Why should Israel care about the negative publicity

Politics International Politics
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Here an article today to reference:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64U2YM20100601

Whether it was justified - I need to see some more facts (hopefully not distorted or spun by the Israeli government and hardline press), I really hope some of the protesters got some pictures or video, but I realize it was at night. In general though, IF they are violating a blockade that has in the past blocked military supplies, and IF the military did give them warning (I believe the military said beforehand they would attack at night, though I don’t know ho they told), and IF the protesters fought back - and I mean seriously fought back, not just threw a few punches and pushes - then I believe it’s quite possible that the military were in the right to use some force, at least legally. Don’t see why they couldn’t use Tasers or something instead though, but that may be rosy thinking.

Imagine if the US was blocking ships from say Iran (they probably are in fact, unless there’s oil on board) because they’re worried about nuclear or dirty bomb parts getting in the country, and the ship tried to run the blockade, the US military boarded, and the admittedly less armed or not armed Iranian crew fought back.

But IF there was no real warning, or IF there was no real fighting from the protesters, or IF it was very obvious or checkable that the supplies could not be used for military purposes, then I believe the military overreacted, and should be… what? Taken to the ICC? I think Israel and the US aren’t party to the ICC for just these reasons. Sanctions? Nothing serious will be done.

But here’s the thing:

Netanyahu is on record as having - and was elected partially because of - his hardline stance against the Palestinian issue and his opposition to peace talks. So they go and kill some protesters on the flotilla, and all of the media are talking about how this will hurt the prospects of the “indirect talks” for peace and bad publicity and so forth. Why is it not obvious that Netanyahu and the current administration don’t give a rats ass about peace with the Palestinians under any of the current peace plans? They only want unconditional surrender and halt of all attacks permanently before they will even consider peace. The Israeli hardliners know that America can whine and whistle all they want, they will not give up support for Israel so long as they are the only ardent supporters of US policy in the Middle East and the only thing close to a stable non-US hating democracy (even though it is mainly a democracy for the Jewish citizenry). Simple fact, everyone knows it. So the flotilla incident, as pathetic as it may end up being, should come as no surprise, and the world reaction probably plays into BN’s hands. If the US and the other European allies push back too hard, Israel’s always got their aces in the hole - nuking Iran, totally closing off Gaza and the West Bank - to play.

So we can argue this all we want, and we should (still like to see a few more “facts”), but in the end, the Israeli government DOES NOT CARE.

Here’s a real good article on how the religious right in Israel is pre-training soon to be soldiers to be religious soldiers, and how the percentage of highly religious soldiers is increasing to huge numbers. Good read if you’ve got the time.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/29/israels-holy-warriors/

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IDF Video

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If that can be verified as real and accurate footage, it looks fairly clear to me that the commandos coming down from the helicopter are getting attacked by poles and chairs and things. Any mainstream news organizations putting that video up yet?

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You make a good point about the blockade being well known, and the IDF giving advance warning to the flotilla that they would not be allowed in. You can already see the Israelphiles and the israelphobes lining up on their prospective sides, without any semblance of nuance. Although, I have to say, if you completely quarantine a population like they have done in Gaza, what outcome could they possibly expect?

But what you didn’t mention, and is by far the most important thing, is the damage this did to Israel’s relations with Turkey. Turkey is Israel’s only friend in the region and this incident has ruined that relationship, at least in the short term. Turkey was/is the only country in the Middle East that could be relied upon by Israel. Not any more. :bravo: :bravo:

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[quote=“Byshguy”]You make a good point about the blockade being well known, and the IDF giving advance warning to the flotilla that they would not be allowed in. You can already see the Israelphiles and the israelphobes lining up on their prospective sides, without any semblance of nuance. Although, I have to say, if you completely quarantine a population like they have done in Gaza, what outcome could they possibly expect?

But what you didn’t mention, and is by far the most important thing, is the damage this did to Israel’s relations with Turkey. Turkey is Israel’s only friend in the region and this incident has ruined that relationship, at least in the short term. Turkey was/is the only country in the Middle East that could be relied upon by Israel. Not any more. :bravo: :bravo:[/quote]
Yeah but you know I aint believing it. Remember that whole mess a couple month’s back with the poster of Peres “bowing” to Erdogan? Nothing really came of that. Turkey will line up with Israel when the time comes I bet. But we’ll see, this is a global situation now, maybe all the words and dismay coming from Turkey will actually result in some change in policy. Like nonlethal means against protesters? But I doubt it, it’ll just be added to the list of grievances and everyone will move on.

Just to be clear, I am not supporting Israel’s handling of Gaza or the Palestinian plight in any way. I am saying that if you give plenty of warning, go on board without yet firing a shot, and then get attacked, well, you gotta have some defense.

