The Israeli response to the "humanitarian" flotilla

[MechAg94]

A good question. Perhaps you should ask the architects of this blockade.

I thought you had something to do with it?  Seriously, you are in a better position to know that than we are.   

[Doggy Daddy]

Does the fact the head of Israel's YaMaM [Special Police Unit] condemned the tactics used mean anything?

It means no more than the fact that the president of The United States has condemned and apologized for actions of The United States.

IOW, consider the source.

DD

[RaspberrySurprise]

What do honey, chocolate and wheelchairs have to do with anything?

Rolling chocolate coated stickybombs?

Hamas, being the utter smacktards they are, have stopped the rest of the aid from getting through.

Yeah but it's getting them some great PR and will probably end up earning them extra money in donations, can't try to destroy Israel with just humanitarian aid now can they?

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

The ships were inspected in neutral port.

'

by the irish trade unions twice.  gee thats reassuring

[makattak]

Honestly, I don't care that honey and chocolate are banned.

A blockade SHOULD hurt a people that support a murderous regime.

Honestly, isn't that the point of trade sanctions?

And further, we're complaining they can't get honey and chocolate through the blockade?!? That's the unconscionable human rights violation!??

The West is doomed.

[MicroBalrog]

Why shouldn't we be complaining?

I don't remember ever supporting hurting the 53% of the Palestinians that did not vote for Hamas. Or their children. Or, in a matter of fact, the children of individuals who did vote for Hamas.

Here, in simple language: I support blocking and inspecting any cargos going to Gaza until such a time the hostilities subside, however I oppose blocking the passage of civilian goods which accomplished nothing but make the lives of both Gazans and ISraelis worse and destroys Israel's PR effort.

[De Selby]

What do honey, chocolate and wheelchairs have to do with anything?

Prohibiting them helps make life miserable for people in Gaza.  That is the only reason for the vast majority of things on the ephemeral ban list; if it were simply a ban on military-use goods, there would be no international issue and Gaza wouldn't have an insane (as in, worse than Haiti) rate of malnourishment. 

But I guess folks who would believe it's okay to gun people down for trying to bring food to the hungry, would also probably think it's fine to let kids be crippled for life by food bans that contribute to malnourishment.  That's all justifiable, as long as Hamas is launching rockets (oh wait, Hamas isn't)...I mean, as long as Hamas exists on that same piece of geography.

The double standard is just too obvious to countenance sometime - how can someone sit here and say "Israel should use any means, no matter how brutal, to let its enemies know it means business" and not see the irony in condemning the hordes of Lebanese who encourage Hizbullah to use "any force necessary" to "show Israel they mean business"?

[MicroBalrog]

Prohibiting them helps make life miserable for people in Gaza.  That is the only reason for the vast majority of things on the ephemeral ban list; if it were simply a ban on military-use goods, there would be no international issue and Gaza wouldn't have an insane (as in, worse than Haiti) rate of malnourishment.

THIS. Times a thousand.

People, I'm a LIKUD VOTER. Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman has already stated that the siege will be amended to let through things like chocolate and food within the coming days and that the previous policy probably harmed Israel more than it did it good.

Does it give you any pause that you're taking a position far more hardline on the Palestinians than the most hard-line party in Israel's government?

[dogmush]

But I guess folks who would believe it's okay to gun people down for trying to bring food to the hungry,

Just to be clear, they were gunned down for attacking armed soldiers with pipes and bats, and throwing a guy with 60lbs of gear tied to him overboard.  The food was ancillery to the beating and shootings.

Micro, Like most governments everywhere, yours is doing some things right, and some wrong.  It's the nature of the beast.  I'm glad you're rethinking the blockade, as it is turning into a PR disaster for you even taking into account the "Israel is the devil" parts of the world.  I think it didn't have to, and Israel approched it with bad tactics, but that happens.

To be clear I'm not trying to be more hardline then Israel's hardline folks, I was just pointing out that haveing a military force in place to blockade another group with known military tendencies is pretty likely to result in gunfire.  Why's everyone surprised?  It's not like Israel has a history of making threats and backing down.

[roo_ster]

This raid had nothing to do with the blockade itself - there's no question that the boats were not carrying weapons for Hamas, and were not loaded with terrorists.

They were loaded with hippies, international journalists, and a spattering of random folk from around the world.

Descending on those boats guns blazing, or sinking them, would undoubtedly be crimes.  It's not morally or legally justifiable to kill people who are without a doubt not any threat to the lives of others.

This is why the international community is outraged - including many places that are no friend of Hamas, not Muslim, etc etc.  The behaviour was as abhorrent as it was incompetent. 

I suppose, since you are a lawyer & all, that honesty and integrity mean very little to you.  There have been plenty of news releases indicating that a goodly number of them went out looking to fight and organized themselves to do so.  Also, that it was supported (in a material sense) by elements of the Muslim Brotherhood.  I doubt you have missed these, so I suggest you are lying when you write the above.

