[News] Why the Palmer-Uribe report on Israel’s flotilla attack is worthless

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Why the Palmer-Uribe report on Israel’s flotilla attack is worthless

Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Fri, 09/02/2011 - 08:00
http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/why-palmer-uribe-report-israels-flotilla-attack-worthless

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez has been 
criticized for his abuses of human rights 
defenders. (Center for American Progress)

Turkey has imposed sanctions on Israel following 
Turkey’s rejection of a UN report on Israel’s 
attack on the Gaza flotilla last year.

In the latest developments on Friday morning, 
<http://www.todayszaman.com/news-255543-turkey-downgrades-ties-with-israel-suspends-military-agreements.html>Turkish 
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto lu rejected the 
findings of the report and announced 
unprecedented sanctions on Israel saying “it’s time for Israel to pay a price.”

 From 7 September, diplomatic ties will be 
reduced to the lowest level, all Turkish-Israeli 
military agreements will be canceled, and Turkey 
will support victims of the Israeli attack on the 
flotilla to pursue justice through legal cases.

Crucially, Davuto lu affirmed that Turkey does 
not recognize the blockade of Gaza which the 
Palmer report attempted to justify, and which a 
UN Human Rights Council official fact-finding 
mission had already ruled to be illegal. Turkey 
will also challenge the Israeli siege of Gaza 
through international legal channels.


Palmer report attempts to whitewash attack on flotilla, justify Israeli siege

A 
<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/Palmer-Committee-Final-report.pdf>leaked 
copy of the Palmer report into Israel’s attack on 
the 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/gaza-freedom-flotilla>Gaza 
Freedom Flotilla in May 2010 was published by the 
New York Times on Thursday, a day before its 
expected official release by the UN Secretary General.

On 31 May 2010, 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/israels-attack-gaza-freedom-flotilla-looking-back-year-later>Israel 
attacked the largest ship in the Gaza Freedom 
Flotilla, the Mavi Marmara, killing 9 people on board.

Publication of the report had been delayed 
several times as Turkey and Israel attempted to 
negotiate a settlement. Turkey demanded an 
apology for the attack, compensation for victims 
and an end to the 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/gaza-siege>siege 
of Gaza. In his statement today Davuto lu said 
Israel had passed up many opportunities to resolve the issue.

The four-member committee that wrote the Palmer 
report was appointed by UN Secretary General Ban 
Ki-moon and was chaired by former New Zealand 
prime minister Geoffrey Palmer and vice-chaired 
by former president of Colombia Alvaro Uribe.

This panel is in addition to an official UN Human 
Rights Council fact-finding mission which 
<http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/15session/A.HRC.15.21_en.PDF>reported 
last September that Israel’s attack on the ships was illegal.

According to the 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/world/middleeast/02flotilla.html>The 
New York 
Times<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/world/middleeast/02flotilla.html> 
article on the Palmer report, the Palmer panel:

has found that Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza is 
both legal and appropriate. But it said that the 
way Israeli forces boarded the vessels trying to 
break that blockade 15 months ago was excessive and unreasonable.

The report, expected to be released Friday, also 
found that when Israeli commandos boarded the 
main ship, they faced “organized and violent 
resistance from a group of passengers” and were 
therefore required to use force for their own 
protection. But the report called the force 
“excessive and unreasonable,” saying that the 
loss of life was unacceptable and that the 
Israeli military’s later treatment of passengers was abusive.

An initial examination of the report indicates 
that these many of findings are not credible on 
their face for a number of reasons including the 
composition of the panel, its reliance on Israel 
which has controlled and withheld most of the 
evidence, and a skewed and politicized 
perspective which ignores the realities of 
Israel’s decades-long violent occupation of Gaza.


