Oh, come on, everybody knows that nobody cares about disabled Jewish victims of terror attacks.

I do not see why anyone would attack Arty for stating the company line.  That is exactly how Turkey and others wanted the issue portrayed.  We can wade through rivers of internet sites looking for their propaganda, but Arty spelled it out to us in plain English and brought it to us.  He did us a favor.

His family did, although they never did get any justice.

Certainly.

But I really do want to know how these people explained to themselves that boarding enemy merchant ships is suddenly illegal.

Having watched some of the video and my curiosity having been piqued by serendipitously hearing a few minutes of Michael Savage's radio show this evening, I wonder what the H the IDF was thinking.

That operation seems bizarre in its execution and presumptively its planning.  Very un-Mossad-like, very un-IDF-like.  Strange tactics placing commandos in such an indefensible situation.  Rappelling one at a time?  With paintball guns?  Why in international waters? Why not wait until they were in territorial waters?

Makes me wonder what sort of intelligence the IDF & Mossad had in hand.  Very strange.  Big picture, Israel had to enforce the blockade.  Small picture, odd way to do it.

Just caught a couple of clips from Obama's AIPAC speech during the 2008 campaign.  What a scumbag.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABjE_7uwA0I

A single Jew, hundreds of Nazi protesters. I am certain I wouldn't have had the guts.

There was no need to wait until they were in territorial waters since that wouldn't have influenced the legality. It probably seems to you as if it would have changed the reporting, but I am sure it wouldn't have. The press would have spoken of "international waters" even if this had happened a mile off the coast.

The IDF didn't think the "peace activists" would actually attack them. That's why they came essentially unarmed. That is indeed naivity of a high degree. I myself use the working assumption that there is few people more dangerous than "peace activists" have so far escaped their "love" although some have wished me a horrible death. The problem is that once a group calls itself "peace activists" confronting them with weapons is considered a most horrible crime.

Problem was the Israeli navy could not just redirect the ships to Ashdod without boarding because the smaller boats might have run out of water if the maneuver takes too long. Better to kill a few of the more "peaceful" "activists" than led those die who really didn't plan to be very "peaceful".

Now that I looked this up...

Turns out there are no international waters in that region. Check the update to my post.

That doesn't surprise me. If the flotilla was boarded in international waters, far from Israel and Cyprus, it would be hard to believe indeed that it was on route to Gaza, which can only be reached through Israeli waters.

The mainstream (?) left now comes out in support of Israel. It seems the tide is turning.

At the same time, those supposedly bringing "aid" to the people of Gaza have form for using alleged acts of humanitarianism as cover for weapons smuggling – and Israel has every right to defend its own citizens from the consequences of such illicit transfer of arms. There is not a country on earth that would not take similar steps to protect its people; there is not an army on earth that would not allow its soldiers to respond with force to neutralise a life-threatening attack on their fellow troops.

The activists who launched the vicious assault on the boarding soldiers knew full well what they were doing. They had issued threat after threat against the IDF in the days building up to this morning's clash, with convoy organiser Huwaida Arraf brashly declaring his group's unwavering dedication to reaching Gaza: "They are going to have to forcefully stop us." Club-wielding assailants might not fit the cute and cuddly image of stereotypical aid workers, but there can be no doubt from the evidence that those attacking the Israeli forces were not the archetype of calm and measured peace activists.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/01/israel-no-choice-gaza-flotilla

In fact the Israelis had announced several times last week that if the convoy of six ships would divert to the Israeli port of Ashdod, Israel would allow it to offload its aid shipments and then after inspection (to insure they didn't include military contraband) would facilitate their direct delivery to Gaza and its people -- just as Israel allows 10 to15,000 tons of humanitarian aid to be delivered to Gaza each week.

