Turkel report whitewashes war crimes:
The ball is now in Palestine’s and Turkey’s court
By Mazin Qumsiyeh
Victims from the attack on the Mavi Marmara, Furkan was also a US citizen
The Israeli “investigation” of its own crimes exonerated
itself, again. In the first part of the
so called Turkel report, in January 2011 the Israeli appointed commission (not
independent but known apologists for the Israeli government) “found” that its
attack on the Mavi Marmara and the Gaza freedom flotilla (Turkish and
international-flagged civilian ships in International waters), was “kosher” by
International law. International legal
experts, UN investigators, human rights organizations, the Turkish government, and most of the world governments
and world public disagreed. In fact, if
the US has not blocked action by NATO (because decisions must have agreement of
all NATO members), this is an actual attack on a NATO country. But today (February 6, 2013 more than two
years later) came the second even more shocking (though not unexpected) part of
the Turkel report. This is the most
convoluted whitewash sophistry in jargon that one can see. This part was supposed to look at the actions
of the Israeli commandos as they pirated (and yes that is the proper term
PIRACY) the ships but also in actions in the West Bank. Turkel concluded that
Israel’s oversight and investigations procedures of war crimes in this incident
and in actions in the West Bank “in general meet the requirements set by
International law.”! Ironically in
another part of the report it says that Israel unlike other Western Countries
had no definition or delineation of what constitutes war crimes! The commission
thus could not really evaluate something they had no definition of and if they
wanted the definitions that most countries ply it is available in International
law (e.g. the Geneva conventions which were not brought up in this context by
Turkel). Israel is obliged to follow
International law including refraining from war crimes. I do not need to go through the rest of the
lengthy report since it is mostly dealing with “operational improvements” in
the actions of the Israeli forces and the Israeli government. It actually regresses by making a
recommendation to the government that such events as attack on Palestinians or
Internationals should not be investigated by Israeli police or Israeli civilian
legal system but by the “Israeli military advocate general”. This is the same advocate general who
received 240 well documented cases of abuse by the Israeli forces in 2012 but
not a single case was brought to indictment/trials of the perpetrators (this is
from Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization that looked into this). And this was a relatively quiet year. In 2003
and 2004 there were hundreds of executions and other war crimes by the Israeli
military.
The Turkel report assigned no responsibility and was clearly
intended as a PR campaign to show that no International and truly independent
investigation is needed since the occupation army and the colonial state do a “good
job” investigating themselves though they can improve “operationally” in this
good performance! Even the Israeli
investigation of the massacre of hundreds of civilians at Sabra and Shatila in
1982 (a massacre performed by Lebanese phalange paid mercenaries of the Israeli
army with lighting and protection by Israeli forces) was a bit more nuanced. That 1982 investigation at least assigned
some responsibility to then defense minister Ariel Sharon who left political
life briefly but returned to become prime minister instead of being sent to the
Hague for war crimes. And of course
independent UN investigations are not allowed or if they happen are dismissed
out of hand. Even the killings of US
citizens are not investigated independently (for example see the murder of
Rachel Corrie).
I think this “Turkel report” should be the straw that breaks
the camel’s back. I think Turkey (a member of the International Criminal Court
and a member of NATO) and Palestine (which can now apply for membership) should
take Israel to the ICC. I think
Palestinian and Turkish officials meeting with President Obama next months should
say to him: enough is enough. It pained
me to see Salam Fayyad meeting with Israeli Knesset members and pleading with
them to release the Palestinian tax money that Israel stole. After 20 years of “Oslo”, will they learn
that pleading and begging colonizers/occupiers for our rights does not work?
If you want to waste a lot of time reading gibberish, here
is the website of the Israeli commission that exonerated the Israeli actions: see
http://www.turkel-committee.com but for for
real reports on what happened on the Mavi Marmara and the pirated ships people
can read the reports below:
Two UN reports contradict the Israeli report. See for example
http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/middle_east/Gaza_Flotilla_Panel_Report.pdf
All human rights organizations who looked into this even
wanted stronger actions (and of course these were not on the agenda of Mr.
Turkel). See for example Amnesty which first
described the initial Israeli report of January 2011 as a whitewash
and came up with a strong
report of its own
But if Israel is about transparency, why not release the
hundreds of camera/video cameras that it confiscated from the hundreds of passengers
on board? Why not even mention them in the
Turkel report (which did use the selective videos by Israeli military commandoes). The few smuggled videos are rather damning
and indeed show war crimes.
Here is a segment of execution by Israeli soldiers of a
peace activist on board the Mavi Marmara http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi6c10ntFZk
And here is a far longer smuggled video that shown many
other atrocities issues
And of course Mr. Turkel and company did not care about the
testimony of hundreds of survivors. Here
is just one chilling testimony: http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/middle-east/kidnapped-israel-forsaken-britain
And the Turkel report does not allude to these Photos that
show Mavi Marmara passengers protecting, aiding Israeli soldiers http://aliabunimah.posterous.com/blog-post-israel-hasbara-fails-again-pics-sho
Gideon Levy wrote an article that says “Israel does as it
pleases: Until now it’s worked. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Sudan and, of
course, the Palestinians wiped the saliva, said it was rain and restrained
themselves, because they are weak and Israel is strong.” http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/israel-does-as-it-pleases.premium-1.501032
Well I say again this “Turkel report” could be the straw
that breaks the camel’s back if Turkey (a member of the International Criminal
Court and a member of NATO) and Palestine (which can now apply for membership) can
get their act together. I do hope we will not have to wait for the next war
crime to act.
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
http://qumsiyeh.org
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