Palmer panel was stacked for Israel and includes notorious human rights abuser

As 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/uribes-appointment-flotilla-probe-guarantees-its-failure/8968>Jose 
Antonio Gutierrez and David Landy explained on 
The Electronic Intifada in August 2010, the panel 
was selected almost entirely according to Israel’s dictates:

The commission is composed of four persons, one 
chosen by Turkey, one chosen by Israel and two 
chosen from a list provided by Israel. The latter 
two are former Prime Minister of New Zealand 
Geoffrey Palmer, who will be the chair, and 
Uribe, who will serve as vice-chair. While 
Palmer, an expert in international law, is an 
uncontroversial choice, the appointment of Uribe 
is as perplexing as it is shocking. It appears 
that “balance” in this commission involves 
balance between someone versed in international 
and human rights law and someone who is adamantly 
opposed to it. This notion of balance fatally 
weakens this commission even before it has 
started, and tarnishes the process of international law.

Uribe himself has a long and notorious history of 
violating human rights on a massive scale, 
attacking human rights defenders and 
organizations, and expressing contempt for any 
notion of law that restrains states from engaging 
in almost any kind of violence they desire.

Gutierrez and Landy on Uribe’s record in Colombia:

In June 2010 an international human rights 
mission investigated the biggest mass grave in 
the western hemisphere ­ containing some 2,000 
execution victims who had been dumped there since 
2004 ­ which had just been discovered in the 
Colombian town of La Macarena. At the same time 
Uribe travelled to that very locality but not to 
pay his condolences to the victims’ families, or 
guarantee that an investigation would determine 
what happened there. Instead, he went to visit 
the local military base ­ exactly the same people 
that, according to victims’ reports, filled that 
mass grave with its grisly contents ­ to praise them for their work.

On Uribe’s attacks on human rights defenders, Gutierrez and Landy write:

Uribe’s scorn for human right defenders is 
notorious. According to Human Rights First, 
“President Uribe and other administration 
officials have branded [human rights defenders] 
as terrorist sympathizers and have insinuated 
that illicit connections exist between human 
rights NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and 
illegal armed groups. Irresponsible comments by 
government officials in Colombia put the lives of 
human rights defenders at even greater risk and 
threaten to undermine the value and credibility 
of their work” 
(“<http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/defenders/hrd_colombia/hrd_colombia.aspx?c=c1>Human 
Rights Defencers in Colombia”).

In September 2009 Colombia was visited by 
Margaret Sekaggya, special rapporteur on the 
situation of human rights defenders from the UN 
Human Rights Commission. Sekaggya found that 
constant problems faced by human rights defenders 
in Colombia include “Stigmatization [of human 
rights defenders] by public officials and 
non-State actors; their illegal surveillance by 
State intelligence services; their arbitrary 
arrest and detention, and their judicial 
harassment; and raids of nongovernmental 
organizations’ (NGOs) premises and theft of 
information” 
(“<http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/defenders/docs/A.HRC.13.22.Add.3_en.pdf>Report 
of the Special Rapporteur 
,” 4 March 2010, pp. 
13-18 [PDF]). Public officials in Colombia 
constantly attack human rights defenders and 
members of the political and social opposition as 
aides of “terrorists,” that is, left-wing guerrillas.

Uribe has led these attacks, calling human rights 
defenders “rent-a-mobs at terrorism’s service who 
cowardly wave the human rights flag,” “human 
rights traffickers,” “charlatans of human 
rights,” “bandits’ [ie. guerrillas] colleagues,” 
“intellectual front of the FARC [the 
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia]” and he 
has stated that “Every time terrorists and their 
supporters feel they will be defeated, they 
resort to denouncing human rights violations.”

This is just a small selection of Uribe’s verbal 
attacks on human rights organizations in his own 
country, but he has also referred to Amnesty 
International and Human Rights Watch as “rats.”


