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| QUOTE (CM06 @ May 31 2010, 08:25 PM) |
| If scenerio of prewarned activists boats sail towards singapore i think we will use even more deadly force. Loud hailer warning + flare + protector USVs. If they dont turn away. Block their ships with our PCG boats? If they enter our waters and ignore us, who knows, maybe we will fire to disable their engines? Something like the WTO meet in Singapore - protesters are allowed only at certain location. - lay down rules and regulations. Then park all the riot vehicles and show police riot gear clearly to tell them to dont play play. |
| QUOTE (bdique @ May 31 2010, 08:36 PM) |
| ch5 news says the 'shooting continues even though the white flag is raised'. idf has something on youtube to get their POV across. (WWPAFFD? :rolleyes: ) frankly, from the turkish TV grab, looks like there was shooting, then it became an all out brawl. I guess it all hinges on who fires those first shots. Stuff from 90c and CNA |
| QUOTE (IceStorm @ May 31 2010, 08:51 PM) | ||
would you still trust a white flag at that point of time? i mean, its suppose to be a "humanitarian" ship... yet out comes the knives and iron pipes... i am not even sure how many of those assailants themselves respect the "flag of truce". |
| QUOTE (Alfie007 @ May 31 2010, 08:57 PM) |
| IMHO (pls correct me if I'm wrong), a likely situation in Singapore context may probably be a influx of refugees coming up in a neighbouring country due to civil unrest, etc, etc.. The most important thing for our SAF & SPF personnel defending our shores is not to fire the first shot as this will bring about an undesirable international response to our actions.. If have to, disable their engines.. In Israel's case this morning, I believe the Israeli commandos would not have open fire if they were not attacked.. Humanitarians aren't suppose to harm military personnel anyway.. While there were casualties (some dead) among the "humanitarians", the IAF also claimed that they suffered casualties too (as heard in the news).. The Israelis tried to take control of the ships but it turned ugly when those "humanitarians" attacked the soldiers as they landed on the ship.. A civilian who take up arms (even if they used sticks, iron pipes, knives, those are still weapons) with the intention to harm a soldier is no longer considered a "civilian".. I opened up my facebook today and saw several Malaysian Muslim friends condemning the attacks partly due to the fact that there are some Malaysians on board.. Looks like another "boycott call" of American & Israeli products again?? |
| QUOTE (Viper52 @ May 31 2010, 10:08 PM) |
| The flotilla was lit up like Christmas trees. |
| QUOTE (IceStorm @ May 31 2010, 08:43 PM) |
| but large ships would mow down our PUNY PVs. could apache hellfire disable the engine or will it simply blow the ship up into two? |
| QUOTE (bdique @ Jun 1 2010, 12:40 AM) |
| dtwn, the FUBAR may have started before the first man hit the deck. Kinda shows the inherent dangers of rappelling straight into a hostile crowd. The troops probably knew what they were going into and still went in anyway. From IDF something looked a little bizzare. @0:52, did troops go in armed with paintball guns? |
| QUOTE (bdique @ Jun 1 2010, 12:40 AM) |
| dtwn, the FUBAR may have started before the first man hit the deck. Kinda shows the inherent dangers of rappelling straight into a hostile crowd. The troops probably knew what they were going into and still went in anyway. From IDF something looked a little bizzare. @0:52, did troops go in armed with paintball guns? |
| QUOTE (bdique @ Jun 1 2010, 07:45 AM) |
| Here's one with 'sound', just noticed, besides the gas mask dude (I thought I spotted a few) at about 1:02 one of the commandos had his paintball gun snatched from him, hence he switched to his pistol. I guess paintball guns cause less damage then rubber bullets? also usage of gas might be ineffective due to the helicopter's downwash... frankly I had a crazy idea about how to stop the ship of that size, but I don't know if its feasible...maybe ram a UUV into the prop blades, hopefully damaging it and leaving it stranded in the water without causing structural damage to the hull. You'll have to sacrifice it, but its a lot easier to control than say shooting a dummy torpedo. Once dead in the water, you can offer to tow them back to your own port and offer to help fix this unfortunate 'incident'. edit: check out how this 'peaceful' demonstrator 'deals' with IDF troops on his deck. edit the second: got some info from Jpost, has a pretty good description of the sequence of events. |
| QUOTE |
| crewnate — May 31, 2010 — The "Gaza Freedom Flotilla" was a fleet carrying self-described "peace activists" with "aid" for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. This is what they were really planning. Watch and judge the facts for yourself. Who are the real thugs? Actually, it's amazing the Israelis were able to peacefully and professionally deal with all the other vessels. Only terrorists aboard the Turkish boat Mavi Marmara put up a pre-planned and vicious fight. But who are we kidding? When has truth or reality convinced Islamists and their spineless Western liberal buddies of error? Israel is always the bad guy no matter what happens. They know exactly what they're doing, and this was a slick move by Turkey. A real win-win, given their certainty of support by the Western mainstream media. They are making this into a PR victory for radical Islam under cover of Palestinian "freedom," and the dead thugs a becoming martyrs and heroes. Let's spread the facts and defend Israel's right to defend itself. |
