Ships to Gaza incident

[Dinner]

Some people think Hamas may have missiles similar to those used by Hezbollah in Lebanon to hit Israeli ships.

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&newspaperUserId=27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3a76f6fe33-87ec-4a49-96be-fd20aae7a9ab&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckFindCommentKey=CommentKey:0894b52c-709d-4e7d-acbd-0d584543b15b#CommentKey:0894b52c-709d-4e7d-acbd-0d584543b15b

I'm thinking this may be why the Israelis would not want a large action too close to Gaza.

Some strong quotes in the Aviation Week article:

The missile fired from Gaza out to the Mediterranean last week and shown on Israel TV as a Hamas display, was not a Qassam as reported but could be a modified version of a Chinese C-802, possibly an Iranian shore-to-ship Nur C-802 missile, which is based on the Chinese "Silkworm."

A C-802 shore-to-ship missile was fired during the Second Lebanon War from Beirut beach hitting the rear section of the Israeli Navy Ship Hanit causing extensive damage.

If, as Israel claims, Hamas has Iranian built versions of the Chinese silkworm anti-ship missile then that would be an excellent reason for the Israelis to board the ships further out to sea out of range of the Hamas anti-ship missiles.

[Hauldren Collider]

You people are also missing the bigger picture here because if we were dealing with peace activists why would israel need to prepare for a fight? They had every right to direct the ships to Ashdod for weapons inspection. Breaking the blockade is not a prerequisite for getting aid to Gaza.

[Dinner]

In fact Israel repeatedly offered to allow the ships to land in Israel where they would be inspected for weapons and contraband and then allow the shipment to continue into Gaza. It's telling that they refused and the leader of this organization instead made speeches about the glories of martyrdom and killing Jews. These were not mostly peace activists or humanitarians as the videos Robert posted shows.

[Zevico]

Interesting footage.

Uncut version:

[DaShi]

You people are also missing the bigger picture here because if we were dealing with peace activists why would israel need to prepare for a fight? They had every right to direct the ships to Ashdod for weapons inspection. Breaking the blockade is not a prerequisite for getting aid to Gaza.

How can we blame this on Obama and the Democrats?

[Zevico]

NOTHING more to be said. Israeli soldiers kill at least nine peace activists trying to ship aid to a starving people.

Or as the front page of The Age screamed: "Israel kills boat protesters."

End of story. There are immediate riots and protests against this appalling brutality in London, Paris, New York, Istanbul, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and throughout the Middle East.

Click here to have your say at Andrew's blog

The United Nations whacks Israel and calls for an emergency meeting of the Security Council. And from Moscow to Washington, Israel stands utterly friendless. Dangerously alone.

What a coup for those pledged to the destruction of that tiny Jewish country. How discredited and invitingly defenceless Israel now seems. Someone couldn't have scripted this any better.

Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.
Related Coverage

* Video: Gaza flotilla violence
* Witness testimony: Doubt cast on Israel raid claims

End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.

Well, almost no better, because even the journalists most sympathetic to the activists on the six ships intercepted on Monday by Israel couldn't help but refer, albeit grudgingly, to a couple of untidy details too obvious to ignore.

ABC radio host Jon Faine, for instance, described these poor victims of Zionist aggression as "humanitarian activists with a few knives".

Er, with knives? Humanitarians?

And a strident report in The Age, Australia's most Left-wing metropolitan daily, conceded that video of the Israeli soldiers being lowered on to the ships from helicopters did show that some of the "hundreds of politicians and protesters" on board did offer "signs of resistance".

Here are some of those "signs of the resistance" that this Age reporter tactfully failed to detail.

You see the Israeli commandos, at first brandishing just paintball guns, being grabbed by mobs as they landed, dragged to the ground, and beaten brutally with metal pipes and clubs.

On another clip, apparently shot by protesters, you see a soldier stabbed in the back, and then in the front.

Another soldier is shown being beaten and thrown over the side.

Photographs show two Israeli soldiers, one of them shot, being carried off with serious wounds.

