Yup. Poor old Israel, suckered again by those nasty Arab sympathizers.
One is left to wonder who planned the mission, and why they planned it the way they did. OF course statements like “The IDF fucked up, pure and simple” sound supiciously like claims that the Abu Ghraib atrocities were the result of ‘a few bad apples’; very convenient.
Are you claiming Inbred Mm domesticus is an Israeli apologist? :dubious:
Nope, I’m saying that ‘fuck up’ is a phrase that shouldn’t naturally come into play in this sort of situation with seasoned troops.
It does however offer a very convenient shield for whoever masterminded the operation.
I’d like to know who that is, before we go blaming the soldiers themselves.
A bit of resistance by the people on the ships being boarded does not strike me as something no one could have pre-imagined, and if it was imagined, it seems likely to me that a non-lethal response could have been worked out. What was the contingency plan for this?
It does seem odd to have boarded an obviously hostile vessel so lightly armed. But it also seems unlikely that the Israeli Military would send troops out with the intent of having them set upon as they were. We can sit here and speculate to our hearts’ delight, but I think it would be wiser to wait and see what the analysis shows.
Dunno the provenance, but here is a clip purporting to be a partial video of the event. No doubt more will come out as time goes on.
The IDF should know by now, you don’t take paint-ball guns to a pole fight.
Those soldiers hadn’t been invited on the boat, and the “activists” had every right to resist them, and even evict them from the boat.
That’s your interpretation.
You didn’t actually specify that you were quoting the 4th GC. That made it an article of unknown provenance. Unknown provenance meaning, of course, unknown origin.
How, pray tell, do you suggest that the International Community[sup]tm[/sup] “put an end” to the things you don’t like? Shall we speculate?
Was the protest not planned? Was the confrontation with the Israelis not planned, advertised and inevitable? Did the ship already know that others had been boarded without violence and that it would be next? Did the people on the ship not gather in anticipation of the commandos, prepared to attack them?
Whether or not the exact specifics were planned, it is pretty obvious that the strategy of provoking Israeli into stopping the ships was, indeed, planned and the reaction to the boarding was, if not planned, at least the spontaneous reaction of a bunch of folks that had only one possible outcome; when you attacked armed soldiers, tea parties are not known to result.
You are out of line.
Knock it off.
[ /Moderating ]
Wrong. You said it was supposed to work one way, the 4th GC explicitly says it’s supposed to work another. There’s no “interpretation” involved. On one hand we have you claims, on the other the 4th GC specifically says that “the Power which permits their free passage shall have the right to prescribe the technical arrangements under which such passage is allowed.”
Your claim that there is some degree of “interpretation” is absurd.
Bull. The link goes straight to the 4th GC as hosted by the ICRC. Your failure to check the cite doesn’t mean that its origin isn’t clear.
And leave this stuff for the BBQ Pit.
It’s interesting to see how the news coverage portrays this.
In Norway, the story goes something like this:
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Independent flotilla of ships with aproximately 600 activists & crewmembers and aproximately 10.000 tons of aid & relief materiell are heading to Gaza to bypass the Israeli blockade.
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In international waters, IDF soldiers board and occupy several ships from helicopters and attack boats. It is emphasized that this is strictly and very illegal and counts as hijacking in international waters, which the Israeli embassy in Norway has confirmed, citing a need to “still defend themselves, even in International Waters.”
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Most of the boats and ships surrender. In one (or several, I haven’t been able to find a number yet) of the boats, however, the crew and activists attack the boarding IDF forces. They attack with anything they have at hand - metal poles, knives, crowbars and bottles.
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This, for some reason, takes the IDF forces by surprise and a number of them are injured or incapacitated before they decide to start opening fire. (Their decision to drop forces one-by-one on to the ships must be seen as phenomenally stupid.)
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After opening fire, IDF forces take control of the situation. IDF numbers suggest that aproximately 10 activists were killed with an unspecified number of injuries, and 7 injured IDF personell, of which two were serious. Israeli Channel 10 claims 19 activists were killed and 36 are injured. However, since Israel has put a heavy-handed moratorium on information regarding the attack, we can’t verify either of those numbers.
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Reports that the activists opened fire in return appear to have stemmed from two handguns the activists wrestled away from the IDF forces. The pistols were found with empty clips, so this appears to be true; activists did return fire on IDF forces. However, it also disproves that the ships were carrying weapons as contraband, or at least that the activists made any use of them.
