Well, unfortunately there is at least one problem in the article cited: Giraldi claims that the Turks aboard the Mavi Marmara were unarmed. Footage of the commando raid shows them shoving an Israeli commando over the rails of the ship into the sea and beating another one brutally with clubs. Another photo showed a Turk holding a knife until a Western media outlet actually edited the knife out of the photo. A number of impromptu weapons were confiscated on the ship and photographed. Several people aboard the ship testify that their fellow members of the flotilla sawed the railings of the ship to make clubs. It is reported that the people on the ship confiscated the side-arms of at least on Israeli soldier they captured.

Please try to consider both sides in this debate. The Israeli account is not, prima facie, implausible. They expected to take over the ship easily, they met much fiercer resistance than they expected. Israeli soldiers were overpowered and thrown overboard. The Israelis responded with lethal force. Maybe that’s an overreaction. Or maybe that’s legitimate self-defense when fellow soldiers are being tossed into the sea, they are being overpowered and beaten with metal clubs, and their side-arms are being confiscated. The Israelis are ugly fighters. But so are the Palestinians and their Islamist allies. The situation in which the Israeli commandos found themselves is not all that different from what cops might find themselves when facing drug gangs in the United States. Remember, our own police have been found innocent of wrongdoing even in instances when the people they shot to death were found to be unarmed. Why were they acquited? Because the juries found that in the heat of the moment they were incapable of ascertaining that the people they shot were not as great a threat as they initially seemed to be. It *may* be that this was a case of a blunder on the part of the commandos. It certainly makes no sense to say that the people on the ship were unarmed — everyone admits that they were wielding potentially deadly clubs. We have footage of them assaulting the Israelis and tossing them into the sea. So it was an escalating violent situation. It was not a simple massacre of nonviolent resisters. That at least should be acknowledged.

We owe it to the Israelis to acknowledge this even if this was a culpable over-reaction and even if the blockade is wrong. Why? Because we would not want the world to be so quick to judge us if some leftist, do-gooder activists forced our own military or police into similar confrontations. A few weeks ago American border agents killed a Mexican teenager. We could be quick to judge — murder! — or we could wait for an investigation. I think we should give the Israelis the same consideration until further investigation comes forward.

Thank you.

I am an American Jewish convert to Latin Mass Catholicism and enjoyed your comic piece immensely. Israel is irrelevant. The combined assault by the spectacularly evil heresy of Islam combined with the ‘Progressive’ and truly Satanic Left is worldwide, relentless and has nothing to do with Israel and EVERYTHING to do with worldwide Jihad and submission of the earth to ‘Allah’. Jews play a prominent role in this hideous process of self-annihilation. Israel hating, atheistic Jews not Zionist ones. I agree with with Von Hildebrand: You can slap and spit on Jesus, He may forgive you but antisemitism is slapping and spitting on His mother. When Jew-hatred becomes as confused, laughable and insane as this, it is antisemitism. Your allies against Israel by the way hate and loathe the Catholic church.