This isn't what you'd normally expect from "peace protesters" or "humanitarian activists", even those armed merely "with a few knives".

So these clues suggest the Western media - and many foolish politicians - have just fallen for a brilliant propaganda coup by the kind of Islamists who threaten us, too.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd also fell for it, saying he was "deeply concerned" by the deaths and condemning "any use of violence under the sorts of circumstances we have seen".

His Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, likewise attacked Israel for a "terrible and shocking event" and demanded it hold an inquiry.

Not once did Rudd or Smith suggest an inquiry into who organised this trap in which Israel had fallen - or into those who now stand most to gain.

The despairing Israeli ambassador, Yuval Rotem, could only congratulate the organisers: "They couldn't have had a better outcome."

So who are we talking about? Here's another vital clue.

The Israeli soldiers took over six ships of an "aid" flotilla trying to pierce the blockade that both Israel and Egypt have imposed on Gaza, a territory controlled by the Islamist Hamas.

Only on one of those six ships did the Israelis meet a resistance that clearly - and fatally - caught them by surprise.

This was not on one of the ships manned by the Western politicians, aid workers and other useful idiots brought along for camouflage.

It broke out instead on the Mavi Marmara, a ship bought and supplied by a Turkish "humanitarian relief fund" known as IHH.

IHH may boast about its good works, but intelligence agencies warn that it is in fact tied to Islamist terrorists.

The CIA as long ago as 1996 noted it was linked to "Iran operatives" and gave "support for extremist/terrorist activity", including in Bosnia.

In 2001, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, the prominent French counter-terrorism magistrate, said at the trial of the "millennium bomber" that IHH had played "an important role" in the plot to blow up Los Angeles airport.

He said the charity was "a type of cover-up" to infiltrate mujahideen into combat, get forged documents and smuggle weapons.

In 2006, the Danish Institute for International Studies reported that Turkish security forces had raided the IHH's Istanbul bureau and found firearms, explosives and bomb-making instructions, as well as records of calls to an al-Qaida guest house in Milan.

The Turkish investigators concluded this "charity" was sending jihadists to Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan, where Australian soldiers serve.

IHH has also been a long-time supporter of Hamas, listed in many countries as a terrorist group.

But this time it planned something more effective than an explosion. It decided to destroy Israel's moral standing among its more fickle friends.

Its Mavi Marmara would now head a flotilla to break through the Israeli blockade of Gaza - or, rather, to provoke Israel into stopping it by force.

IHH head Bulent Yildirim gloated that this would be seen as "a declaration of war" against all the countries that supplied the flotilla's passengers, which is why so many foreigners, and particularly sympathetic journalists such as the Sydney Morning Herald's Paul McGeough, were on board, having been recruited from Australia, Britain, the US and many other countries that IHH and its allies hoped could be turned into enemies of Israel.

It was obvious Israel would stop the convoy. It had to: to relax the blockade once would be to open a corridor to yet more ships, giving Gaza yet another conduit for the smuggling of jihadists and militarily useful supplies.

Oh, and ignore soothing claims now that Hamas, which runs Gaza, should actually be negotiated with, rather than blockaded. Hamas fires rockets at Israeli civilians, and has a charter that calls for the destruction of Israel, declaring "there is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad".

INDEED, jihad was also the spirit on the Mavi Marmara as it sailed for Gaza.

Those on board refused offers by Israel that they dock at an Israeli port so their aid could be checked and forwarded to Gaza. They rejected warnings to turn back. They prepared instead for a deadly confrontation.

Arab television showed one woman on board exulting: "We await one of two good things - to achieve martyrdom or reach the shore of Gaza."

Added another passenger, Yemeni professor Abd al-Fatah Nu'man: "These are people who wish to be martyred for the sake of Allah. As much as they want to reach Gaza, the other option is more desirable to them."

They got just what they wanted, then, as did Hamas and its chief backer, Iran.

Iran, needing attention distracted from its nuclear weapons program, pumped out instant YouTube footage of this Israeli "atrocity".

