COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Saturday, June 05, 2010

No Young Idealist Should Be Shot and Killed for Protesting.




Allison Krause was 19 when shot dead by US troops at Kent State.

A young American citizen on a civilian ship in international waters was shot and killed during an Israeli assault on the ship. The events that led up to the assault and what happened during are not yet known. Was it necessary for such an assault to have taken place and is there justification for it and the consequential deaths?

It is not the first time that a government overreacting to events made such a mistake. This time is was the Jewish State of Israel that was the government and one of the victims an American citizen of Turkish ancestry. It reminded me of an event years ago when four students were killed by US federal troops.

Three of the students shot to death by US troops at Kent State were of the Jewish tradition.

It was then, and is now, an infamous iconic event. What is not controversial was that four innocent idealistic young people were shot and killed in a protest event.

Today from the autopsy report conducted in Turkey, we learn of the fate of another young American protester:

A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. This time it was an Israeli soldier who did the killing.

To be consistent and intellectually honest is not always easy. At the time of Kent State, I supported the US effort in Viet Nam. I was viscerally opposed to the protestors and sympathetic to the US soldiers that killed them, but their leaders were wrong and the deaths were wrong.

Kent State disgusted many in the US who had previously supported the US war effort. Israel needs friends and allies. This foolish attack in the Mediterranean has cost Israel dearly. Questions need to be answered and the appearance of a cover-up should be avoided to prevent further damage.
______________



Remembering Kent State as an American Tragedy With a Jewish Face

THE JEWISH DAILY FORWARD
By Jonah Lowenfeld
Published April 28, 2010, issue of May 07, 2010.


KENT, OHIO — At 11 p.m. on May 3, a group of marchers will begin a candlelight vigil at Kent State University in Ohio to recall what is for many a distant echo from another era.

‘The Day the War Came Home’: Clockwise from top left, Allison Krause, William Schroeder, Sandra Scheuer and Jeffrey Miller were killed when Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on a group of unarmed students and bystanders during campus anti-war protests on May 4, 1970. The shootings came after some students hurled rocks at the soldiers.

The killing of four unarmed students by members of the Ohio National Guard during a national wave of campus protests against the Vietnam War will have its 40th anniversary this year. And as they have every year since 1971, those honoring the students’ memory will circle the area where the demonstrations took place and end up in the parking lot where they were killed.

There, the gathering will hear students from the campus Hillel recite the Kaddish.

The Jewish prayer for the dead has been recited regularly at this annual event since the early 1980s — a reflection of the fact that three of the “four dead in Ohio” famously memorialized in song by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were Jewish.

Neither at the time of the shootings nor since has anyone looked closely at this odd fact — one that seems odder still for a campus where Jews have never made up more than 5% of those enrolled. Karen Weinberger, a sorority sister of Sandra Scheuer, one of the slain, recalled that back then “it wasn’t anything that was really of great significance. The significance was the fact that you had four students that died and nine that were injured.”

But if the shootings themselves were not a Jewish tragedy, the first commemorations of them were overwhelmingly so. “What happened that day was not a Jewish event,” said Tom Sudow, an alumnus who transferred to Kent State in the fall of 1973. “The response to May 4 in a lot of ways, though, became a Jewish event.”

Today, the killings are memorialized by no fewer than four separate markers at and around the site. They convey official recognition of what happened there by everyone from the campus administration to the federal government, to the Ohio Historical Society. But in 1971, as the first anniversary of the killings approached, there were no plans to do anything to note the date’s passing. The war in Vietnam was still raging, Richard Nixon was still president, and Kent State seemed unwilling to confront its recent bloody history. “It wasn’t, ‘Cover up,’” Sudow recalled. “It was, ‘If we ignore it, maybe it will go away.’”


‘Four Dead in Ohio’: Mary Ann Vecchio screams as she kneels over the body of student Jeffrey Miller during an anti-war demonstration on May 4, 1970.

It was the campus Jewish community that stepped up then. “Hillel was very involved and had a prominent role in commemorating the lives of the four students lost,” said Jennifer Chestnut, the current executive director of Hillel at Kent State.

The Kent State Hillel back then was housed in a rented apartment and had a staff of one: Rabbi Gerald Turk. A charismatic Orthodox rabbi known for his Bukharan yarmulke and his out-of-the-box programming, Turk led the effort to place a simple plaque bearing the names of the four victims on the ground of the parking lot where they died. Dedicated May 4, 1971, it was the first physical marker of the deaths on campus.

In 1974, the plaque was stolen and later returned, riddled with bullet holes. A granite replacement was rededicated by a group of faculty members on May 4, 1975. It remained the only physical memorial on campus until 1990, when the university administration dedicated its own memorial.

The Jewish community on campus still commemorates the events of May 4, often in the context of universitywide events. The candlelight walk and vigil — one of the most distinctive elements of the annual May 4 commemoration — exemplify this.

