You Are In Israel Now - You Have No Rights

This week the UNHRC published its report into Israel’s attack on the Gaza Freedom flotilla earlier this year. No doubt it will be dismissed out of hand in some quarters as a product of the “biased”, “antisemitic” Human Rights Council. Such a response ignores the fact that whatever the flaws of the UN HRC as a voting body, the individuals who carried out this inquiry:

Judge Karl T. Hudson-Phillips, Q.C., retired Judge of the International Criminal Court and former Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago, (Chairman)

Sir Desmond de Silva, Q.C. of the United Kingdom, former Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone

Ms. Mary Shanthi Dairiam of Malaysia, founding member of the Board of Directors of the International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific and former member of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women

are all highly credible and have no known vendetta against the State of Israel (or Jews). Moreover in the report they explicitly recognise the somewhat partial nature of their mandate and describe how they re-interpreted it in order to treat the issue fairly. Finally, in its most significant conclusions (see below), the report merely agrees with an already overwhelming consensus.

Its main findings:

- the Gaza "blockade" is both "disproportionate" in its effects on the civilian population of Gaza and is intended to "punish the people of the Gaza Strip", and is therefore "illegal"

- the entire "closure regime" likewise constitutes "collective punishment" and is thus "illegal"

- Israel remains an "occupying power" with respect to Gaza, and as such its conduct remains subject to the provisions of international humanitarian law.

- the interception of the flotilla "was implemented in support of the overall closure regime", and was thus "illegal".

- Israeli forces perpetrated a “series” of “crimes”, including “wilful killing” and “torture or inhuman treatment”

In reaching these conclusions, the report for the most part merely agrees with the existing political legal and legal consensus, as expressed in, for example, UN reports and the positions of the major international humanitarian and human rights organisations. TheInternational Committee of the Red Cross, for example, considers that the siege of Gaza constitutes “a collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law”.

The report, basing itself on interviews with 112 witnesses, testimony from officials and forensic evidence, also offers the most authoritative account to date of the events on the flotilla itself. In the process, it exposes the narrative promoted in the immediate aftermath of the attack by Israel and its apologists as deceitful propaganda. The full report runs to 56 pages, excluding annexes, and I won’t attempt to summarise it all here. Still, there are a few points that are worth highlighting.

“Activist aggressors”

First, on the basis of this report it is quite clear that what happened on board the Mavi Marmara was a massacre. Immediately after the attack, in which nine civilians were killed and dozens more injured, Israel and its apologists insisted, with typical chutzpah, that it was that activistswho were the aggressors. The elite IDF special ops forces wereportrayed as innocent naifs who, wielding nothing more than “paint-guns” and Buddhist literature, stumbled unawares into a “vicious assault” by “ultra-violent” “[c]lub-wielding” “activists aggressors” (to quote the Guardian’s resident ‘critic of Israel’). What actually happened, according to this report, the most authoritative account to date?

When it became clear that Israeli forces intended to forcibly board the ship, “some individuals grouped together with the intention to defend the ship” against the “illegal” attack. There was “little evidence of any unified command to coordinate the defense of the ship”. Some passengers “engaged in last minute efforts to fashion rudimentary weapons shortly prior to interception”.

Their ‘weaponry’? Some passengers used “electric tools” to saw off bits of metal railing, and metal chains between the railings, to use as weapons. When the ship’s crew discovered this they “confiscated” the tools and locked them in the radio room. Other individuals donned “gas masks” to counter the effects of tear-gas; gas masks are part of a ship’s “standard fire-fighting equipment”.

During the actual fighting, a few passengers used rods, water hoses and “culinary knives” to fend off Israeli soldiers who had already fired upon the boat, including with live ammunition. Contrary to Israeli claims, which were “so inconsistent and contradictory” that the commission was forced to dismiss them, there is “no evidence” that any passengers used “firearms” against the soldiers. This bears repeating: Israeli forces fired first, with live ammunition, before boarding the boat; and, contrary to Israeli claims, there is no evidence that any activist used a firearm, despite having multiple opportunities to do so (activists did succeed in wresting firearms from Israeli soldiers – they then threw them into the sea).

What did the IDF deploy to thwart the deadly threat of a few activists wielding metal railings, kitchen cutlery and fire-fighting equipment? "Soldiers from the ‘Shayetet 13’ special naval forces unit took part in the operation", and used "live ammunition", tear-gas and plastic bullets to kill passengers who "posed… [no] threat" to them. They were supported by

“a number of corvettes and missile boats, helicopters, zodiacs, surveillance aircraft and possibly two submarines.”

Presumably Dimona was on full alert too.

