Willravel

Hold on just a second, I think we may be operating with different information. The civilians captured, taken to Israel, and released have started to give their eyewitness accounts of what happened, and all of them, without exception, say IDF opened fire before landing on the flotilla... not just with teargas and smoke grenades as I previously posted, but with suppressive fire that hit some of the humanitarians. There's already been write-ups about this in the NYT, Guardian, and elsewhere, starting about mid-day yesterday. IDF naval forces opened fire with live rounds before anyone on the aid ships could have possibly done anything to instigate violence other than sailing for Gaza, which isn't an instigation of violence but belligerence.

While I suppose it's certainly possible some people on those aid ships are the third type you describe (though, seriously, as someone relatively active in the Palestinian freedom movement, these people are exceedingly rare), I'm not entirely sure it matters in this specific instance. The violence on the flotilla as the IDF forces foolishly repeled into a crowd was a direct response to the shooting of unarmed civilians, not the other way around. If that wasn't bad enough, the IDF commandos that landed also opened fire. This is when the American citizen from Turkey had 4 shots to the head and one to the chest all from short range.

With all due respect, I cannot see how anyone could be trying to justify the actions of the IDF under orders from Israeli officials given the available information.

Here is a link to the NYT article, in which witnesses attested to the actual timeline of events.