Initiated in 1971 by then assistant professor of sociology Jerry Lewis, the yearly walk begins in the area of the campus where the protests took place, and ends at midnight in the parking lot where Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder were killed. The midnight vigil continues, in 30-minute shifts, until 12:24 p.m. on May 4 — the exact time of the shootings.

Lewis, now a professor emeritus, has tried, by his own account, to keep the walk and vigil simple. But he did allow for one significant addition: “In the early 1980s, Rabbi Turk came to me and said, ‘Do you mind if I say Kaddish?’ I said, ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ because I knew that three of the students were of the Jewish tradition.”

In the meantime, as tempers have cooled, many of the questions about what happened then have been resolved, but not all.

When Nixon announced the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia on April 30, 1970, students on campuses across the country protested. At Kent State, students broke windows of some of the businesses in the city of Kent. And at 5 p.m. the next day, amid rumors of plans to destroy the ROTC building on the campus, the mayor of Kent summoned the National Guard. The ROTC building did go up in flames Saturday evening, May 2, and the guardsmen then cleared students from the area, using tear gas and bayonets.

The next day, Ohio Governor James Rhodes visited the campus — by then wholly occupied by the Guard. Rhodes, who was in a tough race for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate, gave a speech designed to cement his position as a law-and-order candidate. He called the students who rioted “worse than the Brown Shirts and the communist element,” and promised to use “whatever force necessary to drive them out of Kent.” On Monday, May 4, at a noontime protest, demonstrators defied dispersal orders from the guardsmen, with some of the students hurling rocks at them from a distance. After an extended standoff, 28 guardsmen fired 67 rounds in 13 seconds at a group of unarmed student demonstrators and nearby bystanders. Four were killed; nine were wounded.

Protesters Krause and Miller were both Jewish. Scheuer and Schroeder, were bystanders, Scheuer being the third Jew.

In September 1970, a federal panel established to investigate the Kent State deaths — as well as the killing of two black students at Jackson State University in Mississippi and campus unrest nationwide —condemned the “indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students” at Kent State as “unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.”

In the years since, numerous articles, books, government inquiries, TV specials and films have attempted to answer some of the difficult questions about “the day the Vietnam War came home.” Were students armed, as was initially reported? (No.) Were guardsmen ordered to fire? (It appears that they were — though no individual was ever clearly identified or held accountable for giving the order.) Were so-called outside agitators responsible for inciting the students to protest? (Possibly, but every one of the dead and wounded was a full-time Kent State student.)

Alan Canfora, a Kent State alumnus who was among the wounded protesters, recalled, “There were about 500 protesters there, and another 1,500 bystanders.” That three of the slain were Jews, he said, was “just an extremely unlikely mathematical probability.” No one believes they were — or could have been — especially targeted.

Few beyond the Kent State campus know about the Jewish connection to the events of May 4. But in 1970, at least some American Jews were aware of their connection to Krause, Miller and Scheuer. “I heard from so many people,” said Elaine Holstein, Miller’s mother, “and I know there were people in the Jewish community. Most people were very supportive.”

Canfora, as director of the Kent May 4 Center, for years has been collecting materials related to the shooting. When the Krause and Scheuer families invited him to retrieve materials from their houses for his archive in the 1990s, he found “numerous letters from synagogues across the country” among the papers. Each family had also received “hundreds of certificates,” Canfora said, “where members of the Jewish community across our country had purchased a tree in Israel and planted it in memory of our martyrs.”

In recent years, the university has become more comfortable with the legacy of May 4. At the urging of students, faculty and alumni, Kent State has established a number of memorials to the slain and wounded students. Earlier this year, part of the campus was added to the National Register of Historic Places. And later this year, the university will open the May 4 Visitors Center, which tells about the history of the university’s darkest day.

But to all this, Doris Krause, whose daughter, Allison, was 19 when she was killed, responded as any mother would. “I wish it weren’t so,” she said.






67 comments:

  1. This is crap...

    To put up this post is offensive...

    Those who died at Kent State were NOT being violent and trying to break INTO a war zone...

    They were not armed, nor were they threatening anyone...

    Just as rat tried to compare (in the last thread) Leon Kinghoffer's MURDER to the death of Fulkan Dogan it's offensive...

    JUST AS THIS THREAD IS....

    ReplyDelete
  2. "A young American citizen on a civilian ship in international waters was shot and killed during an Israeli assault on the ship. The events that led up to the assault and what happened during are not yet known. Was it necessary for such an assault to have taken place and is there justification for it and the consequential deaths?"

    -------------

    Civilian ships do not carry pistols, stun grenades, bulletproof vests, gas masks, clubs, knives and 60 hired islamic mercenaries..

    Fulkan Dogan was no innocent... He was a Major Hussein out of uniform...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Deuce is just pretending to be a willing Dupe of the MSM, WIO.

    ...he's applying for a job @ The Onion.
    Or, IHOP.

