Cheeky Bloody Israelis

Using the start of the World Cup as cover Israel has announced that it is to carry out an internal investigation into the shooting of nine Turkish nationals aboard the Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara.

The investigation will be carried out by a three man panel made up of a senior Israeli Judge, a retired Israeli military officer and an Israeli professor of international law. The scope of the investigation will be very narrow only examining the manner of the deaths. So it will only ask who shot who rather then why a situation arose where shooting occurred. The panel will also rule on the legality of the naval blockade. I suspect that the Israelis will rule that it is legal.

Apparently bowing to international pressure Israel have agreed to allow two international observers to watch the investigation. Having looked at the two observers who have been appointed I can only presume that the Israelis must be joking.

The first is Ken Watkin a retired Brigadier General in the Canadian army who specialises in military law. I have to admit that I'm not familiar with Watkin but the fact he's managed to rise to such a high rank in an army that swears allegiance to the Queen of England would suggest he's a very pro-Israeli Zionist. He's probably less likely to criticise Israel then the Israelis on the panel.

I am much more familiar with the second observer. It's David Trimble former leader of Northern Ireland's Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) which is in an electoral alliance with Britain's Conservative party. Although a moderate Loyalist Trimble has been linked with terrorists groups like the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). There are rumours that both the UVF and the UDA were armed, in part, with weapons that had been seized from Palestinian terror groups*. Politically Trimble comes between Lieberman and Netanhayu. In the unlikely event that he was to criticise Israel Trimble will be far too busy. Instead he'll be trying to deal with Israeli attempts to take control of the English Defence League (EDL) who are linked to the UDA.

I understand that punishing Israel over the incident is one thing but surely rewarding them for it is quite another.





*While I'm vaguely on the subject the long awaited British government report on the Bloody Sunday shootings is to be released soon. There is a whisper on the wind that this report will show that one of the weapons used, which the army claim was destroyed, turned up in the hands of rebel fighters in Sierra Leone. Coming out during the World Cup this will ignite a debate a small arms in Africa and Tony Blair's military intervention against the rebels in Sierra Leone. Of course the purpose of that argument is to distract attention away from the events of Bloody Sunday where the British Army shot and killed British civilians on the streets of a British city.