| QUOTE (IceStorm @ Jun 1 2010, 02:48 AM) |
| singapore should seriously look into non lethal weapons for such operations. maggot bomb :D snake bomb :lol: flea bomb :P |
| QUOTE (Grunt @ Jun 1 2010, 10:21 PM) | ||
Pork floss bomb (this joke was suggested by a female Muslim friend). |
| QUOTE |
| idfnadesk — June 01, 2010 — IDF forces unload the humanitarian cargo from the Gaza Flotilla and bring the aid through the Kerem Shalom crossing. An average of 10,000 tons of aid a week are imported into the Gaza Strip in coordination with international organizations through the land crossings. However, there remains a maritime closure on the strip as Hamas continues to smuggle weapons through tunnels for use against Israeli civilians. For more information about the IDF's humanitarian operations visit: www.idfspokesperson.com and https://www.swivel.com/people/1016582-IDF-Online |
| QUOTE (IAF @ Jun 2 2010, 12:48 PM) |
| You wish..lol! Ahmadinejad: "Israeli commandos are wild dogs" http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Ar....aspx?id=177128 |
| QUOTE |
| Kadima MK Nachman Shai, a former IDF Spokesman who has a doctorate in public diplomacy, said that had the footage come out earlier in the day it would have dramatically changed the way the story was covered by the international press. “I watched the videos and it filled me with anger, since it was not flattering for the Shayetet,” he said on Tuesday. “But at the same time, in these types of events the first hours set the rest of the media coverage, and if the statement and video had come out earlier it could have gotten the message across that these soldiers were violently attacked.” |
| QUOTE |
| For many Israelis who had believed the IDF account all along[that they were lynched and not the aggressors], the belated supporting evidence may have only deepened the frustrations felt all day at the rest of the world’s readiness to doubt Israel’s account of events and believe the false narratives of its enemies. |
| QUOTE (Dzirhan @ Jun 2 2010, 01:29 PM) |
| Wouldn't make much difference if the video released early or not, a lot of ppl on the international front would have already made up their mind as to which side to blame. |
| QUOTE (LionFlyer @ Jun 2 2010, 08:20 PM) |
| Israel needs a strategic rethink. I think they are really too quick to resort to violence to solve their geopolitical problems because they feel it is the only way forward. |
| QUOTE |
| idfnadesk — June 01, 2010 — The IDF commandos, during the operation to redirect the Gaza flotilla, boarded the Mavi Marmara in the early hours of May 31st, 2010. When they attempted to board, activists, in a prepared attack, lynched the soldiers and stole two pistols. In this footage you can hear the radio exchange between soldiers on their way to the bridge and the IDF ship. The soldiers report encountering live fire and serious violence. For more information about the incidents aboard the Mavi Marmara: www.idfspokesperson.com or www.idf.il/english |
| QUOTE |
| idfnadesk — June 02, 2010 — In footage captured on the Mavi Marmara, activists are seen attacking the soldiers with a stun grenade, a box of plates, and water hoses as the soldiers attempt to board the ship. the activists are also waiving around metal rods and chains later used to attack the soldiers with. The IDF soldiers were armed with paint ball guns (used for riot dispersal) and pistols which they were ordered to use only as a last resort. In the early hours of the 31st of May 2010, IDF soldiers boarded the ships of the "Free Gaza" Flotilla, after the ships refused to redirect their course. Aboard the Mavi Marmara the soldiers encountered serious violence when, in a preplanned attack, the activists on board lynched the soldiers with knives, metal rods and stole two of their guns. As a result 7 soldiers were injured and 9 activists were killed. |
| QUOTE (George Friedman) |
| Flotillas and the Wars of Public Opinion On Sunday, Israeli naval forces intercepted the ships of a Turkish nongovernmental organization (NGO) delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Israel had demanded that the vessels not go directly to Gaza but instead dock in Israeli ports, where the supplies would be offloaded and delivered to Gaza. The Turkish NGO refused, insisting on going directly to Gaza. Gunfire ensued when Israeli naval personnel boarded one of the vessels, and a significant number of the passengers and crew on the ship were killed or wounded. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon charged that the mission was simply an attempt to provoke the Israelis. That was certainly the case. The mission was designed to demonstrate that the Israelis were unreasonable and brutal. The hope was that Israel would be provoked to extreme action, further alienating Israel from the global community and possibly driving a wedge between Israel and the United States. The operation’s planners also hoped this would trigger a political crisis in Israel. A logical Israeli response would have been avoiding falling into the provocation trap and suffering the political repercussions the Turkish NGO was trying to trigger. Instead, the Israelis decided to make a show of force. The Israelis appear to have reasoned that backing down would demonstrate weakness and encourage further flotillas to Gaza, unraveling the Israeli position vis-à-vis Hamas. In this thinking, a violent interception was a superior strategy to accommodation regardless of political consequences. Thus, the Israelis accepted the bait and were provoked. The ‘Exodus’ Scenario In the 1950s, an author named Leon Uris published a