AN inquiry ordered by the UN Human Rights Council said on Wednesday that Israel violated human rights law and international humanitarian law when its occupation troops stormed the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ last May. The probe added that there was clear evidence to back prosecution against the Zionist entity for committing crimes of ‘wilful killing; torture or inhuman treatment; and wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health.’
On May 31, nine Turkish activists were martyred when Israeli occupation soldiers stormed aid ships going to end the crippling blockade on Gaza.
The probe also said Israel’s enforcement of a blockade was itself unlawful, since Gaza was suffering from a humanitarian crisis on the day of the deadly raid. ‘For this reason alone, the blockade is unlawful and cannot be sustained in law. This is so regardless of the grounds on which it is sought to justify the legality of the blockade,’ said the report.
It said even those activists who did not try to stop Israeli soldiers from illegally boarding the aid ships ‘received injuries, including fatal injuries.’
It added: ‘It is apparent that no effort was made to minimise injuries at certain states of the operation and that the use of live fire was done in an extensive and arbitrary manner.’
Further: ‘The circumstances of the killing of at least six of the passengers were in a manner consistent with an extra-legal, arbitrary and summary execution.
‘The conduct of the Israeli military and other personnel towards the flotilla passengers was not only disproportionate to the occasion but demonstrated levels of totally unnecessary and incredible violence,’ said the probe.
It is a matter of fact that if an Israeli vessel had been intercepted in the same way, and its passengers treated in the same way by the Turkish, Egyptian or Syrian military, there would have been an immediate declaration of war on the offending state by the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv, and the use of every weapon in Israel’s extensive arsenal, however horrific.
As it is, the Israeli regime with its extensive international imperialist support, has been able to thumb its nose at the UN rights body’s judgement of its actions and claim that it is biased.
This is a variant of the same claim that the Israeli leadership has used since the foundation of the Israeli state, after the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948, when those who exposed this terror tactic were called anti-semites by the Zionists.
The same term of abuse was flung at opponents of the six-day war in 1967, and the annexing of the Sinai Peninsula, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights.
And again it was hurled at those who condemned the settlement building in the occupied territories and East Jerusalem and the armed interventions into the West Bank and Gaza and into the Lebanon.
In the last two years, those who have opposed the starving of the Palestinian masses by the siege of Gaza have been called the same name.
However, the truth is that Zionism is not Judaism, and the conduct of the Zionist rulers of Israel since 1948 has served to incite anti-semitism all over the world.
Now the UN Human Rights Council, a world body, has condemned the state of Israel for the ‘summary execution’ of Turkish citizens and one Turkish- American.
The Zionist leadership must be put on trial before the Hague war crimes tribunal. The worldwide labour movement must move into action to help liberate the Palestinian and Jewish people from the Zionist ruling clique in Tel Aviv.
The trade unions must clamp a complete boycott onto the state of Israel and maintain it until the siege of Gaza is lifted, and a Palestinian state established with Jerusalem as its capital, where Christians, Jews and Arabs will be able to live side by side.