Thoughts on the Israeli Navy Operation

Sunday night before I went to sleep I checked the news in Israel, as is my nightly routine before I shut my eyes and look forward to another day. There was some talk about a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, which is under a sea blockade from Egypt and Israel for the last three years, since Hamas took over from the PLO in the Gaza Strip in a bloody coup.

I remembered that when I was just about to finish my national service as a combat soldier in the Israeli Navy, three years ago, Hamas was voted in and they called (and still call) for the total annihilation of the State of Israel. At the time the Israeli and Egyptian governments chose to close their borders with the Gaza Strip for fears of weapons smuggling into the Gaza Strip by factions interested in war and destruction. Part of the closure included a sea blockade, which is enforced until this present day.

Late on Sunday night I tuned in live to a satellite video broadcast from ‘Marmara’, one of the ships that sailed from Turkey as part of the flotilla, it was in Arabic and Turkish, but there were some European civilians on board who interviewed too and spoke in English about how they looked forward to meeting Hamas and delivering the aid to Gaza. At the time I was thinking to myself what sort of things would I be doing if I was in Israel on board my Navy ship? How is the Israeli Navy meant to stop them? I realized the fragility of the situation, but I hoped for good and genuinely believed that the flotilla that seemed peaceful on camera would deliver the aid through the Port of Ashdod in Israel for it to be inspected.

When I woke up in the morning to check the news I was in disbelief of what had escalated into a sad and unsettling scenario. Scores of people injured and some killed. I tuned into live news updates from Israel on www.mako.co.il to better understand what happened on board the same ship I was watching the broadcast from only the previous night. I learned that during the night Israeli authorities repeatedly called for the flotilla of ships to take the aid to either Egypt or Israel for it to be assessed. Unfortunately, out of the 6 ships only the ‘Marmara’ refused to collaborate after repeatedly being told to head to the Port of Ashdod. Eventually during the night some IDF soldiers boarded the ship to make sure it changed its course and headed towards Ashdod. To their dismay and total astonishment they were met with gangs of people who hit them with iron bars, stabbed them with knives and even shot at them. The ‘Marmara’ turned out to be a place where some ‘peaceful activists’ decided to wage all out war against the IDF soldiers boarding the ship. This left the IDF soldiers with no other option but to protect their own lives as some activists set about lynching them.
The IDF and the Israeli government regret the loss of any life. There is no doubt in my mind that this should not have happened. Certainly, the Israeli Navy should have assessed the situation more carefully before deploying soldiers aboard a ship that turned out to host ‘activists’ that are interested in confrontation and violence rather than a peaceful solution and agreement.

What if the flotilla was allowed to continue its course to Gaza, without having the aid assessed? Would there be a promise that there was no ammunition or rockets being delivered too? Would Israelis have died instead? Some may claim that the only way forward is by stopping the blockade on Gaza, but is it really safe to do so whilst Hamas is still in power? Are we naïve enough to believe that the Hamas regime in Gaza in any way seeks peace with Israel?
The Palestinian people deserve the right for freedom from its own aggressors, the Hamas regime; with that freedom they also deserve the right to have free trade and goods in to their territory; a fact that is not possible so long Hamas continue to claim that Israel doesn’t have a right to exist. This is proven by the rockets fired into Israel on a daily basis to this present day.

I can only hope that what infiltrates into the Palestinian peoples’ mind is how the firing of rockets into Israel is counter productive. How do we convince the Palestinians of this? I also hope that should the blockade be lifted, the Israeli people would feel confident enough that no more rockets would be fired into southern Israel.  The Israeli people deserve to live in peace and security, two fundamental rights that any country in the world deserve to have. So what do we do next? Would the lifting of the blockade ease tensions? Would the lifting of the blockade convince Hamas that peace and not war is the right way forward? How do we create the vital element of trust needed for peace to be found?

Od yavo shalom Eleynu…עוד יבוא שלום עלינו

Ben Jardine
Your ‘’Ex-Israeli Navy’’ Shaliach