Lol. I find it funny when Prime-Ministers fail, because unlike Kings and Queens, they are elected by the people. Except if you are Gordon Brown, who just marched into 10 Downing Street.

They aren't elected, their parties are elected. Only presidents are directly elected.
And kings and queens don't really do all to much, except showing their heads on the coins. Theoretically, they decide what government shall rule and what laws get passed, but in practice they don't actually have any influence on any of that at all.

So Shos invited me to the Facebook group "Facts on the Gaza Flotilla (w/ VIDEOS) - JOIN THE GROUP AND PASS IT ON". I'll repost their information and respond to it here, in the spoiler, to avoid a looong post.



Now, please explain why the activists was being stopped from speaking with newspapers and ambassadors after the incident, why it was necessary to board the ship instead of shooting down the rodder of the ship, why it had to be done on international territory, how the organizers of the event are terrorists and why you believe that the UN would support terrorism, and finally why not enough supplies are bought into Gaza. People there survive only because of how easy it is to smuggle things from Egypt into Gaza.

Question mark at the end, isa? I don't think this will ever be solved, and as my History teacher was saying whilst talking about the Crusades, there has been conflict around that area for over 2000 years.

Isa, does it really matter where it happened? we know they were coming here, don't we? besides, that was not an 'attack', you know. and woah, you seriously misinterpreted all this. what the IDF told the ships was to hand all those toys, food and such over to them so that THEY can give these to Gaza, just like we always do. this was not meant to be prevented. and what restoration are you talking about? Israel has one soldier - Gilad Shalit - who was kidnapped by Hamas nearly 4 years ago. they don't let the Red cross or any medical treatment get to him at all. that is the reason for what you call 'the blockade'. is that not a suffice reason? about the war thingie - of course we won't attack - we never do, we are always the one attacked. I was saying that if they try anything of that kind, they're doomed, cuz, well, the IDF really is a badbutt army despite its small size xD
about the 'sending these supplies' - once again: did you see ANY source of information showing those supplies? i haven't; nothing at all. all I have seen was the bundles of knives and metal pipes. these are supplies, of course, but not the kind you were thinking of, correct me if i'm wrong. and about the hatred. in the last few years? people hate israel from the day it was made, just for being there you know. that 'big house project' - really, what the hell? the fact that it was announced was completely independent of the fact that Biden was there. in addition, it was done without our prime minister knowing about it, and anyways - why the hell would you all care about that? how bout i don't allow you to poo while i'm staying at the US? the american said that unless we freeze the building, they don't speak with us, but really, what the heck does that have to do with anything? people work in real-estate(sp?), you know. houses are being built just as cars are being produced - what does it have to do with it? Biden was not there for that reason at all. about the 'killings' - you're just being pathetic here. wars have casualties, you know? I wonder how would you react if some part of your country would shoot rockets on your area on a daily basis. oh, of course, we don't want to harm any of their innocent people, so let's just hope they stop killing our innocent people.

there's a difference between the way we shoot them and the way they shoot us. see, they do not have the technology. so they just shoot thousands of missiles randomly; the more jews that die - the better. it doesn't matter if they were 'innocent children' or soldiers. as long as they die. However, when we shoot them, we firstly send warnings to all civilians living in the bombed area - hey, tomorrow in 2 p.m. we're going to bomb there - get OUT. only then, we shoot; do you know of any army in the world that does that? nope, none of them do that. of course, these people want to protect hamas, so they don't move - they stay there. therefore, they get hurt when we bombard the area. about killing 300 innocent children - what are you talking about? no such thing happened here at all the only thing i can think of that is relatively similar is at the same war, when Hamas hid their ammo in schools and then complained about us bombing children.



about dominating the media. that is completely wrong. there has been a whole discussion in our media simply about how we did NOT dominate the media. everything stays unopposed? well, of course - they prove it with videos, you know - they make sure that there's no way someone makes a mistake in understanding them. the ones on the other side, tho, don't do that. people who were on board did get to say what they want - but they simply say, 'soldiers shot children while they were sleeping', they don't elaborate. so yea, you choose to believe THAT, and say that our videos are fake. just like everyone.


*sigh*...completely on topic...
that's exactly the thing, jell. the IDF did not prepare for a worst-case scenario. Israel started some whole investigations about why they were not prepared for war.

I brought the newspaper here - i'll translate some parts of what it says. remember tho, this is OUR newspaper. anyhing in brackets was added by me.

