ISRAEL - IRAN - SYRIA - HAMAS - HEZBOLLAH - WWWIII?

When it comes to Israel, Advocate never thinks. As far as he is concerned, Israel can do no wrong. Whining about having their commandos attacked while engaged in what was, essentially, an act of piracy, is the equivalent of a mugger saying he had to stab the victim, because the guy what hitting him.

Israel began creating itself long before UN resolution 181. It merely declared itself a state after the fact, and contrary to the terms of the resolution. One of the things it did to create itself was to ethnically cleans, "transfer" they called it at the time, large areas of Palestine that came under their control. This was perpetrated months before the start of the 1948 war.

Israel is oppressing the Palestinian people by insisting that it exist as an ethnocentric state at the expense of the peoples of Palestine. The peoples of Palestine attempted, and are attempting, to suppress Israel in its endeavor. They have so far failed to do so.

Who conquered whom in the 11th century does not give Israel or anyone the right to oppress a people. Your appeal to history is irrelevant to the crux of the conflict.

Actually Cyclo,
They DO have the right to stop, board, and inspect ANY ship entering their waters or attempting to run their blockade.
The US does it all the time, thats part of the job of the US Coast Guard.

And regarding the stopping of ships attempting to run their blockade, all you have to do is lok back to the early 1960's with the US Navy.
We did that quite often during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
We stopped and boarded every ship headed to Cuba.
And those ships were also in international waters.

Are you saying that Israel does not have the same rights as a state that the US does?

The Israeli soldiers were not committing an act of piracy. They were merely seeking to determine whether or not the ship on which they landed was carrying weapons and/or other ordnance into Gaza.

The Israelis had years ago established a well known embargo on weapons and/or other ordnance being brought into Gaza. So it was no surprise to the owners of those ships bound for Gaza that they would have to be searched for weapons and/or other ordnance to show they were not carrying any weapons and/or other ordnance.

The surprise was that some of the passengers on that ship began to beat Israeli soldier searchers that had landed on the ship.

Naturally those soldiers and those in the helicopter above, defended themselves by shooting at those who were beating the soldiers on the boat deck. Seven of those beating Israeli soldiers were killed as a consequence.

Moral of the story: To avoid soldier searchers killing you, do not beat them!

Duh!

The ship was not in their waters, so they didn't have the right to board it. Period. It isn't even a question.



We didn't have that right either, MM. We only had the power to do so, and nobody was around to stop us. This doesn't mean you have the right to do something.

Cycloptichorn

InfraBlue, your accusations against the Israelis are bunk. The actual history reveals that the Palestinian Arabs began trying to rid Palestine of Jews in 1920! I'll post that true history here again from Encyclopedia Brittanica, if you really are unaware of it.

But the ships crew had already announced their intention to attempt to run the blockade.

Would you be ok with what Israel did if it occured after the ship entered Israeli waters?

It would still have been ham-fisted and stupid, but not illegal.

Israel ignores the law, because they can, because we back them. Otherwise they wouldn't even exist as a nation any longer. But might doesn't make right and the moral indecencies of the modern Israeli government cannot be excused any more than any other country can.

Cycloptichorn

Do you even know what the UNCLOS laws are?

Reading them, you can clearly see that Isreal was within their rights to stop and board those ships.

To make it easy for you, I will link to the relevant parts for you...

http://www.admiraltylawguide.com/conven/unclospart2.html
Start reading at article 19 and then go down to section 4 and read what it says about contiguous zones.

From what I have read, those ships WERE inside the contiguous zone, and they did meet the qualifications of article 33 section 1(a) and they met the requirements of article 19 section 2(g).

So, Israel had a legal right to stop those ships.

That the Palestinians rioted against the immigrant Ashkenazim in 1920 does not negate the fact that the Zionists ethnically cleansed large areas of Palestine that fell under their control before the start of the 1948 war.