book called “Exodus.” Later made into a major motion picture, Exodus told the story of a Zionist provocation against the British. In the wake of World War II, the British — who controlled Palestine, as it was then known — maintained limits on Jewish immigration there. Would-be immigrants captured trying to run the blockade were detained in camps in Cyprus. In the book and movie, Zionists planned a propaganda exercise involving a breakout of Jews — mostly children — from the camp, who would then board a ship renamed the Exodus. When the Royal Navy intercepted the ship, the passengers would mount a hunger strike. The goal was to portray the British as brutes finishing the work of the Nazis. The image of children potentially dying of hunger would force the British to permit the ship to go to Palestine, to reconsider British policy on immigration, and ultimately to decide to abandon Palestine and turn the matter over to the United Nations. There was in fact a ship called Exodus, but the affair did not play out precisely as portrayed by Uris, who used an amalgam of incidents to display the propaganda war waged by the Jews. Those carrying out this war had two goals. The first was to create sympathy in Britain and throughout the world for Jews who, just a couple of years after German concentration camps, were now being held in British camps. Second, they sought to portray their struggle as being against the British. The British were portrayed as continuing Nazi policies toward the Jews in order to maintain their empire. The Jews were portrayed as anti-imperialists, fighting the British much as the Americans had. It was a brilliant strategy. By focusing on Jewish victimhood and on the British, the Zionists defined the battle as being against the British, with the Arabs playing the role of people trying to create the second phase of the Holocaust. The British were portrayed as pro-Arab for economic and imperial reasons, indifferent at best to the survivors of the Holocaust. Rather than restraining the Arabs, the British were arming them. The goal was not to vilify the Arabs but to villify the British, and to position the Jews with other nationalist groups whether in India or Egypt rising against the British. The precise truth or falsehood of this portrayal didn’t particularly matter. For most of the world, the Palestine issue was poorly understood and not a matter of immediate concern. The Zionists intended to shape the perceptions of a global public with limited interest in or understanding of the issues, filling in the blanks with their own narrative. And they succeeded. The success was rooted in a political reality. Where knowledge is limited, and the desire to learn the complex reality doesn’t exist, public opinion can be shaped by whoever generates the most powerful symbols. And on a matter of only tangential interest, governments tend to follow their publics’ wishes, however they originate. There is little to be gained for governments in resisting public opinion and much to be gained by giving in. By shaping the battlefield of public perception, it is thus possible to get governments to change positions. In this way, the Zionists’ ability to shape global public perceptions of what was happening in Palestine — to demonize the British and turn the question of Palestine into a Jewish-British issue — shaped the political decisions of a range of governments. It was not the truth or falsehood of the narrative that mattered. What mattered was the ability to identify the victim and victimizer such that global opinion caused both London and governments not directly involved in the issue to adopt political stances advantageous to the Zionists. It is in this context that we need to view the Turkish flotilla. The Turkish Flotilla to Gaza The Palestinians have long argued that they are the victims of Israel, an invention of British and American imperialism. Since 1967, they have focused not so much on the existence of the state of Israel (at least in messages geared toward the West) as on the oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Since the split between Hamas and Fatah and the Gaza War, the focus has been on the plight of the citizens of Gaza, who have been portrayed as the dispossessed victims of Israeli violence. The bid to shape global perceptions by portraying the Palestinians as victims of Israel was the first prong of a longtime two-part campaign. The second part of this campaign involved armed resistance against the Israelis. The way this resistance was carried out, from airplane hijackings to stone-throwing children to suicide bombers, interfered with the first part of the campaign, however. The Israelis could point to suicide bombings or the use of children against soldiers as symbols of Palestinian inhumanity. This in turn was used to justify conditions in Gaza. While the Palestinians had made significant inroads in placing Israel on the defensive in global public opinion, they thus consistently gave the Israelis the opportunity to turn the tables. And this is where the flotilla comes in. The Turkish flotilla aimed to replicate the Exodus story or, more precisely, to define the global image of Israel in the same way the Zionists defined the image that they wanted to project. As with the Zionist portrayal of the situation in 1947, the Gaza situation is far more complicated than as portrayed by the Palestinians. The moral question is also far more ambiguous. But as in 1947, when the Zionist portrayal was not intended to be a scholarly analysis of the situation but a political weapon designed to define perceptions, the Turkish flotilla was not designed to carry out a