Israeli forces storm Gaza aid ship, and beat people on board. Fatalities reported.

[Sesquipedalian]

To be fair to the Israelis, I don't think they expected the people on the ships to fight back. We all know that their remonstrations about terrorists and how they knew all along they were dangerous are bollocks. They thought it would be easy and that they could prove their might without any danger to themselves or bad PR.

You are deluded.

 

[cesare]

To be fair to the Israelis, I don't think they expected the people on the ships to fight back. We all know that their remonstrations about terrorists and how they knew all along they were dangerous are bollocks. They thought it would be easy and that they could prove their might without any danger to themselves or bad PR.

Maybe. I prefer to think that they did expect some resistance, and wanted/needed to capitalise on that to try and lend some legitimacy to their subsequent actions.

 

[cesare]

I wonder whether Israel's next move will be to throw out the diplomatic sop of 'perhaps the well-intentioned initial 'short sharp sting' of paintballs was, in retrospect, a trifle ill conceived at ground/tactical level although laudable in intent ... many regrets for casualties ... what a pity it came to this ... look how well we're treating everyone's [surviving] citizens before they go home ... we'll look into it thoroughly so lessons are learned etc etc'

Job done.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Maybe. I prefer to think that they did expect some resistance, and wanted/needed to capitalise on that to try and lend some legitimacy to their subsequent actions.

That doesn't make any sense.

 

[selamlar]

Not that this is the point, but is there any actual proof that the commandos were armed with paintball guns other than that Israel says they were? Gonna need a bit more than that.
I say not that this is the point because however said murderers were or were not armed, they still attacked an unarmed civilian aid convoy in international waters, killed several civilians and are attempting to blame said civilians for being a bit miffed about black clad soldiers abseiling onto their ship in the middle of the night.

 

[danny la rouge]

If I say a man with a gun tells you to stop, and you don't, and you're shot, and that you might have envisioned that you'd maybe be shot when you didn't stop - does that say anywhere that the shooting was justified or legal?

If an international aid flotilla was attacked in international waters and boarded by armed North Korean forces who killed and injured several on board, you'd be cheering the brave unarmed men who tried to repel the attack. As would I.

 

[Pickman's model]

If an international aid flotilla was attacked in international waters and boarded by armed North Korean forces who killed and injured several on board, you'd be cheering the brave unarmed men who tried to repel the attack. As would I.

north koreans in the mediterranean? you're having a fucking laugh

 

[gavman]

I bet it wouldn't take much to get you to fall in line. There wouldn't have to be guns involved. The mere sight of a uniform has you on your knees.

mouth open

 

[Pickman's model]

I think the best plan would be to crew all further aid ships entirely with US citizens. Either the Israelis won't kill them or America will start taking a harder line once it's their citizens the Israelis are using their military aid to shoot. win/win.

you've not heard of the uss liberty, have you. once you've read about that you will retract your suggestion.

 

[Pickman's model]

fao quimcunx

The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a United States Navy technical research ship, USS Liberty, by Israeli Air Force jet fighter planes and motor torpedo boats, on June 8, 1967, during the Six-Day War. The combined air and sea attack killed 34 crew members (naval officers, seamen, two Marines, and a civilian), wounded 171 crew members, and severely damaged the ship. At the time, the ship was in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula, about 25.5 nmi (29.3 mi; 47.2 km) northwest from the Egyptian city of Arish.[1]

Both the Israeli and U.S. governments conducted inquiries[2] into the incident, and issued reports, which concluded that the attack was a mistake, due to Israeli confusion about the identity of the USS Liberty. Some U.S. diplomats, veterans and intelligence officials involved in the incident continue to dispute these official findings, saying the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was not a mistake, and it remains the only major maritime incident in U.S. history not investigated by the U.S. Congress.[3]

In May 1968, the Israeli government paid US$3,323,500 as full payment to the families of the 34 men killed in the attack. In March 1969, Israel paid a further $3,566,457 in compensation to the men who had been wounded. On 18 December 1980, it agreed to pay $6 million as settlement for the U.S. claim of $7,644,146 for material damage to the Liberty itself.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident

 

[gavman]

It's true. What we'd say is 'I ain't catching whatever it is you're pitching!'

that sounds like a gay rejection

 

[gavman]

Nobody would ever consider such a thing.
Something beyond the ken of the human mind to conceive.