Krauthammer: Those troublesome Jews

Network News



Charles Krauthammer
Friday, June 4, 2010

The world is outraged at Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey denounces its illegality, inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usual U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in. The Obama administration dithers.

This Story
Krauthammer: Those troublesome Jews
Nudging Israel toward a Gaza fix
Cairo's unmet promise
But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel -- a declaration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilian territory. Yet having pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets.

In World War II, with full international legality, the United States blockaded Germany and Japan. And during the October 1962 missile crisis, we blockaded ("quarantined") Cuba. Arms-bearing Russian ships headed to Cuba turned back because the Soviets knew that the U.S. Navy would either board them or sink them. Yet Israel is accused of international criminality for doing precisely what John Kennedy did: impose a naval blockade to prevent a hostile state from acquiring lethal weaponry.

Oh, but weren't the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel's offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza -- as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.


Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel's inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas.

Israel has already twice intercepted ships laden with Iranian arms destined for Hezbollah and Gaza. What country would allow that?

But even more important, why did Israel even have to resort to blockade? Because, blockade is Israel's fallback as the world systematically de-legitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself -- forward and active defense.

(1) Forward defense: As a small, densely populated country surrounded by hostile states, Israel had, for its first half-century, adopted forward defense -- fighting wars on enemy territory (such as the Sinai and Golan Heights) rather than its own.

Where possible (Sinai, for example) Israel has traded territory for peace. But where peace offers were refused, Israel retained the territory as a protective buffer zone. Thus Israel retained a small strip of southern Lebanon to protect the villages of northern Israel. And it took many losses in Gaza, rather than expose Israeli border towns to Palestinian terror attacks. It is for the same reason America wages a grinding war in Afghanistan: You fight them there, so you don't have to fight them here.

But under overwhelming outside pressure, Israel gave it up. The Israelis were told the occupations were not just illegal but at the root of the anti-Israel insurgencies -- and therefore withdrawal, by removing the cause, would bring peace.

Land for peace. Remember? Well, during the past decade, Israel gave the land -- evacuating South Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. What did it get? An intensification of belligerency, heavy militarization of the enemy side, multiple kidnappings, cross-border attacks and, from Gaza, years of unrelenting rocket attack.

(2) Active defense: Israel then had to switch to active defense -- military action to disrupt, dismantle and defeat (to borrow President Obama's description of our campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda) the newly armed terrorist mini-states established in southern Lebanon and Gaza after Israel withdrew.

The result? The Lebanon war of 2006 and Gaza operation of 2008-09. They were met with yet another avalanche of opprobrium and calumny by the same international community that had demanded the land-for-peace Israeli withdrawals in the first place. Worse, the U.N. Goldstone report, which essentially criminalized Israel's defensive operation in Gaza while whitewashing the casus belli -- the preceding and unprovoked Hamas rocket war -- effectively de-legitimized any active Israeli defense against its self-declared terror enemies.

(3) Passive defense: Without forward or active defense, Israel is left with but the most passive and benign of all defenses -- a blockade to simply prevent enemy rearmament. Yet, as we speak, this too is headed for international de-legitimation. Even the United States is now moving toward having it abolished.

But, if none of these is permissible, what's left?

Ah, but that's the point. It's the point understood by the blockade-busting flotilla of useful idiots and terror sympathizers, by the Turkish front organization that funded it, by the automatic anti-Israel Third World chorus at the United Nations, and by the supine Europeans who've had quite enough of the Jewish problem.

What's left? Nothing. The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense. Why, just last week, the Obama administration joined the jackals, and reversed four decades of U.S. practice, by signing onto a consensus document that singles out Israel's possession of nuclear weapons -- thus de-legitimizing Israel's very last line of defense: deterrence.

The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million -- that number again -- hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists -- Iranian in particular -- openly prepare a more final solution.

Yup, a long siege against a defenseless little country. An illegal and immoral embargo. Terrorist act after terrorist act against Cuba, all courtesy of the US government, that great defender of freedom, that shining city on a hill, ..., why oh why would they commit such heinous terrorist actions against innocent civilians?