Meanwhile, Hamas spokesman Samil Abu Zuhri called for a global "intifada": "We call on all Arabs and Muslims to rise up in front of Zionist embassies across the whole world."

And in capital cities around Australia, we yesterday saw the new front open as angry demonstrators took the streets.

So what, you may scoff. A few of the usual hotheads.

But see this time how many of our politicians, journalists and "thinkers" are on the wrong side of this front.

See how willingly they've surrendered to an Islamist plot more effective than any Bali bomb.

Andrew Bolt offers some sensible comments.

[Zevico]

"Don't fall for Islamist hype about flotilla attack"--Andrew Bolt
NOTHING more to be said. Israeli soldiers kill at least nine peace activists trying to ship aid to a starving people.

Or as the front page of The Age [Zevico says: an Australian broadsheet, "left of centre"] screamed: "Israel kills boat protesters."

End of story. There are immediate riots and protests against this appalling brutality in London, Paris, New York, Istanbul, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and throughout the Middle East.

The United Nations whacks Israel and calls for an emergency meeting of the Security Council. And from Moscow to Washington, Israel stands utterly friendless. Dangerously alone.

What a coup for those pledged to the destruction of that tiny Jewish country. How discredited and invitingly defenceless Israel now seems. Someone couldn't have scripted this any better.

Well, almost no better, because even the journalists most sympathetic to the activists on the six ships intercepted on Monday by Israel couldn't help but refer, albeit grudgingly, to a couple of untidy details too obvious to ignore.

ABC radio host Jon Faine, for instance, described these poor victims of Zionist aggression as "humanitarian activists with a few knives".

Er, with knives? Humanitarians?

And a strident report in The Age, Australia's most Left-wing metropolitan daily, conceded that video of the Israeli soldiers being lowered on to the ships from helicopters did show that some of the "hundreds of politicians and protesters" on board did offer "signs of resistance".

Here are some of those "signs of the resistance" that this Age reporter tactfully failed to detail.

You see the Israeli commandos, at first brandishing just paintball guns, being grabbed by mobs as they landed, dragged to the ground, and beaten brutally with metal pipes and clubs.

On another clip, apparently shot by protesters, you see a soldier stabbed in the back, and then in the front.

Another soldier is shown being beaten and thrown over the side.

Photographs show two Israeli soldiers, one of them shot, being carried off with serious wounds.

This isn't what you'd normally expect from "peace protesters" or "humanitarian activists", even those armed merely "with a few knives".

So these clues suggest the Western media - and many foolish politicians - have just fallen for a brilliant propaganda coup by the kind of Islamists who threaten us, too.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd also fell for it, saying he was "deeply concerned" by the deaths and condemning "any use of violence under the sorts of circumstances we have seen".

His Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, likewise attacked Israel for a "terrible and shocking event" and demanded it hold an inquiry.

Not once did Rudd or Smith suggest an inquiry into who organised this trap in which Israel had fallen - or into those who now stand most to gain.

The despairing Israeli ambassador, Yuval Rotem, could only congratulate the organisers: "They couldn't have had a better outcome."

So who are we talking about? Here's another vital clue.

The Israeli soldiers took over six ships of an "aid" flotilla trying to pierce the blockade that both Israel and Egypt have imposed on Gaza, a territory controlled by the Islamist Hamas.

Only on one of those six ships did the Israelis meet a resistance that clearly - and fatally - caught them by surprise.

This was not on one of the ships manned by the Western politicians, aid workers and other useful idiots brought along for camouflage.

It broke out instead on the Mavi Marmara, a ship bought and supplied by a Turkish "humanitarian relief fund" known as IHH.

IHH may boast about its good works, but intelligence agencies warn that it is in fact tied to Islamist terrorists.

The CIA as long ago as 1996 noted it was linked to "Iran operatives" and gave "support for extremist/terrorist activity", including in Bosnia.

In 2001, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, the prominent French counter-terrorism magistrate, said at the trial of the "millennium bomber" that IHH had played "an important role" in the plot to blow up Los Angeles airport.

