Yet even if we disregard flotilla organizers’ rendition of events and charitably accept Israel’s story as what happened, Israel is still culpable. The Israeli military attacked unarmed ships in international waters about 41 miles from the Israeli coastline—well beyond the 12-mile limit of Israeli territorial waters—to enforce an illegal and inhumane blockade of Gaza. The blockade is a violation of international law and an act of war. Thus, the passengers of any ship being illegally attacked have a right to defend themselves with any armaments they can scrounge up, including pistols captured from incompetent commandos.
The Israelis claiming self-defense while in attack mode is similar to what their former patron, George W. Bush, claimed as he invaded the sovereign state of Iraq. As with Bush, the Israelis have always believed that “the best defense is a good offense.”
Not only were the Israelis in attack mode, they used what French President Nicolas Sarkozy aptly called “the disproportionate use of force” against the flotilla. After all, the flotilla contained aid supplies for the Gazan people, not weapons going to Hamas. Einat Wilf, a member of the Israeli parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, admitted, “This had nothing to with security. The armaments for Hamas were not coming from this flotilla.” Before the attack, she had cautioned the Israeli government that this was a public relations issue, not a military one.
The one silver lining to Israel’s unconscionable attack on a humanitarian flotilla is that its reprehensible collective punishment of Gazans through blockade likely will be made politically “unsustainable.”
TVNL Comment: Unfortunately Israel's unsustainable policies and actions have been sustained for decades and the world sits silent.