International Panel Named To Investigate The Mavi Marmara Incident

The panel that will investigate what happened aboard the Mavi Marmara--the one ship of the flotilla where members of the ship were killed--will be headed by retired Supreme Court justice Ya'akov Tuerkel and will include: international-law Professor Shabtai Rosen who won the Israel Prize winner and is a winner of the Hague Prize for International Law and former Technion president Amos Chorev, who served as a general in the reserves.

Now Arutz Sheva reports the names of the 2 international observers:


Lord William David Trimble, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and international lawyer Ken Watkin, Canada's Judge Advocate General of Canada's forces.

One Jerusalem notes:

The two international observers are respected authorities and men of integrity that will add creditability to the findings of the investigation. Unfortunately, their presence and involvement are necessary because the conclusions of the respected Israelis on this panel would be dismissed out of hand by much of the international community.

The Obama administration responded to this Israeli panel with tempered support and a dictate to work quickly. It still remains to be seen if the Administration will support a United Nations based panel that will convict Israel before gathering any evidence.

It should be noted that the United Nations Human Rights Council already made its opinion clear on the matter on June 2:

The Human Rights Council in its midday meeting adopted a resolution on the attack by Israeli forces against the humanitarian flotilla bound for Gaza in which it condemned in the strongest terms the outrageous attack by the Israeli forces which resulted in the killing and injuring of many innocent civilians from different countries, and decided to dispatch an independent international fact finding mission to investigate violations of international law resulting from the Israeli attack.

An "independent" fact finding mission is exactly what is called for--independent of the biases already clear in the UNHRC, and this panel, with its external observers, fulfills that need.

Technorati Tag: Gaza Flotilla and Mavi Marmara.