Just my two cents:

1) The ships were in international waters when they were boarded. The ships were not headed to or about to enter Israeli waters and all were flying flags of other sovereign states.

From a legal perspective, the IDF had no jurisdiction or right to board any of these ships, therefore technically the passengers were not in the wrong to defend themselves.

In addition to this, the IDF chose the worst possible means of boarding- rapidly deploying off of helicopters in an early morning blitz as a means of trying to exert complete dominance without so much as a "hey, do you mind if we come aboard and look around??"

The fact that no IDF troops were killed and in fact a very small number were injured lends creedence to the fact that the 600 people on board the ships were not armed to the teeth terrorists but were probably more like "hey wtf, imperial storm troopers dropping out of the sky!!!!" and that quite understandably scuffles broke out upon seeing said storm troopers descending.

2) All of these ships were searched by Turkish authorities before departure who confirmed that indeed the convoy carried things like pencils and laundry detergent (interestingly enough two items that don't seem to find their way across very much at the land crossings)

If Israel doesn't trust the Turkish authorities then perhaps diplomatic relations should be severed.

 3) The "criminal terrorists" among the passenger manifests included a nobel peace laureate and holocaust survivor, as well as several elected politicians from other nations and human rights activists from various groups. It will be very interesting to hear their version of events.

4) As a whole, the Israeli blockade of Gaza is both illegal and ineffective. It has been going on for years now and Hamas is still in power. The operation "cast lead" was also ineffective as it did not accomplish it's goal of removing Hamas from power. What it has accomplished is the collective punishment of more than a million people for voting into power a government that Israel does not approve of. The ultimate victims of the blockade are not Hamas, but the people of Gaza who now effectively live in one of the largest open air prisons on the planet.

What should be done? If Israel wants to blockade it's borders into Gaza, well, Israel is a sovereign state so they can do that.

-however-

Israel should not, nor do they have the right, to run a naval blockade as well. So what should happen? I'm sure the UN wouldn't have a problem passing a resolution and deploying a few warships in the area. These ships could stop and inspect all shipping going to Gaza, and so long as no weapons are found they should be able to pass. Since operation cast lead large amounts of goods and technology have not been allowed in to rebuild from the damage inflicted on the ludicrous and paranoid assertion that they could all be -possibly- converted into weapons.

Or, maybe Turkey could send one of their warships with the next convoy of humanitarian ships and see what happens.

You are such an apologist, Arty.  Israel allows and will allow all the humanitarian aid people want to deliver.  Just not directly by sea, which would simply permit large scale smuggling of weapons & munitions.

Get real.  You know perfectly well that this was a mission of provocation from the git-go.  Doesn't matter that it had the 'intended' result - Israel did what it had to do.  The UN hasn't, and won't, do anything to prevent Hamas continuing its war to eliminate Israel.

hhhmm... that's not what the Israeli human rights group Btselem says-

http://www.btselem.org/English/Gaza_Strip/20100531_The_Siege_on_Gaza.asp

Harsh restrictions on imports

Under agreements between Israel and Egypt, the Gaza Strip’s foreign trade must be conducted through Israel. The quantity of goods that Israel allows into the area is less than one-quarter the quantity that entered prior to the siege, and far below the amount required for the population’s needs. The range of goods that Israel allows in is also much smaller: 150 types of goods compared with 4,000 before the siege. Israel refuses to publish the list of products permitted into the Gaza Strip, or the rules used in determining the list. The NGO Gisha filed an action in the Administrative Court demanding this information. In refusing the demand, the state argued that providing this information would harm state security and Israel’s foreign relations. The court has not yet given its decision.

Difficulties in rebuilding destroyed and damaged buildings

Israel prohibits the importing of building materials, including iron and cement. The prohibition has remained in place even after Operation Cast Lead, during which 3,500 houses were completely destroyed, thousands more damaged, and extensive harm caused to infrastructures. Israel’s prohibition is preventing the reconstruction of thousands of buildings destroyed during the operation.

Frequent blackouts, sewage flowing into the sea

The siege also severely impairs the supply of electricity in the Gaza Strip. Since September 2007, when Israel declared the Gaza Strip a “hostile entity” following the firing of Qassam rockets, Israel has cut reduced the supply of industrial fuel, which is needed to operate the power station in Gaza. Following a petition filed by the NGOs Gisha and Adalah, the state agreed to supply some 63 percent of the fuel needed to meet all the residents’ needs. In practice, however, it provides less than this quantity. As a result of Israel’s policy, 98 percent of Gaza residents suffer from planned blackouts lasting up to eight or ten hours a day. The other two percent of the population do not receive any electricity at all, in part due to the shortage of spare parts, which makes it impossible to repair infrastructure, or due to the proximity of their homes to the border with Israel.

