Lieberman: "There is no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip"

Not that I think it is highly applicable here, but one could certainly see how Israel wouldn't think too highly of a strategy of escorting large, unknown shipping vessels into port to only then be boarded and investigated. Again, here doesn't seem to be quite as applicable, but generally a policy one can understand.

The question here, I think, is why Israel didn't wait until they were technically in Israel waters, and more accurate, truthful detail regarding what happened on the ship in question.

 

Seeing how these "humanitarians" were defiant, I doubt they would have allowed the IDF to escort them to an Israeli port. I feel they would keep on course to a Palestinian dock, where the IDF would feel threatened.

 

There is another option. The armed men could withdraw.

 

Boarding a ship in international waters with armed commandos is the first attack.

 

Sorry I wasn't clear. I meant escort them to a Palestinian dock and there have them unload publically with the World press in full view. That ends up being a win win situation as the Israelis can show the World how humanitarian they are while the flotilla organizers can fulfill their mission. On the other hand if this really is a case of the flotilla trying to smuggle weapons to Hamas they will then be exposed for what they are.

In my opinion the Israelis were locked into one way of thinking without considering other options that in the long run will help their cause more than confrontation.

Just to add that Israel controls the Palestinian ports so whether a port in Gaza or Israel proper both are under Israeli control.

 

The problem with is that you are essentially making a might makes right argument when we have seen assymetric warfare successful along with situations where a greater power was forced to reform and / or withdraw due to moral pressure.

Consider that the under your argument the Apartheid regime would've never collapsed nor would Britian have ever withdrawn from India since militarily they were both in control and in the case of the regime in Pretoria they were truly paranoid about their survival.

The British did act in good faith and showed restraint when splinter groups of the IRA didn't renounce violence and tried to derail the peace proposal. As FB noted the Israelis haven't shown the sort of patience that the British have in Northern Ireland. In regard to Ireland we can go back even further and consider the British withdrawl from most of Ireland. There it wasn't just a matter of the British being defeated by the IRA but a combination of domestic and international pressure over things like the Easter Uprising.

 

they could, but that oversimplifies reality, imo.

Unlike the bus analogy, withdrawing for the armed men would mean jumping off a large vessel in the middle of the open ocean. Granted, with Israeli boats around, one would think this could still be possible...though consider, they were apparently being beaten at the time, making even withdrawal difficult.

Secondly, withdrawing would basically be not getting on in the first place. Which leads one back to arguing over the validity of the boarding, the politics of the Gaza strip situation, etc. In this case, they were onboard, there to take over, to prevent the ship from going further, etc.

As with your comment regarding escorting the ship into port, again, generally, one could see how it wouldn't be a good idea to "attempt" to detain apparent cargo vessels with a plan of, let's board the ship and hope to detain them, but if we start getting seriously attacked and beaten, jump off or wave the white flag. again, not really the policy you'd want to be sending the rest of the world. now, clearly, the policy of kill people when they get unruly doesn't seem that smart, either, as Israel is finding out...but imagine if there was some pretty serious stuff on board the ship, that the soldiers withdrawal could ultimately mean harm being done to citizens of their country. that's why the policy really can't be, come on in, our mistake, sorry to board your ship folks.

One might not like or agree with the gunfire, but I still contend that it's hard to find fault with the IDF soldiers or be surprised that the it ultimately resulted in this action, given the violence that had broken out.

this is all caveated by needing to better understand that actual, truthful timeline of what happened aboard that ship...which I doubt any other than those present will ever truly know...

 

A Jewish politician supporting Israel and denying any wrong-doing in Palestine. What else is new?

 

why

 

I see a lot of replies here claiming that the IDF screwed up and made errors in judgement. But I am not so sure about that. The IDF, Shin Bet, Likud, etc should be viewed in the highest respect with regards to strategy, intelligence and overall competence. And I lean towards the thinking that they got exactly the result they wanted and expected. Maybe they want reaction from a certain country or maybe they simply want to end the notion of any further Flotilla attempts by any group going forward. Whatever the reason(s) may be, it has to be assumed that they have orchestrated the situation to their pleasing.

 

How hilarious that Rahm Emanuel was visiting family in Isreal at this time.
The fact that our Chief of Staff volunteered for another country's army
(though not in combat) during a war is just insane!!!

Isn't that treason?? How is someone so tied to another country to make decisions that are best for the Americans as opposed to the Israelis?

I think the US needs to wake up and see that the emperor has no clothes!

 

Wtf are you even talking about? Even if this was about Joe Lieberman, your statement seems incredibly prejudiced.

 

Maybe I phrased it aggressively. The context of people still illegally boarding your boats carrying items in good faith with weapons in the middle of the night is a startling situation. I believe it is a natural reaction to become defensive, and more importantly it is the right of the passengers to become defensive. The fact is that Israel has little to no regard for the loss of innocent life. They met for days discussing how to handle the situation, and still chose a very aggressive and confrontational method.

Look at the situation objectively removing any sympathy to one party or another.

What in your mind is a comparable situation. They way I see it, there was a group of people carrying goods, who were illegally boarded, and when they tried to defend themselves they were murdered.

 

I'm in no way talking about "right". I'm interested in the mechanics of peace.

