Some of the ships were flagged in NATO member countries. An attack on a ship in international waters is in fact an act of war. In the event of an act of war on a NATO member, all 27 other NATO members, including the United States, are required to come to fight against the attacker. In other words, the US may now be legally required to go to war AGAINST Israel.

This is more than a PR disaster.

You are right, it is a PR disaster. It is all over the internet and it is the first time I’ve ever seen a story about Israel as the #1 recommended story on dailykos.com. If these ships really do contain nothing but relief supplies this will look awful.

The location of deployed naval vessels is (or should be) classified national security information.

2. BTW, no country advertises where submarines are deployed – and it is unlikely that any discussion of the matter is even slightly reliable

3. One should note that it is cheapest way to deter an attack is to start a rumor about one’s military capability

The expressed aim of the flotilla’s organizers is to unlawfully provide aid and comfort to Hamas – an illegal terrorist organization. Since it seized power in Gaza three years ago, Hamas, which is openly committed to the genocide of world Jewry and the physical eradication of Israel, has transformed the Gaza Strip into a hub of the global jihad. It has been illegally holding hostage Gilad Schalit incommunicado for four years. And it is continuously engaged in a massive, Iranian-financed arms buildup ahead of its next assault.

Beyond providing aid to Hamas, the declared aim of the “Free Gaza” movement is to coerce Israel into providing Hamas with an outlet to the sea. This too is in contravention of international law which expressly prohibits states and non-state actors from providing any support to terrorist organizations.

IN SENDING out the latest group of ships, Turkey and its Irish, Greek and Swedish partners seek to appropriate the imagery of the Jewish pre-statehood struggle for independence from Britain. In a bid to appease Hamas’s jihadist precursors, in 1939 Britain’s Mandatory authorities broke international law and prohibited Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine.

The League of Nations’ letter of mandate for Britain specifically enjoined the British to facilitate Jewish immigration to the land of Israel. Yet following the Arab terror war from 1936-1939, the British issued the White Paper that all but prohibited Jewish immigration. This move blocked the one place on Earth where European Jews were wanted from accepting them and so trapped 6 million Jews in Hitler’s Europe.

In the aftermath of the war, the British maintained their prohibition on Jewish immigration. To fight this British policy, the Zionist leadership in pre-state Israel organized the Aliya Bet program of illegal immigration. Jewish agents scoured the world for ships large enough to bring Europe’s Jewish refugees to the land of Israel.

The ship most emblematic of the era was the Exodus. The Exodus which set sail from France in July 1947 with 4,515 Jewish Holocaust survivors on board was the Zionist response to a new British policy to force illegal immigrant ships to return to Europe.

The British rammed the Exodus in Haifa. They boarded and killed three Jewish defenders. They then forced its passengers to board British prison ships that would return them to Europe. French authorities denied the ships the right to land in France, so the British sailed on to Hamburg, Germany, where the refugees were forced to disembark.

The international outcry against Britain in the wake of the Exodus affair shamed London into cancelling its new policy. It also paved the way for Israel’s independence 10 months later.

Now the Turkish, Greek, Swedish and Irish governments are colluding with Hamas to purloin the imagery of the Exodus and the heroism of the Jewish people in the years leading up to statehood and project that imagery onto a terrorist organization that seeks to complete Hitler’s work. They further seek to invert reality by portraying Israel, which in accordance with international law is trying to contain and defeat Hamas, as a combination of the German Nazis and the British imperialists.

SO FAR, they are getting away with it. So far, for their efforts on behalf of a genocidal terrorist organization Erdogan and his ilk are being extolled as human rights champions. Barring any unexpected events, Israel will suffer yet another public relations disaster on Thursday when the ships approach Gaza.