Video of Israeli Commando Executing American

I wasn’t going to post any more about the Freedom Flotilla, but over on Juan Cole’s site I found this post, Video Shows Israeli Commando Executing American. From there:

The Israeli military attempted to confiscate and erase the photographic and video evidence of its brutal asault on the Mavi Marmara aid ship on Memorial Day. But it turns out that digital images can often be recovered after erasure, and can be put on small memory sticks that can be hidden in nooks and crannies of luggage. So some images are in fact surfacing.

The most damaging is a film of an Israeli soldier kicking an American citizen while the latter is on the ground,and then executing him. This film completely refutes the rightwing Israeli government’s narrative of besieged lightly armed troops haplessly fending off naked aggression on the part of the aid workers.

I can’t make out very well what’s actually going on in this video. Try it yourself. There is no graphic gore visible.

There’s also a post over at Tikun Olam, IDF Executed Mavi Marmara Victims.

I don’t want to post the video here, but you can search for it on YouTube under İsraeli soldiers killing Furkan 19 years (The Freedom Flotilla) .

American Citizen Among Those Killed by Israelis

New York Times story here.

One of the dead passengers aboard the Mavi Marmara, which was boarded by Israeli commandos on the high seas in the dead of night, leaving at least nine dead, was an American citizen.

ISTANBUL — One of the nine people killed in an Israeli commando raid on a flotilla of ships heading for Gaza this week was a United States citizen of Turkish descent, officials in Turkey and Washington said Thursday.

Reports in the Turkish press identified the American as Furkan Dogan, 19, who was born in the United States before returning to Turkey with his family as a young child.

Mr. Dogan’s brother, Mustafa, described him as “clean-hearted with a happy face,” and said that he had asked for his parents’ blessing before leaving with the flotilla, according to a report in the Turkish newspaper Zaman.

The Cihan news agency reported that Mr. Dogan had one bullet in the chest and four bullets fired into his head from close range.

We’ll be eagerly waiting to hear what our brave administration has to say about this. Also, reputedly Sarah Palin is preparing a Facebook update on the massacre at sea. Can’t wait.

There’s a good post and comment thread over at Balloon Juice on this topic.

Well, it took about an hour and a half, but one of the back benchers in the WH Press Corpse finally asked Gibbs if it mattered to the WH that an American was among one of the flotilla dead.

The response from Gibbs when finally asked was so evasive and noncommittal that I can’t remember anything other than his mentioning that Obama had a good talk with Erdogan two days ago.

Some funny comments:

Then, of course, you have Elian Gonsalez who was really an American citizen even though he wasn’t born here and neither were his parents. This shit is confusing.

Joe Lieberman has just introduced a bill to take away the citizenship of any Americans killed by Israel.

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UPDATE: by the way, there’s a hilarious spoof Twitter account called Israel Global PR. Here’s their most recent tweet:

Israel apologises for the death of a US citizen aboard the flotilla, however we must state that the individual was not white

And some earlier tweets from them:

US citizens from the flotilla have been released. USA, please try to control our taxpayers.

Israel has seized CCTV footage from the flotilla: http://bit.ly/deWQpl The rest of the tape was uninteresting and has been disposed of

Sneak preview of our impartial investigation: “Israel’s response was proportionate and justified”

Israel Fakes Weapons Photos

It’s hard to know what to believe these days, you can’t even trust your old, reliable eyes when it comes to footage and photos. So if you were skeptical about the footage Israel was posting on YouTube, your instincts were the right ones.
Here’s an article at The Arabist about Israel’s photos of purported weapons caches found aboard the Mavi Marmara. As you might have guessed, the pictures were actually taken several years earlier and, naturally, someplace else.

My friend Ibn Kafka has a wonderful post catching Israel in a propaganda f**k-up. The Israeli Ministry Foreign Affairs posted on its Flickr account pictures of the terrifying weapons they found on the IHH ship. You know, things like bulletproof vests for emergency services, pepper spray, kitchen knives, bits of wood and other weapons of mass destruction. Except that they did not realize that Flickr displays EXIF data, which is the information that cameras record when they take pictures: aperture, shutter speed, flash status… and the time the picture was taken.

Which, as Flickr commenters quickly pointed out, was sometime in 2006.

So the Israeli MFA quickly changed the EXIF date, but not before I was able to take snapshots of before and after:

In other news, an American citizen had her eye put out by a tear gas canister fired by Israeli soldiers. Story here at Salon.

A student at New York’s Cooper Union School of Art is recovering in an Israeli hospital after being shot in the face with a tear gas canister on Monday during a demonstration at a check point between Israel and the West Bank.

