Israel Attack Humanitarian Ship, 10 men killed

[Down South]

Pat Kenny covering this now on RTE Radio 1. Interviewing people on the Irish boat and talking to the families of those already detained.

[Hedley Lamarr]

You are missing my point.....the Arab/Muslim world should be boycotting them.

Why? This is a Human Rights issue not a religous one.

Thanks for clearing that up

The fact that there is no boycott here is what puzzles me. 

[Ulick]

It doesn't make sense what the Israelis did here.  They have an extremely well oiled propaganda machine and usually have a they started it argument before they go in all guns blazing, even if for all the thousands of rockets they claim are being fired at Israel none ever seem to hit a built up area (considering how much of Israel is a built up area).  Do the Israelis have a bigger strategy or are they just saying now 'F&*k you all we will do what we want and we don't care about PR exercises or how it looks anymore'.

Well I think they did e.g. preventing the European parliamentarians from boarding the ships in Cyprus. Their propaganda machine has been pretty slick so far, preventing communications from those on board the ships to ensure only the Israeli story gets out, releasing the edited video footage (without timestamps), releasing the pictures of the weapons (even if they are mostly kitchen utensils) and then muddying the waters with the claims they offered to allow the aid through (without mentioning their restrictions) and that they were fired on first. All of that is more than enough to allow the Jewish lobby to keep the US on board.

[Hardy]

I'm still wondering what our government is doing about the kidnap of Irish citizens and their abduction to Israel, a place they had no intention of going to. Why is the Irish ambassador to the UN not raising the kidnap of Irish citizens at the security council, and demanding international sanctions against the perpetrators?

The abuse of our passports by Israeli agents was an indirect compromising of the security of our citizens. The seizure of our citizens on the high seas is an act of piracy and is an order of magnitude more serious. We should reasonably expect our government to defend our right to travel without let or hindrance and to protect us against attack, kidnapping and abduction. What did I pay €80 for a passport for?

No other state has molested Irish citizens in this way. When Irish citizens are kidnapped by guerillas or terrorists in other countries, we have Department Of Foreign Affairs officials, consuls and ambassadors on the job immediately. Where are they now? At the very least, we should be doing what Turkey is doing and telling the Israelis that an Air Corps plane will be landing in Tel Aviv in five hours time and they had better produce our citizens.

[Zapatista]

Thanks for clearing that up

The fact that there is no boycott here is what puzzles me.

It's the same reason there is no boycott anywhere. We don't know or we don't care enough.

[Ulick]

I hope I'm wrong but I'd like to think it's nothing to do with arms contracts:

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/state-bought-836414m-of-weapons-from-israel-2161819.html

[Hardy]

That usually works the other way. The supplier is afraid of pissing off the customer.

[Down South]

Here's a different view ... Jeruselam Times, currently front page 


Our World: Ending Israel's losing streak
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
06/01/2010 08:12

A straight line runs from the anti-Israel UN resolution passed last Friday and the Hamas flotilla.
Talkbacks (5)


These words are being written before the dust has settled on Monday morning's naval commando raid on the Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla of terror supporters. The raid's full range of operational failures still cannot be known. Obviously the fact that the mission ended with at least six soldiers wounded and at least 10 Hamas supporters dead makes clear that there were significant failures in both the IDF's training for and execution of the mission.

The navy and other relevant bodies will no doubt study these failures. But they point to a larger strategic failure that has crippled the country's capacity to contend with the information war being waged against it. Until this failure is remedied, no after-action investigation, no enhanced training, no new electronic warfare doodad will make a significant impact on Israel's ability to contend with the next Hamas flotilla.

IN THE space of four days, the country has suffered two massive defeats. A straight line runs between the anti-Israel resolution passed last Friday at the UN's Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference and the Hamas flotilla. And in both cases, officials voiced "surprise" at these defeats.

Given the months-long build-up to the NPT review conference, and the weeks-long build-up to the Turkish-Hamas flotilla, that surprise cannot be attributed to a lack of information. What it points to, rather, is a cognitive failure of our leaders to understand the nature of the war being waged against us. And it is this fundamental failure of cognition that has landed six soldiers in the hospital, the nation's international reputation in tatters and its spokesmen searching for a way to describe a reality they do not understand.

The reality is simple and stark. Israel is the target of a massive information war, unprecedented in scale and scope. This war is being waged primarily by a massive consortium of the international Left and the Arab and Islamic worlds. The staggering scale of the forces aligned against us is demonstrated by two things.