    ReplyDelete
  4. FWIW,
    Kent State was no My Lai,
    Gaurdsmen got pushed into an impossible situation.

    ...like Turkey created for Israel.

    ReplyDelete
  5. There is nothing offensive in seeking the truth.

    I no more take the word of Netanyahu at face value than I did Nixon. All five young Americans are dead because of the decisions of two politicians.

    The first reports from Kent State claimed that shots were fired and federal troops responded.
    A thorough investigation proved that to be untrue.

    If Israel is being slandered by the reports, then an investigation will show that to be the case.
    Israel should have nothing to fear from an investigation.

    No government, ruled by a man, a professional politician, deserves to have his word believed without question and certainly not by me.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Doug...

    My nerves are frayed...

    The world has lost all rational thought process...

    When Helen Thomas, Obama and Rat call the morality punches it makes my head explode...

    ReplyDelete
  7. I repeat:
    Turkey is not our ally, no matter what Condi and BHO insist is true.

    ReplyDelete
  8. No government, ruled by a man, a professional politician, deserves to have his word believed without question and certainly not by me.



    TOTALLY AGREE....

    But dont compare KENT STATE with this crap

    ReplyDelete
  9. "FWIW,
    Kent State was no My Lai,
    Gaurdsmen got pushed into an impossible situation.

    ...like Turkey created for Israel."


    That fairly represents my position.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Maybe a thread that exposes the Flotilla's connections to Hamas...

    Maybe highlighting it's funding..

    Maybe a query about who the 60 thugs without passports were....

    ReplyDelete
  11. Actually, Kent State was analogous the the Flotilla Fiasco:
    "Innocent Activists" put law enforcers @ mortal risk

    Shit Ensued.

    ReplyDelete
  12. If Israel is being slandered by the reports, then an investigation will show that to be the case.
    Israel should have nothing to fear from an investigation.




    Israel has everything to fear from kangaroo investigations...

    Just look at the Goldstone Slander, the Jenin Massacre etc...

    ReplyDelete
  13. You have to relax WIO.

    Let our rulers and masters account for their actions, just like you would if you ever come into their sights.

    I am telling you at the time of Kent State many Americans believed the students got what they deserved.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Doug said...
    Actually, Kent State was analogous the the Flotilla Fiasco:
    "Innocent Activists" put law enforcers @ mortal risk

    Shit Ensued.



    Nonsense.... Kent State didnt have armed thugs beating to death National Guardsmen...

    ReplyDelete
  15. d: I am telling you at the time of Kent State many Americans believed the students got what they deserved.



    If this was in a vacuum sure... But this aint a vacuum... Its a war...

    Me? I would have sunk the flotilla... no warning..

    It's war...

    Many ships have already been captured with arms on board, because these didnt have arms? Not an issue...

    It's a legal blockade of a territory (just like America did to Cuba) by two member states of the UN against a group that openly advocates and attacks Israel.

    Rockets have been raining down on Israel AGAIN on a daily basis.

    It's a war.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Deuce: A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. This time it was an Israeli soldier who did the killing.

    Welcome to the dark side, Deuce, conservative anti-Jihadist former supporters of the State of Israel who are disgusted with this raid.
    Five of the protestors were executed by single shots to the head, one was a mere two centimeters between the machine gun muzzle to his skull. I figure he must have been the one spraying soldiers with water from a fire hose.

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  17. How many innocent activists has America murdered in Afghanistan? Those predator strikes hit many nice boys and girls supporting the Taliban, they are activists also?

    what bullshit...

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  18. You have more friends than you think, including this one, but I blindly follow no one. I am loyal to my tribe and have served my country in several capacities.

    I have been on the wrong side of government and politicians but always loyal to the Constitutional US. The two are not incompatible.

    I instinctively trust no politician.

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  19. t: Welcome to the dark side, Deuce, conservative anti-Jihadist former supporters of the State of Israel who are disgusted with this raid.
    Five of the protestors were executed by single shots to the head, one was a mere two centimeters between the machine gun muzzle to his skull. I figure he must have been the one spraying soldiers with water from a fire hose.


    there were no "machine guns"

    there were IDF soldiers being beaten and stabbed by a gang of "peace loving activists"

    Sounds like the soldier, fearing for his LIFE, shot and killed the perps...

    Sounds good to me...

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  20. deuce: I instinctively trust no politician.



    I agree, and Israel should and will investigate what happened...

    But to compare the deaths of crowbar wielding "peace loving activists" with the Kent State situation is disgusting.

    ReplyDelete
  21. 7) When the commandos feared for their lives, they opened fire with real weapons.

    Yet, even with all of these details, it is still Israel’s fault, because according to Rosenberg and the Progressive establishment at Media Matters, the blockade of the terrorist Gaza Strip of Hamas is illegal, and as with all things Progressive, the ends justify the means.

