# Turkish flagged vessel attack \[What if?--becomes What now?\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 25, 2010, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765 "2010-05-25T23:32:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 63
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2010, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1241 "2010-06-12T21:39:23Z")
> [@](#): > > …but hey, Friendship means not being able to defend yourself. I guess. I am content to leave it to the reader whether or not you have fairly and accurately summarized my position. But you make one point worth noting: how many times, you ask, must Israel offer the hand of peace and have it refused, how many blows must she take without answering? The glib answer would be “As many as it takes”. The truthful answer is, I don’t know, I did not consider this an issue to be answered by quantifying. One blow, two, three? It would have to depend upon the nature of the blows, wouldn’t it? And, as I’m sure you know, you wildly mischaracterize my suggestion as saying that Hamas would be privileged to rain down death and terror on Israel as long as it pleases. But, of course, if you believe wildly imaginative slander is a persuasive form of argument, you are welcome to it. But to clarify to anyone confused by you: what I mean by “taking the last blow”. In any conflict, if it ends, there is a last blow struck. Between America and Japan, it would likely be Nagasaki. But does anyone remember the last blow struck by the IRA against England and the Protestants? If peace can be achieved, does it matter? Peace will be achieved only with patience, humanity, and courage, qualities Israel has in abundance. Who else, then, can lead? The bitterness and fanatical resentment of Palestinians for their fate is a flame that you have tried to drown with gasoline for two generations now. It isn’t working. Time to try something else. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2010, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1242 "2010-06-12T21:43:30Z")
> [@Happy\_Poster](#): > > I just wanted to post to observe that this thread is very long. Yeah, but I think the various sides are on the brink of agreement. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2010, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1243 "2010-06-12T21:51:52Z")
I wholly concur that this thread is long. But is it “very” long? That it is quite a different matter. Websters Online Dictionary defines “very” as…hey, quit shoving…defines “very” as…hey, man, uncool!..stop that!.. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2010, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1244 "2010-06-12T22:01:52Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > I am content to leave it to the reader whether or not you have fairly and accurately summarized my position. Ahhh, the good old “Sure the facts show I’m wrong, but I’m willing to let other people put the facts against my claims” gambit. By the way, it’s generally a rather odd tactic to deny something, and then confirm it right away. > [@elucidator](#): > > The glib answer would be “As many as it takes”. The truthful answer is, I don’t know, I did not consider this an issue to be answered by quantifying. One blow, two, three? It would have to depend upon the nature of the blows, wouldn’t it? You’ve claimed it’s a “mis-characterization” to state that you’ve demanded that Hamas be allowed limitless attacks against Israel without any degree of self defense. Then when pressed on it… you still can’t name a limit. > [@elucidator](#): > > saying that Hamas would be privileged to rain down death and terror on Israel as long as it pleases. Name the limit. Go for it. If it’s not “as long as it pleases”, when does your rhetoric stop and you say “my big Friend Israel can defend itself.” What’s the limit? Obviously, nothing that’s come so far has reached that limit, so it’s somewhere past what we’ve ever seen, ever. So if there’s some sort of limit it’s pretty damn massive. Or is it, in fact, limitless and you cannot name any actual limit? Go ahead, quit this nonsense about “slander” and prove that you’re right. Identify the limit and we can discuss that, rather than your clearly limitless demand while you argue that it’s not limitless, it’s just got no limit. > [@elucidator](#): > > The bitterness and fanatical resentment of Palestinians for their fate is a flame that you have tried to drown with gasoline for two generations now. It isn’t working. Time to try something else. And yet again your argument just happens to ignore all the Israeli peace proposals that came in the face of violence. But, you certify, all your Friend Israel has to do to meet your demands is to offer peace in the face of violence and then after a point (really, there is a limit!) Israel can defend itself. Explain, then, why all the times Israel has done that don’t count? Because if you’ll disregard all the times Israel has been attacked and still offered peace (while you demand that Israel “sooner or later” do that), and if you demand that Israel accept a limitless number of attacks from Hamas (while saying that really there’s a limit past which Israel can respond, you are just completely unable to state what that limit is.) Well… ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2010, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1245 "2010-06-12T23:10:04Z")
