Once inside the building, they barricaded themselves in and set to work. Equipment used to make weapon components were trashed and computers, filing cabinets and office furnishings were thrown out of the windows. Once they were done they calmly waited for the police to arrest them. Two activists who supported them outside the factory gates were also on trial. All of the defendants have argued that what they did was not only morally necessary but crucially that it was legal. U.K law allows the commission of damage of property to prevent greater crimes.

Two of the accused, Simon Levin and Chris Osmond have extensive experience of working in Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement. Chris Osmond told the court that ’the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza at that time meant it was imperative to act’. He cited the words of Rachel Corrie, the U.S activist who was killed by an IDF bulldozer in Rafah, as an inspiration. The court heard a passage of Corrie’s diary ’I’m witnessing this chronic insidious genocide and I’m really scared, this has to stop, I think it is a good idea idea for all of us to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop’.

During the trial the court heard not only from the defendants themselves but from Sharyn Lock, who was an international human rights volunteer in Gaza during Cast Lead. She was inside Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City when it was attacked with white phosphorus. She concluded her evidence by saying that she had no doubt that those who armed the Israeli Air Force ’had the blood of children on their hands’. The jury saw footage of the air attacks on the UNWRA compounds where civilians were sheltering and have been given an edited version of the Goldstone report.

Recently elected member of Parliament for Brighton Pavilion, Caroline Lucas also gave evidence supporting the decommssioners, saying that the democratic process ’had been exhausted’ as far as the factory was concerned.

On January the 17th 2009 the bombs had already fallen relentlessly on Gaza for three weeks. Massive, passionate demonstrations and pickets had been held in many cities around the country and the world in protest against Israel’s war crimes, but to no avail. A growing sense of helplessness was grabbing hold of the movement as the Palestinian body count stood at over 1400 and counting. 300 of the dead were children. It was against this background that the “citizen’s decommissioning” of EDO MBM/ITT took place.

EDO/ITT is an arms manufacturer, based in Brighton since 1946. They were acquired along with the rest of EDO Corporation by the multinational arms conglomerate ITT in December 2007. Their primary business is the manufacture of weapons systems such as bomb release mechanisms and bomb racks. This includes crucially the manufacture of the VER-2 Zero Retention Force Arming Unit for the Israeli Air Force’s F16 war planes.

Over the years, EDO have consistently denied supplying Israel, and despite over fifty court cases campaigners were not able to properly expose the links between the factory and the IAF. However the serious nature of the charges against the seven (the factory sustained nearly £200,000 of damage and may not have recommenced production for weeks) means that for the first time courts took the argument that EDOs business is fundamentally illegal very seriously.

Paul Hills, the Managing Director of EDO MBM, spent his five days on the witness stand last week being confronted with all the evidence gathered by campaigners over the years –evidence which exposes a complex network of collaboration between British, American and Israeli arms companies and the way in which their deals are clouded in secrecy. The Decommissioners were able to present Mr Hills, for the first time, with a dossier of evidence showing how EDO MBM use a front company in the U.S.A to indirectly supply components for the F 16 to Israel. Under U.K law the supply of weapons components that might be used in the Occupied Territories is actually a crime.

After hearing Hills’ explanations of his company’s business practices, Judge George Bathurst-Norman said that, despite Hill’s denials of dealing with Israel, it was clear that their was enough evidence to justify a genuinely held belief they did. He also offered the opinion that End User Certificates required for arms export licences were “ not worth the paper they are written on” as they can be easily manipulated.

There is a history of juries in British courts finding anti-war activists not guilty when they attack machinery used in war crimes. In 1996 four women from Trident Ploughshares decommissioned a Hawk jet that was about to be shipped to Indonesia – they were found not guilty. In 2008 the Raytheon 9, who damaged a factory in Derry supplying weapons to Israel during the 2006 Lebanon war, were acquitted by a jury and only two weeks ago a group of nine women carrying out a similar action at Raytheon during the Gaza attacks were also found not guilty by an unanimous jury.

On Friday, the jury found Simon Levin, Tom Woodhead, Ornella Saibene, Bob Nicholls, Harvey Tadman, Elijah Smith and Chris Osmond not guilty of “Conspiracy to Cause Criminal damage” by unanimous verdict in Hove Crown Court.