Uribe’s alliance with Israel

During Uribe’s term, Colombia, which is one of 
the top three recipients of US military aid along 
with Israel and Egypt, developed a close military 
alliance with Israel, as Gutierrez and Landy explain:

In recent years, according to news reports, 
Israel has become Colombia’s number one weapon 
supplier, with arms worth tens of millions of 
dollars, “including Kfir aircraft, drones, 
weapons and intelligence systems” being used 
against opponents of the Colombian regime 
(“<http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3435949,00.html>Report: 
Israelis fighting guerillas in Colombia,” Ynet, 
10 August 2007). According to a senior Israeli 
defense official, “Israel’s methods of fighting 
terror have been duplicated in Colombia” 
(“<http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=174358>Colombia’s 
FM: We share your resilience,” 30 April 2010).

There is a reason that Latin Americans often 
refer to Colombia as the “Israel of Latin 
America,” and indeed why Colombian 
President-elect Juan Manuel Santos, ex-Minister 
of Defence and right hand of Uribe, expressed his 
pride at such a comparison 
(“<http://www.elespectador.com/video-207170-santos-orgulloso-de-colombia-comparen-israel>Santos, 
orgulloso de que a Colombia lo comparen con 
Israel,” El Espectador, 6 June 2010).

As Gutierrez and Landy also point out, top 
officials in Uribe’s administration, including 
the president himself, frequently expressed full 
support for Israel’s fight against what it terms “terrorism.”


Israel withheld and manipulated evidence

The Palmer panel cannot be described in any sense 
as an independent investigation. As the report states:

The Panel received and reviewed reports of the 
detailed national investigations conducted by 
both Turkey and Israel. Turkey established a 
National Commission of Inquiry to examine the 
facts of the incident and its legal consequences, 
which provided an interim and final report to the 
Panel along with annexes and related material. 
Israel provided the report of the independent 
Public Commission that it had established to 
review whether the actions taken by the State of 
Israel had been compatible with international law.

The Panel reviewed these reports and further 
information and clarifications it received in 
written form and through direct meetings with 
Points of Contact appointed by each government.

The report adds:

In particular, the Panel’s means of obtaining 
information were through diplomatic channels. The 
Panel enjoyed no coercive powers to compel 
witnesses to provide evidence. It could not 
conduct criminal investigations. The Panel was 
required to obtain its information from the two 
nations primarily involved in its inquiry, Turkey 
and Israel, and other affected States.

The panel therefore interviewed no survivors or 
witnesses. Only Israel controlled most key 
physical evidence – the ship itself and the 
belongings and recordings of all the passengers 
and the weapons Israel used in carrying out the 
attack. The panel did not have uncensored access 
to the massive amounts of evidence in the form of 
photo and video from passengers on board that 
Israel has stolen, hidden and refused to release 
or return. As a consequence, of these crippling limitations, the report states:

It means that the Panel cannot make definitive 
findings either of fact or law. But it can give its view.

The panel also implies that its own independence 
is further in question because:

It will be clear from the above that the 
essential logic of the Panel’s inquiry is that it 
is dependent upon the investigations conducted by Israel and Turkey.

In contrast, the 
<http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/15session/A.HRC.15.21_en.PDF>UN 
Human Rights Council fact-finding mission report 
published last September went much beyond merely 
commenting on information provided by governments. That fact-finding mission:

conducted interviews with more than 100 witnesses 
in Geneva, London, Istanbul and Amman.

And in addition to information provided by 
governments, the Human Rights Council also relied on information

including the evidence of eyewitnesses, forensic 
reports and interviews with medical and forensic 
personnel in Turkey, as well as written 
statements, video film footage and other 
photographic material relating to the incident.

Perhaps because of its thoroughness, Israel 
refused to cooperate with the Human Rights 
Council fact-finding mission, just as it refused 
to cooperate with the Goldstone report.


Accusations of “violent resistance”

The Palmer panel report claims:

Israeli Defense Forces personnel faced 
significant, organized and violent resistance 
from a group of passengers when they boarded the 
Mavi Marmara requiring them to use force for 
their own protection. Three soldiers were 
captured, mistreated, and placed at risk by those 
passengers. Several others were wounded.

