The Freedom Flotilla fraud
What was supposed to be a routine Israeli maritime boarding and inspection operation is turning into a propaganda victory for the Islamist terror group Hamas. The main lesson learned from the incident on the ship Mavi Marmara is: Don’t bring a paintball gun to a knife fight.
The initial frenzy of denunciations of the operation in which nine people died – using words like piracy, slaughter, genocide and so forth – is fading in the cold light of facts. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay claimed that the Israeli operation had no legal justification, which only betrays her ignorance of maritime law. Navies routinely stop, board and search suspicious vessels, and Israel has intercepted blockade runners headed to Gaza for years. The difference this time is that the “peace activists” on board were armed and looking for a fight.
The Israelis boarded with paintball guns, tasers, tear gas and other nonlethal weapons. They expected the usual highly choreographed dance in which they board the ship and take control of it while the activists link arms, sing the Palestinian terrorist equivalent of “We Shall Overcome,” take photos and issue press releases about the latest “Zionist atrocity.” That’s the usual Mahatma Gandhi/Martin Luther King Jr. passive-resistance theater.