[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Breaking a blockade is breaking a blockade. By your logic a force breaking a blockade could be demanded to be allowed success if only it does not shoot at those opposing forces enforcing the blockade. That is absurd. It does not matter whether the blockade runner is armed and doe snot use its weapons, or has no weapons. The frigate running a blockade is the same like a trader running a blockade.

Without getting into whether it should be "allowed success", I see that you have silenced yourself on the point of it being "military aggression".

Can't comment, don't know the details of that incident.

At risk of oversimplifying, in a nutshell. The Soviet interpretation of the term "innocent passage" is that it applies only to merchants, and they have to follow the navigational regime of the nation who owns the territorial waters (makes sense to me). The American interpretation allows for warships & merchantmen, and they can be allowed to do almost anything short of opening fire (technically, the American position does not allow surveillance, but let's get real, in these days of electronic steered, radome-covered devices how can you easily tell, and even a active radar can easily be covered in the name of "navigational safety" while conveniently recording down intelligence).

Anyway, the Americans decided to assert their position in their "Freedom of Navigation" program (which in this case is more a "Freedom to be an *sshole" program IMO) and sent Yorktown and Caron to loiter in Soviet Black Sea waters. The Soviets eventually sent two frigates to bump (literally) them away. The Americans bawled - they argue that even if there was a violation it should be handled in court...

So, if we accept that a running a blockade is military aggression, by extension so would this little violation (especially since Yorktown and Caron are after all, very modern large warships) of national waters - thus they may be legitimately sunk. It is quite clear regardless of the legal specifics, if they were sunk, it would have been a incident instigated by America. Yet I just don't see NATO not standing by America if this scenario did come to pass...

See above. Abloackade is a blockade. It has a purpose, that is to prevent, limit or control the flow of goods to an enemy one is at war at. Any effort trying to counter that prevention or control of goods transports, is breaking the blockade. So is smuggling.

The blockade by Israel is legal, was supoported actively by Egypt, and tolerated by many araba states.

The legality is disputable, I think Egypt is bailing ship now they fully understand what this blockade means, and tolerance is no endorsement.

Now will you finally please spend some time on trying to understand what purpose a blockade has and what it tries to acchieve. It's becoming a bit boring that time and again I must point out and explain the very obvious. the Israeli blockade to Gaza is not even a total one, but one that is about inspections and just filtering out certain items that can be of military use for Hamas.

And there you go - it was supposed to let humanitarian items through, and we have commandos.

Civilians voluntarily lining up with combatants - become combatants themselves that way, because they have chosen one combatant side to line up with. Civilians in Israel that get terroised by randomly aimed missiles do not do that, nor does the Israeli military confuse the situation by hiding in civilian crowds like Hamas and Hezbollah does.

That's the distinction you picked, hmm? What the Israeli military does is a non sequitur in this case - if Turkey tried to disguise its warship as merchantmen there might be something to it...

As for civilians, for one thing, it is very highly disputable as to whether a civilian becomes a combatant just for running a blockade. I guess the Lusitania just never knew its death was perfectly legitimate and it was actually a military aggressor on the mere grounds it was running a German sub blockade.

In another point, we get into a bunch of horny questions over how close the alignment has to be b/f it is valid to shoot them. After all, the average Israeli citizen is a conscript and reservist (even the women though they IIRC have shorter programs), and in any case they all pay taxes contributing to a Apache firing into the Gaza.

In a third point, if some Israeli civilian runs across the street to help, for example, some Israeli wounded soldier or to bring him some food, will you really feel nothing as some Hamas fella guns him down (knowing he's a civvie) on grounds that he just "voluntarily lined up" with the IDF, that he knew what was coming ... etc?

The activists on those ships, on the other hand, voluntarily joined blockade runners and knew what they were doing and said that that was what they wanted and what they were doing. they have chosen sides in a conflict they knew they were heading into. That's what made them no neutral civilians but blockde runners. And since running through a blockade is an act of conflict in itself, they were combatants even if they were just sitting on the deck.

Choosing sides, in most people's books, does not equate to becoming combatants...

No. you just mess up the meaning of war and think there is a way war could be fought in a civilised way, like a sports event. It isn'T. It's neither fair nor just. It's only a war either needed, or a war not needed. The first you fight, the second you better stay away from.

That may be your position. The average guy in the West thinks differently however, or they'll be total hypocrites as they cry out against terrorists. And Israel is not willing to pay the political price to use your definition.

And if you believe there is no civility in war, again, there is nothing left to condemn a terrorist with.