Chris Osmond said “This action was taken because of EDO MBMs illegal supply of weapons to the Israeli military. We brought the suffering of ordinary Palestinians into a British courtroom and confronted with the evidence they took the brave decision to find that our actions were justified.”

The decommissioners’ stance made it clear to companies like EDO that they can no longer count on not being held to account for their actions. There are now a growing number of people in the international community who are willing to risk their own liberty to stand up for the people of Gaza and to challenge Israel’s war crimes through whatever means possible.

Your video, Israelis Celebrate IDF Flotilla Attack, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Eight years of Duhbya.>> ^kronosposeidon:

Q: What do you get when morality is based on ancient traditions superstition tea leaves card tricks faith?
A: Hmm, let's see..
- Roman persecution of Christians
- The Inquisition
- Thuggee murders
- Aztec human sacrifice
- Mountain Meadows Massacre
- Jonestown
- Witch trials
- Islamic Jihad
- The Holocaust
- The Crusades
- Thirty Years' War
- Armenian Genocide
- The Troubles in Northern Ireland
- The Taliban
and lest we forget
- The Middle Fucking East

@gwiz665 The Gaza Blockade is illegal and the flotilla attack was done in International waters. Because the blockade of Gaza itself violates international law, Israel committed an illegal act of war attacking the convoy, regardless of who attacked whom first.

>> ^gwiz665:

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/Pprt" title="member since April 8th, 2008" class="profilelink">Pprt If they are breaking a military blockade, then they are pretty close to soldiers, wouldn't you say?
I'm having some trouble with the timing of the things - it looks like they were shot before the IDF got there, which is weird. It's a great big mess down there, but the people on the flotilla could have expected something like this, when they break the blockade, even if their intentions may be good and honorable.

@Pprt If they are breaking a military blockade, then they are pretty close to soldiers, wouldn't you say?

I'm having some trouble with the timing of the things - it looks like they were shot before the IDF got there, which is weird. It's a great big mess down there, but the people on the flotilla could have expected something like this, when they break the blockade, even if their intentions may be good and honorable.

^ That's called a false equivalence, and the IDF is notorious for saying that rocks are just the same as bullets, and that kids in the street are the same things as armed, trained soldiers.

They've pulled this shit over and over again. Lebanon, Jenin, and bombing the fuck out of Gaza just before Obama took office.

You can lie to yourself all you want, but the rest of the world just isn't that gullible.

Lyrics:
There comes a time
When we need to make a show
For the world, the Web and CNN

There's no people dying,
so the best that we can do
Is create the greatest bluff of all

We must go on pretending day by day
That in Gaza, there's crisis, hunger and plague
Coz the billion bucks in aid won't buy their basic needs
Like some cheese and missiles for the kids

We'll make the world
Abandon reason
We'll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
With guns and our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV

Ooooh, we'll stab them at heart
They are soldiers, no one cares
We are small, and we took some pictures with doves
As Allah showed us, for facts there's no demand
So we will always gain the upper hand

We'll make the world
Abandon reason
We'll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
we're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV

If Islam and terror brighten up your mood
But you worry that it may not look so good
Well well well well don't you realize
You just gotta call yourself
An activist for peace and human aid

We'll make the world
Abandon reason
We'll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
We're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV

We con the world
We con the people
We'll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper
We are peaceful travelers
We're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV
We con the world
We con the people
We'll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper
We are peaceful travelers
We're waving our own knives
the truth will never find its way to your TV
The truth will never find its way to your TV

>> ^thumpa28:

I wonder if theres another video about the 8 tunnellers gassed by the Egyptians the day before? Nope? Must have missed that one. Oh thats right, it didnt involve Israel.


So basically, your only excuse for the IDF attacking people in international waters is to compare the state of Israel to a bloody dictature? My hat's off to you, sir.

Krauthammer - no lockstep conservative - nails it this way...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR2010060304287.html

Basically the only people trying to claim the blockade is 'illegal' are the Turks - who sponsored the flotilla. Everyone else recognizes that Hamas (Gaza) and Isreal are in a state of armed conflict (kind of hard to deny with 4000+ rocket attacks) and that the blockade is a legal effort by Isreal to prevent the re-arming of Hamas. Ships flying neutral flags in international waters can be legally stopped, searched, diverted, and even attacked if there is reasonable cause.

