Just because...

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

We need Cherith Cutestory, maritime lawyer, to solve this problem

cute story bro

Pirates of the Caribbean is serious business.

It's also easier to resolve

Why were they deployed in the first place? From what I've read, this was a commando unit without experience or training in dealing with crowd control, or experience with confronting civilians. If Israel wants to maintain its blockade, why not use a police unit that has the necessary experience to handle that type of situation? Why not wait until the ships have entered Israeli waters?

I'm not blaming the Israeli soldiers--what exactly happened on board is still murky, and maybe you are right, they may have been acting in self-defense--but I think it is fair to be critical of whoever decided it would be a good idea to deploy commandos into a situation that they weren't properly prepared to confront.

Do you really think Israel reacted in way that benefits its people? What does Israel hope to gain by antagonizing Turkey--one of its only allies in the Muslim world? Turkey is claiming future aid ships will be escorted by the Turkish navy. Turkey is a member of NATO, so that makes things interesting. I strongly disagree that this was the best course of action for Israel to take.

Whether it was beneficial for the Israeli state or not, the reasons they had for placing the blockade and refusing those vessels entry were justified. In war you can't allow your enemies to receive aid, supplies, potential troop reinforcements and military assistance.

In a country slightly bigger than New Jersey, I move that it's kind of hard for a commando unit to have no experience dealing with civilians.

Also, even my limited experience in Israel confirms what FD says. Now, I only met kids in the service, but that kind of covers most of the population.

They all also want to go to South America. Irony.

via Digg

Violence aside, Israel still boarded and seized a humanitarian vessel in international water.



So, denying supplies to innocent civilians and instead letting them suffer and die is justified?

Let them eat cake.

Wasn't the point to stop weapons being imported?

So they seize a humanitarian vessel?

How about another question added into the mix?

You must be reading a different article to me, because things seem nowhere near that simple to me

That's true. So I guess my question is "Can they do that?" It's not obvious to me yet that they can't.

It's hard to say that what the Israeli soldiers did is self defense when they were boarding another vessel in international waters. Which of course is highly illegal and in in a way an act of piracy.

Fox News and folks like that have been talking about "terrorist ties" that the humanitarian group had, which is just absurd and an excuse for this obvious **** up that Israel did.

It was, admittedly a bit simplistic. Let me reword that: The current ongoing war was sparked by the decision of the UN to divide Palestine in a Jewish and Arab state after the second world war had ended to resolve the ****load of problems the Jews had after the holocaust. This decision resulted in a large amount of Jews emigrating to the Jewish state, resulting in an escalation of the conflicts. Conflicts were there a long time before, like the Arab revolt, an uprising where one of the causes were the mass immigration of the Jews. The UN should have recognized that a renewed mass immigration would likely start a lot of conflicts.

Is that right?

The best solution for the future of the rest of us is to turn the middle east into a sheet of glass, including Israel. But we're too nice for that.

This is a good article about the legality of the raid. It's not cut and dry.

No.

For starters, the UN decision to partition the Palestinian Authority was reactionary to the aliyahs (mass migrations) that were already taking place. The aliyahs were not prompted or encouraged by any third party at all. In fact, the Allies were opposed to the aliyahs - the British set up concentration camps on Cyprus to prevent Jewish refugees from reaching Palestine.

There were Jewish terrorist/paramilitary agents working in Palestine for a very long time before WW2... the earliest I can think of would be mid-19th century Restorationism, but it certainly dates back further. I believe the current war is prehistoric.

Seriously?

Can you cite anything for that last proposition? Because it seems to me that if you're carrying out a blockade (which, let's assume for the moment, can be legal in at least some circumstances), you can carry it out either in international waters or in the target's territorial waters. I don't see why the first option would be more objectionable than the second.

I'll say that piracy is right out, though. What Israel did here is definitionally not piracy for more than one reason.

You can pull the trigger, tough guy. We'll have plenty of alcohol standing by so you can attempt to drown out what remains of your conscience in that soulless husk of yours.

Come on. You're obviously too smart to actually believe this, and you ought to be too smart to think it's clever or original.

A state declaring and enforcing a blockade on another state is legal in wartime. The problem here, as with anything else involving laws in the conflict, is that Palestine/Hamas is not a state. It's in limbo, apparently.