(headline)Witnesses talk: the (IDF) commando soldiers talk about the operation which ended in 9 dead people and many soldiers
(big headline) Ambush to the Shayetet(the shayetet is our commando unit)

"we got down from the Helicopter with bare hands, 15 soldiers with paintball guns. on the roof of the ship 30 men waited for us. we came to talk, they came for war. immidiately when we got down from the tropes they assaulted us with knives and pipes. it felt like a lynch in Ramallah".
(now there's a brief explanation of what happened in 5 stages, with pictures)
1) final warning: After all the attempts to call the ship to stop were answered negatively, at 4.30 am an order is given to the commando: take control of the marmara(no pic)
2) against the helo: the sildiers start to climb down the ropes onto the deck. the passengers tie the rope to an antenna in attempt to crash the heli. the pilot decides to cur the rope and retreat. meanwhile, passengers throw balls of irom and molotov cocktails on another force trying to climb to the ship using ladders(pic shown: a soldiers hanging on the rope while an iron ball is in the air, flying towards him) EDIT: found the pic: http://www.ynet.co.il/PicServer2/24012010/2585220/c_wh.jpg
3) Isolation and assault: the rope thing(my translation lol) and the assault on the soldiers delays the charging over the ship. as a result, instead of dozens of soldiers who were supposed to charge on the ship at the same time from multiple directions - there are only four soldiers on board, waiting for backup. the "peace activists" make use of the isolation and start attacking the soldiers(couldn't find the pic, but in this vid, in 0:54, that's it:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LulDJh4fWI)
4)the lynch:
within seconds the violence becomes a serious lynch: the passengers of the boat take out metal poles and knives and start hammering the soldiers and stabbing them. the weapons of some soldiers was captures(as far as i know that some is 2), live fire is opened towards them, and one of them is tossed from theboard, a 10 meters fall, and loses his concsiousness. some soldiers jump to the open sea to escape.(the pic: in that same vid, in 0:44)
5)leaving the paintball: the Shayetet commander allows the use of live fire. instead of paintball guns and pepper spray, soldiers take out their handguns and help their 4 friends escape. around 5a.m, the shayetet successfully takes control on the Marmara. 7 soldiers are wounded, 20 passengers are wounded, and 9 passengers died.

(jell, this one is for you: you asked how comes we weren't prepared?)
(quotes from soldiers: )
"they waited for us to kill. they yelled in arabic. they stormed over me with clubs and glass bottles and took off my helmet. i saw a gun pointed at me and started fearing for my life, so i pulled out my handgun and shot to their legs.we didn't come to kill, so most of the wounded are at their legs. i believe people died losing blood because they stayed bleeding on board for a while".


"It's funny that we even thought about it this way" says A(name censored). "we thought that we're just going to go to the bridge and tell the captain to turn around to Ashdod port, but they were prepared for war. they tried to kidnap everyone who came to the ship, and take our weapons. the actaully smashed my paintball gun! as a last resort I took out the handgun and shot their legs, cuz i knew we were supposed to neutralize them only"

about the setup thingie isa - here's what they say:

(topic: )ALL PLANNED
(subtopic: )"It was a booby trap", admits an activist in the IHH headquarters, the turkish organization standing behind the ideas, and explains: "now israel will stay all alone"

(you're also welcome to read this, if you want to, it explains some of what i said: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64T21820100530)

I kinda dropped out of the conversation by now, but what's the history behind that blockade against Gaza anyway?

oh i only just saw what you posted isa. well, i agree with you in some parts there - it indeed would have been wiser, but as said, we were not preparing for a violent attack, these were 'peace activists', remember?

international interecepting rules do not allow what you said, by the way. any way to physically stop the mobilability of a vessel is prohibited, for some reason.

about the sources - well, yeah, as i said in this big post here, the fact that you choose not to believe what we show you is something we cannot do anything about, i'm sorry.

• Israel left Gaza in hopes of peace in 2005 and in return received more than 10,000 rockets and terrorist attacks.
If the sentence means to say that 10,000 rockets and terrorist attacks occurred at once after Israel leaving Gaza, it sounds like an over-exaggeration, but still dreadful behavior from the Palestinians in Gaza. If it is from 2005-->2010, then I think that Israel has done deeds towards the Gaza population comparable to that (blockading the whole area, killing thousands...).