An impossibility, in short.


I'll bet when the people on that boat saw the Israeli gunboats approaching, they said: "Wha......???!!!" Who could ever conceive of a thing like this happening??!!

sorry bud, but following your conscience in the face of an implacable enemy is what absolutely merits the support of progressive thinking people everywhere.
is a fireman prepared to lay down his life?
does that make it less of a crime to kill him?

 

[gavman]

Not even Turkey - up until now, Israel's sole Muslim ally in the area - expected them to illegally attack an unarmed ship in international waters and start murdering people on-board, Johnny.

I know one of the women in the convey - a respected activist and journalist - and I'm pretty damn sure she wasn't expecting to be met by murdering Israeli soldiers in open waters either.

that probably goes for the various parliamentarians as well...

 

[gavman]

'Israel is a Lunatic State' - Norman Finkelstein on Russia Today

dylans beat you to it

 

[Citizen66]

Israel thinks international law doesn't apply to it. When the fuck are the united nations of America going to finally act?

 

[gavman]

Who is justifying anything? I'm just saying that if a man with a gun pointed at you tells you to stop and you don't, you might get shot.

yes but you are also saying that it's then your fault he shot you

 

[gavman]

I wonder whether Israel's next move will be to throw out the diplomatic sop of 'perhaps the well-intentioned initial 'short sharp sting' of paintballs was, in retrospect, a trifle ill conceived at ground/tactical level although laudable in intent ... many regrets for casualties ... what a pity it came to this ... look how well we're treating everyone's [surviving] citizens before they go home ... we'll look into it thoroughly so lessons are learned etc etc'

Job done.

you missed the part where they give them new suits

 

[Idris2002]

Oh my heart bleeds. Please think of the poor soldiers.



It gets better. Those poor defenceless crack special forces troops, were totally unprepared for the vicious assault by poets and artists



They have got to be kidding. Do they really expect anyone to buy this utter shit?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100531/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians

I've never ever heard of paintballs being used in a non-recreational context. I'm wondering if this was a deliberate, cynical, attempt to endanger the squaddies lives and therefore create a scene that would make Israel look like the victim?

If it was it backfired - here's to the 9 brave people the IDF killed.

 

[tangentlama]

Sorry to hear that you had a friend on the ships. Israel did give clear warning however that the convoy would not get through the blockade.

Why are so many people appearing to support Hamas, an unelected body who took Gaza at gunpoint, rather than Israel who have a democratically elected government? Why support a body that is firing rockets into a civilian population?

Hamas were elected.
Hamas took over Gaza after a failed coup by Bush-administration-funded Fatah warlord Dahlan.

Fallacy #2: Hamas Launched a Coup Against the Legitimate Government in Gaza

No, Hamas is the legitimate government in Gaza, and in the West Bank for that matter. There may be a debate to be had over whether its decision to move against Fatah’s militias was ill-considered, but there’s no question in the minds of Hamas — and even of many Fatah activists in Gaza and the West Bank — that its target was not the government or the Fatah organization, but a political-military faction within Fatah headed by the warlord Mohammed Dahlan, the Palestinian Pinochet figure backed to the hilt by the U.S. The Observer’s reporting seems to back this up, stressing that the speed of Hamas’s victory was a result of the fact that it’s assault targeted Dahlan and his organization, and left many other Fatah figures untouched. Some of these figures continue to cooperate with Hamas in Gaza, and the “new government” in the West Bank is threatening to withhold their salaries as punishment.

In a superb, detailed analysis, Mark Perry of Conflicts Forum points out: “Last week, many Fatah members in Gaza stood aside, aghast and angry as their American-trained cohorts marched into the Strip (only to just as quickly flee) — and these Fatah loyalists who are not supporters of Dahlan continue to work with their counterparts in Hamas. A Fatah militia has been defeated, but rank and file Fatah members are not being lined up against walls, or herded into camps. Newspapers are not being closed or businesses shuttered. Schools are not being told what to teach and there is no purge. This is not an Islamic revolution but simply a political party attempting to defend itself against the militia of an unelected warlord backed by foreign powers. Not only is life returning to normal, people are now breathing much easier. The instability and violence that marked life in Gaza over the last few months is gone, in large part because the soldiers of the Preventive Security Services are gone.”

