With its deaths and wounded, the episode on the Turkish ship, has diabolical elements. What is diabolical is the reversal, the lie that is being designed by International public opinion, as in the battle in Jenin and the death of Mohamad Al Dura: the truth, apart from being tragic and regretful, has been inverted, flipping responsibility. Condemnations fly, and they all star a character who was on the ship and is called “pacifist” or “civil” while the Israeli soldiers are depicted as having bloodily interrupted a “rescue mission.” No one speaks about organizations that are pro-Hamas, none about provocations, which is really what was being transported by
But it’s not enough to declare oneself a pacifist in order to be one.
those ships. Besides of course the human qualities that we are sad to see disappearing.
It’s not enough to declare oneself a pacifist in order to be one. The Turkish organization IHH, the protagonist of the story, has always been pro-terrorist, an active friend of jihadists and of Hamas, itself linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Its members have been pursued and arrested, and its headquarters were closed by the Turks themselves for possessing automatic weapons, explosives and other violent acts. But now, because IHH was on the ship called Marmara, it became “pacifist”, like the other various NGOs who are militants travelling on the waves of the Mediterranean.
It is no longer enough to declare oneself “civilian.” In today’s wars, in fact, the use of civilians as human shields and as warriors at the frontline, is the most difficult novelty in a variety of scenarios. A uniform does not separate the good from the bad: we have seen the use of houses and Mosques as trenches of the “civilian” militarized; at sea we were not accustomed to it before, but it is an interesting new invention on behalf of jihad.
Before leaving, a woman on the ship declared: “We are waiting now for one of two good things: either to achieve martyrdom or to reach Gaza" . But who listens to a statement so revealing and uncomfortable when the siren of humanitarian enterprise sings? The flotilla leader said that his aim was to bring humanitarian aid. And it didn’t matter, on the contrary it pleased the warm souls of those who believe in human rights, that they were headed towards Gaza, a strip dominated by Hamas – a terrorist organization that not only persecutes Christians, but also has condemned all Jews to death using children, objects, buildings, everything in order to fight Israel and the entire West. Regardless of the missiles and attacks, the ships continued to travel towards Gaza.
Israel repeatedly made offers to the organizers of the fleet to inspect its goods at the port of Ashdod with the purpose of delivering them to the intended recipients. They refused, and this seems like a decisive proof of their lacking humanitarianism – just like when they said that they don't care about dealing with Gilad Shalit, as his father asked them to. Once again...
The flotilla was directed towards Gaza. And Israel’s goal was that of avoiding unidentified cargo from falling into the hands of Hamas, an armed terrorist organization. Was Gaza’s population in need of urgent help? Israel states that this was an unjustified excuse. For example, in the week of 2-8 May, limiting myself to only a few goods from a long list, the following passed from the borders of Israel to the people of Gaza: 1.535.787 liters of gasoline, 91 trucks of flour, 76 of fruits and vegetables, 39 of milk and cheese, 33 of meat, 48 of clothes, 30 of sugar, 7 of medicine, 112 of animal food, and 26 of hygiene products. In addition, 370 sick people went to Israeli hospitals, etc., etc.
Therefore, it was not the hunger that put wind in the sails of the ships that came from Cyprus with the help of the Turks. From the start, it was the political pressure in order to legitimate Hamas and to morally delegitimize Israel, a pressure that surely never affects the Chinese for their persecution of the Uyghurs or the Turks for their persecution of the Kurds. And so the anti-Israeli aspiration of the Marmara ship has popped like a cork from a champagne bottle when the soldiers came down by helicopter in an attempt to control the ship so as to bring it to Ashdod.
At four in the morning, a firsthand witness Carmela Menashe, a military reporter who mercilessly uncovered many scandals in the Israeli army, declared that when soldiers from the Israeli Navy tried to get off the ship they were welcomed with gunfire. “There were firearms on the ship” of the pacifists; the soldiers that touched the bridge faced a lynching “like that of Ramallah” in which human limbs were thrown into the crowd. The "pacifists" used, with enormous enthusiasm according to recounts, iron bars, knives and gas. The Israeli soldiers were thrown into the hold of the ship by the “pacifists” in an attempt to either kidnap or throw them into the sea. This explains why their mates fired. Of course, the sailors were not part of the military, they were civilians: but, nowadays, in asymmetric warfare, civilians are used as human shields and combatants.
Israel should have tried to stop the Marmara ship; whether it did with little foresight, we do not know. But surely the soldiers were not the first to shoot, it is forbidden by Israeli military code, it’s not proper use of those soldiers. Now if the world wants to simply delight in its usual condemnations of Israel let them, but it must be aware that by lending support to the forces that have provoked the carnage, it is preparing the next war.
And Turkey, of whose friendship Israel was so proud and that supported this disaster as an homage to its alliance with Iran and recent Islamic militancy, it could now at least retreat from its extremist line, which brings nothing but trouble also to Ataturk’s country. Of course, it does not deserve applause for this show in which only Hamas wins. The conformism that animates the ordeal of condemnations against Israel now, does not temper the souls of extremists, but simply enhances them.
* Translated by Amy K. Rosenthal