US bias exposed in dealing with Gaza flotilla case

Recently-released US government documents related to Israel’s deadly May 2010 raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla shed new light on the extent to which the US disregarded the rights and safety of US citizens participating in the humanitarian mission to the besieged Gaza Strip — and.

Nine passengers, including a US citizen, were killed and many more injured by Israeli commandos who stormed the flagship Mavi Marmara, provoking international outrage and turning world opinion against Israel, possibly irreversibly. Seventeen US citizens were aboard the flotilla, including a former US army colonel and former US ambassador. Passengers were arrested and detained in Israel without charge and eventually deported.

The 5,000 pages of documents from various government agencies — many of them heavily redacted — were released after the New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights sued the US government in May 2011 when the US failed to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests submitted by the CCR one month after the attack.

Murder of Furkan Doğan
The documents show that while the US government tracked citizens participating in the flotilla for months before their scheduled departure to Gaza, but made no efforts to ensure the safety of the passengers and parroted the Israeli government line by characterizing the humanitarian flotilla as a provocation.

The US government emails and cables also show the shocking lack of concern regarding the slaying of a US teenager aboard the Mavi Marmara, Furkan Doğan, despite the desperate pleas of his father for information about his son’s whereabouts and safety (see the CCR’s production guide to the documents related to Furkan Doğan).

As the Center for Constitutional Rights summarizes: “Israeli commandos shot Furkan five times, including one shot to the head at point-blank range. At the time of the attack, it is believed Furkan was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara.” A United Nations inquiry into Israel’s attack on the flotilla states that the teen’s wounds suggest that “he may already have been lying wounded when the fatal shot was delivered, as suggested by witness accounts to that effect.”

The Obama administration made no inquiry into Furkan Doğan’s death and deferred to Israel’s own investigations into the incident, even though the attack occurred in international waters. And not only did the US fail to investigate Doğan’s killing, it also actively undermined independent international investigations into the siege of the flotilla. The US also made no high-level attempt to retrieve property of US citizens seized during the raid, including cameras that would yield key evidence to understanding the truth of what happened on the Mavi Marmara. Israel is believed to still possess property belonging to US citizens aboard the flotilla.
Passengers investigated for terror ties

It took the US government three days to learn that Furkan Doğan was slain on the Mavi Marmara, and US failed to investigate his death, yet the documents show that the US government wasted no time in investigating passengers on the humanitarian convoy for terror group financing ties.

The CCR notes in one of its production guides to the documents: “On August 17, 2010, the FBI’s Counterterrorism Financing Operations and Counterterrorism Financing Management Unit issued a memorandum that stated as its synopsis: ‘To provide results of research conducted on the 561 individuals associated with the Gaza Freedom flotilla’ to Counterterrorism squads in Kansas City, Chicago, San Francisco and Tel Aviv.”

And while the US government was busy investigating humanitarian activists for terror financing crimes, it ignored a request by the Center for Constitutional Rights to investigate an Israeli commando who spoke at New York University about his experience raiding the Mavi Marmara. The Facebook event page for the commando’s speaking event, organized by Birthright Israel and co-sponsored by anti-Palestinian group StandWithUs, promised “exclusive firsthand footage taken aboard the ship.”