In this case, the cause was far more than reasonable for many many reasons. Isreal offered to have the goods unloaded at Ashdod, but the offer was refused. Very suspicious if the 'intent' is to provide relief... Greta Berlin (flotilla doyanne) plainly stated the flotilla was not about delivering aid... Videos of the flotilla participants as they left port showed them brandishing weapons and shouting anti-semitic death threats. Radio communications and warnings were ignored or got responses of arabic curses & threats.

I know that the far-left really Really REALLY wanted this to be all Isreal's fault - but those darn pesky facts just keep cutting the legs out from under the lies. The facts are clear. The deaths were primarily the fault of (in order of culpability...)

#1: The flotilla sponsors for deliberately putting their people in danger when they had numerous other options...
#2: The boatniks for behaving like a bunch of stupid moron idiots...
#3: The IDF for not going in with a lot more force so as to cow an obviously hostile mob... Dropping those guys in 1 at a time by helicopter was just not smart & this would have all gone down different if they'd just shot the propeller out and towed the thing to Ashdod.

They mastered tachyons before the July war.>> ^kronosposeidon:

The IDF is so good that they were able to travel backwards in time to seize bulletproof vests aboard the Mavi Marmara.
In your FACE, Einstein!

The IDF is so good that they were able to travel backwards in time to seize bulletproof vests aboard the Mavi Marmara.

In your FACE, Einstein!

>> ^vaporlock:
There is NO excuse for a modern military to fire on civilians! Especially in a situation like this. Israel acted in it's typical violent and childish manner.
Also, I'm not sure what the source of this video is, but it doesn't seem to mesh very well with the other Russian News clips.


Of course when any one picks up knives and pipes, it goes without saying that they cannot be classified as civies. Even in defense of their own lives! That is the differnce between civies and others... You want sympathy---die for your cause without a weapon! Unless, of course, I could meet your family on the sidewalk carrying a implement of death and threaten them with it, use it on them, and tell the police "these are international sidewalks, and they had some CS foam!" (Yes, that last part was silly )

Of course I could not do that without being shot by the police... Or the military. You call them civies, everyone else calls them guerillas...

Yes. Yes, it is. Your mother is a prostitute..

>> ^demon_ix:

But, please, stick to the fucking facts. Is that too much to ask?

>> ^Hybrid:
They knew who they were attacking with poles and knives. Did they then expect the Israeli shoulders to brush that kind of reaction off?



Flotilla members are saying the Israelis fired warning shots on the boat, and when the boat refused to stop, started shooting at the boat, before the boarding seen in this video took place. Whether that's true or not I have no way of knowing, but if it is, then you can see how they would fear being shot if they simply let themselves be boarded. Not that I think it's realistic to expect to beat a heavily armed military force with what amounts to sticks and stones, but when people get riled up, they don't think very well. Maybe the Israelis didn't fire first at all - point is, these videos prove very little. Need more context.

I never said a paintball gun justifies piracy. And this wasn't piracy.

I used the Al-Jazeera article as a source, and then I went looking for the actual definition of the phrase "International waters", because it was thrown around all the time, and I had no idea what it meant. Wikipedia is as neutral a source as there is, IMO.

I never claimed Israel's territorial waters extend 65km off their shores. I merely questioned what "International waters" actually are.

Of course the paintball pellets weren't loaded with paint. This isn't a game. But if you're suggesting tear-gas is a chemical weapon, then every girl in college around here is armed with unconventional weapons. Take that Geneva.

-------------------------------------------

Let me say this again. I was, and am, AGAINST the military operation in it's entirety. I wish the IDF would have just let the ships pass and bring their supplies into Gaza. I really don't see the harm in that, and now that the Rafah crossing is open, it's all moot.

I do, however, believe those soldiers fired ONLY after feeling their lives were threatened. I base that on this video and on the recently released recording of the boarding force itself.

This mess is entirely Israel's fault. I'm not denying it. I'm stating it clearly.

But, please, stick to the fucking facts. Is that too much to ask?