The Hamas abetting Free Gaza Web site published a list of some 222 organizations that endorsed the terror-supporting flotilla. The listed organizations from the four corners of the earth include Jewish anti-Israel groups as well as Christian, Islamic and nonreligious anti-Israel groups. It is hard to think of any cause other than Israel-bashing that could unite such disparate forces.

The second indicator of the scope of the war is far more devastating than the list of groups that endorsed the pro-Hamas flotilla. That indicator is the fact that at the UN on Friday, 189 governments came together as one to savage Israel. There is no other issue that commands such unanimity. The NPT reviewconference demonstrated that the only way the international community will agree on anything is if its members are agreeing that Israel has no right to defend itself. Theconference 's campaign against Israel shows that the 222 organizations supporting Hamas are a reflection of the will of the majority of the nations of the world.

This war is nothing new. It has been going on since the dawn of modern Zionism 150 years ago. In many ways, it is just the current iteration of the eternal war against the Jewish people.

The red-green alliance's aims are twofold. It seeks to delegitimize Israel's right to exist and it seeks to make it impossible for Israel to defend itself. If these aims are met, Israel's destruction will become an inevitability.

UNTIL US President Barack Obama took office, Israel's one steady asset in this war was the US. Until last year, the US consistently refused to join the red-green alliance because its leaders recognized that the alliance's campaign was part and parcel of its campaign against US superpower status. Indeed, some US leaders recognized that the alliance's animus toward Israel stemmed from the same source as its rejection of American exceptionalism.

Dismally, what the US's vote in favor of the NPT review conference's final anti-Israel (and by default pro-Iranian) resolution makes clear is that under Obama, the US is no longer Israel's reliable ally. Indeed, what the US's vote shows is that the Obama administration's ideological preferences place it on the side of the red-green alliance. No amount of backpedalling by the Obama administration can make up the damage caused by its act of belligerence.

If Israel's leaders were better informed, they would have recognized a number of things in the lead-up to the conference. They would have realized that Obama's anti-nuclear conference in April, his commitment to a nuclear-free world, as well as his general ambivalence – at best – to US global leadership rendered it all but inevitable that he would turn on Israel. The truth is that Egypt's call for the denuclearization of Israel jibes with Obama's own repeatedly statedviews both regarding Israel and the US's own nuclear arsenal. Armed with this basic understanding of Obama's inclinations, Israel should have taken for granted that the NPTconference would target it. Consequently, in months preceding the conference , it should have stated loudly and consistently that as currently constituted, the NPT serves as the chief enabler of nuclear proliferation rather than the central instrument for preventing nuclear proliferation. North Korea exploited its status as an NPT signatory to develop its nuclear arsenal. Today Iran exploits its status as an NPT signatory to develop nuclear weapons. Unless the NPT is fundamentally revised, it will continue to serve as the primary instrument for nuclear proliferation.

Had this been Israel's position, it would have been able to undercut US arguments in favor of signing onto the final resolution. So too, such a position would have prepared Israel to cogently explain its rejection of the final resolution.

And that is the thing of it. The red-green alliance's aim at the NPT conference was to discredit Israel's deterrent capacity while delegitimizing its right to take preemptive action against Iran. Now, due to Israel's failure to make its case against the NPT in the months leading up to theconference , as our enemies use the US-supported final resolution to claim that our opposition to Iran's nuclear weapons program is hypocritical, we lack a cognitive framework for responding.

The fact that the government still doesn't get the point is made clear by its response to the decision. Its denunciation of the resolution makes no mention of the fact that the NPT regime itself has become the chief enabler of nuclear proliferation. So too, disastrously, in a clear bid to pretend away Obama's treachery, Israel actually applauded him for emptily criticizing the resolution he voted for. This response compounds the damage and ensures that the assault will continue.

AS TO the flotilla, the challenge it presented was nothing new. Israel has been confronted by suicide protesters for a decade now. The fact that these pro-Hamas activists intended to commit suicide to discredit Israel on camera was made clear by the fact that the Turkish organizers namedthe lead ship Rachel Corrie.

So too, the fact that IDF forces boarding the ships would be met by trenchant, violent opposition was knowable simply by looking at Turkey's role in the operation. First of all, the Turkish government-supported NGO behind the operation is IHH. As the US government, the Turkish government in the 1990s, the Investigative Project on Terrorism and countless other sources have proven, IHH is a terrorist organization with direct links to al-Qaida and Hamas. Its members have been involved in terrorist warfare from Chechnya and Bosnia to Iraq and Israel. The notion that IHH organizers would behave like radical leftist anti-Israel demonstrators on university campuses is simply ridiculous.

