ISM confirms the death of Vittorio Arrigoni

ISM

Posted on: April 15, 2011

The International Solidarity Movement is shocked and deeply saddened by the killing of our friend and colleague Vittorio Arrigoni. Vik was an inspiring activist and generous soul. Please keep his family and friends in your thoughts.

We will post more information here as it becomes available.

Press Stories

CNN: Italian activist and journalist kidnapped in Gaza is dead

NY Times: Hamas Says It Found Body of Italian Activist

Haaretz: Hamas: Abducted pro-Palestinian activist found dead in Gaza

Al Jazeera English: Body of kidnapped Italian found in Gaza

Guardian: Body of kidnapped Italian peace activist Vittorio Arrigoni found in Gaza

Stay Human

Book Review by Kim Petersen –Dissident Voice– 9 August 2010

Vittorio Arrigoni has written an on-the-spot account of what occurred in Gaza during Israel’s Cast Lead operation. Arrigoni — who lived in Gaza working as an authentic journalist and volunteer with International Solidarity Movement — exemplifies what it is to be a humanist. This comes through in his Gaza: Stay Human — an eyewitness chronicling of destruction, misery, courage, inhumanity, and humanity in Gaza during the massacre that was Cast Lead

A few things to keep in mind

Lee Kaplan of stoptheism.com, a web site that concentrates on debunking the International Solidarity Movement, recently did an op-ed in the Israel National News outlining people who should be targeted in Gaza, including Vittorio Arrigoni, and makes no bones about his Zionist support of violence in Gaza.

Quote”

“Today, these “activists”, including Darlene Wallach and Vittorio Arrigoni are back in Gaza working as human shields for the Hamas. Their purpose is to travel in ambulances the Hamas use to transport terrorists and weapons that the IDF may neutralize in a war zone and to once again interfere with anti-terrorist operations.”

“It is high time that the IDF and Air Force kill ISM activists found to assist Hamas in the combat zone; they are purposely in the way, the same as the Hamas terrorists the ISM protects and assists. Foreign nationals were given the chance to leave Gaza and the ISM activists have refused. The Israeli government should inform the respective countries of these ISMers that they are fighting on the side of the enemy and will be treated as legitimate targets in Gaza. If their embassies won’t command them to leave Gaza, then Israel should have a free hand to liquidate them.”

You can read the article ~HERE~

Lee Kaplan is an undercover investigative journalist and a contributor to Front Page Magazine. He is also a regular columnist for the Israel National News and Canada Free Press and a senior intelligence analyst and communications director for the Northeast Intelligence Network. He heads the organizations Defending America for Knowledge and Action (DAFKA) and Stop the ISM. He has been interviewed on over one hundred nationally and internationally syndicated radio shows and been a guest on Fox Cable TV’s Dayside with Linda Vester and Bill O’Reilly’s The Factor. He is a guest every Tuesday on the Jim Kirkwood Show on Utah’s K-Talk Radio am630. He is currently working on a book about America’s colleges in the War on Terror and the International Solidarity Movement.

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Democratic Party defends Israeli attack on aid flotilla

By Stephen Zunes, Foreign Policy In Focus, June 10, 2010

Tens of thousands of Israelis protested in the streets of Tel Aviv last weekend against their right-wing government’s attack on an unarmed humanitarian aid flotilla sailing in international waters. International condemnation of the raids continued in foreign capitals. Meanwhile, in Washington, Democratic congressional leaders were lining up alongside their Republican colleagues to defend the Israeli assault. Countering the broad consensus of international legal scholars who recognize that the attack was in flagrant violation of international norms, prominent Democrats embraced the Orwellian notion that Israel’s raid, which killed at least nine activists and wounded scores of others, was somehow an act of self-defense.

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Gaza flotilla activists were shot in head at close range

Exclusive: Nine Turkish men on board Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times, autopsy results reveal

Robert Booth, The Guardian/UK, June 4, 2010

Crowds at the funeral of one of the Turkish victims of the Gaza flotilla raid, at the Beyazit mosque in Istanbul. Photograph: Vadim Ghirda/AP

Israel was tonight under pressure to allow an independent inquiry into its assault on the Gaza aid flotilla after autopsy results on the bodies of those killed, obtained by the Guardian, revealed they were peppered with 9mm bullets, many fired at close range.

Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, which carried out the autopsies for the Turkish ministry of justice today.

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Buchanan: Lift the Siege of Gaza

by Pat Buchanan, creators.com, June 4, 2010

In June 1948, our wartime ally imposed a blockade on Berlin, cutting off and condemning to death or Stalinist domination 2 million Germans, most of whom, not long before, had cheered Adolf Hitler.

Harry Truman responded with the Berlin airlift, in perhaps the most magnanimous act of the Cold War.

For nine months, U.S. pilots flew into Tempelhof, carrying everything from candy to coal, saving a city and earning the eternal gratitude of the people of Berlin, and admiration everywhere that moral courage is admired.

That was an America that lived its values.

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Israeli Commando Who Killed Six Aid Workers to Receive Medal

Staff Sergeant Brags of Role in Massacre

by Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com,  June 4, 2010

Autopsies are coming out today revealing some details about the circumstances of the Israeli attack which left at least nine aid workers dead. Doctors say that several of the victims were shot in the head and that in at least one case the gun was just inches from the aid worker’s head when fired.