Five of the six ships agreed. But the sixth, the Mavi Marmara, ignored Israeli warnings. it was clearly looking for a fight. Small wonder. Like much of the flotilla, the Turkish ship was controlled by militants of IHH, a Turkish relief fund with a radical Islamic anti-Western orientation. In addition to legitimate philanthropic activities, IHH supports radical Islamic networks, including Hamas. It also has had ties to global jihad groups.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-z-chesnoff/the-gaza-convoy-looking-f_b_595510.html

For starters, when are so-called peace activists going to admit that while peace is desirable, it is not their primary goal? If it were, then those same activists would also position people among the civilian communities on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza. They would sit in cafés, schools, and otherwise peaceful homes as they lived, or died, through Hamas rocket attacks and bombings. They would remind Gaza, as they have Israel, that not only is the whole world watching, but that the violence they do harms citizens of many nations.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-brad-hirschfield/mourning-not-politicizing_b_595423.html

Once it becomes public (if it will) that the "victims" were radical Islamists (and not well-meaning idiots from Europe), the tide will turn.

It seems like the mass media are always trying to get as much anti-Israel reporting through in the day or two before facts become known. I don't know who watches the watchers, but I do know who watches the Jews.

My immediate problem is now that I am in Ireland. The days of Daniel O'Connell are long gone and it seems like demonstrations will get worse over the next few days.

Friday evening I will be doing security in my synagogue. That's a job that "peace activists" don't have to do. Despite their statements about evil Jews, their meetings are not often attacked by bloodthirsty Jews where we have to deal with the fact that "peace activists" can be quite dangerous.

And no, the problem are not Muslim immigrants (although some of them are), the problem is western left-wingers.

When a major terror attack happens in Iraq, against Muslims, I ask the congregation to pray for Iraq. And I make sure to let my Iraqi butcher know about it. I am not afraid of Muslims attacking a synagogue anywhere. It doesn't happen. Heck, in the West-Bank Muslims even defended a Synagogue against destruction by western "peace activists" two years ago.

The Muslims are not the enemy.

But the Islamists and their left-wing allies are.

Yah blockades are legal if you are at war - Israel however is not at war with Gaza. And neither are they at War with Turkey which would allow them to board turkish territory (which the ship is as long it is not in isreal territory). Don't get me wrong they have the right to search the ship for Weapons (they however have no right to demand the ships to go via Ashdod as long as they are not at war with Gaza), but the methods they used where inappropriate.

Indeed.

Is not?

Define war.

If thousands of rockets raining on one side and 1400 dead on the other side is not a war to you, you are a tougher man than I.

Anyway, we seem to agree that if Gaza were at war with Israel, the blockade would be legal. Correct?

Now we just have to ask Gaza's government, either one of them, whether they are at war with Israel.

Leauki being at War is a very legal term requiring a formal declaration of War and can only happen between recognized states, as Gaza isn't recognized by Israel as independent state at all they can't be at War, in a sense which allows them to have a blockade, with them.

And additionally to that you can't extend a blockade to areas outside your territorial waters as long as you are not in war with the countries you are operating therein. Why didn't Isreal just take the normal approach to search a ship, instead of having this badly planned commando action. They wanted to avoid pictures and video footage taken in daylight, but a normal ship search wouldn't give exactly good propaganda material to the activists.

You must have read different international laws than I. That seems to happen a lot, as lots of people keep referring to "international laws" that I have never seen written down anywhere official. Plus they can never point to them.

So you are saying that as long as one party to a physical war is not a recognised (by whom?) state, the other party cannot use certain tactics that are otherwise legal?

Wasn't it the other way around? I wasn't aware that a higher status of a party to a physical war allows the enemy to use more tactics rather than less. The Geneva Conventions _limit_ what one can do, they do not _expand_.

Anyway, you must have read different international law than I.

The Geneva Conventions, which I believe cover this sort of thing, say, in the text common to all four:

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions [proviosions follow]

http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/GC_1949-IV.pdf

In case you don't know, what the Geneva Conventions call an "armed conflict" is a war.

So, yes, "being at war" is a very legal term. But it never required two recognised nations to be a war.

Civil wars, insurgencies, wars between unrecognised countries etc. are all covered by the same law.

And, as you said, a blockade is a legal way to fight a war, as is boarding blockade runners.

Since when can a party to a war not operate outside its territorial waters?

Did American submarines really wait until Japanese merchant ships reached Japanese territorial waters?

the ships were turkish and therefore Isreal would have needed to declare war on turkey first before boarding them.