Monday, May 31, 2010

Relieved

It's an irrational world.

Gaza is run by Hamas, a terrorist organization sworn to the destruction of Israel and willing to deliberately target women and children. Israel is thus at war with Gaza, although it is being nice in allowing Gaza to receive aid. However, for obvious reasons, a naval blockade is necessary.

The flotilla of six ships was obviously more determined to make an international scene than to deliver aid. Aid can be more effectively delivered via other channels, and if you want to fill a ship with aid, it would help not to pack six hundred people on it.

Israel had to stop the ships. Obviously Israel is not entirely stupid, and would want to stop the ships in the quietest way possible. Which they managed to do with five of the six ships, but you won't see the media reporting that. Nobody in their right mind could possibly think that Israel would want the international disaster of causing casualties.

Apparently, most of the world is not in their right mind. They believe that Israeli forces were given orders to initiate shooting at people and cause a political disaster for Israel.

As we know, Israeli forces who boarded one of the ships were assaulted by weapons. Fearing for their lives, they were forced to defend themselves. Being trained and armed soldiers, they were more effective than their attackers. Which in the eyes of the world, is a moral crime. Apparently in defending one's life, one is only allowed to cause the exact amount of harm that one has suffered so far.

All this is old news, just reflecting the ongoing absurdity of Judeopathy that has been around for a very long time. But the highlight/lowlight, the most absurd thing that I saw in the media, was the description that the Guardian (a notoriously Judeopathic newspaper from England) gave of events. In describing the Israeli version of events, it says that the activists "relieved the commandos of their pistols."

Ah yes! What a perfectly British way of describing it.

"We'll be having those pistols, sir. We wouldn't them to go off. Someone might get hurt. We'll just put them in a safe place where they can't be used. That'll be a relief."

(Yes, I'm aware that one of the dictionary definitions of "relieve" is "steal." However, in this context, it gives the impression that the activists were simply trying to disarm the soldiers, whereas what they actually did was to steal their weapons and use them to shoot at them!)

6 comments:

  1. Another rationalist perspective: perhaps maritime law which allows shooting at ships once they have been warned not to cross into your territorial waters would have sent a stronger message for the same cost.

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  2. During Intifada I someone pointed out to the local anti-Israel newspaper that whenever casualties were reported, it was always "X Palestinians have been killed while Y Israelis have died." Like the Arabs were murdered but maybe the Israelis all had cancer and heart attacks?
    This is how bad it is: I surveyed a few Canadian newsites and it wasn't until I reached the Israeli ones did I find mention that the protesters actually attacked the Israelis!

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  3. While I certainly condemn the hypocritical criticism that Israel is receiving from various European countries, the behavior of the IDF is also problematic. They were clearly caught off-guard by the reaction of the hundreds of militants in that Turkish vessel. Once it was seen that the descending Israeli commandos were being besieged, knocked down, and beaten by pipe wielding thugs, they should have immediately stopped the operation and swept the deck with machine gun fire. Instead, commando after commando was rapelled into that maelstrom.

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  4. As long as Israel acts as if Gaza and the West Bank belongs to the Arabs; as long as Israel defends itself in a very strange turning-the-other-cheek manner; and as long as it is considered "nice," rather than a crime, to give aid to one's enemies the world will be against Israel.

    There are two sides to this dispute. One side says the land is ours. The other side says, well, it's not necessarily ours, it may even be the Arabs, but we can't let them control these pieces of land as long as they're violent.

    If the land isn't yours, would business do you have not giving it to its rightful owners? Are you the Arabs' nanny that you should be able to say "I'm not going to give you this until you behave"?

    I hardly blame anyone for supporting the Arab cause considering the claims he hears from the official representatives of both sides.

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  5. Yehudah, your comment not very "rationalist".

    It is the truth, though.

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