    Rosenberg and his friends on the Progressive Left have very few options to justify the kind of things they are writing in defense of Hamas-controlled Gaza. They either need to argue that Hamas is not a Jihad terrorist group, or that Gaza is not run by Hamas. That, or they need to argue that lifting the blockade of a Jihad terrorist state will lead to a safer Jewish state next door.

    As to the argument that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, or that Gaza is not their base, the Progressive movement will have to take that up with the Clinton/Obama State Department:

    ReplyDelete
  22. The purpose of the flotilla was not to deliver humanitarian goods but to break Israels blockade.

    The Mavi Marmara was sponsored by the IHH. Danish security has link the IHH to extremist groups.

    It's unfortunate that the young man was killed. It's also unfortunate (or not) that he was on board this particular vessel. It's been reported that two pistols were taken from IDF and that one IDF member was shot with a Kalashnikov round. It's been said that the "blockade runners" threw their weapons overboard.

    Erdogan has said that Hamas is not a terrorist organization but a resistance movement. Turkey bears responsibility too.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Turkey embraces Hamas as a RESISTANCE outfit that is ok by him...

    maybe we need to fund a FREE CYPRUS Flotilla and a PKK is not a terrorist group parade...

    Turkey has embraced Iran...

    ALL OF THIS IS A SMOKE SCREEN FOR IRAN and the SANCTIONS

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  24. Pictures of weapons put the lie to Ash's claim of unarmed boats.

    Was OJ "unarmed" when he slit his children's mother's throats?

    ReplyDelete
  25. Jihadists and Progressives in have no problem having "nice young men and women" martyr themselves for the cause...


    Their culture is replete with examples...

    The death of the turkish-american attempting to murder the israel is NOT unfortunate, it's what happens across the globe on a daily basis when someone with a crowbar tries to crack open the skull of a uniformed police/soldier.

    Is it not interesting that UN-armed, PEACEFUL protesters that were murdered in the streets of Iran got no UNSC resolution?

    ReplyDelete
  26. "Turkey is not our ally..."

    Yes, Turkey is our ally. One in the somewhat thin ranks of those with a no-dicking-around army.

    And one we occasionally help out with their little PKK problem.

    I do appreciate Liz Cheney's efforts to depict them as Iraq's replacement in the Axis of Evil, further establishing her cred as a useless loon.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Was OJ "unarmed" when he slit his children's mother's throats?


    According to the Jew hating, Israel hating, Zionist hating, west & America hating world, OJ was unarmed

    Homemade Rockets are being unarmed

    Stun Grenades are being unarmed

    Firebombs are being unarmed

    IED's are being unarmed

    AK47s are being unarmed

    When Hamas tries to stab jews, that's resistance.

    When Israel builds a fence? It's a war crime

    ReplyDelete
  28. trish said...
    "Turkey is not our ally..."

    Yes, Turkey is our ally. One in the somewhat thin ranks of those with a no-dicking-around army.


    Maybe on paper.... But not since their refusal to allow the USA to move troops into Iraq..AND NOW? they are embracing Iran & Hamas...

    That maybe OBAMA's ally...

    But Turkey is not America's

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  29. We've got so many allies we hardly know where to put 'em all.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Being a friend and being an ally are not necessarily analogous and certainly not always desirable.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Friends will get you into trouble, allies will help when you are in trouble.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Had we only a dime for every time an ally disagreed with us, didn't cooperate with us, worked at cross purposes, behaved badly, disregarded our express wishes, turned down a handsome bribe, engaged in various crimes and misdemeanors...

    We'd pay off this year's debt.

    ReplyDelete
  33. WiO:there were no "machine guns"

    Oh, that's right, I forgot, the IDF was armed only with paint ball guns. My bad.

    Sixty-year-old Ibrahim Bilgen was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back with paint balls.

    Fulkan Dogan was shot with paint balls five times from less than 45 cm away, in the face, the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back.

    Two other men were shot with paint balls four times. Five of those killed were shot either in the back of the head or in the back.

    One paint-ball was a mere two centimeters between the paint-ball gun muzzle to his skull.

    Forty others suffered non-fatal paint ball wounds and six activists were still missing, probably knocked overboard by paint balls.

    ReplyDelete
  34. I was down on Turkey when they refused entry to the 4th ID, but then also believed that Iraq had WMD.

    In retrospect, the Turks rejection should have given us pause. Time will tell if the outcome in Iraq is in our best interest.

    ReplyDelete
  35. The IDF has identified one of the passengers aboard the Mavi Marmara , which navy commandos commandeered earlier this week, as the ringleader of a group of mercenaries who were recruited from a city in northwest Turkey, according to new details from the military’s ongoing investigation of the Gaza flotilla.

    The IDF identified a group of about 50 men – of the 700 on board – who were well-trained and were stationed throughout the ship, mostly on the upper deck, where they laid an ambush for the IDF soldiers who rappelled onto the deck from helicopters.