Moreover, there is Turkey's behavior to consider. Since Obama took office, Turkey's gradual slide into the Iranian axis has sped up considerably. Turkey's leading role in the flotilla, and the Erdogan government's ostentatious embrace of IHH – which just a decade ago Turkey banned from earthquake relief efforts in light of its violent, jihadist mission – made clear that the Erdogan regime would use any violence on board the ships as a way to strike a strategic blow at Israel's international standing.

In view of all of this, it is clear that the information strategy for contending with the flotilla was ill-conceived. Rather than attack Turkey for its facilitation of terrorism, and openly prepare charge sheets against the flotilla's organizers, crew and passengers for their facilitation of terrorism in breach of both domestic law and international law, the information efforts were largely concentrated on irrelevancies. Officials detailed all the humanitarian assistance Israel has provided Hamas-controlled Gaza. They spoke of the navy's commitment to use nonlethal force to take over the ships.

And now, in the aftermath of the lethal takeover of the flotilla, Israel's leaders stammer. Rather than demand an apology from the Turkish government for its support for these terrorists, Defense Minister Ehud Barak called his Turkish counterpart to talk over what happened. Rather than demand restitution for the terrorist assault against IDF troops, Israel has defended its troops' training in nonviolent crowd control.

These efforts are worse than worthless; they
make Israel appear whiny rather than indignant. And more depressingly, they expose a dangerous lack of comprehension about what has just occurred, and a concomitant inability to prepare for what will most certainly follow.

Israel is the target of a massive information war. For it to win this war, it needs to counter its enemies' lies with the truth.

The NPT has been subverted by the very forces it was created to prevent from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Hamas is a genocidal terrorist organization ideologically indistinguishable from al-Qaida. International law requires all states and non-state actors to take active measures to defeat it.

Israel is the frontline of the free world. Its ability to defend itself and deter its foes is the single most important guarantee of international peace. A strong Israel is also the most potent and reliable guarantor of the US's continued ability to project its power in the Middle East.

This is the unvarnished truth. It is also the beginning of a successful campaign to defang the massive coalition of nuclear proliferation- and terrorism-abettors aligned against Israel. But until our leaders finally recognize the nature of the war being waged against our country, these basic facts will remain ignored as we move from one stunning defeat to the next.

[Ulick]

That usually works the other way. The supplier is afraid of pissing off the customer.

Unless they've got a particularly good deal. 14 million would be peanuts to the Israelis but a substantial chunk out of the Irish Defence Force budget.

[Zapatista]

I'd say it's part of a trade deal.

One which might invovle passports

[Zapatista]

That usually works the other way. The supplier is afraid of pissing off the customer.

Unless they've got a particularly good deal. 14 million would be peanuts to the Israelis but a substantial chunk out of the Irish Defence Force budget.

It totals around 300million a year for the state.

[Ulick]

Israelis celebrating attack on Turkish Aid Ship - in front of Turkish Embassy,Tel Aviv

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6a3_1275348204

[Capt Pat]

It doesn't make sense what the Israelis did here.  They have an extremely well oiled propaganda machine and usually have a they started it argument before they go in all guns blazing, even if for all the thousands of rockets they claim are being fired at Israel none ever seem to hit a built up area (considering how much of Israel is a built up area).  Do the Israelis have a bigger strategy or are they just saying now 'F&*k you all we will do what we want and we don't care about PR exercises or how it looks anymore'.

Israel had to stop those ships from getting to Gaza and unloading their cargos. It is a ghetto that is being maintained by Israel and they want it kept that way. It is the beginning of the end for the Israeli occupation if those shops are allowed in, so they were stopped.

[heganboy]

from a realpolitik perspective this is going to backfire badly in the international community. Israel relies on the US almost completely and the article in the nytimes http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/world/middleeast/01policy.html?hpw is actually a reasonable reflection of the position in which Obama administration finds itself with regard to its own constituents. With Mitchell's initiative due to kick off so soon- Gaza is now back in the spotlight and a tough stance to defend.
From the Israeli internal political perspective, in order to court public opinion this was almost inevitable, a fact that seems to be "justifiable".

If you were interested in the pure political capital  here what if you step back for a bit and ask did anyone involved in the planning of this expedition expect that this group would make it to gaza and successfully distribute supplies? What chance of success did they give it- and was this made clear to all onboard? If you were organizing this trip and this was your cause, was it better to succeed or fail in this fashion? Does the international outcry justify the lives lost and the others put at risk?

Israel's position on Gaza is disgraceful personally I wonder if there were better ways of drawing attention to tht fact...

[gallsman]

Israel should be rightly condemned and sanctioned as a result of this disgraceful action.

However, some of the comments on this thread talking of Jewish conspiracies and power-brokerage in western economies and governments is an outright disgrace.