Report: Turkey set to indict IDF officers over killing of Gaza flotilla activists

Harretz
Barak Ravid

Turkish daily says Ankara's prosecutor readies 144-page document that accuses top Israeli officers, including former army chief Gabi Ashkenazi, of ordering intentional killing, wounding of Turkish nationals on Mavi Marmara; charges still need to be approved by Istanbul district prosecutor.

Turkey’s chief prosecutor is expected to charge retired Israeli defense officials, including former army chief Gabi Ashkenazi, for ordering the intentional killing of activists during a 2010 Israel Defense Forces raid of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, a report said on Wednesday. 

According to the Turkish daily Sabah, Ankara's chief prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya is due to file a 144-page indictment targeting Ashkenazi, former Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin, former Israel Navy chief Eliezer Maron, and former head of Israel Air force's intelligence wing Avishai Levy over the raid on the Mavi Marmara, which resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish nationals. 

The report indicated that Turkey intended to charge the former officials for ordering IDF troops to intentionally kill, wound, and abduct Turkish activists, as well as encourage their torture and loot their belongings. 

Turkey issued warrants against all four former Israeli officers, and they could be arrested on arrival in Turkey, the report added. 

Israel's raid of the Gaza-bound flotilla proved a watershed moment in Israel-Turkey relations, with the once staunch allies trading blame over responsibility for the incident. 

Turkey has insisted that Israel apologize for the raid and its consequences, as well as pay reparations to the families of those killed; Israel has, thus far, refused to do so. 

Former Spy Chief Questions Israeli Leaders’ Judgment

New York Times
Ethan Bronner

Meir Dagan

JERUSALEM — The man who ran Israel’s Mossad spy agency until January contends that Israel’s top leaders lack judgment and that anticipated pressures of international isolation as the Palestinians campaign for statehood could lead to rash decisions — like an airstrike on Iran. 

The former intelligence chief, Meir Dagan, who stepped down after eight years, has made several unusual public appearances and statements in recent weeks. He first made headlines a few weeks ago when he asserted at a Hebrew University conference that attacking Iran militarily would be “a stupid idea.”

This week Mr. Dagan, speaking at Tel Aviv University, said that attacking Iran “would mean regional war, and in that case you would have given Iran the best possible reason to continue the nuclear program.” He added, “The regional challenge that Israel would face would be impossible.”
Mr. Dagan went on to complain that Israel had failed to put forward a peace initiative with the Palestinians and that it had foolishly ignored the Saudi peace initiative promising full diplomatic relations in exchange for a return to the 1967 lines. He worried that soon Israel would be pushed into a corner.

On Thursday he got more specific, naming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, but this time through a leaked statement to journalists. It had to do with his belief that his retirement and those of other top security chiefs had taken away a necessary counterforce in decision making.

In recent months, the military chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, and the director of the Shin Bet internal security agency, Yuval Diskin, also stepped down. Mr. Dagan was quoted in several newspapers as saying that the three of them had served as a counterweight to Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Barak.

“I decided to speak out because when I was in office, Diskin, Ashkenazi and I could block any dangerous adventure,” he was quoted as saying. “Now I am afraid that there is no one to stop Bibi and Barak,” he added, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname.

Journalists recalled that Mr. Dagan, who had refused contact with the media during his time in office, called a news briefing the last week of his tenure and laid out his concerns about an attack on Iran. But military censorship prevented his words from being reported.

“Dagan wanted to send a message to the Israeli public, but the censors stopped him,” Ronen Bergman of Yediot Aharonot, said by telephone. “So now that he is out of office he is going over the heads of the censors by speaking publicly.”

Mr. Dagan’s public and critical comments, at the age of 66 and after a long and widely admired career, have shaken the political establishment. The prime minister’s office declined requests for a response although ministers have attacked him. He has also found an echo among the nation’s commentators who have been ringing similar alarms.

“It’s not the Iranians or the Palestinians who are keeping Dagan awake at night but Israel’s leadership,” asserted Ari Shavit on the front page of Friday’s Haaretz newspaper. “He does not trust the judgment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.”

