Jerry Mazza on The Latest Israeli Atrocity

An independent journalist who resides in New York, Jerry Mazza has been incensed by the arrogance of the Israeli assault on the humanitarian flotilla bringing food, clothing, medical supplies and construction materials to the besieged people of Gaza. Israel conducted a midnight raid on unarmed civilians aboard a ship that was flying the Turkish flag, which is an act of piracy or of war under international maritime law. The Israelis insist that they were acting in "self-defense" when they shot and killed ten civilians and wounded scores of others.

Israel claims that the blockade against bringing supplies to Gaza is justified on the basis of some 2,500 alleged rocket attacks on Israel over the past ten years, but the number killed by those attacks turns out to be less than their commandos have killed in this single ill-conceived and murderous act. I have studied the videos Israel has provided that purport to show civilians using metal pipes to beat commandos, but those swinging the pipes are the same general size and stature of other commandos, who are observing them and taking no action to stop them.

Kevin Barrett has now interviewed an expert who observed that, while the footage purports to have been taken from one ship of events occurring on another, there is visual stability between the decks of the ships, which would be impossible if they were actually afloat and bobbing up and down in the Mediterranean Sea. Not only does Israel appear to have chosen the time of the attack to correspond to Memorial Day in the United States but appears to have resorted to video fakery to make its case for self-defense, even as it maintains tight-control over the world's largest public concentration camp in Gaza.

A 19-year old American was shot in the head four times, which is difficult to reconcile with claims of "self-defense". The incident has not only highlighted the plight of more than a million desperate Palestinians who are being denied their most basic human rights but brought to mind an earlier act of barbarism by Israel, its attack on the USS Liberty, an American spy ship, during the Six Day War, which took the lives of 34 crew members and wounded another 171 more.