\*\*elucidator \*\*and **FinnAgain** , you are both off topic and getting too close to personal insults. Knock it off. = = = EVERYONE, this thread appears to have outlived its usefulness. Everyone has until tomorrow morning (my time, and I will determine when that is), to get in their last digs, then I am closing this thread. It is no longer about the original topic and it is taking way too much of the staff’s time to babysit you folks. **[/Moderating]** ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Poster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@Happy\_Poster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Poster)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2010, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1246 "2010-06-12T23:10:51Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Yeah, but I think the various sides are on the brink of agreement. I’m quietly confident 😃 ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2010, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1247 "2010-06-12T23:14:14Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > EVERYONE, this thread appears to have outlived its usefulness. Everyone has until tomorrow morning (my time, and I will determine when that is), to get in their last digs, then I am closing this thread. It is no longer about the original topic and it is taking way too much of the staff’s time to babysit you folks. > > **[/Moderating]** It’s a blockade! Perhaps we should form a convoy of computers and try to hack our way back in once it’s locked!! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2010, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1248 "2010-06-12T23:17:15Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > It’s a blockade! Perhaps we should form a convoy of computers and try to hack our way back in once it’s locked!! 😃 Unlike Israel, I WILL consider the nuclear option in that event. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2010, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1249 "2010-06-12T23:57:29Z")
I’d still like to hear more about how Jews totally deserve the racism directed at them. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1250 "2010-06-13T00:01:31Z")
Start a new thread? Preferably in the pit, so I can give Marmite a piece of my mind. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1251 "2010-06-13T00:06:52Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > I’d still like to hear more about how Jews totally deserve the racism directed at them. I’ve heard they are very clanish. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1252 "2010-06-13T00:27:44Z")
No, that’s the Scots. Miserly too. The Scots, I mean. ---
**Author:** ![Sevastopol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cdc98d/32.png) [@Sevastopol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sevastopol)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1253 "2010-06-13T01:27:11Z")
> [@EasyPhil](#): > > I infer from your comment that you are proving my point, since you have jumped to a conclusion that I have opinions about the event when I have not expressed any such opinion. > [@](#): > > If you think both sides are placing “spin” on the story then yes I would assume that you think i.e. your opinion is that both sides aren’t merely telling what happened as people that actually witnessed the event. We do know that the Israeli govt is spinning the event based upon their behavior i.e. the confiscating of all video and photos, doctoring auidio, and providing edited clips of information to support the narrative that they want to put out. I don’t see where the activists are doing this so I again ask you what supports your assertion of “spin” by both parties? Reality has an anti-Israel Bias. I think that’s what **T’nD** means. Anything will do, so long as there is no such thing as plain stand alone atrocity on the part of Israel. There’s no crime so grave that many of **T’nD’s** generation won’t give a dispensation for Israel, usually by inventing an equal and opposing crime by its enemies, as here. Lord alone knows what infected that generation so, they certainly won’t talk about it. ---
**Author:** ![Sevastopol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cdc98d/32.png) [@Sevastopol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sevastopol)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1254 "2010-06-13T01:33:23Z")
> [@Marmite\_Lover](#): > > … > > It’s all about the oil. > > … > . I don’t see this. Involvement in the ME in general, yes. Preserving a military relationship with Turkey, its main democratic ally in the Middle East, yes. But there’s nothing so rational in this Israel folly. To the contrary it’s a strategic liability, a drag on progress, chain-anchored to the Israel lobby. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1255 "2010-06-13T01:49:23Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > I’d still like to hear more about how Jews totally deserve the racism directed at them. Not in this thread. (As if you have not already heard it lots of times, previously.) ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1256 "2010-06-13T03:15:36Z")
