[THS] !!!!!! Ray McGovern: Obama`s Timidity and Deaths at Sea

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25595.htm


Obama's Timidity and Deaths at Sea

By Ray McGovern

June 01, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- A chief lesson to learn from President
Barack Obama’s recent unwillingness to stand up to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and the Likud Lobby is that such timidity can get people killed.

Casualty figures are still arriving in the wake of Israel’s Sunday night-Monday
morning commando attack on an unarmed flotilla trying to bring relief supplies to the
1.5 million Palestinians crowded into Gaza. Already, at least nine civilian passengers
are reported killed, and dozens wounded.

Seldom has an act of aggression been so well advertised in advance. Israel had
made clear that it would use force to prevent the ships from reaching Gaza and
heard no stern protest from President Obama, who apparently could not overcome
his fear of Israel’s legendary political clout.

Earlier this year, Obama did criticize Israel’s continued settlement of Palestinian areas
and Netanyahu’s resistance to holding meaningful peace talks, but the President has
failed to follow up his words with firm action or resolve. Netanyahu concluded that
Israel could do what it wished, including dropping commandos from helicopters onto
crowded ships and, after alleging a clash with civilians, ordering the use of lethal
force.

Then, Netanyahu could expect that America’s Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) – with
leading figures like Wolf Blitzer who built his journalistic career by working for the
Jerusalem Post – would finesse the murderous assault into something reasonable and
possibly even tilted sympathetically toward the Israeli troops.

Early on, CNN began repeating the Israeli “explanation” for its attack on the high
seas, parroting the Jerusalem Post which reported that “militants were killed” after
they set upon Israeli naval commandos who boarded one of the six ships Monday
morning at two o’clock.

The commandos “were met with strong resistance from men armed with bladed
weapons and the situation degenerated into a massacre when one of them grabbed
the weapon of a soldier and opened fire,” said the Jerusalem Post, quoting Israeli
military sources.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that the relief convoy organizers had a
“radical Islamic anti-Western orientation,” and that Israeli “naval forces were attacked
with metal clubs and knives, as well as live fire,” though there were no reports of
Israeli deaths. The IDF statement continued:

“The demonstrators had clearly prepared their weapons in advance for this specific
purpose,” adding that the Navy then used riot dispersal methods, which include live
fire, according to JTA, the global news service of the Jewish people.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak blamed the organizers of the convoy for the
violent outcome, and Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told a news conference
why that was so: “The organizers’ intent was violent, their method was violent, and
unfortunately, the results were violent.”

So, you see, the Israeli military resorted to violence only in self-defense. Right.

Quiet Conversation

On Monday, President Obama spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by
phone about the incident. Afterwards, the White House said Obama had expressed
“deep regret” over the deaths, but declined further comment, citing “the importance
of learning all the facts and circumstances” as quickly as possible.

Don’t hold your breath, though, waiting for the timid Obama or his Likud-leaning
advisers — much less the FCM — to question the Israeli version.

We are likely to get an “explanation” worthy of the late Alexander Haig as to why the
slaughter may well have been “justified.” Haig’s death in February brought to mind
comments he made about a brutal incident on the night of Dec. 2, 1980, shortly after
Ronald Reagan’s election victory.

In rightist-ruled El Salvador, government security forces stopped four American
churchwomen in their mini-van and were ordered to kill them. The soldiers first
raped the women and then executed them with high-powered rifles. Reagan’s
foreign policy team decided to treat the rape-murder as a public relations problem,
best handled by shifting blame onto the victims. And so, the women were deemed
not nuns, but “political activists.” (Today, “militants”—whatever that means—is often
the label of choice.)

After becoming Reagan’s first Secretary of State, Haig told Congress that “the nuns
may have run through a roadblock or may have accidentally been perceived to have
been doing so, and there may have been an exchange of fire.”

In just a few weeks, the American women had gone from being innocent victims to
“political activists” to armed insurgents – although knowledgeable U.S. government
officials conceded there was no evidence to support Haig’s shoot-out speculation. As
an intelligence analyst at the time, I knew of Haig’s inclination to make up stuff.