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Multiple videos have been posted on the web.
I guess it all comes down to what one considers a “mainstream news organization” and why the MSM has any credibility in reportage of events such as this?

for consideration:

Why Gaza aid flotilla a media success

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I’ll go under the assumption the video is authentic, it would be hard to imagine how it could be faked. You would have to take the Israeli’s word that shots were fired at them but it doesn’t seem hard to imagine from what I can see. A lot of people seem to be always ready to nail the Israelis at the jump of the gun without knowing many facts, this case would seem to be a classic example. It’s possible that they used excessive force but it looks like that could be an error of degree and not one of magnitude. More facts will become apparent perhaps but it seems the jury has already spoken as far as many are concerned.

One thing I am confused about is what seems to me the incompetence of the Israelis here. Wouldn’t it have been prudent to somehow clear the deck instead of feeding their men in one by one as they did? Or would that have been impossible?

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[quote=“Byshguy”]You make a good point about the blockade being well known, and the IDF giving advance warning to the flotilla that they would not be allowed in. You can already see the Israelphiles and the israelphobes lining up on their prospective sides, without any semblance of nuance. Although, I have to say, if you completely quarantine a population like they have done in Gaza, what outcome could they possibly expect?

But what you didn’t mention, and is by far the most important thing, is the damage this did to Israel’s relations with Turkey. Turkey is Israel’s only friend in the region and this incident has ruined that relationship, at least in the short term. Turkey was/is the only country in the Middle East that could be relied upon by Israel. Not any more. :bravo: :bravo:[/quote]

Turkey’s relations with Israel have been on the cooler for some time, so I wouldn’t say this event was the turning point. They’ve been weakened since Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party came to power in 2006, his storming off the stage at Davos after debating with Shimon Peres, and from banning Israel from doing certain maneuvres in the region. Just another reason why secular elites in Istanbul and Ankara should reassert themselves.

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Multiple videos have been posted on the web.
I guess it all comes down to what one considers a “mainstream news organization” and why the MSM has any credibility in reportage of events such as this?

for consideration:

Why Gaza aid flotilla a media success[/quote]
Hey as a lefty, I’m even more dismayed at the MSM in general than you are, because we know the truth over here on the left, and that is the MSM has been pulled rightward so that the new “mainstream” is actually further right than it used to be. But that’s a different argument, I agree with you that the MSM in general is not the gold standard necessarily (depends on which organization), but what the MSM does do is make less “out there” claims - probably out of fear of lawsuits and loss of reputation - so if something appears on their networks/websites, it is more likely to be vetted as true. They also usually have more resources to determine if something is true.

So I agree with your general lack of confidence in them, but I am appealing to the fact that they have a reputation and resources, that’s all.

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Man I totally agree with you on that shit. I always wanted to visit Istanbul, an it’s probably still plenty safe, but the general mood over there is worrisome and there’re plenty of other places to go - I hear the Greek Isles are particularly cheap right now :discodance:

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Well, let’s imagine that the roles were reversed and that an Arab state was attacking Jewish targets (like that has ever happened)… what would one expect to have occurred and would there have been the same level of opprobrium? Be careful in your answers, I have already lined up my argument… and have a lengthy historical record to back it. Considering that the entire Middle East was ethnically cleansed of Jews… one has to imagine the Israelis having engaged in the same level of ethnic cleansing. That Gaza and the West Bank exist at all as Palestinian enclaves already says something about Israeli restraint. Let’s be fair about that.

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It will be interesting to see what happens in Israel if current demographic trends persist. I’m thinking of the growth in the number certain ultra-Orthodox types who don’t do military service or work for that matter (rather relying on the Israeli taxpayer to provide for them and often their many children). The financial strain on Israel alone will be extraordinary.

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See this is why I think the video needs to be in the mainstream media before it can be used as evidence:

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=177188

If the video is real, and it’s pretty obvious in the video that the people in black are getting attacked, then the other countries, especially Turkey, would have no ground for saying 90% of what they’re saying. So it’s important for the MSM to get the video, vet it, and put it up.

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A Canadian on board these boats has Castro-loving leftist ties (dock workers). :laughing: :laughing: The marriage between foreign leftists and Islamofascists is quite revealing isn’t it? :laughing: They call Israeli’s navy murderous, and yet these activists were the first people that got violent with weapons (and not just sticks as this fifth rate article suggests). The naivete of these foreign leftist activists is unbelievable as they criticize what they deem as agressive tactics but engage in it themselves on board boats with people that do. They criticize Israel and Colombia for human rights as this gent has and yet travel with groups that engage in group violence against one navy person.

rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/djclime … -need-prot

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You mean a totally random situation like if Israel were to send a relief convo to the Kurdish areas of Turkey? I wonder how Turkey might react to that? Would they allow humanitarian supplies to be trucked in without inspection, as they have demanded of the vessels trying to make it to Gaza ports? :ponder:

But back on topic. Biden: Israel right to stop Gaza flotilla from breaking blockade

[quote]“They’ve said, ‘Here you go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship – if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza,’”, he said. "So what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza? Well, it’s legitimate for Israel to say, 'I don’t know what’s on that ship. These guys are dropping… 3,000 rockets on my people.

