Floating the deal: Greece, Israel, Gaza and 'The Audacity of Hope'

Israel Battles Gaza Flotilla on Two Fronts

By James M. Wall
Wallwritings

A year ago, the Israeli Defense Force handed Israel one of its worst media defeats in modern history.

Israeli commandos, filled with their government’s propaganda that Israel’s security was at stake, landed on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, ready for battle and determined to keep the ship from breaking Israel’s control over Gaza’s shores.

Nine Turkish citizens were killed, one of whom was a Turkish-American.

This year Israel took the job of boarding flotilla ships away from the IDF and gave it to the Greek Coast Guard. On the fourth of July, as Americans celebrated their Independence Day, Israel expanded its Gaza blockade to the Aegean Sea.

What led to Greece’s decision to become Israel’s Aegean Sea outpost? Deep Throat could have told you this was coming: “Follow the money”, specifically the $17 billion which Israel and the US knew Greece needed to escape from a monumental economic collapse.

One way diplomacy works is through negotiations.  Another way, when one side is facing default, is to transfer money from the more powerful nation to the economically-strapped nation, which agrees to give up some of its freedom to let the powerful nation have control over segments of its domestic and foreign policy decisions.

The $17 billion guaranteed, the Greek government issued a blanket order: No flotilla ships may sail for Gaza from any Greek port.

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Are American bulldozers guilty of Palestinian oppression?

"The Caterpillar boycott has been endorsed by scores of church groups, peace organizations, and human rights groups.... More than 15,000 Palestinian homes in the occupied territories have been destroyed by Israeli occupation forces, the majority with Caterpillar bulldozers."

Obama's Caterpillar Visit a Thumb in the Eye for Human Rights Activists

By Stephen Zunes, AlterNet

Over the objections of church groups, peace organizations and human rights activists, President Barack Obama decided to return to Illinois to visit the headquarters of the Caterpillar company, which for years has violated international law, U.S. law and its own code of conduct by selling its D9 and D10 bulldozers to Israel.

In his speech on Thursday, Obama praised Caterpillar, saying, “Your machines plow the farms that feed our families; build the towers that shape our skylines; lay the roads that connect our communities; power the trucks that deliver our goods.” He failed to mention that Caterpillar machines have been used to level Palestinian homes, uproot olive orchards, build the illegal separation wall and, in some cases, kill innocent civilians, including a 23-year old American peace activist.

Given the slump in sales that forced Caterpillar to lay off thousands of workers, the company is emblematic of the problems facing industrial towns of the Midwest in the face of the worse recession in decades and was therefore seen as an appropriate place for Obama to make an appearance. Yet surely there were other heavy equipment manufacturers, or other industries, he could have chosen to visit -- one which doesn't provide its wares for what have been widely recognized as crimes against humanity and is not the subject of an international boycott by the human rights community.

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The Gaza Bombshell

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

by David Rose
Vanity Fair, April 2008

“A Dirty War”

The Al Deira Hotel, in Gaza City, is a haven of calm in a land beset by poverty, fear, and violence. In the middle of December 2007, I sit in the hotel’s airy restaurant, its windows open to the Mediterranean, and listen to a slight, bearded man named Mazen Asad abu Dan describe the suffering he endured 11 months before at the hands of his fellow Palestinians. Abu Dan, 28, is a member of Hamas, the Iranian-backed Islamist organization that has been designated a terrorist group by the United States, but I have a good reason for taking him at his word: I’ve seen the video.

It shows abu Dan kneeling, his hands bound behind his back, and screaming as his captors pummel him with a black iron rod. “I lost all the skin on my back from the beatings,” he says. “Instead of medicine, they poured perfume on my wounds. It felt as if they had taken a sword to my injuries.”

On January 26, 2007, abu Dan, a student at the Islamic University of Gaza, had gone to a local cemetery with his father and five others to erect a headstone for his grandmother. When they arrived, however, they found themselves surrounded by 30 armed men from Hamas’s rival, Fatah, the party of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. “They took us to a house in north Gaza,” abu Dan says. “They covered our eyes and took us to a room on the sixth floor.”

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Crop losses put more pressure on Palestinian woes

Farmers hit by prolonged frost in January

HEBRON, WEST BANK (IRIN) - A recent cold snap with sub-zero temperatures has caused farmers in the West Bank to incur losses of nearly US$14.5 million, according to initial estimates by the Palestinian ministry of agriculture (MoA) set out in a 6 February joint "fact sheet" with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The winter cash crop is the most profitable and "[as] a direct result of the frost, thousands of farmers have lost their main source of income for the next [few] months," the "fact sheet", which was emailed to IRIN, said.

Between 70 and 100 percent of crops planted in the open - mainly zucchinis, aubergines, beans, tomatoes, peppers and fruit trees - have either been lost or damaged.

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