Dahlan refused to accept the unity government brokered by the Saudis, and made his opposition intolerable to Hamas when he refused to subject the security forces under his command, armed and trained by the U.S., to the legitimate Palestinian unity government as agreed between Hamas and Fatah. And Dahlan was plainly not following orders from Abbas, but pursuing agendas of his own, and others.
http://tonykaron.com/2007/06/20/the-8-fallacies-of-bushs-abbastan-plan/

Dahlan was funded, armed and encouraged at a very high level - by none other than then President Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Eliott Abrams.

The Gaza Bombshell
After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, the author reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804

The Fatah gunmen who are reported to have initiated the breakdown of the Palestinian unity government and provoked the latest fighting may profess fealty to President Abbas, but it’s not from him that they get their orders. The leader to whom they answer is Mohammed Dahlan, the Gaza warlord who has long been Washington’s anointed favorite to play the role of a Palestinian Pinochet. And while Dahlan is formally subordinate to Abbas, whom he supposedly serves as National Security Adviser, nobody believes that Dahlan answers to Abbas — in fact, it was suggested at the time that Abbas appointed Dahlan only under pressure from Washington, which was irked by the Palestinian Authority president’s decision to join a unity government with Hamas.

If Dahlan takes orders from anyone at all, it’s certainly not from Abbas. Abbas has long recognized the democratic legitimacy and popularity of Hamas, and embraced the reality that no peace process is possible unless the Islamists are given the place in the Palestinian power structure that their popular support necessitates. He has always favored negotiation and cooperation with Hamas — much to the exasperation of the Bush Administration, and also of the Fatah warlords whose power of patronage was threatened by the Hamas election victory — and could see the logic of the unity government proposed by the Saudis even when Washington couldn’t. Indeed, as the indispensable Robert Malley and Hussein Agha note, nothing has hurt Abbas’s political standing as much as the misguided efforts of Washington to boost his standing in the hope of undermining the elected Hamas government.

Needless to say, only an Administration as deluded about its ability to reorder Arab political realities in line with its own fantasies — and also, frankly, as utterly contemptuous of Arab life and of Arab democracy, empty sloganizing notwithstanding — as the current one has proved to be could imagine that
the Palestinians could be starved, battered and manipulated into choosing a Washington-approved political leadership. Yet, that’s exactly what the U.S. has attempted to do ever since Hamas won the last Palestinian election, imposing a financial and economic chokehold on an already distressed population, pouring money and arms into the forces under Dahlan’s control, and eventually adapting itself to funnel monies only through Abbas, as if casting in him in the role of a kind of Quisling-provider would somehow burnish his appeal among Palestinian voters. (As I said, their contempt for Arab intelligence knows no bounds. )

But while the hapless Abbas is little more than a reluctant passenger in Washington’s strategy — and will, I still believe, repair to his former exile lodgings in Qatar in the not too distant future — Mohammed Dahlan is its point man, the warlord who commands the troops and who has been spoiling for a fight with Hamas since they had the temerity to trounce his organization at the polls on home turf.

Dahlan’s ambitions clearly coincided with plans drawn up by White House Middle East policy chief, Elliot Abrams — a veteran of the Reagan Administration’s Central American dirty wars — to arm and train Fatah loyalists to prepare them to topple the Hamas government. If Mahmoud Abbas has been reluctant to embrace the confrontational policy promoted by the White House, Dahlan has no such qualms. And given that Abbas has no political base of his own, he is dependent entirely on Washington and Dahlan.
http://tonykaron.com/2007/05/15/palestinian-pinochet-making-his-move/

Deputy National Security Advisor, Elliott Abrams — who Newsweek recently described as “the last neocon standing” — has had it about for some months now that the U.S. is not only not interested in dealing with Hamas, it is working to ensure its failure. In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas elections, last January, Abrams greeted a group of Palestinian businessmen in his White House office with talk of a “hard coup” against the newly-elected Hamas government — the violent overthrow of their leadership with arms supplied by the United States. While the businessmen were shocked, Abrams was adamant — the U.S. had to support Fatah with guns, ammunition and training, so that they could fight Hamas for control of the Palestinian government.
http://conflictsforum.org/2007/elliot-abrams-uncivil-war/

 

[Idris2002]

Thanks, because that really helps those of us on here who have friends on the flottila and have no idea as to where or how they are.