Given the fact that Palmer panel did not gather 
any evidence of its own, its conclusion that the 
Israeli military attackers who boarded the Mavi 
Marmara under cover of dark in international 
waters, faced “organized and violent resistance” 
can be given no more credibility than any common 
or garden Israeli military press release.

While Israel has repeatedly made such claims, it 
never produced independent evidence of it and – 
as noted – is still concealing evidence.

Nevertheless, the video footage that did escape Israeli confiscation showed:
    * 
<http://aliabunimah.posterous.com/20299014>Indiscriminate 
live fire by the Israeli attackers
    * 
<http://aliabunimah.posterous.com/the-last-moments-of-cevdet-klclar-a-working-j>A 
working journalist who appears to have been executed
    * 
<http://aliabunimah.posterous.com/did-israel-try-to-assassinate-sheikh-raed-sal>Evidence 
of targeted assassination of at least one passenger
Even the deeply flawed Palmer report is forced to admit:

The loss of life and injuries resulting from the 
use of force by Israeli forces during the 
take-over of the Mavi Marmara was unacceptable. 
Nine passengers were killed and many others 
seriously wounded by Israeli forces. No 
satisfactory explanation has been provided to the 
Panel by Israel for any of the nine deaths. 
Forensic evidence showing that most of the 
deceased were shot multiple times, including in 
the back, or at close range has not been 
adequately accounted for in the material presented by Israel.

Moreover, the propagandistic Israeli claims that 
their soldiers were mistreated 
<http://aliabunimah.posterous.com/blog-post-israel-hasbara-fails-again-pics-sho>were 
belied by photographs that showed passengers 
giving aid and protection to Israeli attackers who had been disarmed.

It is possible of course that passengers defended 
themselves against a terrifying Israeli assault 
in dead of night with a 
<http://aliabunimah.posterous.com/european-and-american-weapons-used-in-israeli>full 
military arsenal that included assault 
helicopters and elite commandos against a civilian ship.

Indeed, 
<http://aliabunimah.posterous.com/20299014>footage 
shows terrified passengers hiding and attempting 
to fend off indiscriminate fire with sticks in a 
blood-stained stairwell. But to equate any of 
this to “organized and violent resistance” that 
could in any way justify Israel’s execution-style 
killings is completely absurd.


The blockade is “legal”

The Palmer report’s assertion that the Israeli 
naval blockade of Gaza is legal and necessary for 
“security” echoes the other aspects of the report 
that accept Israeli military propaganda as given.

By privileging the security of Israel, the 
occupying power, the report also ignores the 
rights and needs for security of the Palestinian 
people in Gaza who are being collectively 
punished and who have been subjected to decades 
of indiscriminate Israeli military attacks in 
which thousands of civilians have been killed and injured.

Yet this opinion of the Panel is, as the report 
states, not binding in any legal sense. But more 
importantly, 
<http://aliabunimah.posterous.com/mavi-marmara-was-heading-away-from-israelgaza>it 
has no bearing at all on the assault on the Mavi 
Marmara, which Israel attacked in international 
waters as it was moving 
away<http://aliabunimah.posterous.com/mavi-marmara-was-heading-away-from-israelgaza> 
from the Gaza Strip and the Israeli-controlled coast of Palestine.

Israel’s claim that it needs to blockade people 
it is violently victimizing in order to prevent 
them obtaining any means means whatsoever to 
defend themselves can only be made by wholly 
ignoring the context of Israel’s violent 
occupation of Gaza and decades of well-documented war crimes.

Israel is not in a defensive position in which it 
can claim a “security” need to impose a blockade. 
Israel is the military aggressor which for 
decades from 1967 until 2005 violently colonized 
the Gaza Strip, placing settlers there in blatant 
violation of international law. Since 2005, 
Israel has continued to occupy besiege, harass, 
attack and kill civilians in Gaza with almost no 
respite culminating in the indiscriminate killing 
of hundreds of civilians during the 2008-2009 
“<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/operation-cast-lead>Operation Cast Lead.”

A perfect example of Israel’s wanton violence was 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/how-protests-against-israel-and-flagman-saved-lives-gaza>its 
unprovoked series of attacks on the Gaza Strip 
last month which killed more than two dozen people, including children.


Human Rights Council fact-finding mission and legality of Israeli blockade

The 
<http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/15session/A.HRC.15.21_en.PDF>UN 
Human Rights Council had already concluded that 
Israel’s interception of the flotilla was illegal 
because the blockade was unjustified:

In evaluating the evidence submitted to the 
Mission, including by OCHA oPt [Office for the 
Coordination of Human Affairs in the occupied 
Palestinian territories), confirming the severe 
humanitarian situation in Gaza, the destruction 
of the economy and the prevention of 
reconstruction (as detailed above), the Mission 
is satisfied that the blockade was inflicting 
disproportionate damage upon the civilian 
population in the Gaza strip and that as such the 
interception could not be justified and therefore has to be considered illegal.

It also concludes:

The Mission considers that one of the principal 
motives behind the imposition of the blockade was 
a desire to punish the people of the Gaza Strip 
for having elected Hamas. The combination of this 
motive and the effect of the restrictions on the 
Gaza Strip leave no doubt that Israel’s actions 
and policies amount to collective punishment as defined by international law.

and that:

the blockade amounts to collective punishment in 
violation of Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law.

Palmer panel went against international consensus on blockade

Moreover, the Turkish appointee on the Palmer 
panel, Süleyman Özdem Sanberk, noted in a 
dissenting statement rejecting large parts of the report:

On the legal aspect of the blockade, Turkey and 
Israel have submitted two opposing arguments. 
International legal authorities are divided on 
the matter since it is unprecedented, highly 
complex and the legal framework lacks 
codification. However, the Chairmanship and its 
report fully associated itself with Israel and 
categorically dismissed the views of the other, 
despite the fact that the legal arguments 
presented by Turkey have been supported by the 
vast majority of the international community. 
Common sense and conscience dictate that the blockade is unlawful.
Also the UN Human Rights Council concluded that 
the blockade was unlawful. The Report of the 
Human Rights Council Fact Finding Mission 
received widespread approval from the member states.
Freedom and safety of navigation on the high seas 
is a universally accepted rule of international 
law. There can be no exception from this 
long-standing principle unless there is a universal convergence of views.
The intentions of the participants in the 
international humanitarian convoy were 
humanitarian, reflecting the concerns of the vast 
majority of the international community. They 
came under attack in international waters. They 
resisted for their own protection. Nine civilians 
were killed and many others were injured by the 
Israeli soldiers. One of the victims is still in 
a coma. The evidence confirms that at least some 
of the victims had been killed deliberately.
The wording in the report is not satisfactory in 
describing the actual extent of the atrocities 
that the victims have been subjected to. This 
includes the scope of the maltreatment suffered 
by the passengers in the hands of Israeli soldiers and officials.

After Goldstone, protecting Israel

Based on what was known before its report became 
public, and now that we have read the report, it 
is clear that the Palmer panel was no more than 
political exercise by the UN Secretary General 
Ban Ki-moon to whitewash Israel’s attack on the 
flotilla and protect it from any real accountability.

After Israel and the United States’s all out war 
on the 
<http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/factfindingmission.htm>Goldstone 
report detailing Israeli war crimes in Gaza, it 
appears that international officials are unwilling to repeat the experience.

Indeed, 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/exclusive-leaked-documents-show-pa-undermined-turkeys-push-un-flotilla-probe/8888>an 
exclusive report on The Electronic Intifada in 
June 2010 revealed intense diplomatic efforts to 
undermine Turkey’s push for an independent UN 
investigation into Israel’s flotilla attack.

The Palmer panel was stacked from the start to 
ensure Israeli impunity, not to provide truth for 
the victims and survivors of the Mavi Marmara.




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