Page 8 Toronto Street News Jan. 1-15, 2009 Vol. 10, #13 — Page 8

From: Jerry Ackerman To: Chronicle Herald Letters

Israel accused of ramming Gaza aid boat * guard-ian.co.uk

The damaged Free Gaza boat Dignity arrives in Leba-non after its encounter with the Israeli navy. Photograph: Ali Hashisho/Reuters

Activists trying to bring aid to Gaza claimed their boat

had been rammed by Israeli gunboats in a "criminal attack" in international waters. The Free Gaza Movement said its vessel, the Dignity, was in-tercepted by several Israeli ships as it headed to the Gaza Strip, which has been under Israeli aerial bombardment since Saturday. One gunboat rammed the Dig-nity on the port bow side, caus-ing heavy damage, although no one was hurt, the group said. "When attacked, the Dignity was clearly in international waters, 90 miles off the coast of Gaza," the group said on its

website. "The gunboats also fired their machine guns into the water in an attempt to stop the mercy ship from get-ting to Gaza.

"Israel thumbs its nose in the face of maritime law by attacking a human rights boat in international waters and has put all of these human rights observers at risk.

" A t n o t i m e

was the Dignity ever close to Israeli waters. They clearly identified themselves, and the Israeli attack was wilful and criminal."

The group said the attack took place as the Dignity car-ried 16 passengers and three tonnes of medical supplies at the request of doctors in Gaza.

The crew and passengers had hoped to treat some of those injured in four days of the Israeli air strikes, with hospitals in the territory overwhelmed.

The Dignity later arrived in the Lebanese port of Tyre, where it was met by cheering crowds.

The Lebanese president, Michel Suleiman, ordered that the Dignity be "rescued" and welcomed back in Lebanon.

Markos Kyprianou, the Cypriot foreign minister, told public radio his country would lodge a formal protest over the incident.

He said that although the boat was neither Cypriot-owned nor Cypriot-registered, the fact that it left Cyprus and had Cypriot nationals on board accorded the govern-ment "the right to be informed and to protest".

Kyprianou said he had instructed the Cyprus embassy in Israel to lodge the protest.

The Dignity flies the flag of Gibraltar and is piloted by an English captain. Its 16 passengers include Cynthia

McKinney, a former US congresswoman. It left for Gaza from Lanarca in Cyprus yesterday. The

group said journalists on board filmed the attack. An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Yigal Palmor,

told Reuters there had been no shooting, although two ships had made "physical contact".

Palmor said the boat had failed to respond to Israeli naval radio contact and an Israeli vessel had "clashed with the ship". He said nobody was hurt, and the Israeli ship escorted the aid boat back to Cypriot territorial wa-ters.

Israel declared the coastal territory a closed military zone after it launched air attacks on Hamas targets in Gaza on Saturday in response to Hamas firing rockets into Israel. Israel said the Free Gaza movement boat would not be permitted to dock in the Gaza Strip.

The Free Gaza group made 5 boat deliveries of aid to Gaza since August, defying a blockade imposed by Israel when Hamas won control of the territory in June 2006.

Aid ships for the Palestinian coastal territory often stop at Cyprus before heading to Gaza, opting for the indirect route to deprive Israel of any excuse not to allow them in.

The last boat to make the trip on December 20 carried a Qatari delegation, Lebanese activists and journalists from Israel and Lebanon. Qatar has good relations with both Israel and Hamas.

WHERE TERRORISTS

ARE ‘MUSLIMS’

The zionist-occupied press & media bombard the world with front-page headlines, email alerts, and editorials promoting the ‘war on terror.’ But when zionists are the terrorists, such as is the case in the Israeli Chanukah 2008 Gaza Massacre, silence reigns in the zionist occupied press & media.

