WTF dude!!!
Yeah i can’t access video from here but it sounds like the Commandoes didn’t have a choice once they were in teh soup.
I would say that the popposite of gandhi’s tactics would be offensive attacks on the brits rather than reactive attacks on brits that attack Indians.
Sorry its probably my fualt. I didn’t realize this was out of bounds until ab out two pages ago.
Yeah I think your cite creates room for Israel’s actions assuming that the blockade is legal. Doesn’t really seem to be helping tho.
Well the BBC has angered at least one Palestinian group with their pro-Israeli bias:
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=288843
Anyway the English media has not “been notorious for” anything of the sort. Both sides like to shout very loudly about how it is biased against them. More on the BBC regarding this:
Both sides are generally covered in the UK newspapers as well. Some are quite pro-Israel and some are quite pro-Palestine.
Please don’t ever confuse “people shouting loudly” with “actual evidence”.
Good thing I wasn’t talking about the legality of it then. In fact, that was the whole bloody point of what I posted; that things can be legal and yet still morally reprehensible.
Without the full video anything can be happening here, it could be agent provacatuers that boarded the boat along with the comandos, you really have no way of knowing but once all of the activists get released we’ll hear more of the truth about the situation.
Yeah, I understood that.
My point (to which yours was in response) was that what you said is, in fact, is what motivates people - some gut-level opinion about the rightness or wrongness of the blockade, and presumably about the conflct as a whole.
My evidence of this is that those who initially state that they are affronted by the “illegality” of Israeli actions do not, in any case I know of, change their minds when it is proven that those acts were, in point of fact, “legal”.
See, I totally agree with you - the legality or otherwise of the acts appears to be essentially irrelevant to people’s opinions of them.
Sadly, for the most part, as someone in the thread above loudly proclaimed, so do the facts.
I don’t even know what to say to the above. This train wreck of a thread is 11 pages in now, and it’s been explained at least a dozen times already, yet you can still assert this with a straight face and eyes shinning with…well, something. Unreal.
Though I know it’s futile in the face of such militant stubbornness, and just to be clear here, the Israeli’s have EXACTLY the same authority to stop these ships and inspect them as the police have to pull you over. The fact that it did not take place in their country is IRRELEVANT, and they DO have such a claim.
Which part of the above (that has been explained multiple times already) don’t you seem to be tracking in on, exactly? I’m genuinely curious here, since it seems to me to be about as cut and dried as these kinds of things get.
And what fact based assertion about ‘International Waters’ do you suppose has a bearing on this question? Can you cite why you believe that ‘International Waters’ has any bearing, or why this makes Israel have no authority to enforce their blockade in them?
Why is the onus not on those who deliberately provoked this incident?? What do you base your assertions on (aside from raw emotion and ignorance of the actual international statutes involved)???
-XT
If the Israelis were permitted by international law to be on board to enforce their blockade, you cannot claim that this justified the activists’ retailiation as self-defence. Just like you can’t assault a police officer for tresspassing if he’s got a warrant that permits him to be on your property.
If the activists were not aware of their obligation to allow Israeli soldiers on board, given their stated objective of running the Israeli blockade, they are still fully to blame for their actions. Ignorance of the law is not considered a valid defence.
True. Sadly, it’s considered a valid reason to post, however…
-XT
Well some of the aid workers/activists (delete whichever you disagree with) have been released and are claiming that the israelis opened fire on the ship before boarding:
I thought the debate over the legality of boarding the floatilla had more to do with the ‘occupying country’ question and less with the International Waters issue.
Grumman & xtisme
Are you referring to this: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12522171#post12522171
It’s a good explanation, but I don’t see how it proves me wrong. What I see boils down to this: Israel has the authority because they have the power to enforce it. However, the entire point of the flotilla was to deny that authority. Of course they didn’t see the boarding/invading (depending on whose side you take) soldiers as a legitimate authority. But then, all of this assumes the activists hit/shot first, which has never been proven.
Let me be clear about one thing, I do not blame the soldiers. This is just what happens when you send soldiers to do a non-violent job. The responsibility is on the shoulders of the command, and on the world for allowing this situation to go on as it has.
I am only addressing this because this style of argument I have seen it used too often and it is not only frustrating, moderators end up warning the non-offending party when they get frustrated.
This map was all over the place at the time and noone argued that this was grossly inaccurate. You make incorrect statements from time to time as well as anyone else but that doesn’t make it logical for me to cast a pall over everything you say.
[quote]
If it helps, think of the fact as "The north was not touched [by the type of violence were are currently discussing]"9/quote]
But thats not what you said and you’ve been busting chops over the precise use of words. I think its time for you to stop spending pages and pages on an issue after someone admits that they were engaging in hyperbole or using an idiomatic phrase or they made a small mistake of fact. It is not only distracting it does nothing for the argument. I don’t know if they have a word for this sort of tactic but its very ineffective.