What really gets me is the following:
- IDF forces claiming they fired their guns in “self defence” after boarding sovereign ships in clearly international waters. Your claim to self defence goes away when you’re the agressor in the first place.
- IDF forces being surprised by meeting resistance after essentially invading another country’s sovereign territory.
- IDF forces being unable to tackle untrained activists without using lethal force. These are the Krav Maga trained elite commandos that garner so much respect in the international military community?
- The umbrage at the activists actually fighting to repel an illegal boarding. Yes, they could have surrendered when the troops came aboard and have lived to tell the tale, but they were well within their rights to defend themselves. If anything, the IDF forces should have surrendered when it became obvious that the resistance was stiffer than they had prepared for.
There are, of course, other things.
- Why couldn’t anyone have asked the EU to check the ships for contraband? Wouldn’t that have been a perfect middle ground? Israel gets its’ assurance that the ships doesn’t contain contraband and the ships get to carry much-needed relief supplies to Gaza.
- How high up was this attack approved? Is this another Lillehammer Affair?
- Why didn’t the IDF wait until the ships reached the blockade instead of moving to intercept in what was clearly international waters? This wouldn’t have garnered the outrage it has if they had just waited until the ships attempted to actually bypass the blockade. Hell, why didn’t the IDF just follow alongside the ship then post forces on the docks and wait until they attempted to unload before moving in for an inspection?
I don’t see Israel’s actions in this as being “evil,” by the way, just incredibly incompetent.
Since you missed why I made a call, let me clarify.
Assuming that people on the boats are not suicide squad and considering that we really only have IDF version of the story there can be two narrowly specified scenarios in the context where upon seeing heavily armed and trained commandos (fact) that are air supported (fact) and sea supported (fact) raiding (fact) their boat (fact), people on the boat choose die as suicide martyrs (one speculation) because no other outcome is plausible in a given context or, maybe, just maybe people on the boat did not assume that they will be treated just like anyone assumed to be attacking Israel (another speculation) and fired on a slightest act of defiance that does not include attempt to harm a soldier; to add to this, it is at least 10 people that died which means one side was well organized – which one we probably will never know.
So, moral coward is the person who despite evidence that any type of aggression will be met with deadly force concludes that at least 10 people on that boat are morons instead of concluding that something went wrong with instruction to the soldiers on the nature of engagement and that they may be a bit trigger happy.
Again, I’m assuming that this was not a suicide mission; otherwise, I’ll reverse my initial designation of you as a moral coward and will assign it to myself.
So where do things like this fall in the 4th GC. It’s disingenuous to invoke it here when Israel doesn’t really seem to care about it on other occasions.
Even ignoring that, are you contending that Israel is in a legally-declared war with the Palestinian state (such as it is, or rather isn’t)?
Only complete morons would deliberately take on the IDF and expect to come out on top, but if you were on board that boat and you saw them coming down from helicopters with paintguns, wouldn’t you want to give them a good kicking for their cheek?
Turkey threatens action; Israel on alert
– underlining mine.
Short of going nuclear, I don’t think it’s a good idea for Israel to start a confrontation with the Turks.
Should have thought of it sooner.
Not especially.
Also, FinnAgain, please note the following from your own source:
You’re using your own definition of “disingenuous” it seems. Faced with the fact that you were wrong about how consignments are to be handled by an occupying power, you’re now essentially arguing that it doesn’t matter because you claim that there were other violations committed elsewhere. That’s not a response, it’s a dodge.
In response, you have also cited a report commissioned by the Human Rights Council, a UN body that has conclusively shown that its agenda is to demonize Israel first and foremost and that actual concerns about human rights may, potentially, come in some point down the line.
The Goldstone Report itself was based on numerous errors.
Are you questioning whether or not a state of belligerent occupation exists?
And now this is just getting silly.
I note that you’re grasping at rationalizations that don’t support your claim. The Gaza blockade is not starving the populace nor denying them goods essential for their survival and you’ll have an uphill battle to argue that stopping Hamas from functioning freely is “excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated”.
It’s pretty clear that what’s needed is for Obama to sit down and have a beer with Netanyahu and Erdoğan.