A country has the right to send soldiers to investigate six boats that are about to enter its territory without permission and carrying unknown cargo. Am I really crazy for thinking that?
(Of course, Israel fucked up bad in the end. But really, people. I hate the tired old "Israeli-double-standard" yarn, but this is just ridiculous.)
EDIT: I love when the first actual analysis I read backs me up, and when it's recommended to me by Josh Marshall: link
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I think it's pretty hard to disagree with your first premise. What I'm curious to see though, and what the article you link to gets at towards the end, is what the decision making process was like up until the raid on the ships. Was the decision to apply the Navy-Seal-on-Pirate approach the final one after a series of less severe alternatives were tried? And moral implications of that aside, after this and a host of so many similar incidents, the IDF needs to get a good PR guy. The optics of this are just catastrophic.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was a pretty good article on the whole debacle: http://www.haaretz.com/misc/writers/amos-harel-1.285
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty hard to say any one thing real quick when the thing is about Israel. You're right that they have the right to stop boats entering their territory, and you're right that criticizing Israel for that portion of the incident is unfair, but in the end what the IDF did do wrong they did so wrong that it's really just going to eclipse whatever reasonable premises may have precipitated the attack. People are angry, and I think it's fair to be angry, and I think that the boarding team fucked the pooch mad hard in a way that can only exacerbate every other short and long-term problem Israel currently has.
ReplyDeleteThe board also took place in international waters, which makes it legality very ambiguous.
ReplyDeleteI don't think you're crazy for thinking that at all, but I would be inclined to agree with David and say that this is yet another example of Israel doing something really fucking stupid and far beyond acceptable retaliation in response to a threat. It makes it very difficult for me to be supportive of Israel when it commits acts like this, but I am also uncomfortable with the verbally violent retaliation towards the country as a whole.
ReplyDeleteLion: I ain't no international law expert, but those boats were going to Gaza. Like, that's where they were going. There's no question about that. Israel was very stupid to do it like that, but I don't really see what difference it akchully makes.
ReplyDeleteSarah: Yes, it is very, very stupid. I, unfortunately, can really find nothing wrong with WHAT Israel did, only with HOW it eventually went down. There were undoubtedly many much better ways for Israel to have handled it (letting the boats reach Gaza NOT being one of them - not because I don't want aid getting there, but because boats not given permission to land on a shore do not have permission to land on a shore).
I actually think that part of Israel's line on this one is true: this WAS a provocation. No one in their right minds could have actually believed that those boats would have made it to Gaza, any more than anyone could believe a boat full of Mexicans that was advertised for a week before its voyage would be welcomed with open arms into Texas. The activists may have HOPED that their aid would have gotten their, but there are only two realistic possibilities for their reasons: they were batshit crazy, or they expected (and therefore desired) for precisely this to happen, or both. Probably the latter.
Look. It sucks a big one that people died, as it always does. However, this whole fucking thing is completely fucked up, beyond the regular level of fuckedupedness this situation usually has.
As you can probably tell, the situation is getting to me.
P.S. Auuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggggghhhhh
ReplyDeleteSorry needed to get that out of my system.
It does matter that the incident occurred in international waters, because it makes the boarding and use of force the legal equivalent of piracy. Not, of course, that the IDF has ever displayed a great deal of concern for respecting anyone else's legality--but in international diplomacy, it casts Israel's actions in an even less favorable light.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the dandy. The fact that it was in international water makes a huge difference - if you're arguing, Sol, that the WHAT was not the problem, but the HOW, you have to concede that heading out beyond where they had legal jurisdiction to do what they are claiming was within their rights is a sizable chunk of the fuck-up.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, it doesn't seem like anyone is disputing the point here that Israel was within their legal rights to stop the boat from reaching Gaza, even if the blockade itself is mad inhumane and terrible. Like you said, it's the how that's the clusterfuck.
Yeah, I mean, I think I'm actually agreeing with you, Dave. You're right, the international waters thing probably does fit into the HOW and not the WHAT. As that article you put on Facebook said it, Israel did pretty much exactly what it should have (had to have?) done - it just got fucked up a long the way.
ReplyDeleteIf there's one silver lining, Netanyahu had to go back to Israel from his Canadian visit and so did not get to speak at the synagogue three blocks from my house.
This is probably beside the point, but I saw this on the BBC:
ReplyDelete"The UN Charter on the Law of the Sea says only if a vessel is suspected to be transporting weapons, or weapons of mass destruction, can it be boarded in international waters. Otherwise the permission of the ship's flag carrying nation must be sought. "
Which actually leaves things a little ambiguous. Whether or not the ships were carrying weapons (I assume they were not), Israel could certainly and probably will make the claim that it suspected as much (or, more likely, that some of the aid supplies--say, construction material--could be used as weapons).
Lots of wiggle room there, for sure. The other thing that is interesting, although unlikely to amount to anything, is that Turkey could make the argument that this was an attack on them and that as a NATO nation the alliance is obligated to respond. Not really sure a) how that would play out or b) if it will even go in that direction, but the Turks are pretty pissed and it would cause yet more massive problems for Israel.
ReplyDeleteI was listening to some people talk about that possibility this morning. Seems pretty unlikely, but it sure would put the U.S. in a tough spot.
ReplyDeleteRe: the weapons thing... doesn't seem too unlikely to me, frankly. As I said, the activists must have known exactly what they were getting into. I guess being batshit crazy is not sufficient to prove that they had weapons with them, but it doesn't seem too unlikely. Plus the Israeli soldiers were shot at, and as the article I linked to originally pointed out, it's pretty hard to imagine how a bunch of allegedly panicking activists would have managed to disarm a member of the Israeli navy's elite marine squad.
ReplyDeleteBut this is all speculation anyway, and doesn't really change anything. I doubt any of us think that the UN or the EU will actually give credence to the possibility that there were weapons aboard, so it's pretty much moot.
I'd also like to say that frankly, I think this has the potential to turn out (relatively) well, if this manages to scare Israeli voters into booting Netanyahu and voting in a more progressive government that's willing to cooperate with at least Obama, if not the Palestinians. Although, I thought the same thing about the aftermath of the Lebanon War and the past election, and look what happened there.
Let me just say that I'm pretty fucking scared for Israel.
I see that you are feeling very frank, Sol.
ReplyDeleteOn the guns issue:
If the activists as a group knew exactly what they were getting into (that is, they drove a flotilla into Gaza with the intention of being raided and shot at by IDF special forces and thus hoping to instigate the international incident we know find ourselves discussing in what must be the longest thread this blog has ever seen), you would think they would arm themselves with more than a few pistols.
If the commandos were shot by weapons already aboard the ship, I would imagine that they came in the luggage of a handful of the activists, and not in major caches to be smuggled into Gaza (which I think would probably be more in the spirit of the UN Charter provision). I have a hard time believing the Israeli government would sit on information to the contrary amid all this controversy.
As for the political fallout in Israel, there this: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/world/middleeast/04flotilla.html?ref=global-home
It's pretty weak sauce admittedly. I'm sure the same restrictions that have choked off Gaza on land will be applied at sea. But it's something I guess.
Re: the legality of it, here's an article from the G&M which attempts to lay it all out.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/israels-naval-blockade-pitches-and-rolls-with-the-law-of-the-sea/article1589981/