“They fired many canisters at us in rapid succession. One landed on either side of Emily, then the third one hit her in the face,” said Soren Johanssen, a Swedish ISM volunteer who was standing with Henochowicz at the protest.

In related news, the US strongly feels that only Israel can properly investigate this incident, as any other entity might be impartial might not have Israel’s best interests at heart is unncessary when Israel already has the politicians ready and able to tell us what happened. Guardian story here.

This is so shameful that it’s almost as if Cheney GWB were still president.

The Americans also blocked criticism of Israel for violating international law by assaulting a ship in international waters in the security council statement proposed by Turkey, the Palestinians and Arab nations.

Yeah! Why criticize Israel just because they violated international law in one more way, this time by assaulting a humanitarian ship in international waters, killing nine, whose names they haven’t even released yet? It’s not like they’re Somali pirates or anything.

And vice president Biden plays the absolute moron with these statements:

“They’ve said, ‘Here you go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship — if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza,'”, he said. “So what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza? Well, it’s legitimate for Israel to say, ‘I don’t know what’s on that ship. These guys are dropping… 3,000 rockets on my people.

“Look, you can argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not — but the truth of the matter is, Israel has a right to know — they’re at war with Hamas — has a right to know whether or not arms are being smuggled in.”

Seriously, Israel?

AP story here.

JERUSALEM – Israeli commandos on Monday stormed six ships carrying hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists on an aid mission to the blockaded Gaza Strip, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens

Twice in this story there’s a claim by the Israelis that the civilians on the ship used weapons seized from Israeli commandos. I’m trying to figure out how the civilians seized weapons from soldiers who hadn’t attacked them yet. I’m really trying to figure out how the civilians seized weapons from Israeli commandos at all.

Does this make sense to anyone? A little help here?

An Al-Jazeera reporter on one of the Turkish ships said the Israelis fired at the vessel before boarding it. The Israelis, who had declared they would not let the ships reach Gaza, said they only opened fire after being attacked by activists with sticks, knives and live fire from weapons seized from the Israeli commandos.

The Israeli military said troops only opened fire after encountering unexpected resistance from the activists. Activists attacked troops with knives and iron rods, and opened fire with two pistols seized from the forces.

Response so far:

The tough Israeli response drew condemnations from Turkey, France and the U.N.’s Mideast envoy, while Greece suspended a military exercise with Israel and postponed a visit by Israel’s air force chief.

About 10,000 Turks also marched from Israel’s Consulate in Istanbul toward the city’s main square, shouting slogans denouncing Israel. The protesters earlier Monday tried storm the Consulate building but were blocked by police.

The Israeli ambassadors in Sweden, Spain, Denmark and Greece were summoned for meetings, and the French foreign minister called for an investigation.

In neighboring Jordan, hundreds demonstrated in the capital Amman to protest the Israeli action and demand that their government breaks diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.

The United Nations expressed “shock” and condemned the killings. “We are in contact with the Israeli authorities to express our deep concern and to seek a full explanation,” said a statement from the highest-ranking U.N. official in the region, Robert Serry.

Presumably the US response will be, “Israel has a right to defend its territory.” What do you think?

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UPDATE: the AP story at the link now is not the same story I linked to this morning. Additional information has been added and quotes have been removed. Sorry about that; I have no control over altering the news.
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UPDATE: Swedish novelist Henning Mankell was on board one of the ships and is reported to be fine.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz is publishing some editorials highly critical of the raid. I wish we would publish such things here in the US. A couple of titles:

Seven Idiots in the Cabinet

and Gaza Flotilla Drives Israel into a Sea of Stupidity.

Freedom Flotilla Approaches Israel

I recommend reading Freedom Flotilla: “Israel is Threatening to Attack Us” over at Mantiq al-Tayr all about it. From there:

1. The quote in the title headline is from the video below featuring Huwaida Arraf, an American-born Christian woman of Palestinian heritage married to a Jew, Adam Shapiro, the head of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Rachel Corrie was with the ISM when she was murdered. Ms. Arraf is talking about the Freedom Flotilla, a group of ships heading to Gaza to break the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza’s shore. In addition, the Flotilla is not just carrying “humanitarian aid” – you know, shitty food that Jews occupying Palestine wouldn’t eat themselves, they are carrying construction materials so that Gaza can rebuild itself after the terrorist murderous Israeli invasion of Gaza about a year and a half ago. Said invasion being a series of war crimes against the Palestinian people that was bravely supported by both houses of the Congress of the United States of America, a fact which all decent Americans are utterly ashamed of.

Here are a couple of other articles on the general topic. This one’s from Veterans Today and this one’s from Counterpunch.

And here’s a spanking new AP article about the flotilla. Posted one hour ago.