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

[Ahmad]

Why everyone in muslim world making so much noice over a small incident?

shame on you. is that a small incident?

Edited:

 

[JonAsad]

Terrorsit state America supporting terrorist state israel nothing new..
Did india condemn the attack on innocent humantarians officialy?

 

[Aslan]

shame on you. is that a small incident? wish ajmal kasab would have killed more of you.

Oh boy!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[All-Green]

If Israel had intentions to kill, why send commandos, they can blow away the ship by an attack chopper.... why get the commandos in and kill person by person??? As per the video, commandos were beaten to near death, then they retaliated as they had gun not for mere show off...

So how many commandos were killed?
Even the best trained soldiers do not stand a chance when overwhelmed by a crowd...here we think that Israeli commandos were nearly beaten to death...suddenly they magically escaped and shot their firearms...whereas the crowd was so retarded that despite nearly killing the commandos they did not disarm them.
The first thing a crowd usually does after overwhelming someone is to disarm him, especially if it is a dangerous crowd like the one claimed by Israel.

The overwhelming fact is that Israeli State intentionally attacked a civilian flotilla well inside international waters.
Countries have been attacked for lesser reasons in order to uphold the values of justice by the modern world.
What many like me hope for is to see Israel subjected to sanctions and a very neutral inquiry held into the incident.
Also i shall like to see the Gaza siege lifted, for the sake of the future of not just Palestinians and Israelis but the entire world...if such things are allowed to persist for years upon years then the UN has really no meaning.

 

[Aslan]

Israelis pointed guns at our heads: Turkish captain (Agencies)

2 June 2010, 8:34 AM ISTANBUL - An Israeli warship threatened to sink Captain Huseyin Tokalak’s ship before young commandos boarded the Turkish-flagged Gazze and trained their guns on him and his crew.
“They pointed two guns to the head of each of us,” Tokalak told a news conference on Tuesday. “They were really interesting guns, like the ones you see in the movies.”
It was the only light moment in the grizzled Turkish sea captain’s account of how an attempt to break Israel’s blockade of the Palestinian-run Gaza Strip ended in bloodshed.
There were no casualties on Tokalak’s vessel, but nine activists were killed when the Israeli commandos met resistance as they boarded the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in a six-strong convoy organised by a Turkish Islamic charity — the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH).
Tokalak, who was released from Israeli custody and returned to Istanbul with his crew, said the Gazze, a cargo vessel carrying the bulk of the aid, was close behind the Mavi Marmara, a passenger ship with nearly 600 people on board.
They were 68 miles outside Israeli territorial waters, Tokalak told the news conference organised by the IHH.
He saw lights in the sea and air and helicopters approaching the convoy. Fast dinghies sped towards them and the helicopters hovered over the manoeuvring ships.
Using a tannoy, Tokalak told the approaching craft that his ship was in international waters and carried nothing illegal. He said the other captains did the same.
The Israelis threatened to open fire and sink them, he said.
The Israelis have said their soldiers opened fire only when they boarded the Mavi Marmara and came under attack from pro-Palestinian activists, but Tokalak saw events differently.
“They started shooting directly at Mavi Marmara. They didn’t care if it was the front or back of the ship,” he said.
Empty Life Jackets
Tokalak saw smoke rising from the ship and the helicopters descending. “I thought they would sink the ship.”
“The captain of Mavi Marmara said he was wounded and there were others on his ship who were also wounded. He sounded panicked and we got panicked too.”
Tokalak said he thought he saw people abandoning the ship, and two life jackets were seen in the dark waters. “But then we switched on our lights and saw that no one was in them.”
Communications with the Mavi Marmara seemed to be jammed, but finally its captain made contact, saying the commandos had broken windows and thrown gas bombs.
IHH Chairman Bulent Yildirim, on the Mavi Marmara, told the other ships to move off and wait. “We are in big trouble, we have wounded and dead people,” Tokalak quoted him as saying.
Israeli warships approached the five ships, warning that they would come under fire unless they heaved to.
“We had to stop to avoid more deaths,” Tokalak said.
It was the last order he gave before the Israeli boarding party took control and he became a prisoner on his own ship.

Israelis pointed guns at our heads: Turkish captain

 

[psychedelic_renegade]

shame on you. is that a small incident? wish ajmal kasab would have killed more of you.

Ahmad, it's not expected from someone like you to generalize. But I guess this is the problem the world is facing, even sane voices getting radicalized. This flotilla incident will only help to make the world more radicalized.