Until yesterday morning it used to be perfectly legal to board, even sink, enemy merchant ships. Allied forces sank plenty of Japanese merchant ships on the high seas during World War II. Admiral Doenitz did likewise and was acquitted for it based on Admiral Niemitz's statement that Americans did the same to Axis merchant ships.

I find it hard to believe that this has changed or that sinking enemy merchant ships is legal while boarding them is not. Please go into more detail. When did that happen?

Of course, the passengers had the right to defend themselves. But if and when they do they become combatants and the Israelis can use whatever means are necessary to defeat them.

It's no problem sending aid to Gaza. But it has to be checked for weapons. If the purpose was delivering aid, they could have gone through Ashdod, like the UN and Red Cross do. They decided to break the blockade instead, thereby entering the war. And they didn't even pretend to be neutral.

That's one thing.

The second thing is that Israel does have the right to create a blockade. Blockades are a perfectly legal means of fighting a war as long as humanitarian aid gets through (which it does). Building material does not always qualify as humanitarian aid, which is why the Red Cross hand out food and medical supplies but not cement. The idea that this is somehow illegal when Israel does it is quite ludicrous.

Lots of goods enter Gaza all the time, including building materials.

Anyway, you can see for yourself:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=396434908860&ref=mf

And here is my personal blog entry on the issue, with comparison of how many goods usually go into Gaza and how much of a difference the flotilla would have made:

http://web.mac.com/ajbrehm/Home/Blog/Entries/2010/6/1_A_Tragedy_in_the_Middle-East.html

The flotilla was carrying 10,000 tons of goods. This is less than what enters Gaza on a single weekend. It'd take you some time to find a region in the world that gets as many goods as Gaza! It imports more than most Egyptian cities with greater populations.

Anyway, I am glad you joined the discussion. I was hoping that somebody from the other side could explain to me why boarding enemy merchant ships is suddenly illegal. Seems like the field of international law is a fast-changing world indeed.

Perhaps you can find an example of a country that was in a war and didn't sink sink or board enemy merchant ships because "it's illegal"?

Finally, I'd really like to know if you think that Israel could send a flotilla to land in Iran which goods for the Sunni rebel groups in the south-west without Iran attacking it and firing at the crew if they fight back. Do you think that countries generally let merchant ships deliver goods to countries they are war with? I really don't remember such a case.

The power plant delivering electricity to Gaza is under fire. Sometimes the workers are afraid to go to work. Israel keeps promising that they would send braver workers, but you know how the Jews are... whine, whine, whine.

Is electricity a human right? That would be interesting because the Arab countries have never delivered electricity to Israel or allowed delivery from third parties through their territory. Israel had to produce it herself. I don't remember this coming up as a violation of international law but perhaps it is different for Gaza. My parents told me that when West-Berlin was under Russian blockade (ask the Russians if that was a violation of international law!) Berlin had to build more power plants because for some reason the Russians didn't deliver electricity (they were probably even more scared than the Jews).

Yes, I am sure that would work just as well as the UN troops in southern Lebanon who were supposed to stop Lebanese attacks and instead shared bases with Hizbullah.

They certainly didn't stop the attacks as anyone from the north of Israel can tell you. I'd be surprised if they even tried to stop weapons deliveries.

Yes, we need bigger wars, that's the problem.

Perhaps we can get Israel and Turkey to fight a huge war, then we'd have something.

More war for a better world. Excited times we live in.

Do you have any solutions for this problem that don't involve more war and violence?

Tell that to the relatives of Leon Klinghoffer.

Oh, come on, everybody knows that nobody cares about disabled Jewish victims of terror attacks.

I do not see why anyone would attack Arty for stating the company line.  That is exactly how Turkey and others wanted the issue portrayed.  We can wade through rivers of internet sites looking for their propaganda, but Arty spelled it out to us in plain English and brought it to us.  He did us a favor.

His family did, although they never did get any justice.

Certainly.

But I really do want to know how these people explained to themselves that boarding enemy merchant ships is suddenly illegal.

Having watched some of the video and my curiosity having been piqued by serendipitously hearing a few minutes of Michael Savage's radio show this evening, I wonder what the H the IDF was thinking.

That operation seems bizarre in its execution and presumptively its planning.  Very un-Mossad-like, very un-IDF-like.  Strange tactics placing commandos in such an indefensible situation.  Rappelling one at a time?  With paintball guns?  Why in international waters? Why not wait until they were in territorial waters?

