Israel storms Gaza aid ships in international waters

[dieseltaylor]

All I can see happening is perhaps a consumer boycott as Western governments pussyfoot around. In the UK a lot of the produce like tomatoes and herbs are Israeli but I suppse they are seasonal and with Europe in growing mode now perhaps people will have forgotten.

[Runyan99]

International law is nonsense. Sovereign nations are not subject to any agreement they choose not to be a party to. That's where the guns come in.

[dieseltaylor]

The US position probably made worse by Obama's chief of staff being in Israel currently for the bar-mitzvah of his son and a nephew. Given Perle's hand in the Iraq war the intertwining of US and Israeli interests is unfortunate.

I think what makes things difficult is that religion as in Jewishness is confused with supporting Israel. However in a democracy where voting and donations are the breath of life to politicians pressure groups have great power. Thirteen mmbers of the Senate and 30 of the Representatives are Jewish according:

www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/senrec.html

Just to get some perspective on the matter there are about 13.3M Jews in the world and about 5.5M in the US and 5M in Israel. http://www.jewfaq.org/populatn.htm

Whilst being Catholic means in theory you support the Pope you do not necessarily have to send aid or worry about him grabbing land outside of the Vatican State at the expense of the Roman citizens. If that were the situation would people be worried if the US supported the Pope : )

It is obviously a horribly complex problem but what seems so irritating is that for such a small country the danger it creates to the world in terms of nuclear and non-nuclear war seems inordinately large. I dislike religion as through history a lot of bad has been done in religions name so I am not perhaps the most unbiased of observers. However threats to the World's peace have to be acknowledged. If the US really wishes to solve the crisis admit Israel as a state get the borders sorted and buy off the Arabs who still have land -- or allow them to emigrate to US mainland. As it stands US is taking all the flak whilst Israel misbehaves as it likes under the threat of nuclear usage.

[panzermartin]

International law is nonsense. Sovereign nations are not subject to any agreement they choose not to be a party to. That's where the guns come in.

Hitler thought so too.

[Michael Emrys]

International law is nonsense. Sovereign nations are not subject to any agreement they choose not to be a party to. That's where the guns come in.

And war is probably the stupidest way mankind has of resolving its differences. The hope is that through a system of international law we will eventually arrive at a means of settling differences that are more just and have the additional benefit of not destroying the very thing that one was fighting for.

Michael

[Runyan99]

Hope all you like, but human nature dictates that is never going to happen. In a world of limited land and resources there will be fights once some group ends up on the short end of the stick. Once that happens, the laws go out the window. Always have, always will. The only international law is jungle law. It's the Wild West, and if there is a sheriff in town, he works with his own agenda too.

It seems clear to me you cannot have international law without real World Government that can enforce such law in the way that police and courts enforce civilian law. But certainly such World Government does not exist, and indeed is something that many would fear and oppose.

[Stalins Organ]

Yeah well good luck with making any impact on that inside of a few thousand generations - we are bred for conflict through 4 billion years of evolution. It ain't going away soon.

Edit - sorry - this is in response to Emrys's post at the end of the previous page. I more or less agree with Runyan - "World Government" woudl mean far fewer small ponds for people to be big fish in to ever get any "establishment" support ....except from the very biggest fish who would still be big fish in the bigger pond...... apart from that it's a great idea.

[Sgt Joch]

It is obviously a horribly complex problem but what seems so irritating is that for such a small country the danger it creates to the world in terms of nuclear and non-nuclear war seems inordinately large. I dislike religion as through history a lot of bad has been done in religions name so I am not perhaps the most unbiased of observers. However threats to the World's peace have to be acknowledged. If the US really wishes to solve the crisis admit Israel as a state get the borders sorted and buy off the Arabs who still have land -- or allow them to emigrate to US mainland. As it stands US is taking all the flak whilst Israel misbehaves as it likes under the threat of nuclear usage.

settling the ME problem seems simple enough when you are an outsider:

-give the Golan back to Syria;

-remove Israeli settlers from the west bank;

-lift the blockade on Gaza;

-provide palestinian refugees w. financial compensation and full citizenship to another country of their choice (other than Israel) in exchange for abandoning the right of return;

-give east Jerusalem to Israel;

-recognize Israel's right to exist;

-have everyone (Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Hamas, Fatah, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.) sign a Peace Treaty;

voilà...