The Israelis get away with wholesale murder because Bush’s America allows it and the zionist propaganda machine supports it - either through loudly voiced propaganda or through deafening silence. The internal destabiliza-tion of a US brokered ‘peace proc-ess’ between Israel & the Pales-tinians is part of a zionist plan to bolster the zionist-Israel Lobby’s stranglehold on the American po-litical system. “The Israel Lobby is so powerful,” asserts Jimmy Carter, “that all US politicians are beholden to the Lobby’s

agenda.” The zionist-occupied press cov-

erage of Israeli attacks on Pales-tinian towns treats the US govern-ment as an innocent bystander. Zionism simply chooses to ignore the importance of the US as a sup-plier of weapons to Israel. For in its role as Israel’s primary arms supplier, America could exert control over Israeli murders of Palestinians, but it chooses not to.

Along with the Israelis, the US Military/Zionist complex is also a clear winner in the slaughter of the Gazan civilians. The Israeli air strikes against the Palestinians comes from General Dynamic’s/Lockheed Martin’s F-16 Fighting Falcons & Hughes’/McDonald Douglas’ AH-64 Apache Helicop-ters.

And the shared US/Israeli f rightening technology of “unmanned drones,” which Israel has developed to a perfection, continues to terrorize the Palestin-ian civilian population with “delayed bombs and grenades” deployed throughout Gaza. The Israeli drone is known throughout military circles as the “hi tech kill-ing machine.” This Israeli killing

machine is in huge demand throughout the world.

The US is also reliant on the Israeli “unmanned drones” - util-izing the Israeli-developed tech-nology for homeland security. Northrop Grumman, (for which the neocon, zionist Douglas Feith, does consulting work as well as for Lockheed Martin), has re-cently been awarded a $1bn con-tract to build three unmanned drone prototypes for the US mili-tary. Currently, Israeli-made drones are flying within Amer-ica’s borders.

America’s continuation as a vi-able power is now dependent on a military economy. With the loss of a broad manufacturing base since the 1960’s defense contrac-tors provide the last vestiges of US manufactures.

A system of military-economic fascism is now embedded in America’s political process. The corruption of the US political sys-tem has been advanced to perfec-tion by the most powerful force the world has ever known: the Israel Lobby.

by Hassane Zerouky Global Outlook, No 2, Sum-mer 2002 www.globalresearch.ca

The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/ZER403A.html

Thanks to the Mossad, Israel's "Institute for In-telligence and Special Tasks", the Hamas was al-lowed to reinforce its presence in the occupied terri-tories. Meanwhile, Arafat's Fatah Movement for Na-tional Liberation as well as the Palestinian Left were subjected to the most brutal form of repression and intimidation

Let us not forget that it was Israel, which in fact created Hamas. According to Zeev Sternell, historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, "Israel thought that it was a smart ploy to push the Islamists against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO)".

Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of the Islamist movement in Palestine, returning from Cairo in the seventies, established an Islamic charity association. Prime Minister Golda Meir, saw this as a an oppor-tunity to counterbalance the rise of Arafat's Fatah movement. .According to the Israeli weekly Koteret Rashit (October 1987), "The Islamic associations as well as the university had been supported and en-couraged by the Israeli military authority" in charge of the (civilian) administration of the West Bank and Gaza. "They [the Islamic associations and the uni-versity] were authorized to receive money payments from abroad."

The Islamists set up orphanages and health clinics, as well as a network of schools, workshops which created employment for women as well as system of financial aid to the poor. And in 1978, they created an "Islamic University" in Gaza. "The military au-thority was convinced that these activities would weaken both the PLO and the leftist organizations in Gaza." At the end of 1992, there were six hundred mosques in Gaza. Thanks to Israel's intelligence agency Mossad (Israel's Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks) , the Islamists were allowed to rein-force their presence in the occupied territories. Meanwhile, the members of Fatah (Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine) and the Pales-tinian Left were subjected to the most brutal form of repression.

In 1984, Ahmed Yassin was arrested and con-demned to twelve years in prison, after the discovery of a hidden arms cache. But one year later, he was set free and resumed his activities. And when the Intifada ('uprising') began, in October 1987, which took the Islamists by surprise, Sheik Yassin re-sponded by creating the Hamas (The Islamic Resis-tance Movement): "God is our beginning, the prophet our model, the Koran our constitution", pro-claims article 7 of the charter of the organization.

