Surely a sign of our e-connected times, there is a battle of videos on the Internet taking place between the Israel Defense Forces and the Free Gaza movement that directed the relief flotilla.

On the radio going home yesterday afternoon, I heard Adam Shapiro – who runs the Free Gaza movement – speak on the Marc Steiner radio show about the many cell phone videos that captured Israeli soldiers beating on the “humanitarian protestors.” I have yet to find those videos on YouTube and the Free Gaza web page (http://www.freegaza.org/) or Al-Jazeera (http://www.aljazeera.com), but welcome someone sending them to me. All I can find are videos of protests like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvErJSJUWL4&feature=youtu.be&a .

There are links on something called http://witnessgaza.com/ , which are witnesses testimonies – but no live videos of the event itself. 

However, many people have already seen the video the IDF filmed of their soldiers being dropped into the mob. It was originally on http://www.haaretz.com and is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LulDJh4fWI&feature=related

Now the IDF has released a video that it says are the people on the boat preparing for conflict. It is here and is 2:25 minutes long: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZlSSaPT_OU&feature=player_embedded

Despite the above, I also do not want to callously dismiss the fact that nine people are dead. As Jews, we should be able to mourn that reality while defending the Jewish state – and continuing to ask hard questions about a military move that was made necessary by the flotilla, but which obviously went awry.

Thoughts?

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Neil;
I’ve got to disagree with you about the video, My only fear is that too many idiots around the world won’t get the satire!

Steve (who is a good long-time friend), I mourn the deaths of all people. I want people to change, not to die. That’s what Judaism teaches me—and it does not take away from my understanding that Israel is right to act in its self-defense. For me, there is a need to do both and to never lose our humanity while standing up for our rights as a people and the State of Israel.

The cause of the mission going awry was the need for the terrorists on the main boat to create an incident. So no, I do not mourn the death of 9 terrorists whose goal was to bring death to Jews. They dealt the play and reaped the benefits. And while it may sound callous, I look at the response of Nicholas Sarkozy who thought that the response was “out of proportion” and would love to ask him the following question:

Hey Nick - How many Jews need to die before our troops are allowed to use deadly force? Is it one, two, three, ten, one hundred????? Just how many need to be murdered by terrorists before we are allowed to respond?

Why is there a need to mourn the deaths of nine terrorists?  Would we mourn the deaths of 9 people who attacked our soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan?