Israeli warships attacked at least one of the six ships carrying pro-Palestinian activists and aid for blockaded Gaza. The al Jazeera satellite channel reported that Israeli navy forces fired at the ship and boarded it, wounding the captain.
Israel pointed the finger of blame at the activists on the boats, accusing them of initiating the deadly bloodshed when they attacked a naval boarding force with live fire, knives and clubs on some of the six ships.
The military said “it seems as if part of the participants onboard the ships were planning to lynch the forces.”
“As a result of this life-threatening and violent activity, naval forces employed riot dispersal means, including live fire,” it said.
Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, too blamed the passengers.
“They initiated the violence,” Regev told AFP. “We made every possible effort to avoid this incident. The servicemen were given instructions that it was to be a police operation and to use maximum restraint.
Israeli officials said overnight the navy told the activists by radio to turn back toward Cyprus or head for the Israeli port of Ashdod to unload the 10,000 tonnes of aid, which Israel would then transfer to the Palestinians in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
The convoy set off in international waters off Cyprus on Sunday in defiance of an Israeli-led blockade of Gaza.
The flotilla was organised by pro-Palestinian groups and a Turkish human rights organisation. Turkey had urged Israel to allow it safe passage and said the 10,000 tonnes of aid the convoy was carrying was humanitarian.
Details are sketchy, which they typically are whenever Israel is involved, which I imagine gives their spin doctors time to figure out what the fuck their tact is going to be, but preliminary reports suggest that Israel boarded a ship that was part of a convoy carrying humanitarian supplies such as food and medicine to gaza, and in the midst of waving their guns about, the passengers didn't take kindly to the Israeli forces forces presence and eventually around twenty people were killed and as many fifty were wounded. Then again other reports are like 19. We'll find out eventually. But even I couldn't initially fathom why Israel would attack the 'Freedom Flotilla'. Was it to prove that they are in control? Is this an exercise on how 'bad ass are we' or 'we do what we want'?
Now to be fair, the Israeli forces did declare that they would not allow the ship to reach the Hamas controlled Gaza strip, when they say embargo they mean embargo, but that said with all of the casualties on the Humanitarian Aid Providing Activists (the kind of committed people that make the rest of us feel like shit), I wonder how many Israeli troops were killed in the encounter.....yep. zero.
Now in their defense they may have been dressed in Kevlar, and there wasn't any tear gas handy, or perhaps the Israeli Warships didn't know when the ships rudder was in order to disable it, but regardless, the threat from these 700 knife wielding, fish throwing, gun toting, food delivering activists couldn't have been very strong if they injured only four Israeli sailors...hell, you can injure four guys just by climbing onto a boat. Especially, when they are black commando clad Israeli special forces bad asses being dropped from helicopters onto the ship.
Yes....So, when Israeli ministry said a quaint little 'boarding party' what they really meant was heavily armed guys dressed from head to toe in black being dropped onto the decks of ships at 4:30am.....seriously...has everyone gone cuckoo cuckoo? This is straight out of a Steven Segal flick. All we need now is some martial arts mayhem. Pity there weren't any Japanese Ninja's on board.
Now, I'm a rather open minded fellow. I don't blindly hate Israel or the Jews, because I think it's plain silly. I particularly turn into rock star mode when some religious fundamentalist conspiracy driveling walking Humiliation on Islam finds it in his place to inform me of the power of the Zionist conspiracy and then proceeds to talk about various things he see's on the internet. Because naturally, if your as poorly educated as this fella, once you read something, it must be Quranic....
To any here who feel particularly uncharitably to the World's Jewish Population, consider this. The Prophet treated the Jewish Citizens of the Arab Nations fairly and gave them freedom from religious persecution. Islam is a religion of Tolerance. You can't just be tolerant when you find it convenient or your peeved off at facebook. People are people yo. Some good, some bad, mostly shades of grey. Israel just gets the most crap.
Anyhow, back to the point, I have to say, I think Israel fucked up huge here. They were told that the ship would be coming, turkey assured them that it was carrying only humanitarian aid, there are no Israeli fatalities, no footage (as yet) showing the belligerent hippies attacking the Israeli forces and worst of all the ships are full of journalists (including Pakistani channel Aaj TV's own Talat Hussain).
Now the right question is why not deliver the food to the Israeli's in the first place and let them hand it off. Well, firstly they don't trust the Israelis'. After all, if it wasn't for the bombing, attacks, land disputes etc, those supplies of food and medicine wouldn't be necessary in the first place. And secondly, Israel actually has no right to create that embargo. The reason they get away with it is because no one else in the region has either the balls or the navy to take on Israel's fleet.
The News black out created by a freaked out Israeli information service is hardly going to help when all of those peeved off, shot at, internet publishing journalists take our their laptops and take aim at the blundering Israeli military. By the end of it, they'll make it look like Israel carpet bombed a Toys R Us. Huge Fuck Ups. They need to hire the guy who designed this....
Fire the Military Strategist that thought it was a good idea to attack a Humana-fucking-tarian Convoy. Or just have Mossad make that imbecile disappear. Next time, find a few of your own 'Free Palestine' Israeli Jews and put them on the boat. It'll look way tolerant...and actually good PR for a change.
