The Gaza flotilla raid was legal - but stupid

davidk

"I don't really see how Turkey's view is in any way legally relevant...Turkey, after all, has repeatedly violated international law."

Something that Israel cant be accused of then Mr Korski?

Lol!!!

Robert Eve

Israel was well within its rights.

End of.

macrhino

"Israel was well within it rights"

Well the rest of the world will be well within its rights when it steps on Israel. Israel has been following a policy of slow alienation against practically every other nation on earth. When the US wakes up, Israel will find itself with few friends and powerful enemies.

What is the Chinese view of Israel? What happens when China informs the US that there will be no more "intervention" on behalf of Israel?

neil humphrey

Mistake is worrying for a nuclear power. At least Israel wasn't dumb enough to bomb Turkey itself, and then require NATO retaliation, like Afghanistan, Iraq etc. Sometimes having nukes makes it less safe. With a polluted land, presumably arabs will then be allowed to have it. 50 years of immigrants doesn't make a country. The whole israel idea of kicking people off their own land was always going to be like this. They should learn to inbreed, or check their own linked DNA, and not separate IMHO.

Nicholas

These posts always bring the nasty anti-semites and terror apologists and appeasers crawling out of the woodwork but neil humphrey's incoherent accusations take the cheesy comintern biscuit award of the month, especially when, according to the multi-culti nuts of the New Labour project only 13 years of immigrants are required to make a country.

JasonDB

The various reports from Israel, Turkey and the UN will all be discredited without reason by those desirous of reaching a conclusion aligned with their own politically entrenched positions.

Personally, I'm not so interested in the finely balanced international law arguments about the legality of interception, but the question of the legality of the soldiers' actions once on the ship.

I cannot happily accept either side's version of what happened on the ship without questioning its partisanship. However, the video evidence seems pretty clear of one thing: as Israeli soldiers were landing on the ship, they were being beaten as hard as the perpetrators of the violence could beat them. One was thrown off deck. The perpetrators of that beating were trying to kill the soldiers, I have little doubt. Self-defence is, in those circumstances, an absolute justification for Israeli soldiers' actions to save their own lives.

Any report (UNHCR or Turkey) that doesn't reach that conclusion is a report to which I find difficult to attribute logic or credence.

Owen Morgan

"It’s a bit like Nazi German’s conducting an inquiry into the Holocaust and claiming no Jews were murdered."

Actually, it's nothing like that. A free, democratic country investigated violent deaths, not disputing that they had happened. How does that match your imaginary scenario?

victor jara 67

Mr Korski,

The so called independent pannellists agreed with the report as they both belong to friends of Israel groups and were recommended to the Israel's by that bastion of truth and impartiality. One Tony Blair!

Killing Palestinians and their supporters has always been legal within Israel and apologists for their bloody excesses like yourself should be ashamed. Perhaps you think Israel should find a less high profile way of Killing its neighbours?

I am sure you think the current punitive seige of Gaza or the cast lead massacre perfectly legal and moral as well?

Ed P

Israel were set up and fell for it: by boarding the flotilla & being met both with armed resistance and negative publicity. Too many believe the BBC's pro-Palestinian/anti-Israeli biased coverage.
PS: there is already a Palestinian state - it's now called Jordan - check Middle East history if you doubt this.

Ariadne

neil humphrey said "50 years of immigrants doesn't make a country".

I wonder if he knows that a so-called Palestinian refugee is any Arab claiming refugee status who had lived within the Mandate for Palestine borders 1946-1948. And of course any descendant of these claimants. Absolutely unique hereditary status. The Jewish refugees from Arab countries were far more numerous but did not have any welfare system set up for them, let alone one in perpetuity.

No doubt 50 years - or even one month - or even one day of an Arab life does make a "right" to a "country".

yank

This is a no-win game for Turkey. Forget about all of the globalist troughers' chattering and "reports", as most of us will.

This all comes down to Turkey muscling their way into this affair, independently. I think the Turks should take a look at the smoldering wreckage in Syria, whenever they stick their snoots into affairs. Clan Assad is in power at bayonet point, no matter how many times the IDF slaps them around. But the current Turkish regime must be responsive to the masses to some extent, and smoldering piles of wreckage at Turkish air bases, and video of their planes getting blasted out of the sky, would make it quite difficult for the bosses to stay in power.

