Flotilla? Convoy?
In the firestorm surrounding the recent clash between Israel and the six ships carrying materials to the Gaza strip there has been one constant that I find somewhat surprising: calling the ships an “aid flotilla”.
Now, to be fair, the ships did indeed carry a great deal of aid. There was medicine, cement, food, etc, and reportedly no weapons to be found (other than clubs and knives, of course). Definitely no rockets, though. Judging by merely the contents of the ships, it very reasonable to call the group an “aid flotilla” or “aid convoy”.
That said, we generally name things for their intended purpose. Read any article about the events and you’ll get quotes from those involved with the aid organization that their primary mission was to break the blockade. That’s why they were not willing to drop the materials at a port and have it transferred by land to Gaza. In that case, why are we not referring to the group as “blockade runners”?
A cynical view would be to say that the hesitation with calling the group blockade runners is that it’s easier to understand a military/police takeover of blockade runners, but the same action carried out against an aid convoy? Oh my, that’s an international incident.
Let me be clear here, before some of you get really upset and head to your emails, and state that I don’t believe that Israel acted appropriately, or even intelligently here. I can understand a wide range of motivations for what they were trying to do, from ignorance (they didn’t really know what could have happened) to outrageously aggressive (they were looking to violently engage the ships to send a message), but whatever the feelings were in the government, calm decision-making does not lead you to dropping commando teams onto ships of overwhelmingly unarmed civilians.
My thought to more properly label the group of ships is not to diminish the attack by Israel, neither the poor decision to proceed with the attack or the violent outcome that resulted from it, but rather to provide a more balanced view of what actually was happening.
At the end of the day, there are two parties in the wrong here, not just one. The leadership of the blockade runners had every opportunity to direct the ships to the port to drop the aid goods. The Israeli leadership could have tried to take the ships non-violently with a prop-fouler or if they were set on using commandos, they could have done so in daylight, precipitated by a message over loudspeaker saying that they were landing, were not looking for confrontation and what the instructions the passengers should follow to avoid conflict.
Not properly labeling one of the parties to artificially engender additional sympathy is a disservice to the report of what occured.