“Look, you can argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not – but the truth of the matter is, Israel has a right to know – they’re at war with Hamas – has a right to know whether or not arms are being smuggled in.”

[…]

"As we put pressure, and the world put pressure on Israel to let material go into Gaza to help those people who are suffering, the ordinary Palestinians there, what happened? Hamas would confiscate it, put it in a warehouse [and] sell it.
[/quote]

Q&A: Is Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza legal?

I don’t imagine that Israel cares about the negative publicity when it comes to security, especially not when it has caught Iranian vessels trying to smuggle weapons into the Gaza strip for Hamas. The change is that Turkey is playing the role that Iran has normally played in denouncing Israel. The US may need to reevaluate whether it’s in our strategic interest to keep Turkey as an ally now that their goals and ours are diverging. The term that Steven Cook at Foreign Policy uses is “Frenemy”.

This isn’t exactly a new revelation, that Turkey is fast losing its secular nature and becoming an Islamist country and that has significant strategic repercussions. Stratfor’s George Friedman wrote how Turkey would remake itself it in depth in “The Next Hundred Years”. That path will lead to direct confrontation with the US and Israel.

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As usual, Krauthammer gets it. Love the comparisons with World War II and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also love the jab at the supine Europeans :thumbsup:

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co … inionsbox1

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TMan - Proving, yet again, there is no fool like an old fool.

a Lovely piece done up for the Aid Ships Dilemma…

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Gott mit uns

[quote]Richard J. Goldstone (born October 26, 1938) is a former South African Constitutional Court judge. He served as the chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda from 15 August 1994 to September 1996,and in 2009 led an independent fact-finding mission created by the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate international human rights and humanitarian law violations related to the Gaza War.

Richard Goldstone is a Jewish South African, who is married to Noleen Goldstone. They have two daughters (Glenda and Nicole) and four grandsons (Jason, Sean, Ben and Jordan). According to his daughter Nicole, Goldstone “is a Zionist and loves Israel.” Goldstone himself, in a 2000 speech in Jerusalem, noted that “bringing war criminals to justice stems from the lessons of the Holocaust”.

Goldstone had a very popular standing in the South African Jewish community. They respected his fight against South African apartheid and his role in the war tribunals against Rwanda and Yugoslavia.[/quote]

[quote]The Mission found that, in the lead up to the Israeli military assault on Gaza, Israel imposed a blockade amounting to collective punishment and carried out a systematic policy of progressive isolation and deprivation of the Gaza Strip. During the military operation, houses, factories, wells, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings were destroyed, with families, including the elderly and children, left living amid the rubble of their former dwellings long after the attacks ended, as no reconstruction has been possible due to the continuing blockade. Significant trauma, both immediate and long-term, has been suffered by the population of Gaza. More than 1400 people were killed. The Gaza military operations were directed by Israel at the people of Gaza as a whole, in furtherance of an overall policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population, and in a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population. The destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a deliberate and systematic policy to make the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population. Israeli forces also humiliated, dehumanized and carried out an assault on the dignity of the people in Gaza, through the use of human shields, unlawful detentions, unacceptable conditions of detention, the vandalizing of houses, the treatment of people when their houses were entered, graffiti on the walls, obscenities and racist slogans. The Israeli operations were carefully planned in all their phases as a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability. . . .

Israel failed to take feasible precautions required by international law to avoid or minimize loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects. The firing of white phosphorus shells over the UNRWA compound, the intentional strike at the Al Quds hospital using high explosive artillery shells and white phosphorous, the attack against Al Wafa hospital, were violations of international humanitarian law. The kinds of warnings issued by Israel in Gaza cannot be considered as sufficiently effective in the circumstances to comply with customary law. There were numerous instances of deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian objects (individuals, whole families, houses, mosques) in violation of the fundamental international humanitarian law principle of distinction, resulting in deaths and serious injuries. Israeli attacks were also launched with the intention of spreading terror among the civilian population. In several cases, Israeli armed forces did not allow humanitarian organisations access to the wounded and medical relief, as required by international law. [/quote]-- Goldstone Report, September 2009

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I agree. Why is the media so hell bent on making Israel look evil for wanting to prevent weapons from entering their territory and being used against them? And what does Obama know that we don’t?