    The members of this violent group were not carrying identity cards or passports. Instead, each of them had an envelope in his pocket with about $10,000 in cash. The defense establishment suspects the funding for the mercenaries may have come from elements within the Turkish government.

    According to sources within the defense establishment, one member of the group, who appears to have been the ringleader, traveled to the city of Bursa in northwest Turkey and allegedly recruited mercenaries for the flotilla there.

    In videos from the Marmara released this week by the IDF, this group of men can be seen preparing to confront IDF commandos. The videos, taken by the ship’s security cameras, show the group of activists brandishing metal bars, slingshots, and other assorted weaponry.

    The group was split up into smaller squads that were distributed throughout the deck and communicated with one another with handheld communication devices. The men wore bulletproof vests and gas masks.

    One video clearly shows a member of the group throwing a stun grenade onto the IDF commando vessel that pulled up alongside the Marmara. Another video shows how groups of at least four or five men swarmed each commando that landed on the top deck, beating them with metal bars, and in one case throwing a soldier off the third deck.

    Soldiers testified that in at least two instances their sidearms were taken from them, as were their helmets and vests. Two soldiers jumped off the ship into the water to save themselves from being lynched.

    ReplyDelete
  36. On Wednesday, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna’i told a Knesset hearing that all nine men killed on the Marmara were “involved in the fighting.”

    “There were no innocents among the dead,” Vilna’i said.

    Meanwhile, Palestinian Media Watch reported Thursday that three of the four Turks killed on ship sought a martyr’s death.

    PMW quoted from the official Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat al-Jadida:

    “Three of the four Turks killed in the Israeli attack on the ‘Freedom Flotilla’ bound for the Gaza Strip wanted to die as martyrs, said their relatives and friends. The wife of one of them, Ali Haydar Bengi, told the Vatan daily: “He used to help the poor and the oppressed. For years, he wanted to go to Palestine. And he constantly prayed to Allah to grant him shahada (martyrdom).

    “Ali worked at telephone repair shop in Diyarbakir, the largest city in southeastern Turkey. Sabir Ceylan, a friend of Ali, told the Milliyet newspaper: ‘Before embarking on this journey [to Gaza], he said he desired to become a martyr. He had a strong desire to die as a martyr.’


    “Another Turkish victim was Ali Ekber Yaratilmis, a 55-year old pensioner. He was a father of five who lived in Ankara. Ali volunteered for the Turkish Aid and Human Rights Organization [IHH], which transfers aid to Gaza. A friend, Mehmet Faruk Cevher, told the Sabah daily that [Ali] ‘devoted his life to charity work, that’s why he went to Gaza. He always wanted to become a martyr.’

    “The third victim was Ibrahim Bilgen, a 61-year old pensioner and father of six sons. He was a supporter of the Felicity Party, an Islamic movement in the southeastern city of Siirt, Anatolia news agency reported. His brother-in-law, Nuri Mergen, told the agency: He was an exemplary man and a truly good man. That’s why he was truly worthy of shahada (martyrdom). Allah granted him the death that he wished for.’”

    Palestinian Media Watch reported in the last two days that participants on board were chanting Islamic battle cries and talking about their coming martyrdom during the days before the confrontation.

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  37. I believed that bullshit dossier provided by our eternal friend and ally Great Britain under the politician, Tony Blair.

    ReplyDelete
  38. T defends islamic scum that would gut her lesbian stomach open in a nanosecond:

    Sixty-year-old Ibrahim Bilgen was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back with paint balls.

    Fulkan Dogan was shot with paint balls five times from less than 45 cm away, in the face, the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back.

    Two other men were shot with paint balls four times. Five of those killed were shot either in the back of the head or in the back.

    One paint-ball was a mere two centimeters between the paint-ball gun muzzle to his skull.

    Forty others suffered non-fatal paint ball wounds and six activists were still missing, probably knocked overboard by paint balls.



    Apparently your skills with a Glock SUCK....

    You dont NEED a Sub Machine Gun to kill...

    Are you just getting dumber by the day or WHAT?

    ReplyDelete
  39. Photo by: IDF Spokesman
    'We had no choice'
    By YAAKOV KATZ
    04/06/2010
    'Mavi Marmara' raid commando: "They had murder in their eyes."

    When St.-Sgt. S. fast-roped down from an air force Black Hawk helicopter onto the Mavi Marmara Turkish passenger ship on Monday morning, he did not expect to be landing in what he called “a battlefield” and facing off against a group of “murderous mercenaries.”

    The 15th and last naval commando from Flotilla 13 (the Shayetet) to rappel down onto the ship from the helicopter, S. said on Thursday that he was immediately attacked by what the IDF has called “the mob of mercenaries” aboard the vessel, just like the soldiers who had boarded just before him.

    Looking to his side, he saw three of his commanders lying wounded – one with a gunshot wound to the stomach and another with a gunshot wound to the knee. A third was lying unconscious; his skull was fractured by a devastating blow with a metal bar.