Massacre

Having boarded the ship, the soldiers proceeded to kill and injure its passengers. The “vast majority” of those on the top deck of the boat were shot, mostly in the head and upper body. Four activists were killed during this period, including the American citizen Furkan Dogan, who was using a video camera and was “not involved in any of the fighting”. Two of them appear to have been “shot at close range while lying on the ground”. Soldiers “continued shooting at passengers who had already been wounded”, including with live ammunition. Wounded passengers were also beaten. After taking control of the top deck Israeli soldiers “fired live ammunition” at passengers on the decks below. A number of passengers were “killed and injured” while trying to “take refuge”. At least four more were killed, including a photographer who was taking photos, “none” of whom “posed any threat” to the Israeli forces. After it became clear that “a large number of passengers had become injured”, the President of the IHH used his white shirt to indicate ‘surrender’. This “does not appear to have had any effect” and “live firing continued”.

In total nine activists were killed. “[A]t least six” of these killings were “extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions”. Overall Israeli actions demonstrated “totally unnecessary and incredible violence” that resulted in “the wholly avoidable killing and maiming of a large number of civilian passengers”.

Dealing with passive resistance

During the fighting, activists managed to capture three Israeli soldiers. These soldiers were protected, given medical treatment and set free. Passengers detained by Israeli forces, by contrast, were systematically abused, beaten and tortured.

After the attack, a common line heard from defenders of Israel’s conduct was that ‘the boarding of the other boats in the flotilla took place without incident, because those passengers didn’t resort to violence’. In fact, on three of the other boats, “passive resistance offered by the passengers was met with force”, including the use of smoke and stun grenades, rubber bullets and electroshock weapons, which caused “burns, bruises, hematomas and fractures”. Plastic handcuffs were applied so tightly that circulation was cut off to people’s hands (at least 54 people were injured in this way), and many continue to suffer problems months later. Detainees were left out in the sun to suffer first-degree burns, denied medical treatment and forced to piss themselves. Dogs were set on the passengers, some of whom were bitten. Some were violently beaten, resulting in one case in a fractured leg.

Overall, the report concludes, the treatment of passengers on board the Mavi Marmara and on some of the other boats “amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and, insofar as the treatment was additionally applied as a form of punishment, torture”.

“You are in Israel now; you have no rights.”

Bad as this is, the passengers’ real ordeal appears to have begun after they disembarked in Israel, where they were “paraded” in front of jeering crowds of Israelis, including school children. They were then subjected to physical and verbal abuse if, as almost all did, they refused to sign deportation forms that were in a language most did not understand and included a confession on the part of the signer that s/he had entered Israel illegally (as opposed to being illegally abducted to Israel by the Israeli military). The example of one Greek national Greek national illustrates what happened to individuals deemed non-cooperative: after refusing to provide his fingerprints to the Israeli authorities he was “dragged along the ground for some distance”, “surrounded by a large group of Israeli officials” and “severely beaten”, which resulted in “the deliberate fracture of his leg”. The broken leg was not treated until after the passenger had left Israel. Activists were also subjected to denial of medical care, deliberate humiliation (e.g. repeated and unnecessary strip and internal cavity searches) and, in one instance, death threats. The general approach was accurately summarised by one Israeli officer, responding to protests from a passenger: “You are in Israel now; you have no rights.”

The abuse continued right up until the passengers’ deportation from Israel, via Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. Inside the terminal itself, 30 passengers were “kicked and punched” and “beaten to the ground” by a group of soldiers wielding batons. In one incident, an

“Irish passenger was seen being particularly badly beaten around the head and held in a choke position to the point of near suffocation. He identified his attackers as police officers.”

In another:

“a passenger was physically attacked by around seventeen officers when he refused to sign deportation paper[s], kicked in the head and threatened at gunpoint.”

Another:

“One passenger was seen having his arm twisted behind his back by police to the point that the arm broke.”

In short, “acts of torture were committed by Israeli officials against passengers during their period of detention in Israel”.

BONUS fun footnote: footnote 68, following a description of how passengers used water hoses to repel the soldiers trying to board, observes that according to the International Maritime Organization "the use of water hoses is recommended as a means to prevent an attempted boarding by pirates and armed robbers". Snap!

BONUS lesson for journalists: “In light of seizure of cameras, CCTV footage and digital media storage devices and of the suppression of that material with the disclosure only of a selected and minute quantity of it, the Mission was obliged to treat with extreme caution the versions released by the Israeli authorities where those versions did not coincide with the evidence of eyewitnesses who appeared before us”.

BONUS gratuitous insult: “The passengers on the [‘Rachel Corrie’]… noted with irritation that the Israelis continually referred to the ship by its former name, the M. V. Linda.”