Certainly. Here are the grounds for doing so.
I dunno if anyone can argue with a straight face that “the sole purpose” of the blocade of Gaza is to “starve” the population, so (a) is out.
Whether the “damage to the civilian population” is “excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the blockade” is certainly more arguable, but IMO the better view is that this fails, as well.
Israeli commandos on Monday stormed six ships carrying hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists on an aid mission to Gaza. At least ten people were killed and dozens were wounded after IDF forces encountered unexpected resistance. Turkey’s NTV showed activists beating one Israeli soldier with sticks as he rappelled from a helicopter onto one of the boats.
The Israeli military said troops only opened fire after the activists attacked them with knives and iron rods, and one activist wrested a serviceman’s weapon. Two of the dead activists had fired at soldiers with pistols, the army said. Organizers included people affiliated with the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian group that often sends international activists into battle zones, and the IHH, a Turkish aid group that Israel accuses of having terrorist links.
“We did not want to see confrontation,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Netanyahu. “We made repeated offers to the boats that they come to the (Israeli) port of Ashdod, unload the humanitarian cargo, and we guaranteed to pass all humanitarian items through the crossings to the Gaza Strip. Unfortunately, they rejected our offers and chose the path of confrontation.” (AP-Washington Post)
Claudia Rosett:
The basic narrative spun by the organizers of the “freedom flotilla” is to “break the siege of Gaza” and “establish a permanent sea lane between Gaza and the rest of the world.” But there’s some important information that the flotilla crew omits. Gaza is a terrorist enclave controlled by an Islamist terrorist group, Hamas, backed by Iran. It has a busy and violent history of suicide bombings, shootings and rocket and mortar attacks; and is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. It is Hamas-run Gaza that threatens its neighbors and is hostile generally to liberal, Western societies.
Egypt has also had miseries enough with Hamas to find it worthwhile maintaining the blockade, though this seems to be of less interest to the “freedom flotilla” crowd. This ship convoy is not about freedom and not about aid. It is patently about helping Hamas and harming Israel. The writer is a journalist in residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. (Forbes)
(Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs):
• A state of armed conflict exists between Israel and the Hamas regime controlling Gaza. Hamas has launched 10,000 rockets against Israeli civilians, and is presently smuggling in arms and military supplies into Gaza, by land and sea, in order to fortify its positions and continue its attacks.
• Under international law, Israel has the right to protect the lives of its civilians from Hamas attacks, and, consequently, has undertaken measures to defend itself, including the imposition of a maritime blockade to curb Hamas rearmament. Under international maritime law, when a maritime blockade is in effect, no vessels can enter the blockaded area. The ships participating in the protest flotilla were warned repeatedly that a maritime blockade is in effect off the coast of Gaza.
• Israel repeatedly offered the flotilla organizers to land in the port of Ashdod, and to transfer their aid to Gaza through the existing overland crossings, in accordance with established procedures. The flotilla organizers rejected this offer, stating clearly that “this mission is not about delivering humanitarian supplies, it’s about breaking Israel’s siege.” (Greta Berlin, AFP, 27May10)
• When it became clear that the protest flotilla intended to violate the blockade despite repeated warnings, Israeli Naval personnel boarded the vessels of the flotilla, and redirected them to Ashdod. Given the large number of vessels participating in the flotilla, there was an operational need to undertake measures to enforce the blockade a certain distance from the area of the blockade.
• The Israeli Navy was met with violent opposition, two pistols were found in the hands of protesters, and over a dozen Israeli personnel were hospitalized, some in critical condition.
Professor Cole with his take:
– underlining mine.
Yes, a proper analysis of the mission planning for this could turn out to be quite interesting for Netanyahu and friends. We shall have to see if one is allowed.
I’ll not hold my breath.
Which just so happens to contradict all the facts we have, yet you still cite it.
I guess as long as it supports claims about a devious right wing Israeli conspiracy to ‘send a message’ then by gum it’s citable.
I know you will, but I’m asking you to stop making excuses for a potential regional war which would most likely claim thousands if not tens of thousands of lives.
As for this event, there isn’t much of an ‘excuse’ needed when discussing people attacking armed soldiers whose ROE was to not open fire unless their lives were in danger.
So they went in with non-lethal force, using paintball guns and stun grenades (and according to some reports, some form of gas, most likely tear gas). They didn’t even have long guns. But because the crew of the ship used potentially lethal force to repel what seems to be a legal boarding action in support of a declared blockade, there are allegations that some sort of improper mission planning may have gone on, that extends to the very highest levels of the Israeli government?
Doesn’t seem reasonable.
No-one who has actually watched the videos, posted above, could possibly say with a straight face that they seriously believe that the PM and his cronies deliberately ordered the mission to go down the way it did.
Oh, and the reference to the UN international convention on freedom of navigation on the high seas is interesting. This is a treaty instrument to which Israel is not a signatory.
Cite:
Chronological lists of ratifications of United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
Once cannot be in “contravention” of a treaty to which one is not a party.
Yeah, well ‘reasonable’ is in the eye of the beholder. Your mileage is welcome to vary, but it’s not the only mileage there is, now is it? Let’s see the evidence and then decide how this went down, rather than pre-deciding on a ‘reasonable’ story line.
A UN investigation should be called, and Israel should cooperate.
We’ve seen the evidence and nobody has pre-decided.
To say nothing of the fact that your argument makes no sense. If Israel simply wanted to kill some protesters, they could have strafed them from the air in choppers or simply sunk the damn ships themselves. Instead, all the evidence shows that the commandos went in with less-than-lethal force and were attacked the “peace activists” with potentially lethal weaponry.
