Gaza Flotilla Raid
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Basic Information

On May 31, 2010, the Israeli Defense Forces botched a raid on a blockade-running flotilla of 6 ships full of activists attempting to reach the Gaza Strip. 70 people were injured (10 Israelis and 60 activists), 9 activists died, and the IDF soldiers were forced to jump overboard to escape.

Israel says the soldiers were armed primarily with less-lethal weapons including paintball guns, and only fell back on traditional firearms after being attacked by the activists with knives. They jumped into the water to escape after several were thrown from an upper deck onto a lower deck and injured.

The activists aboard the Mavi Marmara (the ship where the conflict took place) say the Israeli troops opened fire before they ever boarded the ship, while the troops were still rapeling down from a helicopter. The activists were in International Waters, and thus the Israeli raid could be seen as piracy or attempted kidnapping. However, Israel had a declared blockade in place and the activists had announced their intent to run the blockade, so exactly who was in the right is kinda muddy.

The poor-handling of the raid by the IDF has hurt the political position of Israel, and undermined the stability of the already-stressed region. It may have strengthened the international power of Turkey, a country that has recently taken a very strong stance against the blockade, but had previously been one of Israel's few allies in the region.

Sources

See Also:

Media Blackwash - this incident is subject to a great deal of misrepresentation by anti-Israel media in the West, as well as the traditional "daily hate" from the Islamic world.

Game and Story Use

  • This could lead to a war, should Turkey or another nation send military vessels to protect future attempts to run the blockade.
  • In the Continuum RPG there's a timeline of the "Aquarian Era" that lists "Turkey reasserts leadership of the Muslim world". It had previously looked like one of those classic RPG future timelines that gets proven terribly wrong as the years roll on. Now, however, it starts to look like they only got the dates a little off. (I mention this partly because the Continuum RPG is cleverly written as if it were a book brought down from the future to help prepare mankind for the impact open time-travel will have on our societies and civilization.)
  • Really, really easy to steal for Sci-fi games: e.g. Two rival colonies on the same planet engaged in an extended war, one of which has enough space capability to blockade the other.
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