Veterans Today’s Gordon Duff: Gaza: Israeli Commandos ‘Running Like Chickens’

– Gaza: Israeli commandos ‘running like chickens’ (PressTV, July 14, 2014):

By Gordon Duff

Israel has suffered her first defeat in a ground conflict since here ill-fated foray into Lebanon in 2006.

Israel reports that 13 Naval Commandos landed on a beach in Northern Gaza to “take out” a Hamas long-range missile battery. Israel’s own reporting is that they suffered four wounded and that two Palestinians died in the attack.

There is much they don’t tell. We have seen Israeli commandos before, particularly in the 2010 attack on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship carrying relief supplies to Gaza. During this attack in 2010, American born peace activist Ken O’Keefe, a former United States Marine (as is the author), disarmed and captured 3 “commandos.” Photographs of the elite Israeli troops, crying and rather soft looking for “commando types” went viral on the internet.

Israel summarily executed 9 peace activists and journalists on the Mavi Marmara and tortured many of the survivors, including O’Keefe, some for days before releasing them under intense international pressure. Israel recently settled with Turkey over this incident under admission of wrongdoing.

REVERSE HEROICS
Masters of “double-speak,” Israel has already begun to tell of this attack in heroic terms. In 1959, American songwriter Johnny Horton penned the following lyric intended to describe the British invasion of the US at New Orleans in 1814. Today we dedicate them to the Israeli commando group that attacked Gaza:

“We held our fire
‘Till we see’d their faces swell
Then we opened up our squirrel guns
And really gave ’em – well we
Fired our guns and the British kept a-comin’
There wasn’t quite as many as there was a while ago
We fired once more and they begin to runnin’
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico
Yeah, they ran through the briars
And they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes
Where the rabbit couldn’t go
They ran so fast
That the hounds couldn’t catch ’em
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico”…Johnny Horton, American songwriter

Today this song is dedicated to the men of Shayetet 13, Israel’s naval commandos who only live to run away another day thanks to Israel calling a “Broken Arrow,” an emergency request for all air, sea and land forces to save a hopelessly besieged unit.

HISTORY OF DECEIT
Israel was testing Gaza defenses before a possible and now perhaps “less possible” ground assault. The unit that landed in Gaza was not 13 men. The name of the unit is Shayetet 13, trained by American SEALS, this 25-man unit is last surviving arm of the Haganah, the Jewish terror organization established in 1920 based on the teachings of Vladimir Lenin.

In 1940, the precursor of Shayetet 13 planted a bomb on the British liner Patria, killing 260 Jewish refugees in an early “false flag” attack.

After the attack, nothing was mentioned of the details other than by Richard Silverstein of Tikkun.

According to my source, the battle did not go well for the Israeli forces who had hoped for stealth to reach and neutralize their target. With the ambush they lost the element of surprise and were forced to call in F-16s and helicopter gunships to hold off the attacking Palestinians. Certainly such air support wasn’t anticipated unless the operation ran into trouble, which it clearly did.

There is no verification of casualties by either side, Israel due to a 60 plus year blackout on all accurate and factual reporting of any kind and on the Palestinian side based on jamming of communications and systematic attacks on journalist by Israel.

RECENT SETBACKS
Normally, a naval commando unit in such an operation would be landed by one of Israel’s vaunted U Boats.

Coastal operations by Israel against Syria used U Boats until an incident on the evening/morning of May 2/3, 2013, when a commando unit was exfiltrating from Syria by rubber boat.

Syrian news reports, quickly withdrawn, tell of the sinking of the Israeli U Boat with all aboard, victim of a helicopter launched homing torpedo.

American naval intelligence sources verify this sinking, 86 Israelis killed, and of a second sinking due to an “American training exercise” in the Mediterranean later that year.

The American source tells of Israel altering U Boat rosters, painting numbers of boats sunk on surviving vessels and of silencing the families of the dead. What is confirmed is two sinkings, not one, leaving Israeli naval forces broken and in disarray. Today’s fiasco is minor in comparison.

ISSUES OF ACCOUTABILITY
There are several outstanding issues, issues that attack the credibility of the narrative used by the media to describe the Middle East. The US has never gotten past the exposure of its relationship, initially in support of Al Qaeda in Syria and later as founding Al Qaeda, perhaps the worst kept secret in history.

In its current guise, as Al Qaeda 2.0 or as we call it now, ISIS, the purported defender of Gaza and the Palestinian people is increasingly exposed as, minimally, in a full-blown partnership with Israel. There are currently over 1500 patients from ISIS and Al Nusra in Israeli hospitals, a nation where a Palestinian child hit by a car is often left to die alongside a busy road.

The Israeli relationship with the US is strained as well. The Bush administration built up an inventory of both illegal chemical and cluster munitions in Israel. By secret agreement, again, a very poorly guarded secret, the US agrees to “top off” Israel’s stockpiles of “US owned” WMDs if Israel is under threat of invasion.

However, President Obama’s closest advisors are taking exception to this arrangement. Israel has thrown its weight and that of AIPAC/ADL and America’s powerful gambling and human trafficking lobby behind defeating Obama’s domestic and foreign policy reforms. Israel, during the last two years of the Obama administration, despite public statements to the contrary, is unlikely to get any help from the US.

In addition, the US has withdrawn its support of the “Iron Dome” or “Iron Yamuka” air defense system. The heart of that air defense platform is America’s AEGIS radar and the powerful missiles on the ships usually offshore, protecting Israel.

Those ships are elsewhere, the crews enjoying the delights of Mediterranean ports, a needed break from endlessly protecting a rogue nation from feeling the consequences of its misdeeds.