[makattak]

THIS. Times a thousand.

People, I'm a LIKUD VOTER. Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman has already stated that the siege will be amended to let through things like chocolate and food within the coming days and that the previous policy probably harmed Israel more than it did it good.

Does it give you any pause that you're taking a position far more hardline on the Palestinians than the most hard-line party in Israel's government?

No. I take a harder line than most politicians.

We (Western Civilization) play with kid gloves. As a result, more people die.

Too many people think foreign policy and war should be just like the legal system; that we ought to hunt down only the wrongdoers and punish only them. This lowers the cost for citizens of tolerating a bad regime. Treating it in this way leads to more conflict and more deaths.

I cannot condone policies that lead to more deaths just because it makes us feel more "civilized".

[MicroBalrog]

We do not play with kid gloves. We kill the people who launch the missiles with fire.

We do not. I repeat not. Slaughter innocent people, and we should not deny innocent people the basic right to trade peacefully with others.

The Palestinian terrorists do not pose a threat to the existence of Israel. They at best pose a threat to some individual citizens, and the Army, Navy, and Air Force are doing a very good job in defeating this threat. There's no need nor any purpose accomplished in harsh measures against peaceful Gaza citizens when the Army, Navy, and Air Force are already doing a good job smashing up the people who are not peaceful.

Had there been a serious threat from Gaza of destroying Israel, or even doing something more than launching glorified bottle rockets that hit Israel. During Cast Lead alone, the IDF killed (according to Hamas' own public forums) at least 433 members of Hamas and its associated groups.

This means that for every Israeli soldier and civilian killed by Hamas during Cast Lead, the IDF killed 48 members of Hamas and its affiliate groups. (I am omitting Palestinian civilian casualties from this count.) 120 more men were taken prisoners, or 13 prisoners for every Israeli killed.

No nation that exacts a price of 48 enemy combatants for each of its casualties can be seriously referred to as 'playing with kid gloves'.

[makattak]

We do not play with kid gloves. We kill the people who launch the missiles with fire.

We do not. I repeat not. Slaughter innocent people, and we should not deny innocent people the basic right to trade peacefully with others.

The Palestinian terrorists do not pose a threat to the existence of Israel. They at best pose a threat to some individual citizens, and the Army, Navy, and Air Force are doing a very good job in defeating this threat. There's no need nor any purpose accomplished in harsh measures against peaceful Gaza citizens when the Army, Navy, and Air Force are already doing a good job smashing up the people who are not peaceful.

Had there been a serious threat from Gaza of destroying Israel, or even doing something more than launching glorified bottle rockets that hit Israel. During Cast Lead alone, the IDF killed (according to Hamas' own public forums) at least 433 members of Hamas and its associated groups.

This means that for every Israeli soldier and civilian killed by Hamas during Cast Lead, the IDF killed 48 members of Hamas and its affiliate groups. (I am omitting Palestinian civilian casualties from this count.) 120 more men were taken prisoners, or 13 prisoners for every Israeli killed.

No nation that exacts a price of 48 enemy combatants for each of its casualties can be seriously referred to as 'playing with kid gloves'.

And that's put a stop to the violence and calls for Israel's destruction, right?

Killing the bad guys is great. The West is tactically the strongest civilization in the history of the world.

How's that working towards the strategic goal of a country (region, area, whatever the heck we want to call Gaza and the West Bank) that doesn't seek to destroy Israel?

Our (the West's) tactics are amazing. Our (the West's) strategies (nearly) universally suck. (I am willing to admit I am wrong should our strategy in Iraq continue to prove wise, but Iraq is an outlier.)

[MicroBalrog]

It's cut the violence to what most people think is a tolerable level. Amazingly killing the people who want to do you harm and minimizing the damage to people who don't works.

Hamas is not a threat to Israel's existence. There's literally nothing they can do. At best they can harass us with their bottle rockets (if these don't fall in Palestine and kill some of them instead). We outnumber them if nothing else.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

Mark Regev, the spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said that, contrary to hopes when Israel pulled out of Gaza, the Gazan people were being "held hostage" to Hamas's "extremist and nihilist" ideology which was causing undoubted suffering. If Hamas focused resources on the "diet of the people" instead of on "Qassam rockets and violent jihadism" then "this sort of problem would not exist", he said.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7766509.stm

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

    Gaza [is] suspended in a state of misery that defies easy categorization. It is, of course, crowded and poor, but it is better off than nearly all of Africa as well as parts of Asia. There is no acute malnutrition, and infant mortality rates compare with those in Egypt and Jordan, according to Mahmoud Daher of the World Health Organization here.

[MicroBalrog]

Meanwhile, Hamas hadn't let the flotilla's cargo through.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

http://www.forward.com/articles/117311/

[MicroBalrog]

Israel has now eased the blockade conditions.