Don’t bother starting a new thread, folks. Let’s wait for Flotilla II: Float Harder. The one with what’s his name on it. Let some of the heat die down, okay? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1257 "2010-06-13T03:27:51Z")
Oh, sweet Jesus, tell me you don’t mean Jimmy Carter! ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1258 "2010-06-13T03:43:33Z")
[**Israel’s Greatest Loss: Its Moral Imagination**](http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/israel-s-greatest-loss-its-moral-imagination-1.295600) > [@](#): > > \*\*If a people who so recently experienced such unspeakable inhumanities cannot understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions are inflicting, what hope is there for the rest of us? > > Following Israel’s bloody interdiction of the Gaza Flotilla, I called a life-long friend in Israel to inquire about the mood of the country. My friend, an intellectual and a kind and generous man, has nevertheless long sided with Israeli hardliners. Still, I was entirely unprepared for his response. He told me—in a voice trembling with emotion—that the world’s outpouring of condemnation of Israel is reminiscent of the dark period of the Hitler era. > > He told me most everyone in Israel felt that way, with the exception of Meretz, a small Israeli pro-peace party. “But for all practical purposes,” he said, “they are Arabs.” > > \ > > When I managed to get over the shock of that exchange, it struck me that the invocation of the Hitler era was actually a frighteningly apt and searing analogy, although not the one my friend intended. A million and a half civilians have been forced to live in an open-air prison in inhuman conditions for over three years now, but unlike the Hitler years, they are not Jews but Palestinians. Their jailers, incredibly, are survivors of the Holocaust, or their descendants. Of course, the inmates of Gaza are not destined for gas chambers, as the Jews were, but they have been reduced to a debased and hopeless existence. > > Fully 80% of Gaza’s population lives on the edge of malnutrition, depending on international charities for their daily nourishment. According to the UN and World Health authorities, Gaza’s children suffer from dramatically increased morbidity that will affect and shorten the lives of many of them. This obscenity is a consequence of a deliberate and carefully calculated Israeli policy aimed at de-developing Gaza by destroying not only its economy but its physical and social infrastructure while sealing it hermitically from the outside world.\*\* Much more at source. Written by a Token Jew\* no doubt. \*taking a month long leave from my tribe. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1259 "2010-06-13T04:41:22Z")
But what is the truth? I read reports all the way from Gaza is a spa-like summer camp with banana daquiris served beachside, to its a living hell that makes Calcutta slums look like the Hamptons! Somebody, surely, is lying. Who to trust? So, I think, well Doctors Without Borders has a pretty good rep, I’ll google… Bunch of references to Israeli sources insisting that they’re in cahoots with the terrorists. Its not that I find that hard to believe. Its that I find that real hard to believe. But what about the people who find that easy to believe? What objective source can I offer them for evidence? ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765/1260 "2010-06-13T05:16:33Z")
> [@RedFury](#): > > Written by a Token Jew\* no doubt. > \*taking a month long leave from my tribe. Not sure what tribe it is, exactly, that you belong to, but while alleging that every Jew in American politics whose name you can remember (including a Greek Orthodox man who got included in the list somehow) are potential Jewish Traitors because their names sound Jewish to you and they’re in politics… well, it’s somewhat curious that you find a need to mock Jews by joking about how you’re one of them. Something tells me you might not enjoy the accusation that you’re a potential traitor because of your ethnicity. Of course, that seems to be the point. That and, of course, using a token Jew to support your anti-Israel positions is odd in and of itself. One wonders what you’re trying to suggest about your ideas, or what you’re trying to avoid, by pointing out “Oh oh oh, and a Jew agrees, too!” But tokenism is funny that way. Of course, that too seems to be the point. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765.md?page=62) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turkish-flagged-vessel-attack-what-if-becomes-what-now/540765.md?page=64)