 

[Ahmad]

Who knows this ship might not have weapons. If it was successful Hamas could have tried to bring arms follow up ships.

Israel is effected by hamas and they know better about hamas then us.

Instead of killing, Israel could have searched the ship for weapons.

and have you ever wondered how israel have affected palestine?

 

[rohailmalhi]

Nothing new about this .Same like always .We muslims have to Unite and thats the one and the only solution.

 

[Khan007]

US Media Channels such as CNN and Fox News have been biased on this issue as expected but I must praise the British Media for it exposed the terror activities of this tiny monster called Israel! The Guardian has given the most accurate accounts of the illegal attack on the ships and today's newspapers are a nightmare for Israel

 

[Aslan]

As the account stated by one of the ships captains state that the israeli army acted with a trigger happy attitude. More and more such accounts will start puring out once the people get back to their countries. And we will be getting firsthand accounts from the survivors.

 

[Ahmad]

Ahmad, it's not expected from someone like you to generalize. But I guess this is the problem the world is facing, even sane voices getting radicalized. This flotilla incident will only help to make the world more radicalized.

accept my appology, i am feeling so helpless and frustrated and couldnt control myself. hope indian members who have had a balanced approach can just ignore that post of mine, i have already deleted it.

 

[Bang Galore]

Fiasco on the high seas

By Ari Shavit

Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Moshe Ya'alon are supposed to know history. They are supposed to know there was no greater mistake than that of the British with regard to the illegal immigrant ship Exodus in the summer of 1947. The brutality employed by the British Mandate against a ferry loaded with Jewish refugees turned the regime into an object of revile. It lost what is now called international legitimacy. British rule over the country ended just 10 months after the Exodus fiasco,

The Turkish ship Mavi Marmara was no Exodus. It carried not Holocaust survivors but provocateurs, many of them extremists. But a series of baseless decisions on the part of the prime minister and the ministers of defense and of strategic affairs turned the Marmara into a Palestinian Exodus. With a single foolish move, the Israeli cabinet cast the Muslim Brotherhood in the role of the victim and the Israel Navy as the villain and simultaneously opened European, Turkish, Arab, Palestinian and internal Israeli fronts. In so doing, Israel is serving Hamas' interests better than Hamas itself has ever done.

Netanyahu, Barak and Ya'alon have neither vision nor charisma, but they once seemed to have good judgment. The sole promise made by their cabinet was not to make hasty decisions like the one that led its predecessor into the Second Lebanon War. It was supposed to handle Israel's strategic interests with utmost seriousness and responsibility. On the night of May 30th the cabinet broke its promise, demonstrating extreme, unforgivable lack of judgment in the face of the Palestinian flotilla.

During the 2006 war in Lebanon I concluded that my 15-year-old daughter could have conducted it more wisely than the Olmert-Peretz government. We've progressed. Today it's clear to me that my 6-year-old son could do much better than our current government. Even a child would have seen the imbalance in the risk-threat assessment in overpowering the flotilla ships. Any smart kid would understand that you don't sacrifice what is important for what is not. But the cabinet did not understand. Under the leadership of Netanyahu, Barak and Ya'alon it came to a patently unreasonable decision. It was a decision of complete fools.

Endless questions are being asked. What happened to Israel's vaunted creativity? Why was the worst of all possible options chosen? Where was the army chief of staff? Where were the intelligence services? Why did we walk into this trap, which we managed to avoid in all the years of the second intifada, with our eyes open? Why didn't we see that instead of tightening the siege on Gaza, we were about to tighten the siege on ourselves?

Perhaps the most troubling question in the wake of this fiasco on the high sea is this: Who is navigating our ship of state, and toward what catastrophe are the captains of this ship of fools steering us

Fiasco on the high seas - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

 

[Owais]

Talat says will show real face of Israel

AMMAN (updated on: June 02, 2010, 10:04 PST): Executive Director News and current affairs of Aaj News Talat Hussain has said that he will show the real face of Israel by releasing the footage of Israeli commandos assault, Aaj News reported.

Talking to Aaj News after his arrival in Jordan, Talat said that they were remained in Israeli custody for three days.

While expressing gratitude to the nation, Talat Hussain said that the prayers of the nation make him possible to sustain in tough days.

Answering the question about the assault, he said at least 60 Israeli commandos attacked the flotilla vessel, adding that he witnessed the deaths of four mates.

