Two people have reportedly been killed and more than 50 injured after Israeli commandos stormed at least one ship loaded with pro-Palestinian activists bound for Gaza, Hamas-run TV reports. Gaza’s Al-Aqsa television showed footage of black-clad Israeli commandos descending from helicopters and clashing with activists, as well as several wounded people lying on the deck of the ship. The television network said two activists had been killed and some 50 wounded. The Israeli military declined to comment on the report and organisers of the aid convoy said they were no longer in contact with the boats. Turkish media are reporting a Turkish aid agency as saying footage from one of the flotilla’s vessels appeared to show Israeli soldiers boarding the ship while helicopters flew overhead. The ships, carrying more than 700 passengers, were on the last leg of a high-profile mission to deliver some 10,000 tonnes of building and other supplies to Gaza, which has been under a crippling Israeli blockade since 2007.
It’ll be interesting to see how they spin this one
Sifting the truth from the hastily pumped out bullshit is going to be a real nightmare with this story. Here’s an update from an Israeli tv network…
Quote:
Ten people were reported killed and about 30 wounded as Israeli forces stormed a Turkish ship in the flotilla carrying aid to the Gaza Strip, according to Turkish and Israeli media. Israeli private channel 10 television reported that Israeli marine commandos had opened fire after being attacked with axes and knives by a number of the passengers on board the aid ships. It did not give the source of its information. The station did not say whether the dead and injured were passengers or members of the Israeli navy.
Originally Posted by steliosView Post So ‘they encountered resistance’ and the next step was to drop everyone that moves? Who creates IDF’s rules of engagement? Kenny Powers?
This is the footage mentioned in the OP (I think) of the attack on the ship before any Commando had begun boarding.
Now the Israeli government is saying that they’ve found weapons onboard or something on a ship from the fleet with people such as Swedish crime author Henning Mankell, a French Nobel Peace Prize winner, a Holocaust survivor, a former US Congresswoman (Cynthia McKinney).
Israeli naval forces stormed a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in international waters before dawn on Monday, killing up to 19 pro-Palestinian activists, most of them reportedly Turkish nationals. The bloody ending to the high-profile mission to deliver supplies to the besieged Gaza Strip plunged Israel into a diplomatic crisis on the eve of talks between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As Israel pointed the finger of blame at passengers for initiating the violence, accusing them of using deadly force, activists from the ships countered with their own descriptions of how events unfolded in raid which took place in international waters at around 5am
And now Israel is claiming that the civillians attacked the commandos, took their guns away and started shooting them. So they’re either trigger happy violators of international law or the Keystone cops.
Well Israel bombed a UN post in Lebanon with laser guided missles after the UN expressly asked them to make sure not to bomb the post. In the last Gazza offensive, they bombed many many ambulances. Again they bombed a UN shelter full of women and children. And they rammed a boat full of activists and jounalists, Israel responded by saying it was all one big mistake. Israel just keeps killing and stealing, decade after decade.
Obama isn’t going to do anything, he has already restricted sales of nuclear components to Israel, but he needs to go a step further like Bush Senior. He was the only president to ever take a hardline stance against Israel, and he was genuinely going to try and fix the middle east.
Israels policy of targeting women children, journalists, and activists is very very well documented. They have an active policy of first going after women and children. I dunno, its strange one of my best buddies may be going to Israel to study “security studies”. He doesn’t have anything else to do, and his mother keeps pressuring him to go to Israel and marry a nice jewish girl, but we keep telling him not to do it.
U.S.S Liberty On June the 8th 1967, during the six day war, Israel deliberately attacked the intelligence collection ship USS Liberty, in full awareness it was a U.S. Navy ship, and did its best to sink it and leave no survivors. The attack killed 34 U.S. servicemen and wounded at least 173. Scores of intelligence analysts and senior officials have known this for years. That virtually all of them have kept a 40-year frightened silence is testament to the widespread fear of touching this live wire. According to NSA documents – classified top secret – some senior officials in Washington wanted above all, to protect Israel from embarrassment. this video gives a brief overview of the incident along with a few others of note. Supporting Documents.
