Bloody Monday

June 1, 2010 in Uncategorized

9 unarmed, innocent antagonists lie dead at the hands of an occupying state. Sounds familiar? Add 4 more death (and go back 28 years) and you’ve got Bloody Sunday (sort of). Here are 2 things that i thought of reading about the Flotilla massacre.

The wrong people for the job:

Israeli commandos v peace protesters armed with crude weapons: chairs, sticks, rocks. Not a good match. The commandos and the British paras can be compared: neither were used to taking low-level aggression and provocation; both were willing to use live rounds when they perceived threat (when other, lower-level state armed ‘battalions’ would have approached this situation in a non-lethal way cf. constant antagonism in occupied lands against armed forces)

Excuses:

Another parallel can be drawn from the excuses made. Netenyahu actually said there was ‘reports’ of gunfire, the same excuses made by Paras in the Widgery Report (such claims are utter bollox, the only gunfire came after 12 people had been shot dead (a carbine was fired from Rossville flats by someone purported to be from the OIRA)). As soon as I heard him say it, it sounded so much like excuses made in 1972, utter crap, and will be proven to be later.

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Crude post, will get more detailed and more paralleled as the details unfold. The similarities are amazing: Israel know they have completely fucked up, they’ll have to stand by their commandos, white-wash the report, possibly claim some acted aganinst orders, continue to insist on gunfire being heard, stand by their decision to use crack troops to absail down and kill unarmed protesters.