    As the next in the chain of command, S., who has been in the Shayetet for three and a half years, immediately took charge.

    He pushed the wounded soldiers up against the wall of the upper deck and created a perimeter of soldiers around them to begin treating their wounds, he said. He then arranged his men to form a second perimeter, and pulled out his 9 mm. Glock pistol to stave off the charging attackers and to protect his wounded comrades.

    The attackers had already seized two pistols from the commandos, and fired repeatedly at them. Facing more than a dozen of the mercenaries, and convinced their lives were in danger, he and his colleagues opened fire, he said. S. singlehandedly killed six men. His colleagues killed another three.

    On Thursday, S. sat down with The Jerusalem Post at the Shayetet’s base in northern Israel for an exclusive interview, during which he described the dramatic events aboard the Mavi Marmara on Monday; he is being considered for a medal of valor.

    “When I hit the deck, I was immediately attacked by people with bats, metal pipes and axes,” S. told the Post. “These were without a doubt terrorists. I could see the murderous rage in their eyes and that they were coming to kill us.”

    S. does not look like a hero. Well-built, like all commandos in the Shayetet, he is also soft-spoken and stingy with words, but his commander Lt.-Col. T. fills in the blanks.

    “S. did a remarkable job,” T. said. “He stabilized the situation and succeeded in hitting six of the terrorists.”

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  40. Based on preliminary results of its investigation into the navy’s takeover of the Mavi Marmara, which ended with nine dead passengers and more than 30 wounded, the IDF said on Thursday that the commandos were attacked by a well-trained group of mercenaries, most of whom were found without IDs but with thousands of dollars in their pockets.

    The group was well trained and was split into a number of squads of about 20 mercenaries each distributed throughout the upper deck, the IDF said. All of the mercenaries wore gas masks and ceramic bulletproof vests and were armed with either bats, slingshots, metal bars, knives or stun grenades.

    The IDF’s understanding is that the mercenaries mainly chose dual-purpose items of this sort rather than guns, since opening fire would have made it blatantly clear that they were terrorists and not so-called peace activists.

    Nevertheless, the IDF suspects that the group did have some guns of its own. Israeli forensic experts who examined the ship found casings belonging to a weapon that was not used by the commandos, and the Turkish captain of the ship later told the IDF that the “mercenaries” threw their weapons overboard after the commandos took control of the vessel.

    T. said he realized the group they were facing was well-trained and likely ex-military after the commandos threw a number of stun grenades and fired warning shots before rappelling down onto the deck. “They didn’t even flinch,” he said. “Regular people would move.”

    Each squad of the “mercenaries” was equipped with a Motorola communication device, the IDF said, so they could pass information to one another. Assessments in the defense establishment are that members of the group were affiliated with international global jihad elements and had undergone training in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    S. on Thursday downplayed his involvement in the operation. “I did what I was trained to do and now I move on,” he said.

    In contrast to earlier reports, the commandos said that they began using their weapons within a minute and a half after boarding the ship, due to the extreme violence they faced. One of the reasons S. pulled out his gun right after landing on the ship was because one of the mercenaries was pointing a pistol, snatched from one of the commandos, at another commando’s head.

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  41. Some of the Kent State victims weren't even protesting. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    No one just happened to be on board the Mavi Marmara.

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  42. Now that the blockade of Gaza is common household knowledge the diversion of that next ship today by the Israelis May induce a media discussion of what exactly the Israelis allow in as "humanitarian aid". Does cement qualify as humanitarian aid? Do the Israelis have the 'right' to limit cement if it doesn't?

    Israel is on the hot seat.

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  43. "I believed that bullshit dossier provided by our eternal friend and ally Great Britain under the politician, Tony Blair."

    We contributed to the bullshit dossier with our own bullshit.

    Ah, but it's just so much water under the bridge now.

    All we can do is hope that the reforms we put in place...actually work.

    There's some doubt about that.

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  44. The Kent State massacre did not help the state, just the opposite. The opposition seized upon it and used it for their ends to fight the Nixon Administration.

    Israel has handed its opposition a gift and a propaganda bonanza.

    One would be perfectly justified in writing an entire column attacking the way Israel has been misrepresented over its fatal raid on the flotilla bound for Gaza on Monday. One could point out that the IHH, which was in charge of the Turkish boat which was attacked, has well-attested links to terrorist organisations. It was spoiling for a fight: some of those on board spoke of their desire for “martyrdom”.

    One could add that the men who fought the Israeli commandos were strangely described by ABC as “humanitarians with a few knives”. Chanting anti-Jewish battle-cries, they stabbed an Israeli soldier before, it seems, the Israelis had shot anyone. The same “humanitarians”, judging by fairly clear film of the incident, tried to club Israelis to death.