Ron Ben Yishai recounts bloody clash aboard Gaza-bound vessel: The lacking crowd-dispersal means, the brutal violence of ‘peace activists,’ and the attempt to bring down an IDF helicopter
Israeli media saying the commandos were equipped with ‘paintball guns’, who the fuck do they think they’re kidding?
A ship they say was carrying weapons to Hamas, and they board with… paintball guns.
And to think, people scoffed when I called Israel unhinged in the last thread about one of their violent attacks. When is enough enough? When do we sever ties with them? Is the fear they’ll nuke their neighbors without our moderating influence? I wonder…
Well I have quite a bit to say about this but i’ll try and keep it short.
The flotilla was a provocation, at best, not a humanitarian act (the fact that Hamas recruited such high caliber personalities to board those boats only speaks ill of said personalities). The Gaza strip is blockaded as a means of defence; Israel is suffering daily rocket attacks from Hamas terrorists in the Gaza strip; the naval blockade is but one brick in that wall of defense, designed to stop the flow of (Iranian and Syrian) rockets and munitions into Gaza (the other two bricks being the IDF sitting on the perimiter of the Gaza strip and the Egyptian army - these guys are very trigger-happy - sitting on what’s designated “philadelphy line” - basically the Gaza-Egypt border. Hamas terrorists uses tunnels to smuggle said rockets and munitions; the Egyptians periodically flood/gas/blow up the tunnels. Not from the goodness of their hearts but because tunnels work both ways).
Now to the boats:
Why did the so-called “humanitarian” mission blatantly refuse to inquire on the medical condition of IDF POW Gilad Shalit?
Why would a humanitarian flotilla refuse safe passage to Ashdod port (10 km from Gaza), to unload supplies from the flotilla and transport to the Gaza strip, courtesy of the Israely govt? (Israeli government first response to the "aid flotilla"? why did they respond to this proposition with profanity and violence? These are not humanitarians. The people on those boats were, at best, misguided, and at worst, terrorists and provocators. The flotilla’s goal was not to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza but to establish a new arming route to Hamas. These boats probably didn’t carry munitions - these were the clean boats. The next boats will carry rockets - bigger ones than those that fit in the tunnels below philadelphy line.
About the Navy commandos - they were armed with non-fatal, crowd dispersing equipment - paintball guns, and pistols for a last resort. Orders were to non-violently take over the boats, thus the relatively (for this unit) non-lethal setup. The Navy thought they would be dealing with peace activists; but they were meant with extreme violence - about ten soldiers were stabbed, shot and nearly lynched. The commandos were ordered to only fire when fired upon; they did. Surprised they were the better shooetrs?
More stuff you probably don’t know:
Guess who supplies Gaza with electricity, water (Israel has no water) and gas? yep, Israel. Ask yourself this - does it make any sense that a population which possesses the resources to manufacture and fire rockets suffer from a shortage of food?
This was longer than I thought it would be. I got a little worked up. It’s one thing to try and live your life defending yourself from recurring murder attempts, it’s another thing to have everyone else condemn you for it.