...problem solved. simple really...

[panzermartin]

Bred for conflict? Well I'm not and many people here are not too I think. Normal people dont want to go out and kill other human beings. They want peaceful and constructive lives. Its when people are mislead and brainwashed when wars began.

I dont want to die by a piece of shrapnel in my brain, I'll do everything not to happen to me or anyone else. I think this is more normal than cynically accepting this as an unavoidable side of human nature.

[hcrof]

settling the ME problem seems simple enough when you are an outsider:

-give the Golan back to Syria;

-remove Israeli settlers from the west bank;

-lift the blockade on Gaza;

-provide palestinian refugees w. financial compensation and full citizenship to another country of their choice (other than Israel) in exchange for abandoning the right of return;

-give east Jerusalem to Israel;

-recognize Israel's right to exist;

-have everyone (Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Hamas, Fatah, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.) sign a Peace Treaty;

voilà...

...problem solved. simple really...

I really wish it was that simple. The west bank and the Golan heights are 2 major water sources in the region and I don't see Israel voluntarily giving up water security. I would love to propose a solution of my own but there isn't a 'right' answer. Just a 'least bad' compromise that I don't expect to see any time soon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

[Sgt Joch]

I really wish it was that simple. The west bank and the Golan heights are 2 major water sources in the region and I don't see Israel voluntarily giving up water security. I would love to propose a solution of my own but there isn't a 'right' answer. Just a 'least bad' compromise that I don't expect to see any time soon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

so propose one!

everyone is always saying the Israel-Palestinian conflict is un-solvable. Lets see if we can at least get the members of the GF forum to agree to one...

[Stalins Organ]

Bred for conflict? Well I'm not and many people here are not too I think. Normal people dont want to go out and kill other human beings. They want peaceful and constructive lives. Its when people are mislead and brainwashed when wars began.

We are still tribal creatures - the "them and us" instinct remains strong and that is what allows modern people to be "misled and brainwashed" - whether it is "patriotism", religous fervour, support of a soccer team, skin colour, language or whatever - as soon as we identify any "them" and an appropriate "us" we are wired for conflict to ensure "we" get our "fair share"...and "they" get whatever is left!

[panzermartin]

We are still tribal creatures - the "them and us" instinct remains strong and that is what allows modern people to be "misled and brainwashed" - whether it is "patriotism"' date=' religous fervour, support of a soccer team, skin colour, language or whatever - as soon as we identify any "them" and an appropriate "us" we are wired for conflict to ensure "we" get our "fair share"...and "they" get whatever is left![/quote']

Well I get what you say. But I still think violence needs some provocation and guidance to errupt. People in power always take advantage of the tribal insticts to do this. Being a tribal creature doesnt necessary mean you are prone to war. Not everyone that supports a team is willing to spill blood for it. It's usually a minority of fans that come to the stadium with the sole purpose to have some "fun" with the opposite side.

If there was a way to educate, train and protect people from propaganda then the primitive insticts would subside. I think its an evolution thing too. Intelligent indivinduals rely less on violence and tribal habits.

I dont know..maybe one day all people will be as smart as the ones that right now drag them into wars to expand their power and wealth.

[Stalins Organ]

Yes I agree with all of that - mostly we do not want violence because of hte risks associated with it - an entirely sensible attitude!

However where there is any conflict then we readily form into "them & us" & get swept along with "fervour", etc.

and I agree about evolution - that was my initial point and my comment for the need for a few thousand generations - ie to breed it out of us....as long as the meek can do well.....