Why, MM, why?



Not the best example, MM. The US does a whole bunch of immoral and illegal things.

Since you apparently know absolutely nothing about what the Cuban missile crisis was all about, and since your sole reason for living seems to be to bash the US and everyone that is an American, to try and explain it to you would be pointless.

Do a little reading about what was going on, then come back and maybe you can carry on an adult conversation.

In 1962 the U.S. had a naval blockade of Cuba with that "missile crisis" we learned about (for me it was current events). And, the UK had a naval blockade of the Faulkland Islands when it was having that little problem with Argentina over what nationality the sheep on the island had.

So, naval blockades in international waters, to protect one's citizens, is already acceptable by international precedents.

By the way, has California been given back to Mexico yet?

Now the Israelis stopped an Irish ship headed for Gaza. There were toys on board for Gazan children. Perhaps, Christmas comes early for children in Gaza?

Perhaps, they (ship mates and Isrealis) will have a nice communal meal of cornbeef and cabbage. I do not believe there will be any violence, since it is not, in my opinion, in the character of the Irish (today) to have any gratuitous violence. Possibly that lesson should be taken by the radicals in the Middle East.

You mean the ones who stole the lands of the indigenous population and brought Jews from all over the world to occupy those lands.

Your post is bunk!

THE JEWS IN PALESTINE DID NOT ETHNICALLY CLEANSE ANY PART OF PALESTINE.
Israel declared its independence in 1948 within the boundaries recommended by the UN in 1947. Reponding to the advice given by those who were attempting to conquer Israil in 1948, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs fled Palestine expecting to return after Israel was conquered. After the Israelis won in 1948, there were tens of thousands of Arabs living within Israel who had not fled Israel. They and/or their descendants continue to live in Israel.

Based on past and subsequent attempts by some of the Palestinian Arabs to eradicate the Jews in Palestine, Israel decided to refuse to accept back into Israel those Palestinian Arabs that fled Israel like they were advised to do by Israel's would be conquerors. That was a clear demonstration by Israel of enlightened self-defense.

WHO REALLY OWNS WHAT LAND IN PALESTINE? WHO HAS THE RIGHT TO DECIDE? WHO HAS THE LEGAL POWER TO DECIDE? WHO WILL DECIDE?
Here is an abbreviated chronology of ownership of the land now called Palestine (all years are approximate).

You read the information, which was supplied by your own government, which clearly shows that the USA committed heinous acts of terrorism against Cuba, including acts of genocide by introducing virulent diseases to the population and their food sources. Not to mention the frequent bombings and other acts of sabotage.

And now you try to dismiss these actions. You are no better than the worst of the guards in the Nazi death camps, MM.

Let's review, shall we;

That is incorrect.

What you've left out of your abbreviated chronology is the fact that the Haganah, the precursor to the IDF, and the terrorist organizations Irgun and LEHI carried out massacres and wholesale cleansing of entire Palestinian villages and towns such as Deir Yassin, Tiberias, Haifa, Safed, Beisan, Jaffa and Acre that came under their control in the war that preceded the 1948 war and lasted between November 1947 to May 14,1948 upon the termination of Britain's Palestine Mandate, and the declaration of independence by the state of Israel.

A naval blockade is an act of war. Guess what -- Israel is at war with the Hamas govenment, which has attacked Israel proper at every opportunity.

Infra keeps talking about ethnic cleansing by Israel, but fails to mention the Pals persecution and murder of Jews, Christians, and other minorities. I might mention there is similar persecution throughout the ME. In the meantime, Israel lives at peace with its Arab, Christian, et al, citizens, who have the same rights as Jewish citizens. Infra never mentions that countries throughout the ME have driven out and otherwise murdered and persecuted their Jewish citizens. Many of these persecuted Jews eventually emigrated to Israel.