Peace and Humanitarian Aid

I find the outcry over Israel's boarding ships bound for Gaza to be a bit odd. Both Israel and Egypt are maintaining a blockade of Gaza in order to stop arms shipments. Suddenly some ships appear with "humanitarian aid" and they refuse to recognize the blockade. Four ships are brought under control but in two others fights break out and 9 "peace activists" are killed and dozens of others are wounded. The media erupts in stories of cruelty and Palestinians sympathizers march in the streets around the world.

When it comes to Gaza, everybody knows that Hamas is an organization with a long and distinguished history of humanitarian aid. I remember clearly the "peaceful" treatment Hamas gave the Fatah in Gaza when it took over.

Here's a video put out by some thinly veiled Israelis pointing out that Hamas is a "peaceful" organization and these ships were full of "humanitarians" who just happened to have clubs and knives. It is understandable that "peaceful" activists would receive IDF paratroopers with open arms and greet them with knife thrusts and bludgeonings. These are the international symbols of fraternal and peaceful greetings...

[Update: Nuts to crappy IP claims! They've blocked the video. See the replacement at the bottom of this posting...]


I wonder how these "peace activists" would react if North Korea decided it needed to send "humanitarian aid" to San Francisco and refused to recognize the US's border security and requests to stop and be boarded. Just how many protestors would be in the street crying about the injustice of stopping humanitarian aid shipments that might conceal a nuclear bomb?

I wonder how sympathetic Turkey would be to a coalition of Kurdish, Armenian, and Greek "humanitarian aid" that insisted on bringing in six ships filled to the gunwales with "aid" and refused to recognize the Turkish border police? Surely the world would erupt in protests about the cruel and barbaric actions of Turkey in refusing to let this aid flow unobstructed into Turkey. What right has Turkey to stop "peaceful" shipments? Just because these groups have a long hatred of Turkey and have a desire for revenge shouldn't be justification for Turkey to stop shipments and ask to inspect the cargo. These groups have pasted signs on the ship assuring the world these shipments are "humanitarian aid".

I lived through the Cold War when communist sympathizers twisted the truth to "sell" the media on their own version of "the truth". (I'm not saying the West was lily white. The US did awful things by overthrowing governments and bringing war to client states that got out of line. Ugly stuff.) But anybody who has watched the politics of the 20th century has to be aware that some pretty ugly fanatics manipulate the media and the media allows itself to be manipulated.

I'm disgusted that the international media so quickly covered the "humanitarian" side of the story and overlooked any possible interpretation of illegal arms smuggling or the need of the Israelis to defend their country.

Update 2010jun12: Here is a video of Vice President Biden talking to Charlie Rose about this issue:



Judge for yourself how "peaceful" these activist were. I sure don't recognize the principles of Mohatma Gandhi in their response to Israeli paratroopers landing on the ship: