Fleet massacre, a loop in a chain of Israeli massacres

Stephen Lendman: During the Mandate period and throughout its existence, Israel's history has been bloodstained, barbarous, and out-of-control - and for most of it generously funded and heavily armed with the latest weapons and technology by its Washington paymaster/partner to reign terror on the region and Palestine. Early on, Israel was a regional menace. It's now a global one, posing a grave threat to world peace and stability.

The Flotilla attack was just the latest among its thousands of other atrocities, large and small, including preemptive wars, smaller incursions, bombings, killings including targeted assassinations, torture as official policy, and numerous other crimes against humanity as advocated by early leaders like David Ben-Gurion (Israel's first prime minister) saying:

"We must expel the Arabs and take their place and if we have to use force, to guarantee our own right to settle (on their land) then we have (it) at our disposal."

Or former IDF Chief of Staff Raphael Eitan (1978 - 1983) saying:

"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel....Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours."

Or the secret (1976 published) Koenig Report saying:

"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population."

Or Benjamin Netanyahu, as Deputy Foreign Minister, saying "Israel should have exploited the (1989 Tiananmen Square violence), when world attention focused on (China), to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories."

Little wonder why Israel's history is so bloodstained, some notable examples below:

-- on July 22, 1946, future prime minister Menachem Begin's Irgun (a notorious terror group) bombed the King David Hotel, massacring 92 Brits, Arabs and Jews, wounding 58 others, in an operation approved by David Ben-Gurion as head of the Jewish Agency at the time;

-- also under the Mandate, the terrorist Stern Gang (future prime minister Yitzhak Shamir one of its leaders) carried out numerous bombings, kidnappings, and killings, including the 1944 assassination of Lord Moyne in Cairo - Britain's highest ranking official in the region;

-- on April 9, 1948 (during Israel's "war of independence") the Irgun, Stern Gang and other Israeli terrorists slaughtered well over 120 Palestinian men, women and children in the bloody Deir Yassin village rampage; on April 14, The New York Times reported 254 killed;

-- Israel's "war of independence" (Palestine's Nakba, its "Holocaust") depopulated 531 towns and villages and 11 urban neighborhoods, committing mass slaughter, rapings, vast destruction, and countless other atrocities in displacing about 800,000 Palestinians - one of history's greatest ever crimes of war and against humanity;

-- a week after the war's mid-May 1948 end, Israeli troops massacred over 200 al-Tantura villagers, mostly unarmed young men murdered in cold blood;

-- on July 11 & 12, IDF forces slaughtered several hundred Lydda civilians, including 80 machine-gunned inside the Dahmash mosque;

-- from October 24 - 29, 1948, Israeli soldiers slaughtered 50 Hula, Lebanon villagers;

-- on October 29, 1948, they massacred around 200 al-Dawayima villagers;

-- on October 30, 20 more in Majd al-Kurum, 94 when they blew up a house, and hundreds in Sa'sa' village;

-- on October 14, 1953, Ariel Sharon's notorious Unit 101 murdered 70 Qibya, Jordan villagers;

-- on April 5, 1956, IDF shelling massacred 56 and wounded 193 in Gaza City;

-- on October 29, 1956, the IDF slaughtered about 50 Kafr Kassem village men, women and children;

-- during the 1956 Suez War, Israelis executed about 273 Egyptian soldiers and civilians in cold blood;

-- on November 12, 1956, the IDF slaughtered over 100 Rafah Refugee Camp civilians;

-- during Israel's preemptive June 1967 Six Day War, its forces massacred around 2,000 captured Egyptian soldiers, another 340 Syrian villagers in the Golan Heights, and displaced over 300,000 Palestinians who fled to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria to escape the carnage;

-- on June 8, 1967, Israeli forces preemptively attacked the USS Liberty (a clearly marked US intelligence ship), killing 34 Americans and wounding another 171 in international waters; Lyndon Johnson's defense department whitewashed it as a case of "mistaken identity," despite clear knowledge of a premeditated assault;

-- on February 21, 1973, the IDF shot down Libya Airlines Flight 114, killing 106 passengers, including one American;

-- on February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein (a member of  Rabbi Meir Kahane's extremist Jewish Defense League) attacked Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs Ibrahim mosque, massacring 29 and wounding another 129;

-- during Israel's 1982 Lebanon invasion and occupation, IDF forces slaughtered about 18,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, including around 3,000 by its Phalangist allies in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps;

-- during the first (1987 - 1992) and second (2000 - 2005) Intifadas, IDF rampages slaughtered thousands of Palestinian men, women and children in cold blood;

-- in April 2002, IDF forces invaded Jenin and its refugee camp, cut them off from outside help, destroyed hundreds of buildings, buried many alive under the rubble, cut off power, water, food, and other essential supplies, refused to let in help (including medical aid), and killed or wounded at least dozens (perhaps hundreds) of Palestinian civilians; Israel removed bodies and buried them to prevent an accurate count;

-- during the July 2006 Lebanon war, the IDF caused mass destruction, killed about 1,300, wounded many more, and displaced around one million civilians (about one-fourth of the population);

-- during the June 2006 Operation Summer Rain against Gaza, Israelis killed around 240 (mostly civilians) and caused widespread destruction - including three main bridges, the Nusairat and al-Boreji refugee camps' main water pipe, and the Strip's only power plant, supplying 80% of the Territory's electricity;

-- during the same period, the IDF conducted around 50 West Bank incursions, raiding homes, razing farmland, arresting dozens, and on June 29 the entire (elected) Hamas leadership, including eight ministers, 25 PLC Change and Reform Party members, and other Hamas officials; and

-- during the 23-day December 2008 - January 2009 Operation Cast Lead, IDF forces slaughtered over 1,400, injured around 5,500 more (many seriously), and inflicted vast destruction throughout Gaza, including vital infrastructure, hospitals, schools, mosques, government buildings, factories, other businesses, farmland, private homes, and much more unrelated to military necessity in violation of international law; as a result, the Goldstone Commission concluded that:

"the Israeli military operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the (entire) population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population. The destruction of (vital infrastructure and non-military targets) was the result of a deliberate and systematic policy which has made the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population."

And now the Flotilla massacre, Israel's latest crime against humanity, enraging millions worldwide.