Sorry. I wasn't having a go at your friends. I wish they had their guts.

 

[TomUS]

Israel thinks international law doesn't apply to it. When the fuck are the united nations of America going to finally act?

When the Israel lobby/vote it no longer so powerful. And it's gotten more powerful in the last few years with the christian right joining the gung ho pro Israel Jews. The Israelis would have to something really crazy like killing a bunch of Americans for no good reason. But, as was discussed, the USS liberty attack was oficially judged a mistake. Then there was the Jonathan Pollard spy case in the 80s, but well all countries spy on each other.

Israel has it's claws deep in the US political system and much of it's public opinion so I see no end to it.

 

[magneze]

That's the paranoid explanation. Another might be that given it was an international group, they were expecting some mild resistance that might be quelled with a couple of smart stings from paintball pellets. They could have taken beanbag guns or rubber bullets aboard, which are less lethal than bullets, but which might cause serious injury if things go wrong. They chose an even less lethal weapon than that.

And don't forget that commanders have political considerations to think of, but they won't casually put their men in harm's way. If they'd expected serious resistance, it wouldn't have been paintball guns the men were carrying, because being underarmed for the anticipated situation, exposes the soldiers to greater risk of injury.

Missing the point again. They had no reason or jurisdiction to be on board.

 

[quimcunx]

you've not heard of the uss liberty, have you. once you've read about that you will retract your suggestion.

It wasn't a very realistic suggestion but I don't understand why that would make me retract it.

 

[teqniq]

How are people not getting the international waters bit? You are not allowed to board a vessel on such waters. It is straight up piracy. The ensuing massacre, which is what it was, is entirely the fault of the masked pirates.

Whilst I might be inclined to agree with you maritime law (according to an expert on radio 4's 'Today' this morning) suggests that the action could be considered legal only if the blockade of Gaza is legal - and that hinges on whether or not the military advantages of the blockade can be shown to outweigh direct harm to civilians caused by the blockade.

I can see where this will probably end up. Israel will in all likelihood have little difficulty in convincing the 'International community' that the blockade is necessary for any number of reasons. Therefore the action and it's consequences whilst regrettable was necessary.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

The blockade is in defiance of UNSC 1860 though, so presumably it is not legal.

 

[magneze]

We can throw security council resolutions around all day. Until Israel is actually made to comply to any of them they are a bit pointless.

 

[teqniq]

The blockade is in defiance of UNSC 1860 though, so presumably it is not legal.

When have U.N. resolutions stopped them before?

 

[quimcunx]

We can throw security council resolutions around all day. Until Israel is actually made to comply to any of them they are a bit pointless.

This. If you don't actually send a child to its room then what's going to change.

Boycott, divestment and sanctions.

Need governments to sign up for these to work, though, and as it stands Europe is currently signed up to the EU-Israel Association Agreement giving them preferential trading conditions.

Although there had been a delay to ratifying (or extending or something) that prior to the attack on Gaza dec '08 and I don't know what's happened since.

 

[Idris2002]

Just been on Irish radio that Israel is going to deport 48 of the captured activists and 'detain' 480 of them. 'Detain'? WTF?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

When have U.N. resolutions stopped them before?

They haven't but the question I'm addressing is that of the legality of Israel's actions. Defiance of a UN resolution by mounting a blockade of Gaza suggests to me that the blockade itself is illegitimate and hence can't be used to argue that a boarding in international waters (which the law of the sea treaty agricola quoted quite clearly says is illegal) is legal because it supports the blockade.