Makes me wonder what sort of intelligence the IDF & Mossad had in hand.  Very strange.  Big picture, Israel had to enforce the blockade.  Small picture, odd way to do it.

Just caught a couple of clips from Obama's AIPAC speech during the 2008 campaign.  What a scumbag.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABjE_7uwA0I

A single Jew, hundreds of Nazi protesters. I am certain I wouldn't have had the guts.

There was no need to wait until they were in territorial waters since that wouldn't have influenced the legality. It probably seems to you as if it would have changed the reporting, but I am sure it wouldn't have. The press would have spoken of "international waters" even if this had happened a mile off the coast.

The IDF didn't think the "peace activists" would actually attack them. That's why they came essentially unarmed. That is indeed naivity of a high degree. I myself use the working assumption that there is few people more dangerous than "peace activists" have so far escaped their "love" although some have wished me a horrible death. The problem is that once a group calls itself "peace activists" confronting them with weapons is considered a most horrible crime.

Problem was the Israeli navy could not just redirect the ships to Ashdod without boarding because the smaller boats might have run out of water if the maneuver takes too long. Better to kill a few of the more "peaceful" "activists" than led those die who really didn't plan to be very "peaceful".

Now that I looked this up...

Turns out there are no international waters in that region. Check the update to my post.

That doesn't surprise me. If the flotilla was boarded in international waters, far from Israel and Cyprus, it would be hard to believe indeed that it was on route to Gaza, which can only be reached through Israeli waters.

The mainstream (?) left now comes out in support of Israel. It seems the tide is turning.

At the same time, those supposedly bringing "aid" to the people of Gaza have form for using alleged acts of humanitarianism as cover for weapons smuggling – and Israel has every right to defend its own citizens from the consequences of such illicit transfer of arms. There is not a country on earth that would not take similar steps to protect its people; there is not an army on earth that would not allow its soldiers to respond with force to neutralise a life-threatening attack on their fellow troops.

The activists who launched the vicious assault on the boarding soldiers knew full well what they were doing. They had issued threat after threat against the IDF in the days building up to this morning's clash, with convoy organiser Huwaida Arraf brashly declaring his group's unwavering dedication to reaching Gaza: "They are going to have to forcefully stop us." Club-wielding assailants might not fit the cute and cuddly image of stereotypical aid workers, but there can be no doubt from the evidence that those attacking the Israeli forces were not the archetype of calm and measured peace activists.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/01/israel-no-choice-gaza-flotilla

In fact the Israelis had announced several times last week that if the convoy of six ships would divert to the Israeli port of Ashdod, Israel would allow it to offload its aid shipments and then after inspection (to insure they didn't include military contraband) would facilitate their direct delivery to Gaza and its people -- just as Israel allows 10 to15,000 tons of humanitarian aid to be delivered to Gaza each week.

Five of the six ships agreed. But the sixth, the Mavi Marmara, ignored Israeli warnings. it was clearly looking for a fight. Small wonder. Like much of the flotilla, the Turkish ship was controlled by militants of IHH, a Turkish relief fund with a radical Islamic anti-Western orientation. In addition to legitimate philanthropic activities, IHH supports radical Islamic networks, including Hamas. It also has had ties to global jihad groups.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-z-chesnoff/the-gaza-convoy-looking-f_b_595510.html

For starters, when are so-called peace activists going to admit that while peace is desirable, it is not their primary goal? If it were, then those same activists would also position people among the civilian communities on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza. They would sit in cafés, schools, and otherwise peaceful homes as they lived, or died, through Hamas rocket attacks and bombings. They would remind Gaza, as they have Israel, that not only is the whole world watching, but that the violence they do harms citizens of many nations.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-brad-hirschfield/mourning-not-politicizing_b_595423.html

Once it becomes public (if it will) that the "victims" were radical Islamists (and not well-meaning idiots from Europe), the tide will turn.

It seems like the mass media are always trying to get as much anti-Israel reporting through in the day or two before facts become known. I don't know who watches the watchers, but I do know who watches the Jews.

My immediate problem is now that I am in Ireland. The days of Daniel O'Connell are long gone and it seems like demonstrations will get worse over the next few days.

Friday evening I will be doing security in my synagogue. That's a job that "peace activists" don't have to do. Despite their statements about evil Jews, their meetings are not often attacked by bloodthirsty Jews where we have to deal with the fact that "peace activists" can be quite dangerous.

And no, the problem are not Muslim immigrants (although some of them are), the problem is western left-wingers.