[YankeeDog]

Eh. "He who carries the biggest stick gets the prize" has certainly been an element of human society and organization since earliest times. But I think to say that it is the only, or even the dominant factor in the way humans organize and interact is oversimplifying the matter, to say the least. Contrary to what seems obvious at first inspection, history provides ample evidence that victory does not always go to the strong. And societies and nations that win on the battlefield can find themselves overrun with cultural trends that render their military victories irrelevant.

As to the whole Israel-Palestine issue, in my darker moods I sometimes wonder if the world as a whole would be better off if the major powers just agreed to give the local denizens (Arab, Israeli, and otherwise) a couple of months to clear out, and then nuked the whole region into a sheet of uninhabitable glass. As far as I'm concerned, based on recent behavior, none of those currently laying claim to the area deserve it. Biggest tragedy in this plan to my mind would be the loss of antiquities.

But then I snap out of my foul mood and hope for a better solution.

Cheers,

YD

[Stalins Organ]

why bother with letting them get out - they'd just spread the infection!

A tall wall of lead around the area followed by saturation with nukes...

[dieseltaylor]

Neutron bomb?

Getting a bit dark mood here all of a sudden! But trying to get a rational answwer to a religious/nationalist problem is perhaps not possible without a time span of hundreds of years.

[hcrof]

so propose one!

everyone is always saying the Israel-Palestinian conflict is un-solvable. Lets see if we can at least get the members of the GF forum to agree to one...

Well I actually liked the solution that you proposed (apart from the compensate the Palestinians bit and I would also push for a 2 state solution. I don't however think that it is possible - certainly not right now!

I would start with baby steps; removal of the blockade around Gaza, engagement with the surrounding countries in talks and a massive propaganda 'hearts and minds' campaign in Gaza/West Bank which actually contains substance (actions speak louder than words!). This campaign would try to separate the hardliners from the moderates within Hamas and would pave the way for a political settlement. At the same time I would try to engage with Hizballah - I don't see them as the sort of frothing at the mouth crazies that Israel portrays them as. Same trick really, try to marginalise the hardliners and engage with the moderates.

You will notice that I feel that the ball is squarely in Israels court here. Its not because I feel Israel is better or worse than the Palestinians, it is just because right now there is no way for the Palestinians to be proactive on this one. They are too fragmented and the hardliners have too much influence. Israel will lose more people to rocket attacks, the angry rhetoric will still be coming from the Arab states but they must be firm and not give in to their own hardliners. Every time Israel launches an attack it weakens the peace process.

[Thomm]

The next ship is coming ...

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/06/03/gaza.raid/index.html?hpt=T2

Palestinian sources confirmed that trucks that arrived from Israel at the Rafah terminal at the Israel-Gaza border were barred from delivering the aid.

Ra'ed Fatooh, in charge of the crossings, and Jamal Khudari, head of a committee against the Gaza blockade, laid out the following conditions for the aid to be accepted: Israel must release all flotilla detainees -- and representatives of the Free Gaza Movement, which organized the flotilla, must deliver it.

WTF??!?

Best regards,

Thomm

[panzermartin]

The next ship is coming ...

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/06/03/gaza.raid/index.html?hpt=T2

WTF??!?

Best regards,

Thomm

I dont actually find it illogical. The act was more symbolic than anything else. Accepting this, is like palestinians admitting that Israel alone can guarantee their well being, which is not the case. And it's not like a few tons of humanitarian aid will brighten up Gaza's future really.

[gunnergoz]

Religious fanatics on both sides will never allow for a peaceful solution - they are too invested in their own apocalyptic visions of the world ending at this particular place. The only long term solution is to drastically alter the means by which these religious groups inculcate new generations of followers with their propaganda.

[dieseltaylor]

Turkey meanwhile

Though hundreds of Turks protested against Israel for the third day on Wednesday, the Turkish Jewish community seems to have scored an important success by publicly distancing itself from the Jewish state and the violent hatred aimed at it.