It was Mr. Shavit who interviewed Mr. Dagan on stage at Tel Aviv University this week. And while Haaretz is the home of the country’s left wing, Mr. Shavit is more of a centrist.

“Dagan is really worried about September,” Mr. Shavit said in a telephone interview, referring to the date when the Palestinians are expected to ask the United Nations General Assembly to recognize their state within the 1967 lines. The resolution is expected to pass and to bring new forms of international pressure on Israel. “He is afraid that Israel’s isolation will cause its leaders to take reckless action against Iran.”

Nahum Barnea, a commentator for Yediot Aharonot newspaper, wrote on Friday that Mr. Dagan was not alone. Naming the other retired security chiefs and adding Amos Yadlin, who recently retired as chief of military intelligence, Mr. Barnea said that they shared Mr. Dagan’s criticism.

“This is not a military junta that has conspired against the elected leadership,” Mr. Barnea wrote. “These are people who, through their positions, were exposed to the state’s most closely-guarded secrets and participated in the most intimate discussions with the prime minister and the defense minister. It is not so much that their opinion is important as civilians; their testimony is important as people who were there. And their testimony is troubling.”

This concern was backed by a former Mossad official, Gad Shimron, who spoke Friday on Israel Radio.

Mr. Shimron said: “I want everyone to pay attention to the fact that the three tribal elders, Ashkenazi, Diskin and Dagan, within a very short time, are all telling the people of Israel: take note, something is going on that we couldn’t talk about until now, and now we are talking about it. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark and that is the decision-making process. The leadership makes fiery statements, we stepped on the brakes, we are no longer there and we don’t know what will happen. And that’s why we are saying this aloud.”

Neither Mr. Ashkenazi nor Mr. Diskin has made any public statements, and one high-level military official said he did not believe they shared Mr. Dagan’s views.

While in office, Mr. Dagan served three prime ministers, was reappointed twice and oversaw a number of reported operations that Israelis consider great successes — forcing delays in Iran’s nuclear program through sabotaging its computers and assassinating scientists; setting the groundwork for an attack on a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007; and assassinating Imad Mughniyeh, a top Lebanese Hezbollah operative, in 2008 .

When Ariel Sharon, the prime minister in 2002, appointed Mr. Dagan, he was reported to have told him he wanted “a Mossad with a knife between its teeth.” Mr. Dagan is widely thought to have complied and is not seen as a soft-hearted liberal.

Although Mr. Dagan is barred by law from elected office for three years, some suspect he is laying the ground for a political career. Others, like Yossi Peled, a government minister from the Likud party and a former military commander, simply think he is doing more harm than good.

“It damages state security,” he said on Israel Radio. “There is no need to give the other side directions of thought, activity or readiness. I am sure he is very worried and is acting out of good intentions, but I still think there are things that shouldn’t be declared in public.” 

Sheikh Raed Salah: The "Jewish state" and us

A study published in "The Jewish state and the Palestinians inside" - the Centre for Contemporary Studies

Israel was founded as a political entity on the basis of Zionism; it was not originally predicated upon the principle of a Jewish state according to the religious understanding of the concept. On the contrary, it is a product of colonial forces and Zionist backers with financial muscle.

Many of the founders, theorists and supporters of the Zionist project were atheists with a secular outlook; they tended to stress how remote Zionism is from religion in order to manufacture a degree of legitimacy. This was particularly the case in Europe where many priests and rabbis gave the Zionist project their backing in order to attract Jewry in the European Diaspora.
It was clear that the Zionist establishment sought a specific type of Jew to fulfil the aims of this project, those who would be able to create a secure political entity. This can be inferred from a letter by Golda Meir in 1958 when, as Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, she wrote to Israel's ambassador to Poland: "We cannot continue to take in the ill and the disabled." This discussion obviously referred to Jewish migrants to Israel; as such, this letter reveals the real thinking behind Israel's preference despite claiming that it is a state for all Jewish people. This scenario was repeated with the Jews of Yemen whose testimonies remain concealed to this day.