Watch for something similar to happen with respect to the “militants” or “activists”
who were killed or wounded in the incident off Gaza. I avoid tuning in to the FCM
anymore (it’s just too much for my Irish temper), but I’m told that Israel-friendly
pundits are already spinning faster than the famous centrifuges in Iran.

Uncle Remus’s Wisdom

“He Don’t Say Nothin’,” as Uncle Remus put it, with improper grammar but with an
accurate understanding that by not saying anything you can often convey a powerful
or dangerous message.

As a presidential candidate, Obama was careful to say nothing about the brutal
Israeli blockade against the 1.5 million people in Gaza, about to enter its fourth year.
As president-elect he stayed mum as the Israelis attacked densely populated Gaza,
killing some 1,400 Gazans.

As President, he has backed down at every significant moment when Netanyahu
thumbed his nose at Obama or at Vice President Joe Biden.

Obama knew about the “Freedom Flotilla” and its plan to bring supplies to Gaza. And
he had to be aware of Israel’s threats to attack the relief ships. But, like Uncle
Remus’s B’rer Fox, Obama “don’t say nothin.’”

Quite the contrary, Obama’s pro-Zionist White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel,
who recently vacationed in Israel and met with Netanyahu last Wednesday, extended
an invitation for a working visit at the White House. Netanyahu was to visit Obama on
Tuesday after a four-day visit to Canada.

On Monday morning, Netanyahu canceled out of a gala dinner to be held in his
honor in Ottawa and nixed the visit to Washington. He said he hoped that both Prime
Minister Stephen Harper and President Obama “understand that Israel has a great
security problem.”

Getting Away With Murder

The fatal incident off the Gaza coast was not the first time Israel had used lethal
force against a nearly defenseless ship at sea. The attack on the “Freedom Flotilla”
was reminiscent of the attack on the USS Liberty during Israel’s Six-Day War against
three of its Arab neighbors.

The war started on June 5, 1967, when Israel carried out an unprovoked Blitzkrieg
attack. What is my source for “unprovoked?” Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem
Begin, who 15 years later admitted publicly:

“In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai
approaches do not prove that [Egyptian President] Nasser was really about to attack
us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

Three days into the war, Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats turned their firepower on
the intelligence collection ship USS Liberty in international waters after the Israelis
had identified it as a U.S. Navy ship.

The Israelis later insisted that the strafing and torpedo attacks were accidents in the
fog of war. However, U.S. intelligence intercepted Israeli conversations at the time
showing the attacks were deliberate, and their nature and persistence showed clear
intent to sink the Liberty and leave no survivors.

Israeli commandos clad in black were about to land from helicopters and finish off
what remained of the Liberty crew when Seaman Terry Halbardier (later awarded the
Silver Star) slid over the Liberty’s napalm-greased deck to jury-rig an antenna and
get an SOS off to the Sixth Fleet.

Israeli forces intercepted the SOS and quickly broke off the attack. But 34 of the
Liberty crew were killed and over 170 wounded.

To avoid exacerbating relations with Israel, the U.S. Navy was ordered to cover up
the deliberate nature of the attack, and the surviving crew was threatened with
imprisonment, if they so much as told their wives. When some of the crew later called
for an independent investigation, they were hit with charges of anti-Semitism.

One of the surviving crew of the USS Liberty, decorated Navy veteran Joe Meadors,
was with the “Freedom Flotilla” when it was attacked on Sunday night. Meadors is
past president of the USS Liberty Veterans Association. The State Department tells us
that Joe Meadors survived this latest Israeli attack. At last word, he sits in an Israeli
jail.

Rachel Corrie

Another American was murdered in cold blood on March 16, 2003. Twenty-three
year-old Rachel Corrie, a volunteer serving in Gaza with the International Solidarity
Movement was run over by an Israeli Army bulldozer after a prolonged face-off in full
view of several of her volunteer colleagues. Rachel had been trying to prevent the
bulldozing of a Palestinian home where she had been staying.

The message the Israelis wanted to convey in killing Rachel Corrie was that
international volunteers would no longer be exempt from the brutal treatment
accorded young Israeli volunteers who tried to stand up, as Rachel did, for decent
treatment of Palestinians in Gaza.

