Turkey-Israel: For the record. Turkish Defense Minister Gonul said the current crisis with Israel should not delay the delivery of four remotely piloted aircraft (drones), Anatolia news agency reported June 1. Gonul said he expects the drones to be delivered in June or July.
Evidently, the Turks think the plight of the Palestinians is not worth sacrificing one Israeli-supplied remotely piloted aircraft.
Israel-Hamas: Comment: A few myths need to be dispelled that mainstream news commentators have overlooked. First is that there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza that requires a sealift. Knowledgeable and objective analysts have reported no such crisis exists.
That means the attempted sealift was a deliberate confrontation, a provocation and a test of Israeli nerve. Thus, the second myth is that this was an innocent, altruistic effort to help suffering Palestinians. This was a setup, as one Brilliant and Well-informed Reader noted in Feedback.
The third myth is that Israel would be swayed by international outrage. Quarantine is meaningless if not enforced and conciliatory gestures invite escalating provocations because Hamas has promised nothing to Israel. Israel did what it said it would do – escort the ships to Ashdod, which is where they are.
A point that has gotten lost is that Hamas refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist. That marmoreal policy position is existential to Hamas and invites contempt even from fellow Arabs.
Hamas never reciprocates acts of generosity by any one, which explains region-wide contempt for Hamas. On the other hand, Hamas does respond to force and intimidation. Israeli asymmetric strikes in retaliation for rocket attacks from Gaza are the only proven approach for persuading Hamas to stop the rocket attacks.
Hamas may be enjoying Israeli discomfit over the bad publicity, but it lost four ships through its own folly. If there were a genuine humanitarian crisis, then Hamas trifled with the plight of its people and should be exposed as irresponsible. Ship captains on genuine missions of mercy are more than willing to prove the innocence of their cargos in order to complete their missions.
Behavior demonstrating innocent passage is common in all war zones, where humanitarian relief is an urgent need. That is not this case. The humanitarian mission seems unimportant and insignificant, a deception. The behavior of the people on the ships justifies a strong suspicion by any maritime security force in the world that the ships carried contraband and required inspection. That is the law of the sea.
So why has the mainstream media not questioned the motives and behavior of the people on the ships?
This incident at sea was theater; badly directed and poorly performed, but scarfed down by a gullible, uncritical media. Readers may be certain no Arab or Muslim navies will sortie to support the Palestinians in Gaza and their supporters in a subsequent provocation. Plus, this incident will be considered trivial should North Korea start a fight, launch a ballistic missile or detonate a nuclear device.
Israel-Egypt-Gaza: Egypt opened the Rafah border crossing separating the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip and will keep it open for three days to allow aid through. The Rafah crossing was also opened last for four days. According to the source, the Egyptian decision to reopen the crossing was done in cooperation with Israel.
Egypt and Israel work together to make relief shipments by sea superfluous or suspect.
Phi Beta Iota: We take NIGHTWATCH and its Editor very seriously. All of the above is analytic “gold.” HOWEVER, we are also very intolerant of the manner in which Israel, actively enabled by the Arab countries, has carried out a long standing genocide with other atrocities against the Palestinian people. The “solution” to the stand-off between two equally immoral elements–Hamas on the one side and the Zionist government of Israel on the other, has been put forward by Zionist Howard Bloom in his book, GLOBAL BRAIN: the entire Middle East needs to be a humanitarian zone of control for fifty years, raising two new generations that do not learn from birth that the others are “pigs and monkeys” (stage one in Dr. Gregory Stanton's eight steps to genocide). We must tear down the walls that the Zionists have built, connect Palestinians to the sea, have a regional water authority, and generally hold BOTH the Arab nations and Israel accountable–the USA for its part should redirect every penny in military assistance to this region toward Waging Peace. All we need now is integrity among US leaders, if they can find their soul they will carry the regional leaders with them.
