For those of you who still take Juan Cole’s views on Israel seriously, a reminder: “There are two possible reasons for the violence. One is that the Israeli troops boarding the vessels met some sort of resistance and over-reacted. Aid volunteers are unlikely, however, to have posed much real challenge to trained special forces operatives.” […]
Archive | Gaza Ship Incident
“Plausibility” and Legal Claims about the Gaza Blockade
By David Bernstein on September 3, 2011 2:07 pm in Gaza Ship Incident, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Israel
Kevin Jon Heller of University of Melbourne and Opinio Juris: “Insofar as Israel insists that it is not currently occupying Gaza, it cannot plausibly claim that it is involved in an IAC [International Armed Conflict] with Hamas” (and thus the blockade of Gaza is unlawful). U.N.’s Palmer Committee Report on the Mavi Marmara incident (and […]
“Free Gaza” Activists’ Version of the Ship Incident
A bunch of eyewitness accounts are collected here. Various left-wing blogs are trumpeting these accounts as contradicting the Israeli account, but there are actually more commonalities, or at least more important commonalities, than differences. The commonalities: (1) Ship passengers armed themselves with makeshift weapons to prevent the Israeli navy from boarding. Israel claims that these […]