Re: Israeli raid on Gaza flotilla
[QUOTE=bobjuice;866210][B]Mark Steel: Of course, they were asking for it[/B]
[I]Wednesday, 2 June 2010[/I]
It's time the Israeli government's PR team made the most of its talents, and became available for hire. Then whenever a nutcase marched into a shopping mall in somewhere like Wisconsin and gunned down a selection of passers-by, they could be on hand to tell the world's press "The gunman regrets the loss of life but did all he could to avoid violence." Then various governments would issue statements saying "All we know is a man went berserk with an AK 47, and next to him there's a pile of corpses, so until we know the facts we can't pass judgement on what took place."
To strengthen their case the Israelis have released a photo of the weapons they found on board, (which amount to some knives and tools and wooden sticks) that the naive might think you'd expect to find on any ship, but the more astute will recognise as exactly what you'd carry if you were planning to defeat the Israeli army. It's an armoury smaller than you'd find in the average toolshed in a garden in Cirencester, which goes to show the Israelis had better destroy Cirencester quickly as an essential act of self-defence.
It's a shame they weren't more imaginative, as they could have said "We also discovered a deadly barometer, a ship's compass, which could not only be frisbeed at someone's head but even had markings to help the assailant know which direction he was throwing it, and a set of binoculars that could easily be converted into a ray-gun."
That would be as logical as the statement from the Israeli PM's spokesman – "We made every possible effort to avoid this incident." Because the one tiny thing they forgot to do to avoid this incident was not send in armed militia from helicopters in the middle of the night and shoot people. I must be a natural at this sort of technique because I often go all day without climbing off a helicopter and shooting people, and I'm not even making every possible effort. Politicians and commentators worldwide repeat a version of this line. They're aware a nation has sent its militia to confront people carrying provisions for the desperate, in the process shooting several of them dead, and yet they angrily blame the dead ones. One typical headline yesterday read "Activists got what they wanted – confrontation." It's an attitude so deranged it deserves to be registered as a psychosis, something like "Reverse Slaughter Victim Confusion Syndrome".
Israel and its supporters claim that Viva Palestina, made up of people who collect the donated food, cement and items for providing basic amenities such as toilets, and transport them to Gaza, wanted the violence all along. Because presumably they must have been thinking "Hezbollah couldn't beat them, but that's because unlike us they didn't have a ballcock and several boxes of plum tomatoes".
One article told us the flotilla was full of "Thugs spoiling for a confrontation", and then accused them of being "Less about aid and more about PR. Indeed, on board was Swedish novelist Henning Mankell." So were they thugs or about PR? Did they have a thugs' section and a PR quarter, or did they all muck in, the novelist diverting the soldiers with his characterisation while the thugs attacked them with a lethal spirit level?
But some defenders of Israel are so blind to what happens in front of them there's nothing at all they wouldn't jump to defend. Israel could blow up a cats home and within five minutes they'd be yelling "How do we know the cats weren't smuggling semtex in their fur for Hamas?"
If this incident had been carried about by Iran, or anyone we were trying to portray as an enemy, so much condemnation would have been spewed out it would have created a vast cloud of outrage that airlines would be unable to fly through.
But as it's Israel, most governments offer a few diplomatic words that blame no one, but accept the deaths are "regrettable". They might as well have picked any random word from the dictionary, so the news would tell us "William Hague described the deaths as 'hexagonal'", and a statement from the US senate said "It's all very confusing. In future let's hope they make every effort to avoid a similar incident."[/QUOTE]
[url]http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/06/of-course-they-were-asking-for-it/[/url]
how about you put a link up next time?
And what a silly article it is. Divorce the facts of what the videos have shown from the potential of the weapon used, and then ignore the videos and focus solely on the small cache of weapons that IN ACTUALITY were used against the boarding team. "it's just a small armory" "maybe a lethal barometer". It doesn't matter what they used. They intended to kill that boarding team. And if they tried to use a lug wrench to crush a skull, that's a weapon. But, the author cries, presumably, "but lug wrenches are not intended to crush skulls, so it's not a weapon." And neither would a pick axe be used as a weapon...until it was used as a weapon.
I'm amused that he cannot adequately defend the fact that 1) there has been an astute blockade for THREE YEARS now, 2) the boats were warned well before they came remotely near the israeli water territory, 3) they were offered FREE PASSAGE of all the aid they had brought so long as they brought it through customs (like EVERY OTHER COUNTRY HAS) and then proceeded to IGNORE that amicable request, 4) they were warned several times when they got closer that they needed to stop the engines as they had ignored the reasonable request to go to the appropriate port for inspection, 5) and then five of the ships stopped, while the SIXTH tried to run. I suppose that this was not enough to the author to 'avoid violence.'
AND THEN, 6) the boarding team, thinking it was a group of peace activists, brought with them non-lethal paintball guns to control the situation which was ordered by their superiors in an effort to avoid any violence whatsoever, 7) but they were fortunate enough to have brought sidarms that remained holstered until shit really got real, 8) and then for several minutes they STILL did not use those sidearms until it was ultimately the only available option to protect themselves from the top deck gang trying to kill them.
But surely, Israel didn't do enough to avoid violence. I also LOL @ his pissy attitude towards the Israeli's dropping the team via helicopters. Presumably Israel has a teleport machine we don't know of? The activists indeed got what they wanted. Everything they did was one step closer to requiring violence to occur. Between the time they loaded the boat, and the time the first gunshot went off, they could have avoided this and acted like reasonable adults who "cared about getting aid to Hamas". But nobody is fooled by this. Which is why they have to make this seem like the Israeli's intended to kill everyone aboard from the very outset. Despite reality dictating the contrary position.
I'm wondering if any of the remaining kool-aid drinkers would agree that a police officer being beaten in the middle of a melee should not ever resort to using his side-arm to protect him.
Another wasted effort by another idiot leftist author.