The FCM’s excitement over President George W. Bush’s eagerly anticipated “shock-
and-awe” bombing of Iraq three days later pushed what limited coverage there was
about Rachel’s murder to the back pages. The Israelis claimed the killing was an
inadvertent mistake, like the shoot-up of the Liberty. The courageous Rachel was
very much with the Freedom Flotilla in spirit. And a certain poetic justice is to be
found in that one of the ships in the convoy bore the name “Rachel Corrie.”

Israel cannot hide behind “inadvertence” this time, although its spin-masters are
already doing their best to smear the civilians on the ships with buzzwords, calling
them “militants” and “terrorists” who “ambushed” and tried to “lynch” the Israeli
commandos.

These P.R. tactics may work with the American FCM and neocons in Washington –
and by extension the TV-watchers in the United States – but patience with Israel in
the international community is wearing paper-thin.

Some Care About the Scandal of Gaza

Much of the world’s impatience has to do with Gaza, including the Israeli attack from
Dec. 17, 2008, to Jan. 18, 2009, as well as the three-year blockade that began when
Hamas won Palestinian elections and became the governing party in Gaza.

Israel and the U.S. government deem Hamas to be a terrorist organization, though
some other countries regard it more as a resistance movement fighting against Israeli
occupation.

Regardless of how one feels about Hamas, Israel’s harsh blockade of Gaza and last
year’s military assault have inflicted a humanitarian disaster on the Palestinian people.

Has Netanyahu Gone Too Far?

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has reacted strongly to the Israeli attack on the relief
ships, the largest of which sailed from Turkey. According to one report, Turkey has
served warning that Turkish Navy ships will escort future relief convoys to Gaza.

Erdogan has had it with Israeli mistreatment of Muslims in his eastern Mediterranean
neighborhood. On Jan. 29, 2009, at the economic summit in Davos, he leveled harsh
criticism to Israeli President Shimon Peres’s face, labeling Gaza “an open-air prison.”

Erdogan angrily cited “the sixth commandment — Thou Shalt Not Kill,” adding, “We
are talking about killing” in Gaza. Erdogan’s one-and-a-half-minute tirade was
captured on camera by the BBC.

Five days before Erdogan’s outburst, the Brazilian government also condemned
Israel’s bombing of Gaza and its effect on the civilian population as a
“disproportionate response.”

It seems to have been the atrocity in Gaza—plus a common determination to prevent
war from spreading to Iran—that galvanized the successful joint effort by Turkish
Prime Minister Erdogan and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to defy Israel.
They persuaded Iran to agree to transfer half of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey
for further processing, rendering it unusable for a nuclear weapon.

Defy Israel? you ask. Confused? If the Israeli leaders truly believe that low-enriched
uranium comprises an essential part of an “existential threat” to Israel from eventual
nuclear weapons in Iran, would they not be delighted at Iran’s agreement to send
half of that uranium out of the country? Good question.

Truth be told, Israel cares a lot less about Iran’s uranium that it does about forcing
“regime change” in Tehran. Netanyahu does not want any agreement with Iran; he
wants sanctions against Iran, and eventually a military conflict, with the U.S. jumping
in to help finish Iran off.

And this twin wish is shared by American neocons who remain influential in the
Obama administration and in the FCM.

The pro-Israeli hardliners are the ones running U.S. policy on the Middle East, not
Obama, who seems only nominally in charge. Unusually clear proof of this came
when the Brazilians released a letter revealing that Obama had personally
encouraged the Brazilian and Turkish leaders to pursue the kind of deal they were
able to work out with the Iranians.

Small wonder, then, that the leaders of Brazil and Turkey were taken aback when
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other administration spokespeople trashed the
tripartite Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal and pressed ahead with a new round of sanctions.

And the President? Did he step up and acknowledge that he had encouraged Brazil
and Turkey to seek the uranium deal? Well, he don’t say nothin’.

Israeli Influence

While Americans continue to be starved of real information from the FCM, better
informed people around the world have come to view with disdain the degree to
which Washington dogs are wagged by Israeli tails.

When I suggested five years ago before a Capitol Hill hearing chaired by Rep. John
Conyers that Israel was right up there, together with oil and military bases, as
comprising the real rationale for war on Iraq, I, too, was called anti-Semitic. But the
evidence has always been as clear as it is abundant.