There are those who do not recognise the ethnic basis for a Jewish people. A lecturer at the University of Tel Aviv, Professor Shlomo Sand wrote "The invention of the Jewish people"; it is considered to be one of the most important books dealing with this subject. Sand holds that "the Jewish people are a retroactively created fiction and a myth promoted by the state of Israel." He also asserts that "the state of Israel was born through an act of violence against the indigenous citizens in 1948." In "The Myths of Zionism", John Rose writes, "Zionism is the problem which threatens peace in the Middle East. No, rather it threatens the future of Judaism with demise. The basic condition for the return of peace is possibly in its elimination."

This begs us to ask what pushes the Zionist establishment to beat its drums day and night in order to remind us of the Jewish nature of the state and demand that everyone recognises its Jewishness. In discussing this issue, we should take into account the following:

1. The failure of this establishment to convince Israelis to stay in Israel. The pervasive corruption within Zionist circles constitutes one of the key reasons for this. The Israeli organisation Sderot for Social Affairs suggests that 67% of Israelis believe that the level of corruption within the country is "high to very high"; only 28% of young Russian immigrants are confident about staying in Israel. The American international lawyer, Franklin Lamb, a CNN report dealing with the reality in Israel which predicted the following:
   
   a.     The migration of millions of Israelis to the United States over the next 15 years.
   b.     The return of 1.5 million Russian Jews to Russia or elsewhere in Europe.
   c.     Half a million Israelis will carry US passports and others will carry European passports.
   d.     According to statements made by a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Immigration and Settlement, Ms Mithal Nawi, the number of immigrants to Israel will equal the number of migrants.
   
2. Yoni Golstein, a Jewish community leader in Canada, revealed that 85% of Jews in Montreal are actually migrants from Israel.
3. Israel's failure to attract new immigrants to the extent that some have called for the dissolution of the Jewish Agency. This rejection has led to demands for the dissolution of the Nateef section. There are also demands from the leadership of the French Jewish      community to abandon the displacement of France's 700,000 Jews. There are similar demands being made by the Jewish leadership in the US where the Jewish population is 6 million. According to Israeli statistics, Israel's population has increased by 125,000 individuals; 21,000 as a result of population growth and only 14,000 as a result of migration.

Israel is, therefore, stripped of its internal sense of invulnerability. According to Police Inspector David Cohen, the spectre of corruption and organised crime constitutes a strategic threat to Israel. Avi Zamir, the head of Israeli army recruitment, has revealed that the number of men dodging compulsory military service rose from 18.1% in 1991 to 25% in 2008; among women the figure went from 32% in 1991 to 44% in 2008.

"Jewish text books prevent the achievement of peace with the Arabs," wrote Dr Eli Budya, a lecturer at the University of Haifa. Russian journalist Dmitri Sumakov, who specialises in international drugs control, claims that "Israel is one of the most important world centres for the drugs trade and this trade is linked to senior Israeli officials". During an academic conference held in Kiev, Ukrainian academics accused Israeli companies of kidnapping 25,000 Ukrainians for their organs.

For many international institutions, Israel's crimes in Gaza were the straw that broke the camel's back with regard to their relationship with the Zionist state and the favouritism with which it has been treated. Malcolm Smart, director of Amnesty International in the Middle East, says unequivocally: "According to international law, the siege of Gaza is collective punishment." Garrett Porto, the US author and political analyst claimed: "Israel fabricated documents published by the British newspaper, the Times, on Iran's atomic bomb." A study of the strategic consequences of recent international reports related to Israel have revealed that Israel is in an unenviable international position as these reports - chaired by Goldstone and Falk respectively  -  destroyed "the image it had created for itself over many decades and which cost it significant diplomatic, political, financial media effort as well as the efforts made by Jewish lobbies across the world; its moral image and the image of it as an ethical  state and army have fallen to such an extent that it is now compared on international forums to Apartheid in South Africa."