Blaming Israel for armed attackers picking a fight with soldiers is… interesting.
Yeah, cuz Israel would never go for plausible deniability in the killings, would they?
I’m a suspicious person, and I think they’re smart enough to at least try to cover their asses on this. Let them prove to the world that they didn’t, that it was all a great big screwup. Let’s see the mission plans.
This is the same standard we see in all sorts of Conspiracy Theories. “Sure, I don’t have any evidence but the lack of evidence is proof that they may be hiding something!”
Again, we have a fairly well understood situation. Armed assailants attacked soldiers. Your claim is, essentially, that Israel somehow planned for the “peace activists” to attack the commandos. Even if true, the use of lethal force in response to people wielding crowbars (to say nothing of knives) is hardly beyond the pale. Attacking a soldier with a deadly weapon removes the “victim” label from the attacker if they get shot in the process of that assault.
Why aren’t you calling for an investigation to see what planning the “peace activists” engaged in, by the way? Or are we just analyzing a possible Israeli CT at present?
You guys are all anti-semites. You know who else would have criticized Israeli for attacking an unarmed ship on a humanitarian mission in international waters and killed two dozen civilians? Yeah, that’s right, the Nazis.
Shame.
Like North Korea brazenly sinking a South Korean ship in international and/or disputed waters?
Let’s start out with the obvious: soldiers were the active party here, boarding the flotilla at 2 AM, illegally in international waters. So it’s a bit misleading to portray it as merely some peace activists running up to some military camp and starting to beat up soldiers. At the very least, saying that the soldiers attacked the boat is far more plausible than saying that the flotilla was “invading Israeli sovereignity.”
Imagine this situation: a bunch of anti-Tehran protesters in a ship in the middle of the Indian ocean are boarded by Iranian thugs who respond to rocks and pipes being thrown at them by… slaughtering two dozen civilians. For some reason I think it unlikely that you’d be out here saying that the activists had it coming.
Yeesh dude, get a grip on your biases. Let’s let the UN look at the mission planning, translate the incident tapes, and see what develops. When a nation kills 10 civilians engaged in a mission of mercy, it’s freakin nuts to presume that its motives were all sweetness and light. Are you nuts? Do you support an international investigation? Why not?
If that ship were a foreign vessel intent on docking at and Iranian port w/o permission, and the people aboard resisted with violence*, then I would not think the Iranians had acted too harshly.
*beating them with pipes, tossing them overboard…
Let’s actually start with the obvious: the applicable laws have already been cited, and far from clearly saying that it was illegal, they sure seem to say that ships that are running a blockade can be boarded outside of neutral waters.
I agree, and if anybody had actually done so, I’d point out how silly it was. Instead, we had a mob armed with deadly weapons attack soldiers who were enforcing a blockade, apparently in accordance with the international laws of warfare.
Aside from the utterly misleading and absurd dimensions of that analogy, that’s a good analogy.
If the blockade runners weren’t blockade runners (duh) and were just staging a love-in in the middle of the Mediterranean, of course I’d condemn anybody attacking their vessel. But they weren’t. If a group of protesters were trying to violate an Iranian blockade and then, wielding lethal weapons, attacked Iranian naval commandos? Yes, I’d most certainly state that they had it coming.
How about this, Finn: let’s drop this “lethal weapon” canard. Sure, crowbars can kill you, but so can pretty much any heavy object. Calling it a lethal weapon is just an attempt to conflate crowbars with machine guns. Yes, they are in fact different. Drop the shrillness.
A question: will you at least grant that Israel fucked up here, and probably should face civil (and possibly criminal) damages? I am certain the Israeli government didn’t intend to end up with this egg on its face, but surely you can admit it’s a screw up?
I’ll chime in here as a U.S. citizen who fully supports the right of Israel to exist, and has fully supported the right of Israel to defend the country from invasion, and has fully supported the U.S. financial and military support of Israel.
This action, simply, is beyond the pale.
Okay, how about this: Iranian Green protesters start a parade without a permit. Soldiers come, some protesters start using lethal weapons! (read: thrown stones) against them, and the military starts spraying them with machine gun fire.
Even if it were the case that it’s totally legal for the Israeli military (as opposed to custom officers) to board a civilian vessel in international waters, don’t you think the question of proportionality is relevant?
How about this, you don’t call facts “canards” just because they don’t fit in well with your argument?
[
](http://definitions.uslegal.com/d/deadly-weapon/)
Crowbars fit quite nicely.
Or, it’s a correct statement that crowbars are deadly weapons and you don’t like that, so you’re saying that they’re being conflated with machine guns and then arguing against that strawman.
Civil damages under which court? And as already cited and quoted twice now, international law certainly seems to state that Israel acted in a legal manner. You can’t just gloss that over because your argument that it’s illegal is much stronger without that tidbit.
Of course, we would have seen the exact same reaction if Israel tried to enforce the blockade within Gaza’s territorial waters (which doesn’t matter, as military blockades are determined by military necessity and not territorial waters). The situation is bog standard, unfortunately. A group initiated violence against Israeli forces in a manner that was virtually guaranteed to result in casualties. When Israeli forces defended themselves and the casualties resulted, some folks claimed “See! Barbaric aggression!”
Of course if Israel let the convoy through, then under international law Israel’s blockade would be illegal since it was no longer effective. Nice Catch 22, of course.
Why are you refusing to use accurate analogies? We were dealing with people willfully and deliberately violating a military blockade and I’m not sure what your interest is in downplaying the use of lethal force when one side does it and overplaying it when the other does (machine guns, seriously?), but if you’d like to let someone smash you in the head with a crowbar (or a nice heavy rock) to prove how non-lethal it is, I’d probably advise against it.