Netanyahu tells Turkel Committee that the attack on the Mavi Marmara was the fault of Hamas and Turkey.
The committee is headed by retired Supreme Court justice, Jacob Turkel, and the alleged purpose was to find out if the so called incident was legal under international law. Despite the fact that this hearing is being held, it has actually very limited powers and in the end will only serve as a way to protect Netanyahu and his government and negate any possibility of an International investigation.
Netanyahu, almost at nausea, repeated that the incident was within the bounds of International law. He then went further by blaming Hamas and telling the hearing that Turkey needs to also take their share of the blame for allowing the vessel to set sail for Gaza in the first place. (And Israel claims to be a democracy).
When it appeared to Netanyahu that the blame might be pointing directly at him, he pointed out that he was not even in the country at the time and had left Defence Minister Ehud Barak in charge of the flotilla takeover operation. He went further by stating that during the ministers' meetings before the Turkish flotilla arrived; the ministers did not discuss taking action, but focused on the media's reaction to it. Despite the fact that several IDF soldiers who stormed the Mavi Marmara, were found to have laminated “picture hit lists” as were shown to international TV viewers live at the time. Netanyahu insisted that there were no pre-agreed plans to storm the vessel at the Ministers meeting.
Later in the day Mark Regev backed Netanyahu, by further stating that all democracies have a similar system of appointing another member of government to look after a situation in their absence.
At this point it was beginning to turn into a he said, she said situation, not unlike what would be seen in any children's playground, however the outcome has enraged a lot of people in Israel, as they feel that Netanyahu was simply dumping this problem on their beloved IDF.
The rest of the hearing was held behind closed doors, because of so called Israeli security concerns.
Anybody who has observed the situation in the Middle East (M.E.) would be able to come to the same conclusion as I will on this whole so called hearing. That conclusion is, the Israeli government are uncomfortable with what happened on the Mavi Marmara and don’t really know how to deal with the fall out, however Israel MUST keep its people in fear of the whole world and totally dependent on the IDF and the right wing government for their collective protection. Even school children are taught to fear and hate others, (as shown in Defamation by Yoav Shamir), thus Mr Netanyahu and his crew can never be seen to be softening on any situation, and especially not on a situation where the Israeli government have hailed their beloved IDF as heroes.
In fact Netanyahu also expressed this in his statement that “the IDF commandos on the Mavi Marmara exhibited "unusual courage" in defending themselves against a clear and present danger to their lives”, you can also bet that the words Self Defence were used time and again in justification.
Netanyahu finished the public debate by declaring the following: Israel is a "rare breed" of democracy in the Middle East, and said "there is no state or army that investigates itself more than Israel and the IDF."
This is likely to be the only true statement you will ever hear from any leader of the state of Israel, the fact that Israel has had to investigate its Army (IDF) so many times in its short history would be a great concern to any civilised society, yet to Netanyahu and his cronies this seems to be a thing of great pride.
The Israeli government is either so out of touch that it really thinks that the greater world believes the outcomes of these Kangaroo court hearings with the IDF, or they have become so bloody minded and arrogant that they don’t care.
To use Netanyahu own words, it is indeed a RARE breed of democracy!
