrows, the report said.

Divrak drew attention to the autopsy of 61-year-old Ibrahim Bilgen, which included the discovery of a tiny bag containing pellets, still intact in his brain, which the report said was was fired from a hunting rifle.

"It is not a type of weapon that we have ever heard of," he said.

Three bullet wounds were also found in Bilgen's chest, back and hip.

Israel says its commandos used force after they were attacked with sticks and stabbed as soon as they landed on the Mavi Marmara, which was sailing in international waters. But the activists insist the troops opened fire as soon as they landed.


The bloody ending to the aid mission, which had aimed to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, plunged ties between Turkey and Israel, once close allies, into deep crisis.

Turkey has dismissed a commission set up by Israel to investigate the raid, insisting for a UN-led international probe.

 

[Solomon2]

This does not mean that Israel has the same right. Intolerant and bigoted Arab states shouldn't mean an intolerant and bigoted Israel.

What are you talking about? Israel absorbed almost all the Jews expelled from the Arab states; the Arab states whose leaders called upon the Arabs to depart from Israel (over 20% of whom did eventually vow allegiance to the Jewish State and return) are proud to deny citizenship to "Palestinians" out of sheer bigotry and the desire to employ them as a kind of weapon against Israel as a diversion from their own tyranny.

Please go ahead and change it to historical accuracy. Debate should be objective, and facts should be objectively and historically true.

You're the one trying to argue that Israel possesses "colonial mindset and brutal expansion", so shouldn't you be the one producing evidence?

I did not mean in any way to exaggerate the claims and I do not claim to have extremely deep knowledge of the conflict.

Learning in depth does take time and effort, but you have both intelligence and modesty, so I'm sure you can do it.

I'll deem it an act of blatant injustice when I'm proven so and when I'm informed that the 9 people who died were posing life threatening danger.

The Israeli videos are pretty damning. So are the pictures, if you can find the ones that don't have the militants' weapons photoshopped out of them.

9 civilians die and no IDF soldiers critically injured...No person of logic and reason would deem killing 9 civilians as justified.

Just because the militants weren't members of the Turkish armed forces doesn't mean their actions and intent were not violent and criminal, does it? Every bit of evidence available is that the Israelis fought back only after being attacked and that the use of deadly force was necessary because the only alternative was to accept kidnapping, mutilation, or murder.

It's been your habit to comment on the objectivity and accuracy of statements rather than accounts.

I'm not sure I understand you here. "Objectivity of accounts?" An account of an event is by definition subjective.

I'm highly agnostic. I deem killing any person regardless of faith as reprehensible.

And killing in self-defense while engaged in lawful, peaceful activities, do you deem that "reprehensible" as well?