In self-defense: Israel properly and lawfully resisted Gaza blockade runners [View All]

[Ian David]

In self-defense: Israel properly and lawfully resisted Gaza blockade runners

It cannot be said forcefully enough: Israel was fully within its rights to enforce the Gaza naval blockade, and, more than that, Israel was duty-bound to do so.

This, too, must be stressed without reservation: Israeli commandos acted in self-defense in killing nine supposed humanitarians on the Mavi Marmara after a mob attacked the soldiers with Molotov cocktails, guns, machetes and crowbars.

The boarding party, armed in the first instance with paintball guns, was clearly surprised by the violence it encountered on descending to the ferry deck under the authority of a legally recognized quarantine. Yet, the raiders and the country they defend are hauled before the court of world opinion as international thugs.

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Those who sponsored the so-called Freedom Flotilla knew from the get-go that reaching dock was out of the question. But getting supplies to Palestinians was never the actual point. Witness the fact that Israel and Egypt, which jointly sanction the blockade to prevent Hamas from importing arms, had each offered to off-load the goods and deliver them into Gaza after inspection.

The point instead was to portray Israel as the agent of Palestinian oppressions and to provoke Israeli action that could be twisted to indict the country as a brute state. As one flotilla participant told Al Jazeera TV, the goal was "one of two happy endings: either martyrdom or reaching Gaza."


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