Last week the State Department released its annual report on Human Rights. The media focused on the China parts. We’re focused on Israel/Palestine portion. Writes a friend:
Really only two paragraphs on the flotilla in the human rights report?
On September 22, the UN Human Rights Council released the report of a fact-finding mission that accused security forces of summarily executing six of the nine passengers killed on a Turkish NGO-organized flotilla of ships intending to reach the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office dismissed the report as “biased” and “distorted.” On July 12, the IDF investigation into the May 31 events concluded that the use of live fire was justified, although it criticized organizational and intelligence failures for not being prepared for the level of violence committed by some of the flotilla’s passengers.
Not even a mention of an American citizen killed on the flotilla–Furkan Dogan. No reference to Ambassador Edward Peck, who was aboard a boat.
But Gilad Shalit’s name is mentioned three times. There is this, too:
At year’s end a trial continued against Yaakov (Jack) Teitel, a Jewish settler in the West Bank who was indicted in 2009 for crimes including the 1997 killings of Palestinian shepherd Issa Jabrin near Hebron and Samir Akram Balbisi, an Arab taxi driver in Jerusalem, and the 2008 bombing deaths of professor Ze’ev Sternhell and a Messianic Jewish leader’s 15-year-old son, Ami Ortiz. On August 30, the Jerusalem District Court ruled he was fit to stand trial.
My understanding is that Sternhell and Ortiz both survived. Here’s a website describing his struggles. No mention in this paragraph — or another – that Teitel came from Florida.