They were in international waters at the time, they could have a naked sex party for all that matters, if they went into Israeli waters it would be different. If that logic holds, then they could just attack the ships when they left Turkish waters no?

No one here will argue that Israel has the right to stop and board any ship, anywhere. In this case, the flotilla clearly declared its intent. If Israel can carry out a blockade (and I'll concede that this part is still in question), it would be nonsensical to say that they can't stop ships attempting to pass the blockade.

And... you're not suggesting in the emphasized part of your post that Israel can only set up a blockade within its own waters, right? That would be pretty incredible.

I don't mean to commit myself to arguing on Israel's behalf here, by the way. I think the blockade is likely to be ill-advised; I'm just not sure that anything about it is clearly illegal, as a lot of other posters here seem to believe.

I'm smart enough to recognize that what's moral or right isn't always what's best. When you weigh the amount of good that comes out of that area of the world against the amount of grief it causes, it's clear that doing away with it is better for everyone else. It's like cutting rotted bits out of a potato.

There's a difference between right and effective here. What's right isn't always the best coarse of action.

I really hope as a fellow human being, that you seriously do not believe that. I agree with you that the Middle-East is a cluster**** currently, but I'm not so sure that it's okay to go nuke the entire Middle-East. You do realize that doing so, would probably cause social chaos around the world, you know, where Muslims, Jews, etc etc have all emigrated. Not so sure they would be down with turning the ME into glass. Along with having the blood of millions and millions and millions of INNOCENT people on your hands.

JM, please just act like you haven't been indoctrinated by the 1942 (yes, I can use 1942 too) styled instillation of fear of everything that is either Muslim or Middle-East. 'The Middle-East' is not a barbaric place. Not even a single percentile of that entire world is actually capable of violence, nor barbaric, nor underdeveloped. Compare that to your average western town where people get beat up every single day, crazy hoots belonging to sects and stores get robbed.

And yes, there are some crazy ass Muslims out there, capable of laying down IEDs and killing soldiers from the western world, but how is their view of 'the enemy' different from our view? Can you call any person who is fighting for a cause they truly believe in a terrorist? Flying planes into skyscrapers, that's some goddamn terrorism. But, in their opinion, defending their country from being invaded by U.S./British/Polish soldiers, is that truly terrorism? Or is that a term put upon them so the general population of the aforementioned countries isn't capable of separating terrorism from war?

Please don't act all: Let's just blow them all up. You're not even slightly influenced by the current ongoing Iraq occupation. Please put things in perspective

Israelis have almost entirely lost the capacity to accept criticism of anything "security" related. It doesn't matter how corrupt politicians are (practically every minister is currently under police investigation) - any government decision labeled "security" automatically achieves universal acceptance by the public. And the politicians know that and use that.

The fact that our government is racist and suicidal doesn't worry me as much as the fact that they have such wide support by the public. There's no political alternative. Just so you know, most of the Israeli public deems the world's reaction as an antisemitic diplomatic lynch orchestrated by Muslim Terrorists(TM) and their liberal anti-Zionist backstabbing commie Jew friends around the world.

Even in Tel Aviv, the last haven of political sanity, you have to watch your words or get called an "Arab lover" or "Israel hater".

Sigh. A co-worker just came up to me and went on and on about how Arab MKs should respect "our" laws and defend the state or be thrown in jail. But he doesn't think it will happen because "we're a state of pussies", unable to do what's right. He also mentioned his aspirations of smashing certain glass objects in their faces, should he be in their vicinity.

Fardreamer, I'm just wondering, are there more people like you, just wanting to have peace? Are there any people publicly speaking about it? Or are you relatively 'on your own'?

Wow, I gave JM way too much credit. He's actually pretty dumb.

1942?

kristallnacht.

SIEG HEIL!

Well apparently they can, because they did and no one got angry enough to invade them. Everything else is just politics.

International law has no actual authority, it's at best a set of fuzzy boundaries that are used as an excuse to start wars. It's not the same as laws that the citizen of a country must abide by.



Are you saying that Hitler was right?

Being a Jew in nazi germany sucked, but being a tall blonde arian man KICKED ASS.

All I'm saying is be a little more selfish. Stop all this high-and-mighty bull**** and put your own country first for a change. Israel is doing it, and look how good they are doing!