Further Indictements.


By newsmax
September 27, 2010
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The 56-page UN report forms a comprehensive indictment of Israeli actions, which includes these findings:

The conduct of the Israeli military and other personnel towards the flotilla passengers was not only totally disproportionate to the occasion but demonstrated levels of totally unnecessary and incredible violence. It constituted “grave violations of human rights law and international humanitarian law”
‘Systematic humiliation and violent treatment of passengers’, and the ‘shocking’ and ‘gratuitous’ use of violence.

No evidence that the passengers fired or had firearms (para 165)

No effort was made to minimise injuries at certain stages of the operation and that the use of live fire was done in an extensive and arbitrary manner. “It is difficult not to conclude that, once the order to use live fire had been given, no one was safe,” the report states. “It seems a matter of pure chance that there were not more fatalities as a result.” (para 169)

There was a “prevailing climate of fear of violence that had a dehumanizing effect on all those detained on board.” (para 178)

Two passengers received wounds compatible with being shot at close range while lying on the ground (para 118)
None of the four passengers who were killed in a separate incident - including a photographer - “posed any threat to the Israeli forces,” (para 120)

Force used by the Israeli soldiers in intercepting the Challenger I, the Sfendoni and the Eleftheri Mesogios was unnecessary, disproportionate, excessive and inappropriate and amounted to violations of the right to physical integrity (para 173)

The factual circumstances provide prima facie evidence that protected persons suffered violations of international humanitarian law including wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment and wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health within the terms of Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Conventions (para 182).

Passengers were “jeered at and taunted by the people on the quay,” in a way that passengers found to be “unsettling and humiliating.” (para 185)

Passengers were “beaten or physically abused for refusing to sign or for advising others not to sign,” papers at the airport.

Passengers were subjected to a series of meticulous searches, including strip searches with a number describing the process as being “deliberately degrading and humiliating, accompanied by taunts, provocative and insulting language and physical abuse.” (para 189).

The wife of one of the deceased passengers was treated with complete insensitivity to her bereavement (para 194)

“Extreme and unprovoked” violence was perpetrated by uniformed Israeli personnel upon passengers at the airport, accounts of which were “so consistent and vivid as to be beyond question.” (para 202)

Unarmed passengers were baton charged at the airport, “In the foray,” the report states, “around 30 passengers were beaten to the ground, kicked and punched in a sustained attack by soldiers.”
A doctor clearly identified as such was kicked and punched (para 207)

Israeli military and police personnel at the airport exhibited behaviour much of which “was surely criminal under domestic Israeli law.” (para 209)

The wounded were handcuffed to their beds using standard metal handcuffs and that sometimes their feed was shackled when they were held in Israeli hospitals.
The Israeli authorities confiscated a large amount of video and photographic footage and that this confiscation “represents a deliberate attempt by the Israeli authorities to suppress or destroy evidence, “ (paras 240-1)

Withholding and sometimes destroying private property of passengers “represents both a violation of rights related to property ownership and to the freedom of expression,” (para 245)

In prison, passengers were subjected to “sleep deprivation and denial of access to a lawyer,” (para 251)·
Acts of torture were committed by Israeli officials against passengers during their period of detention in Israel (para 219)

COMMENTS

Advis3r

27 September, 2010 - 11:06

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2 points

Quite so the report is a complete fabrication from beginning to end and bears no relationship to what actually happened as has been clearly demonstrated by the video evidence produced and by a Turkish eyewitness account which gives the lie to most if not all of this nonsense. Oh sorry they did manage to get the name of the boats right.

Isca Stieglitz

27 September, 2010 - 11:35

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1 point

It's not to say that Israel shouldn't get or never deserves criticism, it does on many counts. However a report which appears so one sided, avoiding even the evidence available to them without Israeli/military cooperation, serves to continue the increasing distrust of the UNHCR as an organisation to cast judgements universally and fairly.

http://www.rnw.nl/international-justice/article/un-human-rights-council-...

The resolutions against Israel may, or may not, be debatable, but if to at least appear fair there has to be equivalent metering out to other countries/transgressors with equal or worse transgressions. A look at the UNHCR record demonstrates clearly that this is not the case.

http://www.un.org/documents/scres.htm

I'm back to my 'camera focus metaphor' again. I want a fair and 'wide-angled' report. The bigger picture would cause major discomfort, but at least everyone would be feeling it.

Advis3r

27 September, 2010 - 11:40

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2 points

From http://cifwatch.com/

"There is so much wrong with this report that it would take far more space than a mere blog post permits in which to detail the numerous mistakes, omissions, erroneous presumptions and politically motivated hearsay upon which it is based. Its methodology and many of the sources upon which it relies can –and should- be called into question. Although, as McGreal pointed out in his CiF article, it carries no legal force, it is already being lauded by Hamas, Turkey and others involved in the ongoing campaign to delegitimize Israel by means of lawfare. It provides a veneer of seemingly irreproachable respectability to many of the pernicious myths surrounding the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas and lends its more than implicit support to those terror-supporting organizations involved in the ‘Free Gaza’ campaign.

The report was commissioned on June 2nd – a mere three days after the events aboard the Mavi Marmara – by a body which had prior to that already come out in predictable condemnation of Israel. The mission and mandate of the subsequently appointed investigatory body were already defined in that condemnation, and whilst the report acknowledges the one-sided nature of its mission as defined, it does not appear to have had the desire to correct that obvious bias.

“Decides to dispatch an independent international fact finding mission to investigate violations of international law, including international humanitarian and human rights law, resulting from the Israeli attacks on the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian assistance.”

Some of the more glaring faults of the report include the omission of any reference to the real causes of power outages in the Gaza strip (clause 31), the declaration that there is a “severe humanitarian situation in Gaza” (clause 53) and that a humanitarian crisis existed on 31/05/2010 in Gaza (clause 261), together with an ‘interesting’ definition of starvation (clause 52). The assumption that Gaza is still under Israeli occupation (clause 51), together with the reliance upon testimonies from such partisan sources as Richard Falk and Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) (clause 179) sets the scene for some of the more fanciful claims made by the writers of the report. These include the defining of the ‘Free Gaza’ movement as a human rights organization (clause 76) and the IHH as a “humanitarian organization”, the dismissal of readily available footage of some of the Mavi Marmara’s passengers’ Jihadi calls to martyrdom with a description of “some bravado”, the description of what went on aboard the ships as “passive resistance”, “non-violence” and “symbolic resistance” (clause 102), the claim that “at no stage was a request made by the Israeli navy for the cargo to be inspected” (clause 109) and the claim that the replies to Israeli navy radio communications which we have all heard and which referred to Auschwitz and the 9/11 terror attack did not come from the ships’ passengers (clause 110). The report even descends to the ridiculous level of describing “excessive air conditioning” in the vans in which detainees were transported (clause 195), the noise in the prison in which they were held (clause 197) and the number of armed soldiers present at the airport before their deportation (clause 202) as deliberate intimidation upon the part of Israel and makes the unsubstantiated claim that detainees were photographed for “trophy pictures” (clause 190) and exposed to “hostile crowds” (clause 185)."
As I said a complete fabrication from beginning to end.

Jonathan Hoffman

27 September, 2010 - 21:56

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Try and learn to spell "Indictments"

Come back when you have progessed beyond Primary School

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