moral inquest. Instead, the flotilla was designed to achieve two ends. The first is to divide Israel and Western governments by shifting public opinion against Israel. The second is to create a political crisis inside Israel between those who feel that Israel’s increasing isolation over the Gaza issue is dangerous versus those who think any weakening of resolve is dangerous. The Geopolitical Fallout for Israel It is vital that the Israelis succeed in portraying the flotilla as an extremist plot. Whether extremist or not, the plot has generated an image of Israel quite damaging to Israeli political interests. Israel is increasingly isolated internationally, with heavy pressure on its relationship with Europe and the United States. In all of these countries, politicians are extremely sensitive to public opinion. It is difficult to imagine circumstances under which public opinion will see Israel as the victim. The general response in the Western public is likely to be that the Israelis probably should have allowed the ships to go to Gaza and offload rather than to precipitate bloodshed. Israel’s enemies will fan these flames by arguing that the Israelis prefer bloodshed to reasonable accommodation. And as Western public opinion shifts against Israel, Western political leaders will track with this shift. The incident also wrecks Israeli relations with Turkey, historically an Israeli ally in the Muslim world with longstanding military cooperation with Israel. The Turkish government undoubtedly has wanted to move away from this relationship, but it faced resistance within the Turkish military and among secularists. The new Israeli action makes a break with Israel easy, and indeed almost necessary for Ankara. With roughly the population of Houston, Texas, Israel is just not large enough to withstand extended isolation, meaning this event has profound geopolitical implications. Public opinion matters where issues are not of fundamental interest to a nation. Israel is not a fundamental interest to other nations. The ability to generate public antipathy to Israel can therefore reshape Israeli relations with countries critical to Israel. For example, a redefinition of U.S.-Israeli relations will have much less effect on the United States than on Israel. The Obama administration, already irritated by the Israelis, might now see a shift in U.S. public opinion that will open the way to a new U.S.-Israeli relationship disadvantageous to Israel. The Israelis will argue that this is all unfair, as they were provoked. Like the British, they seem to think that the issue is whose logic is correct. But the issue actually is, whose logic will be heard? As with a tank battle or an airstrike, this sort of warfare has nothing to do with fairness. It has to do with controlling public perception and using that public perception to shape foreign policy around the world. In this case, the issue will be whether the deaths were necessary. The Israeli argument of provocation will have limited traction. Internationally, there is little doubt that the incident will generate a firestorm. Certainly, Turkey will break cooperation with Israel. Opinion in Europe will likely harden. And public opinion in the United States — by far the most important in the equation — might shift to a “plague-on-both-your-houses” position. While the international reaction is predictable, the interesting question is whether this evolution will cause a political crisis in Israel. Those in Israel who feel that international isolation is preferable to accommodation with the Palestinians are in control now. Many in the opposition see Israel’s isolation as a strategic threat. Economically and militarily, they argue, Israel cannot survive in isolation. The current regime will respond that there will be no isolation. The flotilla aimed to generate what the government has said would not happen. The tougher Israel is, the more the flotilla’s narrative takes hold. As the Zionists knew in 1947 and the Palestinians are learning, controlling public opinion requires subtlety, a selective narrative and cynicism. As they also knew, losing the battle can be catastrophic. It cost Britain the Mandate and allowed Israel to survive. Israel’s enemies are now turning the tables. This maneuver was far more effective than suicide bombings or the Intifada in challenging Israel’s public perception and therefore its geopolitical position (though if the Palestinians return to some of their more distasteful tactics like suicide bombing, the Turkish strategy of portraying Israel as the instigator of violence will be undermined). Israel is now in uncharted waters. It does not know how to respond. It is not clear that the Palestinians know how to take full advantage of the situation, either. But even so, this places the battle on a new field, far more fluid and uncontrollable than what went before. The next steps will involve calls for sanctions against Israel. The Israeli threats against Iran will be seen in a different context, and Israeli portrayal of Iran will hold less sway over the world. And this will cause a political crisis in Israel. If this government survives, then Israel is locked into a course that gives it freedom of action but international isolation. If the government falls, then Israel enters a period of domestic uncertainty. In either case, the flotilla achieved its strategic mission. It got Israel to take violent action against it. In doing so, Israel ran into its own fist. |
| QUOTE (Shotgun @ Jun 2 2010, 11:05 PM) |
| What they should have dropped was tear gas cannisters and smoke grenades to blind everyone and every camera. Horrible planning. |