About his return to Pakistan, Talat said that he will arrived back home on Thursday’s evening.

brecorder.com

 

[Aslan]

The madness of arrogance Dr Alan Sabrosky

2 June 2010 Israel’s attack on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla on America’s Memorial Day was all too predictable, although the form it took surprised many. And it confirms the old proverb that “Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad,” for the attack was the kind of madness only unbridled arrogance can assume.
It wasn’t just that foreigners as well as Palestinians, flying flags other than that of Palestine, were attacked. Israel has a long history of doing such things, especially to the UN. But except for the USS Liberty incident in 1967, it has generally done that on inland sites — Gaza, the West Bank, the Lebanon — where it can largely block news and visual evidence, and control the spin it puts on events, counting on its friends in the US and other mainstream media to say little or nothing to contradict them.

Not this time. An attack on the open seas, in acknowledged international waters, against unarmed ships carrying humanitarian aid with passengers and crews from many countries — especially a direct attack against a Turkish ship — is a different matter, and potentially an explosive one. The number of shipboard casualties indicates that once fighting started, the Israeli commandos simply sprayed automatic weapons fire into the people around them — another of their long-standing habits.

And technology is their enemy here, just as it became in an earlier day the enemy of communist regimes in the former Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries. Too many images and videos were taken, and some sent, and too many witnesses reported what was happening, before the Israelis were able to suppress communications 
from their victims.

Bad for their victims, but also potentially very bad for Israel, and the initial Israeli public-relations damage control efforts show that they are at least dimly aware of that fact. Trying to cast the attack in international waters as an exercise in self-defense would be ludicrous in the best or worst of circumstances — has anyone ever seen wheelchairs used as offensive weaponry?

And for the Israeli spokeswoman to try to spin an assault by warships and armed commandos as defense against a “lynch” (I guess she was trying to push an American “hot button” for Obama — someone should tell her it is “lynching” or “lynch mob”) would have embarrassed even her public relations soul-mate, Dr. Josef Goebbels. But desperate do what desperation dictates, I suppose, although this time they may well have gone way too far.

And that is what the initial responses appear to affirm. All of the major US and many other media outlets are carrying this story, and even with the slant from many Jewish correspondents based in Jerusalem or Ashdod, the bloody particulars are slowly coming through to at least a general American audience for the first time:

1. The unarmed ships with unarmed passengers were trying to ferry humanitarian and reconstruction aid to ravaged and embattled Gaza.

2. Israel has imposed a blockade on Gaza, probably if not certainly in violation of international law, supported largely by US vetoes in the UN 
Security Council.

3. Israeli warships and commandos intercepted and attacked the aid flotilla in international waters — which is an act of war, piracy or state terrorism, depending on one’s view of the details.

4. Under attack, some of the passengers tried to defend themselves, scores were killed or wounded, and some Israeli commandos were also wounded — doubtless a surprise to them, but then their usual run of victims may have made them 
a bit too cocky.

5. Many governments and publics around the world — not only in Arab capitals — are openly outraged, and the discussion forums on US news websites carrying the story suggest that much the same is happening at a public level in this country.

6. But for Israel, this is just another “we are the misunderstood victim” incident in a long, sordid and utterly unbelievable litany of such things — except that this time, they may not get away with it.

This is a time for those interested in justice for Palestine to seize the moment and act, building on the promise engendered but not fulfilled after the submission of the Goldstone 
Report to the HRC.

Americans shouldn’t bother with letters or emails to US Senators or Representatives, or Obama; AIPAC will be there ahead of you with more letters and money than you can generate. Go instead directly to the local offices of US Senators and Representatives, stay until you speak personally to the senior person there, and make your case as forcefully as you can.

Make sure as many people hear you as possible — but be polite, and leave your signs at home.

For the world community, now is the time and this is the incident to drive home the UN “Uniting for Peace” Resolution, in both the Security Council and the General Assembly as needed. The nationalities of the victims will at least neutralise many European countries that might have opposed it before. Sanctions, embargoes, even the suspension or expulsion of Israel from the UN itself, do as much as quickly and as forcefully as possible.

Remember that the cornerstone of our oaths is not to obedience, but to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Think about it on this Memorial Day.

Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D, University of Michigan) is a 10-year US Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the US Army War College

The madness of arrogance

 

[Comet]

looking forward to Talat Hussain's remarks.