But additional information is also coming in in the form of a report from an unnamed Israeli staff-sergeant, who claims proudly to have single-handedly killed at least six of the civilian aid workers.

The staff-sergeant says he has no doubt everyone on board was a “terrorist” and claimed there were secretly dozens of “hardcore mercenaries” on board.

The staff-sergeant’s story is being well received in Israel, where the killings have been lionized by a sympathetic media and by government officials eager to cash in on the latest jingoist craze. He is now being praised for “stabilizing the situation” and is being considered for a medal of valor for his killings.

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Why Israel Chooses Violence

Israel’s leaders, both civilian and military, are not fumbling, hysterical novices. Their actions are deliberate and carefully weighed. To realise its expansionist ambitions, Israel has always sought to avoid serious negotiations with the Palestinians because, if negotiations were to succeed, they would inevitably mean ceding territory, notes Patrick Seale.

Middle East Online,  June 4, 2010

Israel’s deadly commando assault last Monday on the Free Gaza flotilla has been variously denounced around the world as state terrorism, piracy, a war crime, and as the latest example of Israel’s arrogant contempt for international law and its criminal indifference for (non-Jewish) human life.

In view of the enormity of the act — and the toll of dead and wounded among unarmed activists seeking to break the three-year Gaza siege — these charges appear justified. But they do not explain why Israel chooses to behave as it does. Its leaders, both civilian and military, are not fumbling, hysterical novices. Their actions are deliberate and carefully weighed. So what is the cold-eyed strategy behind them?

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Not in My Jewish Name!

Rob Kall | OpEdNews | June 1, 2010

I am a Jew and I am outraged and ashamed by the acts Israel has perpetrated. I am not a self hating Jew, not an anti-semite, as some religious extremist Jews have accused me and other Jews who criticize Israel.

I am a Jew who knows right from wrong, who can see that the band of evil idiots in Israel who are making decisions are doing the wrong thing, doing things that are bad for the Jewish people. I stand up now declaring that Israel does not act in my name. AIPAC, the lobbying group for Israel does not act in my name.

I was ashamed and outraged when Israel attacked Gaza, killing over 1000 innocents. I told my son it would be like him throwing a balled up peice of paper at me and me coming back with a hammer smashing him in the head and face repeatedly.

Read more:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Not-in-My-Jewish-Name-by-Rob-Kall-100601-960.html

By Jonathan Tasini
Congressional Candidate Tasini Calls on U.S. To Condemn Israeli Attack on Gaza Peace Activists
I speak out not just as a candidate for public office. I speak as a Jew. I speak out as the son of a father who was born in Palestine, and who fought in the Jewish underground. I speak as someone who has had family members killed in the decades-long conflict, and who has lived in Israel and witnessed violence first-hand.

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Grief, Horror, Commitment to Act: Responding to Israeli Navy killings of civilians in ships on the high seas
This morning (Monday, Memorial Day, May 31, 2010), I awoke to news reports that the Israeli Navy had boarded and fired on six unarmed small ships, bearing civilians from many countries, in international waters approaching the coast of Gaza, carrying humanitarian supplies for Palestinians who have been suffering an Israeli blockade of many (not all) civilian goods.

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Cohn: Israel Murders Human Rights Workers Delivering Humanitarian Aid

by Marjorie Cohn, CommonDreams.org, May 31, 2010

On Sunday, Israel murdered human rights workers who were attempting to deliver 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, because Gaza has been virtually cut off from the outside world by Israel. At least 19 people were reportedly killed and dozens injured when Israeli troops boarded the 6-ship Freedom Flotilla convoy in international waters and immediately fired live ammunition at the people on board the ships. The convoy was comprised of 700 people from 50 nationalities and included a Nobel laureate, members of parliament from Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Turkey and Malaysia, as well as Palestinian members of the Israeli Knesset and a Holocaust survivor.

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Israeli general ‘tried to cover up truth about death of Rachel Corrie’

Israeli war hero accused of suppressing testimony that could reveal what really happened to Gaza activist

By Ben Lynfield, The Independent/UK, May 7, 2010

AP

The peace activist Rachel Corrie died on 16 March 2003

Seven years after the American activist Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza, evidence has emerged which appears to implicate Israel’s Gaza commander at the time, in an attempt to obstruct the official investigation into her death.

The alleged intervention of Major-General Doron Almog, then head of Israel’s southern command, is documented in testimony taken by Israeli military police a day after Ms Corrie was killed on March 16, 2003. The hand written affidavit, seen by The Independent, was submitted as evidence during a civil law suit being pursued by the Corrie family against the state of Israel.

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Talking Palestine To Power

By Sonja Karkar, ZNet, April 14, 2010

Today, there is no excuse for not knowing the truth about Palestine, especially what is happening in Gaza. Even taking into account the disinformation spread in mainstream media, there are enough glimpses one gets of a ravaged Gaza and a brutalized people that should compel us to ask questions. There are enough websites and blogs easily available for anyone to learn more, even if it requires sifting through and evaluating the available information. Certainly, the alarm bells should be ringing when our political leaders declare undying fealty to Israel or cavalierly wear it as a badge of honour, despite the documented reports of Israel’s war crimes by human rights groups and official enquiries.

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