(NYDailynews-Editorials).It cannot be said forcefully enough: Israel was fully within its rights to enforce the Gaza naval blockade, and, more than that, Israel was duty-bound to do so.
This, too, must be stressed without reservation: Israeli commandos acted in self-defense in killing nine supposed humanitarians on the Mavi Marmara after a mob attacked the soldiers with Molotov cocktails, guns, machetes and crowbars.
The boarding party, armed in the first instance with paintball guns, was clearly surprised by the violence it encountered on descending to the ferry deck under the authority of a legally recognized quarantine. Yet, the raiders and the country they defend are hauled before the court of world opinion as international thugs.
Israel - not Hamas, the terror band that enslaves the Palestinians of Gaza while engineering military strikes on Israel.
Israel - not the pro-Hamas, terrorist-supporting activist group that sponsored the flotilla while masquerading as a social services organization.
Israel - not the radical Islamists and their deluded sympathizers who are waging a propaganda campaign to destroy Israel's moral legitimacy by depicting the Middle East's only democracy as the perpetrator of war crimes.
All of that said, Israel handed its many enemies potent rhetorical ammunition in planning an extraordinarily difficult operation. Five blockade-running ships were stopped without incident. On the sixth, a small team met organized resistance by a far larger force with disastrous consequences for a country whose every response to attack is scathingly denounced as disproportionate.
Those who sponsored the so-called Freedom Flotilla knew from the get-go that reaching dock was out of the question. But getting supplies to Palestinians was never the actual point. Witness the fact that Israel and Egypt, which jointly sanction the blockade to prevent Hamas from importing arms, had each offered to off-load the goods and deliver them into Gaza after inspection.
The point instead was to portray Israel as the agent of Palestinian oppressions and to provoke Israeli action that could be twisted to indict the country as a brute state. As one flotilla participant told Al Jazeera TV, the goal was "one of two happy endings: either martyrdom or reaching Gaza."
To its shame, the United Nations Security Council rushed to take up a resolution condemning Israel rather than one backing a nation's right to enforce international law and order on the high seas. Such is the fetid nature of the swamp at Turtle Bay.
Happily, the U.S. refused to participate in an abomination. The Obama administration steered the panel into neutrally protesting "acts" that led to the nine deaths and then blocked demands for an international inquiry into Israel's conduct.
Urging a probe of that kind is part and parcel of the effort to cast Israel as the seed of evil in the Mideast, not just, in this case, a country whose military might have better handled a particular operation. As often happens in other war zones without raising a Security Council eyebrow.
The double standard - the higher standard to which Israel is held - is screamingly apparent. So, too, the horribly cynical tactic of bludgeoning Israel with misplaced blame.
Hamas fires thousands of rockets into Israel, Israel at long last responds - and Israel is found by a UN kangaroo court to be the author of atrocities.
Hamas represses Palestinians in Gaza with Taliban-style misrule while Palestinians on the West Bank enjoy a freer society and economic growth - and Israel is blamed for the miseries in Gaza.
Hamas acquires rockets that could rain down on cities across Israel - and Israel gets savaged for, if anything, underestimating the potential for violent fanaticism in the attempt to bust a blockade that is essential to its national survival.
This, too, must be stressed without reservation: Israeli commandos acted in self-defense in killing nine supposed humanitarians on the Mavi Marmara after a mob attacked the soldiers with Molotov cocktails, guns, machetes and crowbars.
The boarding party, armed in the first instance with paintball guns, was clearly surprised by the violence it encountered on descending to the ferry deck under the authority of a legally recognized quarantine. Yet, the raiders and the country they defend are hauled before the court of world opinion as international thugs.
Israel - not Hamas, the terror band that enslaves the Palestinians of Gaza while engineering military strikes on Israel.
Israel - not the pro-Hamas, terrorist-supporting activist group that sponsored the flotilla while masquerading as a social services organization.
Israel - not the radical Islamists and their deluded sympathizers who are waging a propaganda campaign to destroy Israel's moral legitimacy by depicting the Middle East's only democracy as the perpetrator of war crimes.
All of that said, Israel handed its many enemies potent rhetorical ammunition in planning an extraordinarily difficult operation. Five blockade-running ships were stopped without incident. On the sixth, a small team met organized resistance by a far larger force with disastrous consequences for a country whose every response to attack is scathingly denounced as disproportionate.
Those who sponsored the so-called Freedom Flotilla knew from the get-go that reaching dock was out of the question. But getting supplies to Palestinians was never the actual point. Witness the fact that Israel and Egypt, which jointly sanction the blockade to prevent Hamas from importing arms, had each offered to off-load the goods and deliver them into Gaza after inspection.
The point instead was to portray Israel as the agent of Palestinian oppressions and to provoke Israeli action that could be twisted to indict the country as a brute state. As one flotilla participant told Al Jazeera TV, the goal was "one of two happy endings: either martyrdom or reaching Gaza."
To its shame, the United Nations Security Council rushed to take up a resolution condemning Israel rather than one backing a nation's right to enforce international law and order on the high seas. Such is the fetid nature of the swamp at Turtle Bay.
Happily, the U.S. refused to participate in an abomination. The Obama administration steered the panel into neutrally protesting "acts" that led to the nine deaths and then blocked demands for an international inquiry into Israel's conduct.
Urging a probe of that kind is part and parcel of the effort to cast Israel as the seed of evil in the Mideast, not just, in this case, a country whose military might have better handled a particular operation. As often happens in other war zones without raising a Security Council eyebrow.
The double standard - the higher standard to which Israel is held - is screamingly apparent. So, too, the horribly cynical tactic of bludgeoning Israel with misplaced blame.
Hamas fires thousands of rockets into Israel, Israel at long last responds - and Israel is found by a UN kangaroo court to be the author of atrocities.
Hamas represses Palestinians in Gaza with Taliban-style misrule while Palestinians on the West Bank enjoy a freer society and economic growth - and Israel is blamed for the miseries in Gaza.
Hamas acquires rockets that could rain down on cities across Israel - and Israel gets savaged for, if anything, underestimating the potential for violent fanaticism in the attempt to bust a blockade that is essential to its national survival.