Despite well-documented evidence that seven of the nine Turks killed in the violent confrontation aboard the Mavi Marmara had previously declared their desire to become martyr (shaheeds), Fairfax insists that those involved were nothing more than "troublemakers".
The Zionist Council of Victoria tears this argument to shreds on its website but it really doesn't go far enough in its expose of the antics of flotilla participant McGeough who stupidly passes off his flotilla mates as harmless little fleas.
"There are a lot of ominous dots to join there. But a critical one is missing - if these friends of al-Qaeda who became a lynch mob had control of the ship and were so bent on violent confrontation with Israeli forces, why were they so poorly armed?"
The obvious answer is that had they been armed it would have destroyed the sole purpose of their expedition which was to embed themselves among unwitting peaceniks and make Israel look like an out of control aggressor which is how McGeough has been painting it for the past month. As it was, the Israeli commandos boarding the Marvi Marmara weren't exactly struck at by feather dusters but the Fairfax reporter slyly writes this all off as the work of "troublemakers".
In his hast to excoriate Israel and Israel alone, McGeough fails to understand the political implications of the flotilla and the role of the Turkish government.
Naturally, he ignores the real evidence - Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center
1. An analysis of the names of the Turks killed in the violent confrontation with the IDF aboard the Mavi Marmara shows that almost all of them (eight of the nine) belonged to IHH or to Islamist Turkish factions or groups affiliated with IHH.
2. The one exception was a 19-year old named Furkan Dogan who had dual Turkish-American citizenship and whose involvement in the confrontation was unclear. In effect, according to an article in Radikal, a small intellectual Turkish newspaper which offers varied points of view, before the confrontation with the IDF Dogan wrote a diary entry attesting to his desire to become a shaheed.
3. The article in Radikal criticized the Turkish government's policy of referring to those killed as shaheeds because their activity was civilian and not religious. According to the paper, it was enough to quote the diary of high school student Furkan Dogan, who wrote the following on the morning before the confrontation: “I think there is not much time left for that moment of martyrdom. Is there anything more honorable? If there is, it should be my mother. I am not sure of that either. Which one’s better? My mother’s compassion or dying for a noble cause?" (radikal.com.tr, June 16, 2010). The same quote appears on another website, which notes that they were his last words (sailanmuslim.com).1 (Note: The above quotation was taken from the Sailanmuslim website.)
4. In addition, a report in the Turkish paper Zaman (quoted by the Israeli media) stated that before Furkan boarded the Mavi Marmara he asked for his parents' blessing. His brother Mustafa said that "we did not expect him to return to us like this. But we are not sorry he was killed as a shaheed." His father said that the family believed Furkan died an honorable death and was blessed in paradise (Haaretz.co.il, June 3; Ynet.co.il, June 4, 2010).
By what measure are such people mere "troublemakers"?
Yes, it's come to this. A Turkish Newspaper and even Al Jazeera can be better relied upon to tell the truth than can this pathetic broadsheet with a political agenda.
What an embarrassment?
Would it be fair to suggest The Age is obsessed with Israel.
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