    There was no need, one might go on, for humanitarian aid to travel by these means, since the Israelis were prepared to deliver it themselves, as they regularly deliver aid of their own to Gaza. The purpose of the Gaza blockade, now roundly condemned by world leaders, was originally backed up by international agreement. Various forces, including the Royal Navy, said they would help interdict supplies of arms to Gaza: it could not be permitted to become, in effect, an Iranian port. And one could remind the world that the reason Gaza is an independent entity at all is that, in 2005, Israel withdrew from it.

    Finally, one might note sarcastically that world opinion’s instantaneous outrage against Israel’s action contrasts sharply with its marked reluctance to rush to judgment when North Korea sinks a South Korean ship, or, most notably, when Iran takes another step towards building its Bomb.

    But I shall say no more about any of these things, because what friends of Israel need to say at this point is that this mess is Israel’s fault.
    I do not mean, as so many do, that Israel is wicked and aggressive, let alone – as is often, almost obscenely, claimed – that its actions replicate the behaviour of apartheid South Africa or even of Nazis in the Holocaust. I mean that Israel is at fault because, by failing to define the nature of the conflict, it is allowing such views to win.

    In fewer than 10 days’ time, nearly 40 years after the event itself, and 13 years and £191 million after it was established, the Saville Inquiry on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry will report. This saga is a terrible lesson in what happens when the wrong narrative is allowed to capture the public consciousness. This week’s event, perhaps prompted by a similar, ill-disciplined impulse to teach bad people a lesson, may well be used against Israel at the bar of world opinion 40 years hence.

    Telegraph

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  45. and now for something completely different:


    "A solitary lament for an America in decline

    Jeffrey Simpson

    Earl Fry’s book should be required reading for a U.S. audience

    At first glance, Earl Fry does not appear to be a man with a secular mission. He is grandfatherly in manner, polite in address and careful with language.

    Although originally a Californian, Prof. Fry has lived in Utah, arguably the most conservative of states. From there, and from the Mormon university where he teaches, Brigham Young, one does not expect a cry for Americans to awaken to their serious, structural problems.

    Alas, most Americans will not hear his cry, for Prof. Fry could not find a U.S. publisher for his book, Lament for America: Decline of the Superpower, Plan for Renewal. Instead, this excellent summary of his country’s challenges has been published by the University of Toronto Press, hardly a household name in U.S. publishing circles.

    In one sense, it is not surprising that a Canadian publisher knew Earl Fry, because he has been among the few serious U.S. scholars interested in Canada throughout his career. (Brigham Young has more than 300 Canadian students, largely Mormons.) It’s a pity, however, that Lament for a Superpower might not reach a wide U.S. audience, because piling fact on fact, Prof. Fry outlines his country’s immense and largely self-inflicted problems, starting with an increasingly polarized political system lubricated by money and barnacled by lobbyists.

    That system, he argues, has delivered the “largest government debt in human history”; a shift from the U.S. being the largest creditor nation to the world’s largest debtor nation; a broken, expensive health-care system; “an almost incomprehensible tax code”; and “an overall record of making laws that often favour the powerful special interests over the general welfare of the country.”

    That system has balanced the U.S. budget five times since 1961, with yearly deficits now surpassing $1-trillion, big unfunded liabilities ahead for Social Security and Medicare (the government health plan for poor Americans) and absolutely no serious national debate, let alone consensus, on how to solve the fiscal problems.

    Writes Prof. Fry presciently: “Bogged down in future years by the twin deficits (government and current account) which have required it to borrow most of the surplus savings accumulated in the rest of the world, and saddled with a weakened and more erratic currency, the United States will be hard-pressed to sustain its role as the world’s superpower.”

    Any serious analyst of the American fiscal dilemma, including Prof. Fry of course, knows that the deficit/debt challenge can only be met by higher taxes and reduced government spending. Neither can command a political majority.

    He argues, and he is profoundly right, that the U.S. is militarily stretched around the world. The invasion of Iraq was a costly mistake; the surge in Afghanistan will almost certainly lead nowhere, except to more casualties, more borrowed money and no fundamental change in the culture or politics of Afghanistan. Given its enfeebled fiscal circumstances, the U.S. will have to curtail is defence expenditures, Prof. Fry argues, which means that allies such as Canada should spend more.

    But who has the will to curb defence spending in Washington, where Republicans never saw a defence budget they did not love, and Democrats are scared of scaling back the military lest they be accused of being “soft on terror”?

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  46. The world features, as everyone knows, new competitor nations, not in a military sense (the U.S. defence budget eclipses those of the 15 next-highest defence-spending countries) but increasingly in economic terms. China, India and Brazil obviously start from far, far behind the United States by every economic measure, and they will remain far behind for a long time. They also have severe internal problems, such as corruption, crime and pollution.