An inadvertent remark by a major player on Iraq, former British Prime Minister Blair,
has provided insight — straight from the horse’s ass, I mean, mouth.

In early February 2010, the British press revealed that Blair, testifying to the Iraq war
commission in the U.K., offered the following account of his discussions with Bush in
Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. (That’s when Bush said war was the only way to deal
with Saddam Hussein, and Blair acquiesced.) But Blair’s remarks revealed that Israeli
concerns were a major part of the equation and that Israeli officials were involved in
the discussions. Thus, Blair:

“As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going
to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big
issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been
conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So
that was a major part of all this."

It is a safe bet that Hillary Clinton’s Likud-friendly lieutenants and their new junior
partners in London are busy conferring with Tel Aviv right now about how to handle
the P.R. challenge caused by the upstart leaders of Turkey and Brazil with the
temerity to work out a deal with Tehran. (Never mind that Obama personally asked
them to do it.)

How does one make into a bad thing Iran’s agreement to ship half its uranium out of
the country, even if additional steps might still be needed to assure the world that
Iran is telling the truth when it says it isn’t building a nuclear bomb?

More and more people around the globe are seeing Obama as subservient to the
Likud Lobby, perhaps not as enthusiastically as Bush was, but still unwilling to put
action behind his occasional words of dissatisfaction. Important players in the Middle
East, as well as increasingly assertive countries like Turkey and Brazil, conclude that
the policies and behavior of Tel Aviv and Washington are virtually identical.

And then there is the $3 billion or so that the United States gives Israel each year
that enables the Israelis to arm themselves to the teeth. It is understandable, then,
that many will blame Washington for what happened in the dark of night, on the eve
of Memorial Day, on the high seas.

Hard Lessons

The likely results are three-fold:

1)--On Memorial Day next year, there may well be hundreds more “fallen heroes” to
honor, killed by Muslim and other “militants” who make no distinction between what
the U.S. has done in Iraq and Afghanistan and what Israel does in Gaza and the
occupied West Bank — and add Lebanon and Syria, for good measure.

As Gen. David Petraeus pointed out earlier this year, the unresolved Arab-Israeli
“conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for
Israel” and thus puts U.S. troops at greater risk.

“Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S.
partnerships with governments and peoples in the [region] and weakens the
legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world,” Petraeus said. “Meanwhile, al-
Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support."

2)--The linking of U.S. support with Israeli actions increases the incentive of terrorists
to ply their dark arts in the United States.

While it is difficult to find a measure of objectivity in official U.S. government
documents on this topic, every so often there is a slip between cup and lip. There
was such a slip on Sept. 23, 2004, for example, when the Pentagon-sponsored U.S.
Defense Science Board issued a formal report concluding:

“Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies. The
overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in
favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights.”

You will not be surprised to find out that the board’s report was generally suppressed
in the FCM, as were the following, more specific, examples:

“By his own account, KSM’s [9/11 “mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s] animus
toward the United States stemmed not from his experience there as a student, but
rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.” [9/11
Commission Report, July 22, 2004, page 147]

And what motivated Dr. Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, the 32-year-old Jordanian
physician of Palestinian origin, who on Dec. 30, 2009, detonated a suicide bomb at a
CIA site in eastern Afghanistan, killing seven American CIA operatives? According to
his brother, al-Balawi “changed” during the three-week-long Israeli offensive in Gaza,
which killed some 1,400 Gazans.

When al-Balawi volunteered to treat injured Palestinians in Gaza, he was arrested by
Jordanian authorities, his brother said. It was after that arrest that al-Balawi allowed
himself to be “recruited” to spy on al-Qaeda for the CIA. Quickly, it became payback
time for Americans and Jordanians whom he associated with Israel.

Christmas underpants bomber Abdulmuttallab, also is reported to have been
particularly outraged by Israel’s slaughter of Gazans at the turn of 2008-09 and
Washington’s defense of Israel’s action.