Ahmed Yassin was in prison when, the Oslo ac-cords (Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government) were signed in September 1993. The Hamas had rejected Oslo outright. But at that time, 70% of Palestinians had condemned the attacks on Israeli civilians. Yassin did everything in his power to undermine the Oslo accords. Even prior to Prime Minister Rabin's death, he had the support of the Israeli government. The latter was very reluctant to implement the peace agreement.

The Hamas then launched a carefully timed cam-paign of attacks against civilians, one day before the meeting between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators, regarding the formal recognition of Israel by the Na-tional Palestinian Council. These events were largely instrumental in the formation of a Right wing Israeli government following the May 1996 elections.

Quite unexpectedly, Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered Sheik Ahmed Yassin to be released from prison ("on humanitarian grounds") where he was serving a life sentence. Meanwhile, Netanyahu, to-gether with President Bill Clinton, was putting pres-sure on Arafat to control the Hamas. In fact, Netanyahu knew that he could rely, once more, on the Islamists to sabotage the Oslo accords. Worse still: after having expelled Yassin to Jordan, Prime Minister Netanyahu allowed him to return to Gaza, where he was welcomed triumphantly as a hero in October 1997.

Arafat was helpless in the face of these events. Moreover, because he had supported Saddam Hus-sein during the1991 Gulf war, (while the Hamas had cautiously abstained from taking sides), the Gulf states decided to cut off their financing of the Pales-tinian Authority. Meanwhile, between February and April 1998, Sheik Ahmad Yassin was able to raise several hundred million dollars, from those same countries. The the budget of The Hamas was said to be greater than that of the Palestinian Authority. These new sources of funding enabled the Islamists to effectively pursue their various charitable activi-ties. It is estimated that one Palestinian out of three is the recipient of financial aid from the Hamas. And in this regard, Israel has done nothing to curb the inflow of money into the occupied territories.

The Hamas had built its strength through its vari-ous acts of sabotage of the peace process, in a way which was compatible with the interests of the Is-raeli government. In turn, the latter sought in a num-ber of ways, to prevent the application of the Oslo accords. In other words, Hamas was fulfilling the functions for which it was originally created: to pre-vent the creation of a Palestinian State. And in this regard, Hamas and Ariel Sharon, see eye to eye; they are exactly on the same wave length.

A new political division of the Kingdom of the Netherlands will come into force on 15 Decem-ber 2010. Aruba will re-main a separate country

Brit Zionist Led Aristocracy For Mass Internet Censorship

From Dick Eastman The UK has recently introduced a national

Internet censorship scheme, a national ID card

British courts continue to disgrace Enlighten-ment values.

This month saw a secret UK court hearing, with secret participants, produce a secret order to secretly gag the population, the terms of

Fawkes', editor of 'order-order.com'.

The summary states: 1. The identities of the Applicants/Claimants

must remain confidential. 2. The fact of the existence of the Orders must

world's largest arms exporter, the preferred home of Russian and middle-eastern oligarchs, the world center for "libel tourism" and, as far as we can tell, the Western capital of secret gag orders.

Only a week ago, on December 17, the High

Hamas is a Creation of Mossad

Israel Commits Piracy Terror On High Seas!

U of Toronto Professor Danny Goldstick (at left) admires protester

Kosher Jews For Social Justice

Toronto saw the largest protest in years as thousands of protesters arrived to voice their concerns over the Gaza holocaust — thousands of people are dead and wounded in the Gaza. Our friends and columnists are feeling exonerated to know that local Toronto Jews also came out in force to defend the rights of Palestinians to have a life free of bombings, racism, attacks on their children, lack of food, clean water, medicine, medical services, maintenance of kidney dialysis machines, etc. Peace is possible only when Israel which decides life and death over Palestinians decides it is time to stop the killings. While this goes on the lands of the Palestinians continues to be stolen. Our friends the Orthodox Rabbis at Neturei Karta told the zionists to: “Stop stealing the Palestin-ian lands!” at the previous protest at Spadina & Bloor. — VPF

Protesters included immigrants from many Protesters included immigrants from many countries aware of Israel’s zionist criminalitycountries aware of Israel’s zionist criminality