Merged Israel Attacks Palestinian Aid Flotilla, According To Reports

[bit_pattern]

I'm not Jewish and have never been to Israel(but hope to someday!)...but I'd love to have the stones to wear his T-shirt at that location.

But people with the stones to sail into a naval blockade are "provocateurs" and "terrorists", right? Love the double standards on this forum!

 

[The Fool]

Still only one unconvincing response to this. Man up everyone, Israel should allow any ship to dock in Gaza or not?

I think you are getting poor response rates due to the quality of the question. Israel has already allowed ships to land in the past....maybe a better question would be why not these particular ships? My views on that is variation in response to ships is a function of varying Israeli leadership....Olmert didn't pull a Netanyahu stunt....probably because he is not a complete dickhead.

 

[bit_pattern]

^6 And to respond to lionking. No, they don't have to, they could search the aid ships themselves and let them dock. Or open up the land borders to international aid and maintain the naval blockade, or a combination of both. or they could negotiate a peace settlement that doesn't involve them ethnically cleansing East Jerusalem of its Arab population and turning the West Bank into an archipelago of scattered territory by withdrawing to the 1967 borders.

 

[lionking]

I think you are getting poor response rates due to the quality of the question. Israel has already allowed ships to land in the past....maybe a better question would be why not these particular ships? My views on that is variation in response to ships is a function of varying Israeli leadership....Olmert didn't pull a Netanyahu stunt....probably because he is not a complete dickhead.

You obsess about Israel's leadership while remaining silent about Gaza's terrorist government. Curious.

 

[portlandatheist]

But people with the stones to sail into a naval blockade are "provocateurs" and "terrorists", right? Love the double standards on this forum!

There's actually a huge difference between peaceful protest and violence. At least in my book.

 

[bigjelmapro]

Commenting on the retraction, Blumenthal writes, "The more Israel’s claims about the flotilla’s terrorist links are challenged, the more they fall apart."

So you care to comment on this alleged 'claim' from the previous page or you going to conveniently gloss over this as well?

As for the terrorist links to IHH in general, there's plenty of material that can be found. But I'm sure this is a smear campaign, that is a campaign that's been ongoing for over decade now

Good primer:

 

[bigjelmapro]

Why do you think that divulge such state secrets to you when they won't even divulge it the BBC?

Your assumption is that such information isn't given to the BBC. My question would be is if the BBC would actually include such information in their print/online stories? Its no secret that the BBC doesn't have a stellar history of balanced reporting when it comes to this conflict.

Would you want to delve into this as well? Or just continue throwing any number of deflections into this thread

 

[lionking]

why is not stopping these ships going to lead to the sky falling when they have not intercepted ships in the past?

Because ships in the past carried weapons. Do you contest this?

 

[bigjelmapro]

But people with the stones to sail into a naval blockade are "provocateurs" and "terrorists", right? Love the double standards on this forum!

If this incident just involved people sailing and protesting, then by all means. But to my knowledge and how this incident unfolded, it was anything but a regatta.

Love the creation of this double standard on your part too. Kudos.

 

[theprestige]

But people with the stones to sail into a naval blockade are "provocateurs" and "terrorists", right? Love the double standards on this forum!

Not all of us have double standards. I think the kid was definitely a provocateur, in the sense that he was obviously intending to provoke a response of some kind. I'm glad he didn't provoke a violent response. And I'm glad he didn't seem to have a goal of provoking a violent response as an excuse to retaliate with violence of his own while loudly proclaiming "they started it!" But still, I think what he did was a provocation.

And I think that yeah, anybody trying to run a military blockade has some stones. And for the most part, I have no problem with people trying to run blockades if they think it's worth the risk and the effort.

Of course, I also have no problem with the people doing the blockading actually, you know, intercepting blockade runners and doing whatever is necessary to prevent them from running the blockade.

Depending on which faction I support--blockaders or runners--I'll naturally hope for one side to succeed while the other fails.

And I don't even really object to blockade-running--or violent resistance to blockaders--as a propaganda tool. The only real objection I have is to all the amateur propagandists, willing dupes, and useful idiots flailing about in this thread

 

[Gangularis]

Ah, peace activists. You gotta love 'em.

"All we are saaaaaaaaaying,

Is give peace slaughtering the dirty Jew(s) a chance..."

These folks remind me of the aliens from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide saga that lived on a planet constantly covered with clouds. Once they sent a probe outside the discovery of the universe had so shocked them, that they decided to eradicate it.

So they went out of their planet in a big fleet of spaceship, "singing songs of peace, love, happiness, and destruction of all other life forms".

"All you are doooinnggg... is makin strawman claims..."

No one in the video said anything of the sort. In fact, at the very end, the girl that accused them of killing her grandparents, says they should live with jews, but not in a "jewish state" ... How horrifically racist of her to suggest people live on equal footing with one another!! It gets so tiring watching people play the "whaaa am an innocent victim of anti-semitism" card, when it's simply not the case. Do yourself, and the jewish people, a favor, and stop crying wolf.