That Israeli actions in Gaza acted as catalysts to al-Balawi’s and Abdulmuttallab’s
determination to exact revenge on the U.S. is hardly surprising — the more so in view
of Washington’s efforts to suppress the findings of the UN-commissioned Gaza
investigation by Justice Richard Goldstone. His report concluded that:

“The blockade policies implemented by Israel against the Gaza Strip, in particular the
closure of or restrictions imposed on border crossings in the immediate period before
the military operations, subjected the local population to extreme hardship and
deprivations that amounted to a violation of Israel’s obligations as an Occupying
Power under the Fourth Geneva Convention. 


“Israel has essentially violated its obligation to allow free passage of all consignments
of medical and hospital objects, food, and clothing that were needed to meet the
urgent humanitarian needs of the civilian population 


“The Mission concludes that the conditions resulting from deliberate actions of the
Israeli forces and the declared policies of the Government with regard to the Gaza
Strip before, during, and after the military operation cumulatively indicate the
intention to inflict collective punishment on the people of the Gaza Strip.

“The Mission, therefore, finds a violation of the provisions of Articles 33 of the Fourth
Geneva Convention.”

3)--Attacking Iran

It is no secret that this goal enjoys high priority on Netanyahu’s agenda. It could be
stopped in its tracks by a public warning from President Obama. But all signs point to
his bending to neocon advice to shy away from a showdown and, rather, leave
everything, including another war of aggression, “on the table.”

The fact that world leaders consider Netanyahu a clear and present danger to peace
in the region is shown by the way the leaders of Turkey and Brazil moved at an
accelerated pace to bend the Iranians to the kind of deal that Obama personally had
advocated, before being overruled by Hillary Clinton and others in his misguided
Team of Rivals.

The urgency of the Turkey-Brazil initiative came through in the words of Brazilian
President Lula da Silva, who could hardly have been more explicit:

“We can't allow to happen in Iran what happened in Iraq. Before any sanctions, we
must undertake all possible efforts to try and build peace in the Middle East."

Green Light?

Netanyahu listens only to Washington, when he listens at all. Following the bloody
attack on the Freedom Flotilla, I imagine he will now get at most a mealy-mouthed
“please-don’t-do-this-again” from the White House, together with acquiescence in an
Al-Haig-type made-up excuse about an “exchange” of fire.

If that proves to be the case, Netanyahu is altogether likely to consider that Israel has
a green light to provoke hostilities with Iran, with the full expectation that the United
States will jump right in to help the non-ally ally finish the job.

Non-ally ally? Sorry, despite what you hear from Obama, Congress and the whole
Washington Establishment, Israel is not an ally of the United States. Webster’s (and
international law) define ally as “a state associated with another by treaty.”

There is no mutual defense treaty between the U.S. and Israel. (Washington has
broached the idea to Israel from time to time, but Israel has said no thanks. Treaties,
you see, require internationally recognized borders, and—for obvious reasons—Israeli
leaders avoid that subject like the plague.)

NATO member Turkey, on the other hand, is a U.S. ally. This could make things very
awkward if Turkey sends its warships to accompany the next convoy trying to lift the
siege of Gaza. It is possible that Washington may have to choose between a real ally
and a synthetic one, if shots are fired.

Israel’s Attack Illegal; What Now?

Craig Murray, a former British ambassador and Foreign Office specialist on maritime
law (and VIPS member), has just weighed in with a helpful description of two clear
legal possibilities, which take into account both international law and the Law of the
Sea:

Possibility one is that the Israeli commandos were acting on behalf of the government
of Israel in killing the activists in international waters. The applicable law is that of the
flag state of the ship on which the incident occurred.

In legal terms, the Turkish ship was Turkish territory. So in this case Israel is in a
position of war with Turkey, and the attack by Israeli commandos falls under
international jurisdiction as a war crime.

Possibility two is that, if the killings were not military actions authorized by Israel, they
were then acts of murder and fall under Turkish jurisdiction. If Israel does not
consider itself in a position of war with Turkey, it must hand over the commandos
involved for trial in Turkey under Turkish law. It is for Turkey, not Israel, to carry out
any inquiry or investigation and to initiate any prosecutions. Israel would be obliged
by law to hand over indicted personnel for prosecution.

Stay tuned.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical
Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. As an Army infantry/intelligence
officer and later a CIA analyst, he spent almost 30 years in intelligence work. He is
co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

This article first posted on Consortiumnews.com.