Following the Israeli raid on the Gaza flotilla, Turkey’s Jewish community and chief rabbinate expressed their sorrow over the “military operation against the Mavi Marmara ship” and the “loss of life and injury resulting from the operation,” in a joint statement on the community’s official Web site, musevicemaati.com.

“We share the public reaction this operation has created in our country and express our deep sorrow,” the statement read.

In addition, during an interview with Israeli haredi radio station Kol Barama on Monday, Turkish Chief Rabbi Isak Haleva repeatedly praised the regime’s attitude toward its Jews, while softly condemning Israel for its recent operation, to the native-Israeli interviewer’s surprise.

Turkey maintains strict separation between religion and state, and Jews there consider themselves Turks, which might strike some Israelis who automatically fuse religious and national identity as odd.

The results of Turkish Jewry’s public voice were apparent in Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Tuesday speech on the raid: Even as he slammed Israel’s “bloody massacre... deserving of any kind of curse and condemnation,” he not only praised his Jewish subjects for their loyalty, but spoke out against any hostilities toward them.

“I thank the Turkish Jewish community, putting in words their right and sincere reaction to the event,” he said. “Our Jewish citizens have, as members of the Turkish people, defended, and continue to defend, the right position of Turkey to the utmost.”

He added that “looking with hatred upon our Jewish citizens... is not acceptable; it cannot be and should never be.”

http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=177341

And for an insight into how the news is being spun in the US there is this report on Eliot Spitzers cable programme being apparently biased. Spitzer was a great attorney and though Jewish is married to a Souther Baptist.

http://www.alternet.org/story/147087/glenn_greenwald_clobbers_eliot_spitzer_in_debate_on_the_gaza_flotilla

They refer to the UN report and I felt bad I do not know the details - so here is something to chew on. Seems quite ironic that Israel and Egypt have the worlds largest prison camp.

http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/9A265F2A909E9A1D8525772E004FC34B

The Gaza Strip (Arabic: قطاع غزة‎ Qiṭāʿ Ġazza/Qita' Ghazzah, Arabic pronunciation: [qitˤaːʕ ɣazza]) lies on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the south, east and north. It is about 41 kilometers (25 mi) long, and between 6 and 12 kilometers (4–7.5 mi) wide, with a total area of 360 square kilometers (139 sq mi). The territory takes its name from Gaza, its main city.

The territory has a population of about 1.5 million people, as of July 2009,[1] 1 million of whom were, as of March 2005, refugees[2] who fled to the territory from other parts of Palestine as part of the 1948 Palestinian exodus arising from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and their descendants. The population is predominantly Sunni Muslims and speaks a Western Egyptian dialect of Arabic.

So the Gaza strip has a population roughly a third of Israel's and is predominantly made up of people or their descendants driven from their original land.

[dieseltaylor]

Interesting site with a different view of what is happening:

http://warincontext.org/

The US kid killed with four bullets to the head sounds excessive.

Anyway more thoughtful stuff is here

Carlo Strenger notes in Haaretz:

During the media frenzy of the last days a crucial headline has received close to no attention: Mossad chief Meir Dagan told the Knesset’s Foreign Relations Committee that

Israel is gradually turning from a strategic asset into a liability for the United States of America

.

As it’s a bit difficult to brush aside Dagan as a softheaded idealist, our policy makers will find another way not to listen. They will say, “this would never have happened under George W. Bush; this is only because the Obama administration is not friendly towards Israel. We simply need to wait for Obama to end this term; he won’t get reelected.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. I have heard warnings that Israel is becoming a strategic liability for the U.S. from Americans, including high ranking members of the George W. Bush administration, for years. The only difference is that during the Bush years, nobody in the administration would say this on record or for attribution.