• Israel has said that it will deliver any humanitarian aid to Gaza, as it does daily.
it is true, and has always been true. we have no idea why we do that though. about the question of 'enough', well, we can't really discuss this.

once again, these were 'peace activists'. or perhaps, you're saying it was a trap?


so you see why practically everything done always hurts israel? we have no enemy! it's a terrorist organization - we can't make it 'look worse'...

they captured one of our soldiers. as long as he's still there, in my opinion, they can all shove someth--...yeah.

I don't have enough time to do a big response, but I'll just quote this:



There were eleven Swedes on board, so naturally, Swedish media tried to contact these Swedes to get their point of view. However, for some reason, they were unable to. It's not because they were all seriously injured (none were), but because they were stopped somehow by the Israeli government. I don't know how, but yes, they were stopped. Naturally, they can't elaborate if they're not able to say anything.

I *think* that they're now allowed to speak openly, though.

Anyway, some of the Swedes have returned home, they're giving interviews as of now. I'll keep you updated.

apparantly two missiles were launched from Gaza at israel today. 4 terrorists squads have been taken down by our air force today on their way to make a terrorist attack.

these are just daily here, you see; so if you have any questions about the Gaza blockade...

I already told you mate, everyone there was taken into questioning. if they're just regular people, they will be released soon.

Apologies if I hit the wrong nerve here, but seeing as you take from the Hebrew Bible, shouldn't you guys expect to be hated? I've done some studies of what we call the Old Testament (which I think is just your Bible--correct me if I'm wrong), and glazed throughout are prophecies on wars against Israel, hate against Israel. I think it was the Psalm 83 prophecy which stated that Turkey had to turn against Israel before that specific war would happen. Interesting stuff, I gotta say. And, by the way, I'm not here to start a religious debate or whatnot (which, frankly, would be rather off topic); I'm just bringing up what I know.

Oh so you're Christian, imtimi? So am I, more specifically Catholic. And the "Hebrew Bible" is called the Torah, I think.

The Torah is only a part of our bible. but no timi, there's a great difference between what you call 'the old testament' and our bible. see, our bible existed long before turkey was there, so uh, i can hardly believe that's there. however, i may be wrong, as almost nobody here even read the bible. only really religious people...i'm 17 years old and i know perhaps 2 or 3 of these penguins. (we call them penguins cuz they always dress in black and while and stuff, you know).

nobody, at all, looks at the prophecies there. we're not a religious country, not at all.

Very interesting. Well, I can assure you the prophecies are there. And actually, Turkey was in the Bible, but not as a developed country; of course, the names of cities and countries and empires changed over the years. If I recall correctly, one of the cities that was in the land of Turkey of that time was Ephesus (who Paul, a New Testament writer, wrote to in the book Ephesians). But I digress.

Odd to know that Israel isn't entirely religious. I've always thought the exact opposite.

yea well, that's where people are usually wrong. i explained it to isa too once - we're not religious. there's only one city which is religious - it's called Bene Barak - and it's full of extreme extremists; these are mad, they arrange massive fires and stuff only to protest for opening some garage on Saturday O_o but once again, that is only a very small part of Israel. most of us are completely regular people.

Lol at 'extreme extremists'. I thought the same as Timi.

OK, I've found just about the only UK news about this on the BBC website.

From what I understand, there were 6 ships in the convey: 3 of western humanitarian organizations, 2 of peaceful Arab organizations and one of a Turkish organization Israel already suspected being terrorist for years. The Turkish ship was unrelated to the other 5 ships and didn't join the action till the last moment. When approached by the helicopter, the three western and two Arab ships surrendered instantly. Only the Turkish ship didn't surrender. After the Israeli boarded the ship, the activists attacked them with bats and poles. In the Israeli response, several activists (I think there were 17, but I don't remember exactly (edit:I read it up again, turns out there were 9)) were killed. In their entire search of all the ships, only two guns were found on the dead activists, no other weapons at all. Only the provisions the ships announced they would carry.

Now, when entering a ship, the boarding crew generally comes well prepared. When they expect that ship to be from a terrorist organization that smuggles weapons, I don't expect this to be any different. In the end, it turned out the people on the ship weren't armed at all and didn't smuggle any weapons. Putting all these facts together, I still find it very odd what has happened.

