things get curiouser and curiouser. apparently there's now indications that a couple of the boats from the flotilla were sabotaged and that the flotilla was itself the object of "grey operations." the explanation that's being floated is obvious---the same phantom weapons that the idf was on about yesterday.
infotainment on this:
Quote:
Gaza aid flotilla: Israeli sabotage suspected
Israel's military may have sabotaged two boats carrying Free Gaza activists after both malfuntioned at the same time in the same way prior to the raid
Two passenger boats sailing to Gaza as part of the aid flotilla attacked by Israel malfunctioned at the same time and in the same way earlier in their voyage, prompting suspicions they may have been sabotaged.
Challenger I and Challenger II, carrying 36 activists from the Free Gaza campaign, were forced into port in Cyprus on Friday evening when both their steering systems broke down on the journey from Heraklion in Crete, a campaign spokeswoman said.
The problems emerged as Israel's military establishment gave strong indications that clandestine attempts were made to sabotage some of the ships ahead of yesterday's bloody confrontation, in which at least nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed.
Challenger II started taking on water after the bilge pump suddenly stopped working and an inspection yesterday of Challenger II, which was forced to withdraw from the flotilla, revealed "very suspicious" faults, according to a spokeswoman for Free Gaza, Greta Berlin.
Both boats were forced to radio distress signals to Cypriot ports and Berlin said the captain of Challenger I, Denis Healey, was "frightened that he was not going to be able to get the boat in". Once in port in northern Cyprus, he had to repair hydraulic lines on the boat. Challenger II had to pull alongside the main Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, on the high seas 70 miles off the coast of Cyprus, to transfer its passengers before it limped into port.
Yesterday Matan Vilnai, the deputy minister of defence, was asked by an Israel Radio interviewer today whether there had not been a smarter alternative to direct assault. He answered that "all possibilities had been considered," adding: "The fact is that there were less than the 10 ships that were due to participate in the flotilla."
An unnamed Israeli Defence Force source who briefed the Knesset's foreign affairs and defence committee on the widely criticised interception spoke of "grey operations" being mounted against the flotilla. No further detail was reported, probably because of the military censorship rules that Israeli media are legally required to follow.
The officer also said that military planners had considered trying to stop the MV Marmara rather than board it but had decided against it because the Turkish ship was too fast.
Both Free Gaza boats had left Heraklion in Crete last Thursday and had been sailing for around 30 hours when the malfunctions happened, the Free Gaza group said.
"We had two very fine captains and they both had steering problems but the bilge pump of the Challenger II began not to pump out water," said Berlin. "That boat was close enough to the Turkish ship to offload its passengers. It did that and started to head back towards Cyprus. The captain radioed a distress signal and said he had to come in. That boat went into Limassol in the early evening."
Meanwhile, Healey, the British captain of Challenger I was having the same problems on his way to Cyprus.
"He had 17 passengeres on board as well," said Berlin. "His steering got worse and worse. Dennis is very calm, but he was frightened that he was not going to be able to get the boat in. He radioed to the Cypriots and said he needed to bring the boat in. He told them he was a motor yacht, carrying passengers on their way to Gaza and he was told he couldn't come in. So he went to Famagusta in northern Cyprus instead where he got off and the passengers stayed on board. He repaired the boat himself through the night and into Saturday morning. He fixed the hydraulic lines."
Challenger II was lifted out of the water at Limassol for inspection.
"The inspector said it looked very suspicious and we are having it inspected again by another person today," said Berlin. "It was very odd that this happened at the same time [on each ship] and in almost the same circumstances."
There is at least once known precedent for naval sabotage by the Israelis. Flotilla 13, the elite naval commando unit that carried out Monday's raid, reportedly blew up a ship named al-Awda (the Return) which was chartered by the PLO in 1988 to dramatise the plight of Palestinian refugees. It sank in Limassol.
Vilnai, whose ministry is under fire because of what many Israelis are calling a bungled operation, still insisted it had been the right thing to do: "You cannot allow supplies to go into the giant terrorist base that is being created in the (Gaza) strip and is threatening Israel's heartland," he said.
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Gaza aid flotilla: Israeli sabotage suspected | World news | The Guardian
so let's exclude this weapons nonsense and the standard right wing giant terrorist boogeyman along with it. both seem obvious bullshit. and if the israelis were so worried about weapons coming in they wouldn't have gone after a flotilla with egyptian mps as part of the entourage because a reopened tunnel system back up is WAY more likely to function as a source of weapons than is a highly publicized group of international activists who are interested in ending the 3-year siege of the civilian population of gaza.
just saying.
so that can't be why they did this.
personally i think that the idf was concerned about the political damage allowing the flotilla would cause simply by virtue of the amount of media coverage it would necessarily bring to conditions in gaza. so there must have been a decision taken that's it was less damaging to do things this way, even though it meant 10-15 dead activists and 30 wounded. somewhere there was a calculation that holding hundreds of people hostage after an act of piracy was less damaging than having conditions exposed on the gaza strip. it was apparently less damaging because the spin concerning phantom weapons and the giant terrorist boogeyman are within the control of the idf press machinery and the free gaza action would not have been.