I am not taking issue with the facts of the Lebanese invasion. I am taking issue with the method of argument you fell into. You pick up some inaccuracy, overstatement, or use of rhetoric on some tangential issue and proceed to focus on that inaccuracy as if it will advance the argument of the main issue. I mean you spend PAGES on this sort of stuff and it is very frustrating when Capt. Ridley says something and you continue to impeach him with the same overstatement that he made and clarified half a dozen pages ago.
[if this is more appropriate for another board please delete the following and just let me know where its supposed to go] I would also like to note that it has been my experience that Finn gets away with implying other people’s dishonesty while others do not get away with implying Finn’s dishonesty. Granted Finn never steps way over the line like some other posters but I have seen people say things that were no more offensive than what Finn says and Finn seem to get away with it while the other poster gets told to tone it down. I don’t know if its because you are acting within the rules technically speaking while others have made some footfault that you have not but I wish some moderator would explain to me why this seems to be the case. It happens in thread after thread.
Considering that the entire thread you linked to there seemed to be full of GD type speculative BS without much substance, I’m going to go with ‘no’, for my own answer. Grumman of course is free to give his or her own take on it.
If you are referring to the thread you linked to, I don’t believe it was a very good explanation, since it was remarkably short on actual cited facts for a GQ type thread. Disappointingly so.
Well, that’s certainly a valid point as well in the ‘might makes right’ school of thought. Leaving that aside, however, there is the little matter of Israel having the right to enforce their blockade, especially if they suspect someone is trying to smuggle in weapons. And let’s be honest here…these fools who tried to run the blockade had ‘guilty’ written in large, bold letters all over them.
How did that work out for them? How would it work out for you if you told that cop that he didn’t have the authority to search your MJ wreaking car for drugs? Or to have you take a breathalyzer test when you were weaving about the road from side to side?
Well…yeah. Of course they didn’t. But denial of reality isn’t the same things as being right, no? I could say that I don’t acknowledge the authority of the folks at the air port to search my bags or take my deadly bottle of shampoo away because they fear it’s an explosive…but how do you suppose my brave stand is going to work out for me, especially if I get violent about it? Say I’m going through an air port security check, refuse to allow the authorities to check my bags, and when they try I pull out a large stick and start waling on them? What do you suppose might happen to me in that case? Would you be shocked if I somehow managed to get myself shot?
No, actually, it doesn’t…all this assumes that they simply resisted the Israeli’s authority and refused to comply. If one does that then it’s really not a large surprise if things spin out of control in that situation, especially when the situation itself is so volatile…and so DELIBERATELY and artificially manufactured volatility.
Well, that’s good I guess.
Who would you have sent, considering who these folks were, the situation, the fact that they refused to comply with earlier requests for inspection and the unknown and possibly hostile nature and composition of the cargo? If they had sent over the Israeli equivalent of the Port Authority, do you suppose those folks wouldn’t have been armed as well?? And, if they were attacked (physically or verbally) in an emotionally charged situation as this clearly was, what do you suppose would have been the difference in outcome? Possibly the same number of deaths but perhaps more Israeli’s dead instead? And would that have been better, or would it have justified things in the minds of those who are already clearly anti-Israel??
Considering how this has played out in this thread alone, what would the benefit have been to Israel to do things in this manner? I mean, do you suppose that those who are knee jerking against this whole stinkingly set up incident would somehow have magically given Israel a pass on this had it played out that way?? Seriously?
Again I ask, why is the responsibility not on the shoulders of those who deliberately provoked this incident?? If not all of the responsibility, how about SOME of it? A bit? Any?
-XT
OK.
Can I talk about the tactic of beating someone up over an overstatement or inaccuracy that was clarified pages ago because I don’t really think it proves anything whether a bomb was dropped in lebanon or not but it seems to me that Capt. clarified his position pages and pages ago and yet he gets warned right along with Finn?
It’s time to move on and get back to the topic. If you have a personal issue with how FinnAgain handled that argument you should discuss it with him or start a Pit thread. If you have a question about how the mods handled it, go to ATMB. For the record, neither of them was formally warned. Those posts were mod notes.
They were in the middle of the sea. How do you land commandoes on that boat and then accuse the people on the boat of picking the fight? Perhaps they were asking for it when they declared they were going to run the blockade. Israel says that they were acting in self defense when they tried to maintain the blockade by keeping out the humanitarian aid by sending commandoes because they couldn’t be sure that it was really humanitarian aid. Do the people on the boat have no right of self defense or does everyone have to throw up their hands when the IDF shows up?
Sorry, I’m running a little behind. Your cites seem to show that Israel was not breaking international law by stopping blockade runners. If I have stated that Israel was breaking international law by taking military action to stop blockade runners then I retract that statement until someone can show that Israel was breaking international law. With that said, Turkey seems pissed about the whole thing. not a good development for anyone.