Originally Posted by Dan CohenView Post Well I have quite a bit to say about this but i’ll try and keep it short. The flotilla was a provocation, at best, not a humanitarian act (the fact that Hamas recruited such high caliber personalities to board those boats only speaks ill of said personalities). The Gaza strip is blockaded as a means of defence; Israel is suffering daily rocket attacks from Hamas terrorists in the Gaza strip; the naval blockade is but one brick in that wall of defense, designed to stop the flow of (Iranian and Syrian) rockets and munitions into Gaza (the other two bricks being the IDF sitting on the perimiter of the Gaza strip and the Egyptian army - these guys are very trigger-happy - sitting on what’s designated “philadelphy line” - basically the Gaza-Egypt border. Hamas terrorists uses tunnels to smuggle said rockets and munitions; the Egyptians periodically flood/gas/blow up the tunnels. Not from the goodness of their hearts but because tunnels work both ways). Now to the boats: Why did the so-called “humanitarian” mission blatantly refuse to inquire on the medical condition of IDF POW Gilad Shalit? Why would a humanitarian flotilla refuse safe passage to Ashdod port (10 km from Gaza), to unload supplies from the flotilla and transport to the Gaza strip, courtesy of the Israely govt? (Israeli government first response to the "aid flotilla"Wink? why did they respond to this proposition with profanity and violence? These are not humanitarians. The people on those boats were, at best, misguided, and at worst, terrorists and provocators. The flotilla’s goal was not to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza but to establish a new arming route to Hamas. These boats probably didn’t carry munitions - these were the clean boats. The next boats will carry rockets - bigger ones than those that fit in the tunnels below philadelphy line. About the Navy commandos - they were armed with non-fatal, crowd dispersing equipment - paintball guns, and pistols for a last resort. Orders were to non-violently take over the boats, thus the relatively (for this unit) non-lethal setup. The Navy thought they would be dealing with peace activists; but they were meant with extreme violence - about ten soldiers were stabbed, shot and nearly lynched. The commandos were ordered to only fire when fired upon; they did. Surprised they were the better shooetrs? More stuff you probably don’t know: Guess who supplies Gaza with electricity, water (Israel has no water) and gas? yep, Israel. Ask yourself this - does it make any sense that a population which possesses the resources to manufacture and fire rockets suffer from a shortage of food? This was longer than I thought it would be. I got a little worked up. It’s one thing to try and live your life defending yourself from recurring murder attempts, it’s another thing to have everyone else condemn you for it.
International waters dude,
and why exactly would the Israeli navy equip paintball guns and not rubber bullets or stun guns? How is a paintball gun remotely a practical idea? Especially if Hamas shenanigans were suspected.
The American media is going, in shorthand, with “botched raid,” which is going to color a lot of reactions no matter what the facts are. I think there is a lot more anti-Israeli sentiment in the United States than a lot of Israelis know. In the racist fringe, the thought that “if it wasn’t for Israel, there wouldn’t have been a 9/11” has gained a lot of currency.
It’s an impossible issue to armchair from the U.S., but the American government’s special relationship to Israel can mean that our media goes further to try and “balance” the issue by being particularly hard on Israel.
Which is ironic given how their less than stellar reporting on American gunbarrel misadventures in recent years.
It’s a dicey issue around my house as a lot of my wife’s family is in Israel and we have a lot of ties to the Israeli community here in Los Angeles. I find myself being incredibly critical of the Israeli government and think, “oh, well - my government does the same.” But, the truth is, it’s apples and oranges. Your analogy about “recurring murder attempts” is apt. A friend had begun posting on her Facebook page daily updates of how many rockets were blasted into Israel every day to try and get other people to realize what goes unreported here. But, it found few converts.
Talking about Israel is the star wars conversation for political geeks, a descending vortex of ad hominem attacks, bullheadedness, and useless fury, so I tend to not want to talk about it, but jesus, Dan Cohen.
As far as the Gaza blockade goes, it’s an actual blockade. As in not getting concrete in to fix the buildings Israel knocked down, as in preventing vital supplies from getting in, as in stopping ordinary Gazans from living anything close to what we would consider a normal life. Yes, you have dumb fucks ruining it the rest of the Palestinians and aiming to hurt ordinary innocent Israelis, but to not acknowledge the pain and suffering occurring for the other half affected strikes me as fundamentally uncaring and cold.
As far as not docking in Israel, that was the whole blasted point. Whether you might agree with the people claiming it’s impossible to ship medical goods and the like through the Israelis, you have to admit that considering their stance, going through Israel doesn’t really make too much sense.
But here’s the most important point (Dr. Syn already pointed this out). You have dead protesters. In international waters. There’s no way around that.
? why did they respond to this proposition with profanity and violence? These are not humanitarians. The people on those boats were, at best, misguided, and at worst, terrorists and provocators. The flotilla’s goal was not to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza but to establish a new arming route to Hamas. These boats probably didn’t carry munitions - these were the clean boats. The next boats will carry rockets - bigger ones than those that fit in the tunnels below philadelphy line.