He said the charity was "a type of cover-up" to infiltrate mujahideen into combat, get forged documents and smuggle weapons.

In 2006, the Danish Institute for International Studies reported that Turkish security forces had raided the IHH's Istanbul bureau and found firearms, explosives and bomb-making instructions, as well as records of calls to an al-Qaida guest house in Milan.

The Turkish investigators concluded this "charity" was sending jihadists to Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan, where Australian soldiers serve.

IHH has also been a long-time supporter of Hamas, listed in many countries as a terrorist group.

But this time it planned something more effective than an explosion. It decided to destroy Israel's moral standing among its more fickle friends.

Its Mavi Marmara would now head a flotilla to break through the Israeli blockade of Gaza - or, rather, to provoke Israel into stopping it by force.

IHH head Bulent Yildirim gloated that this would be seen as "a declaration of war" against all the countries that supplied the flotilla's passengers, which is why so many foreigners, and particularly sympathetic journalists such as the Sydney Morning Herald's Paul McGeough, were on board, having been recruited from Australia, Britain, the US and many other countries that IHH and its allies hoped could be turned into enemies of Israel.

It was obvious Israel would stop the convoy. It had to: to relax the blockade once would be to open a corridor to yet more ships, giving Gaza yet another conduit for the smuggling of jihadists and militarily useful supplies.

Oh, and ignore soothing claims now that Hamas, which runs Gaza, should actually be negotiated with, rather than blockaded. Hamas fires rockets at Israeli civilians, and has a charter that calls for the destruction of Israel, declaring "there is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad".

INDEED, jihad was also the spirit on the Mavi Marmara as it sailed for Gaza.

Those on board refused offers by Israel that they dock at an Israeli port so their aid could be checked and forwarded to Gaza. They rejected warnings to turn back. They prepared instead for a deadly confrontation.

Arab television showed one woman on board exulting: "We await one of two good things - to achieve martyrdom or reach the shore of Gaza."

Added another passenger, Yemeni professor Abd al-Fatah Nu'man: "These are people who wish to be martyred for the sake of Allah. As much as they want to reach Gaza, the other option is more desirable to them."

They got just what they wanted, then, as did Hamas and its chief backer, Iran.

Iran, needing attention distracted from its nuclear weapons program, pumped out instant YouTube footage of this Israeli "atrocity".

Meanwhile, Hamas spokesman Samil Abu Zuhri called for a global "intifada": "We call on all Arabs and Muslims to rise up in front of Zionist embassies across the whole world."

And in capital cities around Australia, we yesterday saw the new front open as angry demonstrators took the streets.

So what, you may scoff. A few of the usual hotheads.

But see this time how many of our politicians, journalists and "thinkers" are on the wrong side of this front.

See how willingly they've surrendered to an Islamist plot more effective than any Bali bomb.

Andrew Bolt offers some sensible comments.

Source: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/...-1225874185912

[Dinner]

Double post because of an error message.

[Dinner]

Even liberal magazines like New Republic and The Daily Beast have managed to grasp what the blame Israel people here have missed.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-spine/75249/the-great-flotilla-debate-the-facts-are-israels-side

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-05-31/israel-was-right-to-board-the-gaza-flotilla/?cid=topic:mainpromo1

And video of the "peaceful activists" chatting about killing Jews, Death to Israel, and speaking about their desires to die fighting Israel. This video is from Al Jazeera of all places: http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/2489.htm

[Dinner]

In The Great Flotilla Debate, The Facts Are On Israel's Side

Look, I wish the Israeli raid on the so-called “Freedom Flotilla” had ended differently. Why, I ask, didn’t Israel’s navy disable the engine of the Mavi Marmara and drag the ship into port? Who knows? The engines of the other boats were apparently disabled—or so reliable sources say.

But, frankly, when some 800 men and women, distributed over six boats after weeks and weeks of preparation, are headed towards Gaza on the wings of slogan and hysteria, you don’t take that many chances. Somebody has trouble in mind.

