Since September first, a flotilla of 40 ships from various nations have been slowly sailing across the Mediterranean to deliver a token amount of aid to Gaza. This is a PR move — the reason they are taking so long is because they’re not bringing huge amounts of relief, but are instead trying to bring attention to Israel’s oppression.
Because it specifically has the goal of bringing the world’s attention to the crimes of Israel, you know it would not undermine its message by, for instance, secretly hauling crates of AK-47s. It’s just food and medical aid, and people who are talking on their cell phones to spread the message. That’s why the flotilla has been harassed by electronic countermeasures along the way, and getting buzzed by drones to deprive the passengers of sleep.
And then, yesterday, the Israeli navy boarded the ships and detained people, ending the flotilla’s mission. They have excuses!
Israel has argued its actions constitute a lawful naval blockade needed to prevent Hamas from importing arms, while critics consider it collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza.
Whether the blockade is militarily justified is a point of contention. But the flotilla argues they are a civilian, unarmed group and that the passage of humanitarian aid is guaranteed under international law.
Uh, Israel? You’ve seized the ships, you’ve got troops on board, if they were importing arms, you could be releasing photos of those imaginary crates of AK-47s. You could produce documents that you’ve seized showing correspondence with terrorist organizations. They haven’t! It wouldn’t be believable given Israel’s history of faking evidence, and given the flotilla’s obvious goal of establishing a peaceful propaganda coup.
Well, they succeeded. Israel’s ham-handed attack on the flotilla is just demonstrating that they are criminals who don’t like their ongoing genocide being interrupted by peaceful activists.
“Israel” also doesn’t want witnesses of both the ongoing crimes and those already committed. Images taken from the coast could easily show the extend of the indiscriminate destruction. The IOF has been shown to target journalists on the ground (killing them in the hundreds ) not allowing international journalists inside Gaza and restricting or attempting to restrict camera crews filming from the air. I still can’t believe this “Israeli” government of racist religious lunatics is getting away with all these crimes .
The flotilla may be fortunate that Israel didn’t just follow the US’s current Venezuela policy.
@stevewatson #2:
The flotilla is sufficiently high-profile that even the current government of Israel realises they wouldn’t be able to get away with casual murder on the high seas. You can bet that Mossad are trying to get an agent provocateur onto one of those boats, though.
If Israel is so worried about weapons being smuggled to Gaza through aid missions, then my modest proposal is that Israel should be doing the aid missions themselves.
The israeli military government under naziyahoo is pure evil. It is so sad that decent Jews are caught in this genocidal country.
stevewatson@2: the flotilla was well aware of the risk, which is why they did a huge media campaign and got notable people from dozens of countries. Blowing up a global celebrity like Greta Thunberg would be risky PR; blowing up an MP from an EU country would likely spark sanctions from that country.
Italy has been having general strikes to force the Italian government to support the flotilla or otherwise do something about the genocide.