When a major terror attack happens in Iraq, against Muslims, I ask the congregation to pray for Iraq. And I make sure to let my Iraqi butcher know about it. I am not afraid of Muslims attacking a synagogue anywhere. It doesn't happen. Heck, in the West-Bank Muslims even defended a Synagogue against destruction by western "peace activists" two years ago.

The Muslims are not the enemy.

But the Islamists and their left-wing allies are.

Yah blockades are legal if you are at war - Israel however is not at war with Gaza. And neither are they at War with Turkey which would allow them to board turkish territory (which the ship is as long it is not in isreal territory). Don't get me wrong they have the right to search the ship for Weapons (they however have no right to demand the ships to go via Ashdod as long as they are not at war with Gaza), but the methods they used where inappropriate.

Indeed.

Is not?

Define war.

If thousands of rockets raining on one side and 1400 dead on the other side is not a war to you, you are a tougher man than I.

Anyway, we seem to agree that if Gaza were at war with Israel, the blockade would be legal. Correct?

Now we just have to ask Gaza's government, either one of them, whether they are at war with Israel.

Leauki being at War is a very legal term requiring a formal declaration of War and can only happen between recognized states, as Gaza isn't recognized by Israel as independent state at all they can't be at War, in a sense which allows them to have a blockade, with them.

And additionally to that you can't extend a blockade to areas outside your territorial waters as long as you are not in war with the countries you are operating therein. Why didn't Isreal just take the normal approach to search a ship, instead of having this badly planned commando action. They wanted to avoid pictures and video footage taken in daylight, but a normal ship search wouldn't give exactly good propaganda material to the activists.

You must have read different international laws than I. That seems to happen a lot, as lots of people keep referring to "international laws" that I have never seen written down anywhere official. Plus they can never point to them.

So you are saying that as long as one party to a physical war is not a recognised (by whom?) state, the other party cannot use certain tactics that are otherwise legal?

Wasn't it the other way around? I wasn't aware that a higher status of a party to a physical war allows the enemy to use more tactics rather than less. The Geneva Conventions _limit_ what one can do, they do not _expand_.

Anyway, you must have read different international law than I.

The Geneva Conventions, which I believe cover this sort of thing, say, in the text common to all four:

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions [proviosions follow]

http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/GC_1949-IV.pdf

In case you don't know, what the Geneva Conventions call an "armed conflict" is a war.

So, yes, "being at war" is a very legal term. But it never required two recognised nations to be a war.

Civil wars, insurgencies, wars between unrecognised countries etc. are all covered by the same law.

And, as you said, a blockade is a legal way to fight a war, as is boarding blockade runners.

Since when can a party to a war not operate outside its territorial waters?

Did American submarines really wait until Japanese merchant ships reached Japanese territorial waters?

the ships were turkish and therefore Isreal would have needed to declare war on turkey first before boarding them.

Here is a quote at the site.  I think it is very appropriate given the video.

This boy symbolized Israel. Little country, which stand bravely against millions of fanatic stupid muslims.  - sdfrty

Not true.  Germany was sinking American ships headed to England in both wars before America entered the war.  As Leauki pointed out, the ships were not in international waters, so they entered a war zone on their own.

The ships made clear their alliance with Hamas. If anything Turkey would have had to declare war on Israel before giving aid to Israel's enemy during an existing war.

The ship also was flying flags of all sorts of countries, including at least one "country" ("Palestine") that Israel is indeed at war with.

What's your point? You don't seem to have any arguments except your conviction that this must have been a crime of some sort.

As for your argument regarding war being only between two nations, may I remind you of the war against the Taliban? Are the Taliban a recognised nation? Do NATO forces refrain from attacking their supply transports because doing so would only be allowed if the enemy were a nation?

You seem to think that war is some kind of cat and mouse game where a ship can display one flag until attacked and then display another and say "Look, we are Turks now... don't shoot".

In fact, if I recall correctly flying the wrong flag is an actual war crime (in the books of laws that doesn't differentiate between Jews and others). The ship willfully participated in a war flying several flags, including one of a party to the war. So don't tell me Israel would have to declare war on Turkey first.

If I hired a ship tomorrow and broke an embargo somewhere I wouldn't be able to defend myself by claiming that since I am a German citizen and own a German flag you cannot touch me until you declare war on Germany.

The allies also sank Chilean ships headed to Germany in international waters. Chile was not (at that time) a party to the war and nor where Chile's ships warships. (Chile later joined on the allied side, I think.)

Of course, the US and Britain were not Jewish states, so the legality might have been quite different.

And The USA rightfully condemned that as a war crime. Being in non-israel waters hardly qualifies as being in a war zone either. Additionally Blockades are only legal if acknowledged by the Security Council, which this one isn't.