The first five vessels were steered quietly to the Israeli port city of Ashdod, which means that neither their passengers nor the Israeli commandos were especially provocative. The sixth ship, which had 600 activist Turkish voyeurs on board, is an entirely different story. Sponsored by an organization labeled the Humanitarian Relief Fund (I.H.H.), it is said to have ties to Al Qaeda. Which would be logical since Al Qaeda is an ally of Hamas. An intriguing tripartite liaison.

But I.H.H. is also a satrap of the ever-more-Islamist government in Istanbul, which seems, in turn, to have volunteered itself as a front for jihadism everywhere, most especially in dealing with Iran and its nuclear ambitions. There is hardly a Muslim cause that the Erdogan regime in Ankara has not taken to heart and under its belt. (Recall that Turkey kept U.S. forces from traversing Turkish soil in 2003.)

Turkey was also once an important ally of Israel, which protected it from Syrian ambitions and gave it a non-Arab friend in a sea of Arabism. Israeli commerce and Israeli military cooperation—that is, modernizing Turkish armaments and units—will not continue much longer with this still-backward country. The Israelis will be sad to lose this friend, but, in fact, they have lost it already. And this is a reciprocal loss.

It wasn’t so long ago that Turkey—Erdogan’s Turkey—aspired to membership in the European Union. They can kiss that goodbye. The Turks may now be heroes on the Arab street, but they certainly aren’t heroes in Europe’s chancelleries, which prefer controversies on paper. And, much as some E.U. states have huffed and puffed about Israel, the Union is not anxious to add nearly 80 million Muslims to what would no longer be Europe.

It rings symbolically true that the two European countries first in line to bash Israel were the continent’s prime basket cases: Greece, whose fakeries and troubles have no end; and Spain, saddled with hundreds of thousands of non-working Muslim immigrants and two ongoing separatist movements, one of which (Catalonia) has much justice on its side. Both Greece and Spain are, of course, “progressive,” which is to say socialist (and unbelievably corrupt).

In Massachusetts, where I live, one young man—an Irish-American dual national who took part in the flotilla—has become a hero. His father is Joseph Bangert, a Cape Cod resident who, according to The Boston Globe, is a retired Marine and Vietnam veteran. Under a photograph of his son, a strapping reddish-haired youth of 28, is the Globe’s caption: Bangert “said he had not spoken with his son, Fiachra O’Luain, directly and has had to rely on news reports, information on Facebook, and a YouTube video.”

What was his seed doing in the eastern Mediterranean? This was not, after all, the Easter Rebellion. He was either a fighter, in which case he might have anticipated getting hurt in the excitement. Or he was a voyeur--an idealistic voyeur, to be sure--in which case, whatever ...

The propaganda for the flotilla has been in the works for months. Most of it was simply false. The poverty in Gaza is not qualitatively greater than that of your average Arab city. (Take Cairo. Or Amman, for that matter.) The markets are full of fruit and vegetables ... and flowers. Persistent pockets of deprivation exist in the historic refugee concentrations, which the Palestinian political class maintains as evidence of the ancient wrong. And, no, nobody is building big houses ... except again the elites, to the extent that they can smuggle materiel through the hundreds of tunnels which are perhaps less corrupt than the ordinary channels of commerce.

Who is behind this overhyped mission of mercy? And who is its beneficiary? It is none other than Hamas, the Gazan outpost of the global jihad, cousin of the Taliban, second cousin once-removed of Hezbollah. Wishing Hamas well, laboring for its success, is actually a crime against the Palestinians themselves. Of course, the new realists, so-called, will now beat the drums for a “pragmatic” opening to Hamas. It is an old trope for Robert Malley and his ilk. So, over the last two days, they have returned with the same message: Hamas is the future. Soon we will hear from James Baker, James Wolfensohn, even Paul Volcker, who knows a lot about some things but absolutely zero about the Middle East.

But Hamas is the past, the ugly past of ignorance. That does not mean it has no future. Hamas is the Palestinian counterpart of the movements of dread that now course throughout the world of Islam, and against which the West and moderate Muslims are struggling. The backward Muslims were Lost in the Sacred, as Dan Diner put it in his dazzling book-long essay, subtitled Why the Muslim World Stood Still. Pascal Bruckner depicts their Western sympathizers in The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism. Read these two books and you’ll understand the desperate and comradely pity educated men and women have for pitilessness.