 

[bit_pattern]

says they should live with jews, but not in a "jewish state" ... How horrifically racist of her to suggest people live on equal footing with one another!!

Isn't it interesting to watch a unch of self-professed "sceptics" agitate so heavily in favour of a religiously pure state? I mean, Israel could have solved this problem forty years ago by accepting that the Arab population came with the land they occupied and gave them all citizenship, but no, that might interfere with their religiously/ethnically pure state! I'd love to see their reacions if it were an Islamic country trying to prevent Jews from joining their state! Again, the double standards on this forum never cease to amaze!

 

[lionking]

Isn't it interesting to watch a unch of self-professed "sceptics" agitate so heavily in favour of a religiously pure state? I mean, Israel could have solved this problem forty years ago by accepting that the Arab population came with the land they occupied and gave them all citizenship, but no, that might interfere with their religiously/ethnically pure state! I'd love to see their reacions if it were an Islamic country trying to prevent Jews from joining their state! Again, the double standards on this forum never cease to amaze!

Are you serious? The PLO rejected the best peace offer they will ever get. Why was that?

 

[bigjelmapro]

Isn't it interesting to watch a unch of self-professed "sceptics" agitate so heavily in favour of a religiously pure state? I mean, Israel could have solved this problem forty years ago by accepting that the Arab population came with the land they occupied and gave them all citizenship, but no, that might interfere with their religiously/ethnically pure state! I'd love to see their reacions if it were an Islamic country trying to prevent Jews from joining their state! Again, the double standards on this forum never cease to amaze!

Amazing logic of the one-state solution. To let in a bunch of people associated with those who went to war with Israel in order to destroy it and to let them in and pretend as if nothing happened.

What's even more amazing is that these anti-religion leftists have joined hands with Islamists. Contradiction in terms.

 

[Dr. Tobias Fünke]

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,698916,00.html

It's in Kraut again, the gist is: "Israelis board Irish ship - no violence". Duh.
It's fairly easy not to attack armed soldiers with sticks, most of us manage every day.

 

[lionking]

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,698916,00.html

It's in Kraut again, the gist is: "Israelis board Irish ship - no violence". Duh.
It's fairly easy not to attack armed soldiers with sticks, most of us manage every day.

Eh, Tobias, "kraut" is offensive. Cut it out please.

 

[bit_pattern]

Amazing logic of the one-state solution. To let in a bunch of people associated with those who went to war with Israel in order to destroy it and to let them in and pretend as if nothing happened.

Yes, because we MUST preserve religiously pure states! And ALL Arabs want to destroy the Jews!

Lionking - Have you ever looked at the maps from that "best offer", a non-contiguous state where the whole West Bank is broken into cantons surrounded by Israel and where all routes to and from are controlled by the IDF? It would look much like Gaza looks today, ie. a prison camp, not a state. And who rejected what? The PLO was effectively put into power as the voice for Palestinians when Israel railroaded the moderates in Madrid and instead legitimised Arafat by doing a back room deal with him and the PLO, which lead to a corrupt government that the people wouldn't tolerate any longer. Same happened with Hamas, once Fatah and the PLO became so thoroughly distasteful, they waxed Arafat and gave Hamas legitimacy. All because they don't WANT peace, because that would mean adhering to the internationally recognised solution, laid down over forty years ago, for Israel to give up its expansionist designs and live peacefully with its neighbours. Instead, Israel legitimisies extremists so they can paint the entire population as sub-human mechablim that they can treat any way they choose. Extremism in the Palestinian population suits their cause, that's why they have undermined every attempt at peace ever put forward.

 

[Dr. Tobias Fünke]

What's even more amazing is that these anti-religion leftists have joined hands with Islamists. Contradiction in terms.

I'm amazed, too, by the need of [sarcasm/]"progressive gay vegan lesbian rastafarians" to fellate organisations that would have them dangling from lampposts if they weren't so useful right now ...

I'm not terribly "pro-Israel", I'm "anti-settlement" and maybe even "anti-blockade", don't know enough about it, frankly.
I'm definetly "anti-misogynisticantiintellectualneanderthalswhoinciteteenagerstoblowupthemselvesupamongotherteenagers"

One doesn't have to view the conflict in either black or white but I do think that the "Freedom Flotilla" did achieve exactly what Hamas has hoped to achieve, **** those Lego-bricks, this is PR gold.

 

[Dr. Tobias Fünke]

Eh, Tobias, "kraut" is offensive. Cut it out please.

I AM a Kraut. But I can cut it out if it makes me feel better, thank you

 

[bit_pattern]

It's fairly easy not to attack armed soldiers with sticks, most of us manage every day.

Yep. Just like the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, or the blacks in the Bantustans, knew not to attack their masters with sticks!