It was the Turks who militarized into this incident, remember. And they best be cautious, because that path ultimately leads to their government's downfall. Embarrassment and regime change is the outcome for them here. Think carefully, folks.

MaxSceptic

"Legal - but stupid"

I beg to differ, Israel achieved its aims: no further serious attempt by noisy pro-Hamas activists has been made to breach the blockade on Gaza.

As for the criticism: Israel is criticised 24/7. But as the old Arab proverb has it "The dogs bark, yet the caravan moves on".

ndm

David Trimble is hardly a disinterested observor. His Wikipedia entry states:

--In May 2010 when the former prime minister of Spain Jose Maria Aznar initiated and launched the "Friends of Israel Initiative,"

Israel has shown time and again that it is incapable of investigating its own excesses. In providing succour to these excesses, David Trimble damages his own reputation.

barney Wainer

"yank": "they [turkey] best be cautious, because that path ultimately leads to their government's downfall". After Ataturk had brought the Ottomans into the modern world and appointed the army to independently guard the Constitution we now see Turkey regressing by aligning with Iran and Syria, both Shi'ite Islamist human rights violators while wanting European Union membership:"one can't run with the hares and hunt with the hounds".

ndm

A more complete version of the Wikipedia entry on David Trimble:

-- In May 2010 when the former prime minister of Spain Jose Maria Aznar initiated and launched the "Friends of Israel Initiative," a non-Jewish international project supporting Israel's right to exist, Trimble joined him along with Peru's former president Alejandro Toledo, Italian philosopher Marcelo Pear, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton, and British historian Andrew Roberts.[36]

I love the way they phrase their loyal support of four decades of Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people as "supporting Israel's right to exist."

It is a despicable slander to suggest critics of Israeli policies seek to delegitimize Israel or end its existence. Indeed, the facts suggest that it is those who uncritically support Israeli depravities, BECAUSE Israel is a Jewish state, who have done most damage to the stading of Israel. Thankfully, increasing numbers of commentators in America are finally realising that. Obviously, there are some diehards who don't.

victor jara 67

@ndm
Wise words

Augustus

@ ndm
Idiotic words, and irrelevant.

The turkish Islamic group IHH, which owned the Mavi Marmara and two other ships in the flotilla, is a front organization for the support of terrorist groups such as al Qaida
and the Sunni insurgents in Iraq. An investigation by the Turkish authorities themselves (before its current Islamist government took power) found that they had procured firearms, explosives etc., and was
sending jihadists to Afghanistan, Bosnia,
and Chechnya to fight. Israel therefore had a strong case to enforce the blockade, a measure only undertaken because Hamas had used the seas to bring in war materials and
had used every means to build up its military capability. If the mission had been truly humanitarian there would have been no need to confront Israel as it did,
because Israel offered to have them offloaded at Ashdod, inspected for weapons,
and then sent on to Gaza. But that would have ruined the activists plans to create an incident even at the expense of jeopardizing their mission to get those vitally needed supplies to Gaza. Supplies,
incidentally, twice as much of which is transported into Gaza each week. It's pretty obvious that their real mission was to break the blockade so that bombs and missiles could again flow freely into Gaza.
What IS despicable is to bill such as mission as 'humanitarian' and a mission of
'freedom', so that those who support agression against Israel can be duped into believing that wrong is right. The most cynical victory of all: Doublespeak.

Verity

DavidK - Re your post in the number one spot above, so people are still using "lol"!

How quaint!

AY

Say tomorrow some external power starts smuggling weapons to the UK, where they are used to attack British citizens.

Would author then write the same comment, that trying to stop smugglers is "legal but stupid"? Most likely not, as such phrase wouldn't look very clever by any standards.

Anyway, whoever you author are, fool or anti-Semite or both - "God is Your Judge".

Arman

@yank
it is so foolish to compare turkey with syria and the likes. Syria had no choice but abandon its support for kurdish marxist seperatist when turkey came to its border with less than a division. Israel could not even bear an infantry/guerilla fight for 30 days in lebanon, given that it is all surrounded by enemies an attack by israel to turkey would be devastating for israel. US can't side with Israel, if it does, say goodby to NATO and say hi to likely new alliances. The fact is US needs turkey more which also has many more options than israel does.