Sympathy for Hamas is an odd reality in the Western world, and Israel needs to puzzle over how it has lost so much ground in its struggle against Arab and Muslim barbarism. I understand that the revival of a certain chic anti-Semitism has paved the way for the grosser anti-Semites and for the Muslim phantasts who deal in torment and salvation. Among these were the voyagers on the ship of fools who, a clip from Al Jazeera demonstrates, awaited the shores of Gaza ... or martyrdom.

The front page of the Financial Times reads “Israel faces global backlash.” Turkey, it says, “calls flotilla attack ‘inhuman.’ ” This is Turkey, mind you, which can’t admit to the Armenian genocide of nearly a century ago and won’t relent on the Kurds today. As it happens, the Security Council, meeting way into Tuesday morning, passed a balanced, even judicious, resolution that was, in true meaning, at least as much a rebuke to the Turks as it was a criticism of Israel. Neither Russia nor China stood in the way—at least not in the end—of fairness to Israel. And they did not try to exculpate Hamas or the macabre joy riders, including young Fiachra O’Luain.

And I must admit that this marks a turning point in the Obama administration’s attitude to Israel. Although it made some de rigeur criticisms, it was not about to make Jerusalem a sacrificial lamb for a faltering foreign policy. Susan Rice, with whom you know I have many problems, made all the appropriate visits and phone calls—bravely, conscientiously, and wisely. Maybe it was at least as much for the Palestinian Authority as it was for the Jewish state. Or for ultimate peace, unlikely as it is. But it was. Neither did anyone walk out of the “proximity talks,” non-talks as these are. And, for this, I assume the president is responsible. Mazel tov.

In fact, many people are having second thoughts … or are freeing their initial thoughts from the tiresome orthodoxies in smart parlors.

There were several smart pieces yesterday about the flotilla fallout. One was written by Michael Sean Winters in the lefty National Catholic Reporter. It is called “Judging Israel.” And it judges the Jewish state fairly. But perhaps the most important take on the episode appeared in The Daily Beast. The piece (“Israel Was Right”) was written by Leslie H. Gelb, a senior ideas man in the American foreign policy establishment, a former New York Times columnist, and the longtime president (now president emeritus) of the Council on Foreign Relations. Writes Gelb:

Israel had every right under international law to stop and board ships bound for the Gaza war zone late Sunday. Only knee-jerk left-wingers and the usual legion of poseurs around the world would dispute this. And it is pretty clear that this "humanitarian" flotilla headed for Gaza aimed to provoke a confrontation with Israel. Various representatives of the Free Gaza Movement, one of the main organizers of this deadly extravaganza, have let it slip throughout Monday that their intention was every bit as much "to break" Israel's blockade of Gaza as to deliver the relief goods.

[…]

Regarding international law, blockades are quite legal. The United States and Britain were at war with Germany and Japan and blockaded them. I can't remember international lawyers saying those blockades were illegal—even though they took place on the high seas in international waters.

On that note, here are the relevant passages from the Helsinki Principles on the Law of Maritime Neutrality:

5.1.2 (3) Merchant ships flying the flag of a neutral State may be attacked if they are believed on reasonable grounds to be carrying contraband or breaching a blockade, and after prior warning they intentionally and clearly refuse to stop, or intentionally and clearly resist visit, search, capture or diversion.

5.1.2 (4) Merchant ships flying the flag of a neutral State may be attacked if they (a) engage in belligerent acts on behalf of the enemy; (b) act as auxiliaries to the enemy’s armed forces; (c) are incorporated into or assist the enemy’s intelligence system; (d) sail under convoy of enemy warships or military aircraft; or (e) otherwise make an effective contribution to the enemy’s military action, e.g., by carrying military materials, and it is not feasible for the attacking forces to first place passengers and crew in a place of safety. Unless circumstances do not permit, they are to be given a warning, so that they can re-route, off-load, or take other precautions.