Despite the mild tone used in the UN's Goldstone Report, it revealed that Israel's "very moral" army used civilians as human shields and bombed civilian government buildings and mosques. As a result of these policies, Hampshire University in American withdrew its investment in six Israeli companies it had dealings with.

As a result of far-right, bordering on fascist Israeli policies, international rights organisations have started to pursue military and political elements within Israel deemed to bear responsibility for the Gaza war. Gabi Ashkenazi, the former IDF Chief of Staff, was forced to postpone travel arrangements to Brussels for a meeting between NATO leaders for fear of being arrested on war crimes charges. The Minister of Strategic Affairs, Moshe Yaalon, announced that he was prepared to give up visiting European capitals for the same reason. Former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is wanted in more than one country for her role in such crimes. The matter has become so serious that the global climate summit held in Denmark refused permission for two Israeli delegates to take part; such is Israel's image on the world stage.

Many Israeli strategists fear for the future of the country, and according to a report prepared by America's Central Intelligence Agency the collapse of Israel is predicted within the next 20 years. The Director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs considers that Israel's future depends on its occupation of the West Bank: "The occupation of the West Bank is what will destroy Israel from within."

It is well known that the majority of psychological studies dealing with violence in Israel linked it to the actions of those responsible for violence in the territories occupied in 1967 in that they create the reactionary processes in the Israeli media and on the street. As such, Israel's future as a whole is linked to the situation that they live in and the state of internal disintegration which affects all aspects of life in Israel.

Intelligence officer Mitai Steinberg wrote in "Standing before their Fate", in which he warns of the foolishness of Israeli intransigence with regard to making peace with the Arabs and Palestinians, "Israel's evasion or failure to pay the price demanded by the settlement [i.e. Withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders] involves risk to the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state which is several times greater than ceding the region." The third study from the Ofa Institute entitled "The burden of the Israel-Palestine Conflict", edited by Professor Shlomo Sibirsky, deals with the burden of the conflict in eleven economic, social and military areas. It concludes that Israel has become a state subject to condemnation, ostracism and boycotts by many countries. Alongside all of this, we find that in his book called "Blood and religion", the British author and supporter of Israel, Jonathan Cook, says that Israel faces a future similar to that of South Africa.

The cries coming from the likes of Avraham Burg, Shulamit Aloni and Judge Barak warn of an evil reality that will engulf Israel which, since the moment it was established, considered us Palestinians a demographic threat. The secular documents have exposed the magnitude of this lie which continues to deceive large numbers and constitutes the ideological grounds for dealing with them. How do we pose a demographic threat when Israel exists in an Arab and Islamic region, and Palestinians with Israeli citizenship number just 1.3 million along with 5.5 million Jews. However, we only form a part of the total number of Palestinians in a diaspora of more than 10.5 million.

It is within this context that the idea of a two state-solution exists so that the reality of the illegal settlements is no hindrance. In any case, Israel has never negotiated with the Palestinians; rather it has always nurtured conflict with the Palestinians and the Arabs and the two-state solution is nothing more than a scattering of ash in the eye. Proposals of the two-state solution which cannot be implemented alongside discussions of the state is a form of strategic thinking. Discussions about the Jewishness of the state vis-a-vis the context of the strategic vision of such a  state necessitates that one of its most important components is the purity of the Jewish Ashkenazi people, of East European stock; the expulsion of Palestinians is a key aim.

In conclusion:

1. The project of the Jewish state has similar beginnings to colonialism and colonised states.
2. The project of the Jewish state was imposed on us, the Palestinians.
3. There is complete understanding among Zionists about our removal from our own land.
4. The Palestinians may be allowed a quasi mini-state with enough to ensure that we don't grow too strong, but that we don't starve.
5. The numbers of Jews in the state is equal to the number of Palestinians in historic Palestine but they are the minority to Palestinians in historic Palestine and the diaspora, who have a legal right to return to their country.
6. The aim is to transfer us from our land; that is, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
7. The clear indications are that the Zionist project of Israel is bound to implode, sooner or later.