    But, Prof. Fry argues, “most plausible scenarios would suggest that the United States will be relatively weaker and some of its major rivals relatively stronger within the next few decades.” Hardly an earth-quaking conclusion, but one robustly rejected by Tea Partiers who want to “take back their country” and many others who reject the “declinist” school in U.S. society. Boosterism remains a staple of U.S. public discourse, worsened by political parties and their favoured media outlets that talk right past each other. Hard truths, after all, are not the stuff of political success.

    In the conservative confines of Utah, Prof. Fry’s analysis and prescriptions might be considered radically liberal. They are, in fact, a blend of idealism and pragmatism, borrowing some ideas from conservatives (curbing illegal immigration and loosening controls on business from Washington) and liberals (fettering lobbyists and public financing of elections, health-care for all).

    Surmounting one of these challenges seems too much for U.S. society today, especially facing up to its fiscal mess. Lament for America, were it to be read, would be a useful starting place for Americans to confront their challenges. The book raises indirectly a question for Canadian readers: What do we do, tied as tightly as we are to a country with so many substantial challenges and so little agreement on resolving them?"



    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/a-solitary-lament-for-an-america-in-decline/article1592924/

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  47. I'd comment but my outlook is well known anyway.

    What excellent reporting by Quirk, earlier, worthy of an aspiring gonzo journalist, a wannabe Hunter S. Thompson. Quirk obviously missed his calling, with his marketing crap. "Fear and Loathing in Madrid"

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  48. ash: Does cement qualify as humanitarian aid? Do the Israelis have the 'right' to limit cement if it doesn't?

    Cement is ONLY allowed into Gaza under strict usage inspection.

    Hamas has a history of hijacking supplies to build bunkers and tunnels with it.

    If any cement is imported it must be used in UN sanctioned building or repair.


    The Israel haters are getting dumber by the day..

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  49. Here ya go, Ash--

    National Suicide: How Washington Is Destroying the American Dream from A to Z by Martin L. Gross

    We are, basically, broke.

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  50. It is a tragedy, though, that Quirk wasn't soaking in the tub, when he plugged that appliance in. :)

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  51. It has been reported that the Israeli authorities have taken every camera, telephone and recording device from the captured ship's passengers.

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  52. Forty others suffered non-fatal paint ball wounds...

    An investigation is clearly needed.

    The IDF cannot afford to waste ammunition like that. Fundamentals of assault tactics
    will certainly stressed, with training for better marksmanship also called for.

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  53. We're not in nearly as bad shape as many "doomsters" think.

    All we really have to do is get our tax collections back to the "Historic" average of 20% of GDP, and we'll be fine. (We have, historically, spent 22% of GDP, and raised a bit less than 20% in taxes, tariffs, etc. This leaves us borrowing 2%, which keeps a moderate amount of inflation going, which is what a "fiat" currency needs.)

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  54. Quirk! It's only a month till the big fiesta. Wire the wife, say the ash from Iceland prevents flight, head to Pamplona, dress like a Spaniard, drink wine on balconies, grow a beard, Quirka Hemingway, admire the moon at night, run with the bulls. I can see the headline now. 'American stumbles during bull run, gored in the ass' "The Sun Also Sets"

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  55. Right now, America is caught in a crunch between the Political power of the Big Oil Companies, and the "Crazy Wing" of the Eco movement.

    Neither of these Players have an agenda that is anything but destructive for America, as a whole.

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  56. For critics of the paintball tactic:

    I can see using paintballs - to mark the ones you want to later kill with one color, and non-combatants with another color.
    Posted by ApacheWarrior at June 3, 2010 11:27 PM

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  57. Did anyone know that the Gaza Flotilla had a choir?

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  58. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/dc_turkish_denial_j3JmVrSXVlSdMsgy9nhbTN


    Good article by Ralph Peters.

    " Flustered, Washington rationalizes that, gosh, Turkey's a NATO ally and our access to Incirlik airbase in southeastern Turkey (where our personnel are prepositioned hostages) is worth no end of forbearance.

    As I wrote in Tuesday's paper, we're witnessing the greatest transformation in the Middle East in at least three decades, but our nervous leaders are bearing false testimony.

    On Monday, Turkey turned its back on the West. History changed. Only the closed minds in Washington have not."

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  59. What am I missing here.

    Can anyone honestly picture the US Coast Guard or US Marines assaulting a vessel in or out of international waters with paintball guns?

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  60. It is idiotic. If you want to suppress a mob or take over a ship, you do so with overwhelming and a disproportionate force.

    Paintballs? Why not water pistols?

    You start shooting people with paintballs, become surprised that they fight back, and then go to automatic pistols.

    We have a new name for paintballs. Let's call them BB guns.

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  61. The paintball tactic really distinguished itself. i am sure military academies around the world will be studying this tactic for years.

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  62. FYI, bob: Ralph Peters hyperventilates like a girl.

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  63. Paintballs? Why not water pistols?

    Damned good question. That's what I deserve for repeating something I overheard in a bar.

    Shame on me.

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  64. The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our way of life, the clearer we should see through it.
    http://comiccms.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=114426

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