Between Dome of the Rock and a Hard Place
Max Blumenthal published today a nice catch from the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot about how 550 Israeli officers and soldiers have been investigated for possible war crimes in Gaza. On July 15th, I published a little post on the two IDF soldiers prosecuted for shooting an unarmed, bound, and blindfolded man. I noted the revealing [...]
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The last few blog posts have focused on the contradictions—that is, fabrications—coming out of the “IDF” Press Office and Israeli Foreign Ministry about the flotilla massacre. Here, I focus again on the IDF effort to paint the humanitarian activists as terrorists. The point is not new; it has been making the rounds on the blogosphere, [...]
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In addition to the proven IDF lies highlighted in the preceding posts on this blog, the latest blunder comes from the IDF’s clearly doctored “Radio Transmission from Mavi Marmara to Israel Navy”. Thanks to Ali Abunimah for the original post pointing this out. It sounds in the strange, clearly edited recording that the IDF published [...]
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The Israeli government is very rapidly losing control of its own hasbara efforts. As documented in recent posts, Israel’s Consulate in New York first claimed no commandos were detained by activists, then Israel’s navy said there were, and just now the consulate wrote me again (@HybridStates) to say no IDF troops were captured at any [...]
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The Israeli government has decided to change its story, ostensibly because it felt it had generated enough sympathy in the international media through its confiscation and selective publishing of video from the flotilla attack. Israel’s orchestrated PR effort has only worked, of course, in generating jingoistic empathy for the soldiers among its own largely brainwashed [...]
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Yesterday Yuli Edelstein at the Israel Consulate in New York fielded questions via Twitter about the flotilla massacre. I asked directly: “Were IDF commandos detained by flotilla activists? If so, for how long? How were they released?” The Israeli Consulate responded: “Not true. Its a rumor.” About 30 hours later the world is informed that [...]
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It’s difficult to say precisely when the Gaza siege became a formal naval blockade (Update: a commenter, Marian Houk, points out that the IDF Spokesperson announced the blockade on Jan 3, 2009, a fact that raises an additional question of how the IDF views the siege from 2006 to 2009.) But in the language of [...]
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I hate hyperbole when things are already so bad that no exaggeration is needed. So I am going to keep things as rational and methodical as possible, with a nice and healthy smattering of caveats wherever needed. Still, I have no doubt what I am about to say would disturb my family members who slowly [...]
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After what presumably amounted to months of desperate searching, Judge Goldstone’s detractors finally found the “smoking gun” to forever lay to rest his damaging—and still unrebutted—report on Israeli and Hamas-orchestrated war crimes in Gaza. It turns out that he is a judge, a white man, from South Africa, of sufficient age and experience to have [...]
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It is, in a certain sense, bound to happen. The massacre of unarmed civilians and the institutional cover-up for such behavior are certainties when it comes to modern warfare. This statement applies, of course, to the Sri Lankans as much as the Russians, to the Americans as much as the Israelis. The American military, for [...]
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