And also, Israel isn't (at least wasn't, till a few years ago when the Gaza conflict spiraled out of control) hated by anybody except for the muslim countries. In contrary, many countries, especially the US, supported them to the extreme and supplied them with any weapons and anything else they needed.
You see, to the US and many other such nations, this wasn't a war about territory or anything. It was Korea 2.0. Korea was in fact never between North and South Korea, but between the USA and the USSR, between communism and capitalism. The USA feared that if North Korea won, it would mean that communism was superior to capitalism and that the USSR would take over the world. So they did everything to stop. In the eyes of the US, the war between Israel and Palestine isn't about Jerusalem or other territory, it is about the western world against the Islam. You know the saying "My enemy's enemy is my friend"? At the moment the Islam is greatest enemy of the xenophobic Americans (not saying all Americans are xenophobic, just a larger part of the population compared to other countries). And with the Israel/Palestine war being the biggest war against the Islam at the moment, the USA is doing everything in their power to insure the Islamic side loses.

And finally, two wrongs don't make a right. Them bombing you doesn't justify you bombing them.

thanks for clarifying things up jell. I didn't know the story behind the several ships. And I also really don't like the U.S.'s foreign policies or how everyone can get so xenophobic about everything. However, even though I probably don't know what I'm talking about, it's a stretch to say that we just want Islam to lose. There are probably some idiots in the government who think: 9-11 terrorists were muslim, therefore Muslims are terrorists; but there are also some smart people in the government who are really cautious about the whole thing and realize that anything we do that makes America seem like it's against Islam will only help the terrorists in recruiting more followers.

also that was an interesting article, guyguy

nice comment. i do have a few things to say, though.
the two guns found were two guns that were captured from our soldiers. the passengers were not armed with live fire. our soldiers did not intend to use live fire either. but, aren't knives, bats, poles, and chains weapons? anyways, we couldn't just let them get throughwithout even checking if they smuggle any weapons. and they did not allow that.

In my opinion, the only mistake we did was to start everything on international water. if we waited just a tad more, it would be completely different - it would be legally legitimate, internationally. territorial water are 32 kms away from the coast, and it took half an hour to take control of that ship, and with that ship's mobilability it'll still have some 7 kms to the shore, so it could suffice.

well, you know as much as i do that we're not [i]officially[i] hated by most countries. but practically, i'm pretty sure at least 80% of the people in the world that heard about israel, want us down. our only official allies are the USA, Egypt and Jordan. problem is that nobody, even not the arabs, want to have to deal with the people in Gaza, so we're kinda stuck with them.you're way too naive here. i'm not sure how many wars your country had, but my country was attacked daily for almost 62 years, with 9 official wars (including one that was launched in the holiest day for the jews, in which we lost almost 0.5% of our population). if you know of any way to stop random shooting of missiles from a wide area which is highly populated, you're welcome to advise me. i mean really, cuz if it's a good one, i can forward this by email to our prime minister's office.

i think you misinterpreted what jell said. see, the 'bad guy' isn't the muslim guy, but his religion. the Islam orders its believers to fight anyone who isn't muslim to death; they want to be Shahids - in the Islam anyone who gets killed while killing enemies is holy. therefore, the US wants to 'win' against the islam. there are many muslims who think ths Islam is bad as well, but they just can't do anything against it, because if they do, they'll be both an enemy AND a traitor. there were at least two muslims who publicly said stuff against the islam; but one was assassinated a while later, and one has gone into hiding ever since..

Just so you know, Shos, I am not blaming anyone here. I agree that the ships should've been searched for weapons. I was just saying all the facts I know. I try to be as objective about this as possible. I'm just saying that it is odd that they boarded the ship unarmed, when they already suspected them to be terrorists.



This is not true in the slightest. The Islam doesn't support the killing of individuals. It has the Ji'had, which means that any muslim should try to convert other people to the Islam. Christians have a similar rule to this. The grand goal of the Islam is to join muslims, christians and jews into one religion: the Religion of the Book. However, several radical muslims misinterpret this and think it means that the Islam is the only correct religion, and that everybody who doesn't agree doesn't deserve to live.

Listen to this song, and you may feel different about war, at least if you listen to the lyrics.

'Hero of War- Rise Against'



Yup. I almost completely agree with you shos. But then I'm English, not American.

'Are you, or have you ever been a member of the communist party?'

EDIT: I'm the youngest member trying (badly) to take prt in this topic.

I am quite sure this is false - Islamic countries that makes use of Sharia laws may say so, but if you go to a country such as Indonesia (where 88% of the population consists of Muslims), I am confident that they don't believe that their religion says that they must fight non-believers or those of the 'wrong' religion.