As if to echo and underline Dagan’s message, Anthony Cordesman, one of the most respected non-partisan national security experts in Washington writes:

[T]he depth of America’s moral commitment [to Israel] does not justify or excuse actions by an Israeli government that unnecessarily make Israel a strategic liability when it should remain an asset. It does not mean that the United States should extend support to an Israeli government when that government fails to credibly pursue peace with its neighbors. It does not mean that the United States has the slightest interest in supporting Israeli settlements in the West Bank, or that the United States should take a hard-line position on Jerusalem that would effectively make it a Jewish rather than a mixed city. It does not mean that the United States should be passive when Israel makes a series of major strategic blunders–such as persisting in the strategic bombing of Lebanon during the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, escalating its attack on Gaza long after it had achieved its key objectives, embarrassing the U.S. president by announcing the expansion of Israeli building programs in east Jerusalem at a critical moment in U.S. efforts to put Israeli-Palestinian peace talks back on track, or sending commandos to seize a Turkish ship in a horribly mismanaged effort to halt the “peace flotilla” going to Gaza.

It is time Israel realized that it has obligations to the United States, as well as the United States to Israel, and that it become far more careful about the extent to which it test the limits of U.S. patience and exploits the support of American Jews. This does not mean taking a single action that undercuts Israeli security, but it does mean realizing that Israel should show enough discretion to reflect the fact that it is a tertiary U.S. strategic interest in a complex and demanding world.

And then comes word from the Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood, whose impartial observations as a first-time visitor to the Jewish state cut to the core when she says:

[T]he concept of Israel as a humane and democratic state is in serious trouble. Once a country starts refusing entry to the likes of Noam Chomsky, shutting down the rights of its citizens to use words like “Nakba,” and labelling as “anti-Israel” anyone who tries to tell them what they need to know, a police-state clampdown looms. Will it be a betrayal of age-old humane Jewish traditions and the rule of just law, or a turn towards reconciliation and a truly open society?

Time is running out. Opinion in Israel may be hardening, but in the United States things are moving in the opposite direction. Campus activity is increasing; many young Jewish Americans don’t want Israel speaking for them. America, snarled in two chaotic wars and facing increasing international anger over Palestine, may well be starting to see Israel not as an asset but as a liability.

"

[Stalins Organ]

Thomm hte link you gave doesn't contain the text you quote about Palestinians not allowing the aid through - can you provide another link to that?

[ASL Veteran]

Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may

exist. Money degrades all the gods of man -- and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal self-established _value_ of all things. It has, therefore, robbed the whole world -- both the world ofmen and nature -- of its specific value. Money is the estranged essenceof man's work and man's existence, and this alien essence dominates him,and he worships it.

The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of theworld. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god isonly an illusory bill of exchange.Contempt for theory, art, history, and for man as an end in himself,which is contained in an abstract form in the Jewish religion, is thereal, conscious standpoint, the virtue of the man of money. The species-relation itself, the relation between man and woman, etc.,becomes an object of trade! The woman is bought and sold.

The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of of the merchant, of the man of money in general.Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence ofJudaism -- huckstering and its preconditions -- the Jew will have becomeimpossible, because his consciousness no longer has an object, becausethe subjective basis of Judaism, practical need, has been humanized, ndbecause the conflict between man's individual-sensuous existence and his species-existence has been abolished.

Karl Marx on "The Jewish Question" http://www.cooper.edu/humanities/core/hss3/k_marx4.html So why am I posting this here? This may possibly be a land "problem" between the Arabs and the Israelis themselves, but why are there so many non Arabs who dislike Israel so virulently? Think about it. Until the Palestinians and the Iranians etc recognize the right of Israel to exist then there will be no peace. If you are one of those international lawyer types then you shouldn't have any doubts about Israel's right to exist since the modern state of Israel was created by the UN. Incidentally, just a little tidbit that some of you might not be aware of

The name Iran is a cognate of Aryan, and means "Land of the Aryans".[13][14][15]

it's in Wikipedia but I'm sure it can be found elsewhere if you don't trust Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran

I'm not sure why, but my fonts got all screwed up and I'm just going to have to give up trying to repair them . Looks like I might have gotten the fonts fixed now