5.2.1 As an exception to Principle 5.1.2. paragraph 1 and in accordance with Principle 1.3 (2nd sentence), belligerent warships have a right to visit and search vis-Ă -vis neutral commercial ships in order to ascertain the character and destination of their cargo. If a ship tries to evade this control or offers resistance, measures of coercion necessary to exercise this right are permissible. This includes the right to divert a ship where visit and search at the place where the ship is encountered are not practical.

5.2.10 Blockade, i.e. the interdiction of all or certain maritime traffic coming from or going to a port or coast of a belligerent, is a legitimate method of naval warfare. In order to be valid, the blockade must be declared, notified to belligerent and neutral States, effective and applied impartially to ships of all States. A blockade may not bar access to neutral ports or coasts. Neutral vessels believed on reasonable and probable grounds to be breaching a blockade may be stopped and captured. If they, after prior warning, clearly resist capture, they may be attacked.

The law is on Israel’s side. Ethics and history are on Israel’s side. Those who are on the side of Hamas are actually enemies of civilization.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-spine/75249/the-great-flotilla-debate-the-facts-are-israels-side

[notyoueither]

Pretty sure the Israeli ships have anti-missile defense systems for those rudimentary missiles. Even assuming they do have the missiles, which I highly doubt.

It's no reasonable excuse.

I'm not interested in excuses. For the moment I'm not interested in judgements.

I'm wondering what led the Israelis to conduct the operation the way they did. I agree that what happened led to a bad result and am curious how it came about.

[notyoueither]

You mean they'd eventually fire into the convoy themselves?
They surely
a) don't have the surgical rocket required for such a task.
b) are not as good as the Israelis at ****ing up PR-wise. They would have gained nothing from a rocket attack on an Israeli ship.

Not at the convoy. At Israeli support ships that were in the area.

The article I linked to indicates that they may have quite sophisticated weapons of a type that has already been demonstrated as effective vs IDF ships.

Although they do seem to have gained more from what the Israelis did, I disagree that they would have gained nothing from inflicting damage on an IDF ship(s).

[Ramo]

Marty Peretz the bleeding heart liberal. Have you read anything the man has written before? I like TNR generally, but the only reason why Peretz has a column there is that he bought the magazine. What a completely ludicrous article. My favorite part was where he claims opposing the Iraq war makes Turkey part of the Islamist cabal.

[Zevico]

The strategy appears to have been as follows:

1. Board the deck (only available place for landing).
2. Reach the bridge.
3. Take over the bridge.
4. Secure further back up to secure the ship.

Tactics:
1. Use paintball guns as primary weapons. Aim--stun and deter.
2. Handguns as sidearms.

Handguns appear to have been resorted to once the soldiers were overwhelmed. For the source of this explanation see the youtube video I posted above (post number 454). The explanation is given by a naval expert in counter-terrorism and counter-piracy.

[Asher]

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-spine/75...e-israels-side

This is your "left wing" source?

TNR may be fairly Liberal, but the author of the article is both Jewish and a staunch supporter of Israel. He's an Obama supporter but he disagrees very strongly with Obama on virtually every Israel issue. He's a Jew looking out for the homeland, regardless of his regular political leanings.

The article itself gives fairly obvious indications as to its bias:

Israel needs to puzzle over how it has lost so much ground in its struggle against Arab and Muslim barbarism.

I understand that the revival of a certain chic anti-Semitism has paved the way for the grosser anti-Semites

Those who are on the side of Hamas are actually enemies of civilization.

Sounds objective to you, I'm sure...right Oerdin?

Unfortunately for you, just a couple months ago the author admits to being prejudiced against Arabs (just like you )

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2010/03/06/bigotry-thy-name-is-marty-peretz/

Frankly, I couldn’t quite imagine any venture requiring trust with Arabs turning out especially well. This is, you will say, my prejudice. But some prejudices are built on real facts, and history generally proves me right. Go ahead, prove me wrong.