And this comes to the core problem with much of the historical asymmetric warfare examples. India was a periphery for England. Algeria was a periphery for France. If someone has gangrene in their arm, you can convince him to cut off the arm to save the body. If someone has gangrene in their chest, they aren't going to cut out their heart, because there would be nothing left to save. During the Gaza War, Hamas aired spots on al Aqsa telling Israelis to "go back where you came from". That is an unrealistic expectation.

The British withdrew from Ireland, the USA and India (and the Mandate for that matter) for the same reasons, and it had nothing to do with "public pressure". Rather, they were decimated as a result of other wars, and found it expedient. If the Palestinians can get someone to kill off a quarter of the Israelis in a decade long war, the asymmetric warfare angle might be worth visiting.

The South Africa analogy fails, too, because the fact that there were 10x as many black South Africans as white negates any technological superiority of the whites. In that instance, the manpower superiority makes the blacks the fulcrum. The whites all knew that the blacks had the power, which was why they were so terrified of them.

And if you think the British were "patient" in Northern Ireland, I have a few books that I could recommend. They were certainly more subtle than the Israelis, but they were absolutely as ruthless and bloody if not more so.

And again, I'm not saying the Palestinians should do anything that can't be undone right away. I'm not saying the Palestinians should give all their weapons to Israel, or surrender and grovel for mercy. I'm not saying they should consider doing anything that they haven't halfheartedly tried doing in the past.

Let me repeat. Do you think the recent events have made a mutual peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israelis more likely, or less likely in the near future?

 

I'm trying to be objective in what is increasingly, on this BBS, an anti-Israel bent. Which is fine, if and as warranted. While I appreciate the seriousness of the results of certain harmful Israeli actions over the years on their Palestinian and other Middle Eastern neighbors, I also recognize and appreciate that Israel itself is in possibly as unique a situation as can be for any country, much less one so inherently tied to thousands of years of religious and political history. It's a tough situation on all sides.

I agree that the situation is startling and the natural reaction is one of defense. Which is why it is surprising that the passengers seemingly became so offensive (again, need more facts first, but from the video that exists, surprising).

Were there other ships stopped and boarded? I wonder why only the one ship had the issues? Serious questions?

I don't know what is comparable, but what I do know, is that what you laid out above doesn't seem to be exactly what happened.

What happened was a group of people knowingly set out with other groups of people to sneak/push past an existing blockade where they anticipated and fully expected to hit certain levels of resistance. Given the resistance would be from Israel, it would have been wise to expect it to have been fairly forceful resistance, though I'd certainly agree it would be fair to say the passengers probably didn't expect such aggressive, violent resistance.

These people were probably illegally boarded, but it remains unclear beyond this illegal boarding what type of "resistance" they were up against. At some point - again unclear - these people became very violent themselves, and at some later point, the resistance reacted to the violence with gunfire, resulting in death.

 

Good observation. Not a coincidence that this goes hand in hand with increased activity by people who display high sensitivity and anger when it comes to questioning actions coming out of the Muslim world.

 

It could be a coincidence. It probably has as much to do with the ever growing and more internet savvy Islamic/Muslim populations worldwide and what seems to be more and more "questionable" actions by the Israel government.

Still, the board has definitely grown more pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli over the last few years, in many cases without any regard to the legitimate claims of terrorism/terror-connections that exist on the "pro-Palestinian" side.

Though, there also remain some fairly staunch pro-Israel supporters who equally turn a blind eye towards some of the atrocities resulting from certain Israeli policies.

 

I'll make a more accurate analogy.

Lets say a group of American protesters decided to take a six bus convoy to Mexico to protest their treatment of their own illegal immigrants from other latin american countries and to bring supplies to those illegal immigrants waiting to be deported. The Mexicans tell the protesters several weeks before they leave that there is no way in hell they are going to reach their destination. The protesters ignore this warning and decide to try to get to their destination anyway. Forty miles away from their destination, the protesters are met by the same Mexican authorities who warned them not to come. The Mexican authorities then proceeded to board and take over 5 of the buses without incident. The 6th bus, which somehow managed to stuff 600 passengers in it, decided it was a good idea to try to fight the boarding party.

I didn't say anything about the legality of the actions since I'm not an expert on international law on the high seas, but from what I've read the Israeli's could have had a right to board any ships trying to run a blockade. It'll all be determined in some sort of UN inquiry.

This was a political stunt meant to bring as much bad PR to Israeli's from the start. This is reinforced by the fact that the Israeli's offer to offload the supplies in their port in Ashdod or the Egyptian port of Arish was rejected by the activist, which pretty much left Israel with only one option after they said there was no way the flotilla was going to make it to Gaza. I'm going to get flamed as someone defending Israel, but its more about how little sympathy I have for the activist on the MV Mavi Marmara. I'd probably express more sympathy if the activist on the MV Mavi Marmara showed passive resistance to the boarding parties.

And for the record, I believe the blockade is immoral and punishing the general population in Gaza for supporting Hamas is having the opposite affect that the Israeli's want. It also hurts US standing and interests in the region, which is all i really care about anyways.

 

The one thing you would need to add to your analogy is that the Mexican govt. who didn't want the protestors there, went into the U.S. and boarded the buses while in U.S. territory.

The first 5 buses didn't put up a defense against a group of armed Mexican commandos who had no jurisdiction to do what they did, and were hostile to the cause of the protestors.

The 6th bus did decide to defend against it. And by the way the protestors were bringing food, clothes, and other items that impoverished oppressed citizens in Mexico couldn't get ahold of.